Virtues and Vices and My Thoughts on Wisdom

The next chapter in my science book is called “What Kind of People Ought we to Be?” In it the author lists many virtues that can be found in those who try to prevent the ecological crisis. For instance, respect, self-restraint, honesty, hope, patience, etc, etc. For each of the virtues, he attempts to explain and to name the vices of each. For respect, conceit. For honesty, deception. For hope, despair. He states that virtues have vices, usually two that fit into different categories. Frugality is another virtue, and with it, its vices, greediness and stinginess. Frugality is advisable, and indeed necessary in some conditions, when faced with a limited supply of nutrients. Greediness is a deficiency of that virtue, it is the total opposite, it lacks frugality. Stinginess is an excess of that virtue, it is to much. Other virtues, such as wisdom, do not have two categories of vices. There is a deficiency, (lacking wisdom, having foolishness,) but there is no access. You can not have too much of wisdom. That is what Prediger states, at least.
         But I have a question. Can one have too much wisdom in the sense that one is always flaunting it at others? Or would that be considered foolish and a deficiency? In J. I. Packer’s book, Concise Theology, he says that “Wisdom in scripture means choosing the best and noblest end at which to aim, along with the most appropriate and effective means to it.” God clearly has a lot of wisdom, and there is also wisdom in the scriptures. Is the wisdom that Packer speaks of a different kind of wisdom than Prediger’s? Is the word END the best word to use in the definition of wisdom, for it seems to me that Prediger is speaking of a kind of wisdom that is to enhance, “the beauty of the Earth”, in a way signaling that what we do now is going to effect the Earth in the long run. He is not speaking of an end to the Earth. Those are my thoughts of the day.

End of Note