No matter how smart or educated you are, what you don't know far surpasses anything you may know. Socrates taught us the virtue of recognising our limitations. Wisdom, he said, requires possessing a type of humility manifested in an awareness of one's own ignorance.
Since then, the value of being aware of our ignorance has been a recurring theme in Western thought: Rene Descartes said it is necessary to doubt all things to build a solid foundation for science; and Ludwig Wittgenstein, reflecting on the limits of language, said that "the difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know".
Already a subscriber? Log in
Read the full story and more at $9.90/month
Get exclusive reports and insights with more than 500 subscriber-only articles every month
ST One Digital
$9.90/month
No contract
ST app access on 1 mobile device
Unlock these benefits
All subscriber-only content on ST app and straitstimes.com
Easy access any time via ST app on 1 mobile device
E-paper with 2-week archive so you won't miss out on content that matters to you
