Forms of rationality facing uncertainty: wisdom's possible key role in antifragility

In years characterised by the irresistible rise of logos, which literally means “computation, reckoning”, Reichenbach rewrites Shakespeare’s figure of Hamlet as follows: “Am I allowed to believe what is only probable? Here is the point where I lack the courage. […] I am afraid of doing something on the basis of a mere probability. The logician tells me that a probability has no meaning for an individual case. […] But shall I be right in this case? No answer. […] There is no certainty”. Our era’s challenges even radicalise Hamlet’s doubt, in that, starting with globalisation’s complexity affecting several phenomena, from climate change to pandemics to digital cities, we face challenges characterised by uncertainty more than ever, which means that the number of cases corresponding to Hamlet’s “individual case” are countless. Should we surrender to Hamlet’s logician’s failure when it comes to facing uncertainty by having “the courage” to act, which cannot be found in “a mere probability”? Yet, even the cradle of Western culture may offer promising insights that can help us face uncertainty. Hamlet’s logician’s logos is not alone in ancient Greek culture, in that it is joined at least by another form of rationality: metis, which literally means “wisdom, skill, craft”. Even though logos has won over other forms of rationality, metis has not totally disappeared. The history of Western philosophy teaches us to think of wisdom as self-awareness and awareness of lacks and obstacles, as being adaptable and making a virtue of necessity and as practice-oriented knowledge addressing the whole. After having integrated wisdom’s historical definition with the capacity to imagine especially what we cannot know as at least probabilistically “certain” (which is what, according to Keynes, “We simply do not know”), I shall argue that wisdom may possibly play a key role in antifragility, in that wisdom can master precisely the domain of uncertainty that logos alone cannot master. More precisely, as I shall show through examples, wisdom can give us reasons to act that can be good even though they cannot be “certain”. Thus, wisdom can give us “the courage” to act that we “lack” when we have nothing but “a mere probability”.

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