Wise after the event: who is a 'chacham'?

In the mishnah at Avot 4:1, Ben Zoma defines a chacham ("wise person") as someone who learns from everyone—but this is not the only definition. In the Talmud (Tamid 31b-32a) we learn an aggadic tale that Alexander of Macedon posed ten questions of the Elders of the South. One of them was about the chacham. The Talmud reads like this:

He [Alexander] said to them: “Who is called wise?” They replied: “Who is wise? He who discerns what is about to come to pass [literally “what is about to be born”].”

This raises the questions: do both definitions identify the same person as a chacham? If not, are they contradictory or complementary?

There is no reason why the two definitions should not be satisfied in the same individual. Ben Zoma’s definition looks towards how the chacham obtains knowledge of that which is already known to others, while that of the Elders of the South focuses on how he obtains as-yet unknown knowledge by drawing inferences from that which is already known to him. These two approaches may be perfectly complementary if the mishnah refers to the process of obtaining chochmah ("wisdom") by learning from all people, while the Talmud alludes to the intellectual performance potential of someone who, having undergone that process, has a greater sensitivity to the chain of cause and effect that enables him to take a more accurate and realistic view of the future.

Why did the Elders of the South offer Alexander a different answer to that given by Ben Zoma? It is possible that they were unaware of it in that form. While we learn that the mishnah is Oral Law that has been handed down in a continuous chain of tradition that began with the Giving of the Law at Mount Sinai (Avot 1:1), we also know that the same teaching was sometimes packaged in different verbal formulae, so it is possible that the answer given by the Elders of the South was intended to mean the same thing as Ben Zoma’s answer. We could also turn this question on its head and ask why Ben Zoma did not give the same answer as the Elders of the South. After all, Alexander of Macedon lived and died around 400 years before Ben Zoma and some 500 years before Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi both saved and popularised the vital corpus of the Oral Torah by compiling Avot and the other tractates that make up the Mishnah.

A further explanation may be offered, one which looks more closely at Greek philosophy. Alexander was a pupil of Aristotle, whose thoughts and writings on political philosophy would have greatly influenced him. Aristotle was himself a student of Plato, whose extensive writings focus on the life and methodology of his own teacher, Socrates. Today Socrates is principally remembered for what is called the Socratic method -- a type of question-and-answer dialogue that seeks to stimulate critical thinking by isolating the premises upon which a person’s arguments are based. This method is particularly successful as a way of showing people that the positions they hold are wrong, or that they are not based on the premises claimed for them. Socrates repeatedly demonstrated this technique by asking questions of, and learning from the answers of, craftsmen and artisans as well as other philosophers. In this respect Socrates reflected Ben Zoma’s maxim regarding learning from everyone. Aristotle’s approach was quite different from that of the Platonic school. He was more concerned with the building of systems, whether in the physical world or in terms of the social and political behaviour of man.

We might conjecture that, when Alexander asked the Elders of the South who was wise, he was curious to see if they were followers of Aristotle like he was, or whether they supported the approach followed by Socrates. The Elders of the South, understanding that Alexander was trying to lead them into an argument which might have serious adverse consequences for them, tactfully let him know that they could see what he was up to, letting him know that they were wise enough to see the direction in which he was seeking to steer his interrogation of them and would therefore take steps to avoid a philosophical confrontation with him.

Now for one final observation.  The Elders of the South considered that wisdom was a matter of looking ahead in order to predict the likely outcome of events. In colloquial English, one sometimes hears of a person being “wise after the event.”  These words should not be conceived as even a mild compliment: they are a sharp reminder that anyone can be wise when events have unfolded and it is too late for that wisdom to be of any use. As the Elders of the South indicate, it is only before the future has revealed its course that a person’s wisdom should be praised as such.