The goal of my paper is to consider the modern meanings of the words “wisdom” and “morality” by comparing them with the terms that usually appear in public documents imbued with the idea of unity of all mankind. The most important of these terms is “knowledge”.

The biggest UNESCO document of 2005 is the First World Report called “Towards Knowledge Societies”. This title reflects the global trend in the world policy of UNESCO. Some time ago it was common practice to talk only about information society in a global sense. Now we talk about the united area of knowledge societies (“societies” in plural). Such change reflects, first of all, refusal to accept modern information technologies as the absolute means of communication but as only one of many ways of translating knowledge collected in different cultures and societies (thus, in some societies, primary schools and teachers are in greater demand than computers and networks). Secondly, this slogan underlines the moment of cultural diversity as the most important, as opposed to the unified frame of reference of the global information society.

Thus, the global area of knowledge societies has been declared. It is a significant event, which responds to deep cultural changes.

Lately, “knowledge”, and not “money” became the direct reference to life fulfillment, work promotion, etc. This is a great trend. In the “wild nineties” in Russia, young people placed the value of material wealth so highly that the value of knowledge was definitely much lower. I remember observing during my studies at Moscow State University how the best applicants who started off as straight A-students gave in to the temptation of that time and got carried away with “business”, barely making it to graduation. Meanwhile, they didn’t experience any inner conflict because there were enough young people of their age around who praised their newly acquired wealth. Power was the ultimate virtue among young people, and money was considered the universal, almost the only, means to get it.

At that time people neither thought too much about their dignity, nor seriously contemplated their future. For example, they didn’t notice that the well-paid work for students almost always was temporary and had no prospects for the future. There was always an answer to that: no wealth – no future. I think that after the collapse of the communist ideology in Russia, people completely forgot for a while how to seriously think about the future. Therefore, the most distant perspective was measured by the time of the next splurge. The way it was common to spend a fortune at that time is another special issue.

However, it is now obvious that in European countries (including Russia), knowledge is singled out as the most important cultural universal, and the young generation also perceives it as a universal. The same way we understand it when saying “knowledge societies” in plural.

A universal is always difficult to define or even simply understand. Anyone familiar with the classical philosophical tradition might recall one of the most important works by Plato that still attracts the close attention of philosophers. This is the Theaetetus dialogue, dedicated to multiple fruitless attempts to define what knowledge is. Today this dialogue unexpectedly intercrosses (as often happens in philosophy) with subjects from world cultural policy.

In the Theaetetus dialogue, after long and painful efforts to define “knowledge”, the interlocutors agreed that such a definition would be an impossible task for a human mind. Wherever the characters got in their discourse, it turned out that in order to define knowledge itself, it was needed to know something in advance. This primary knowledge on which the rest of knowledge is based teases and slips out of definition all the time; it always exists in advance and cannot be caught by definition. It didn’t simply establish the weakness of thought of Socrates and his interlocutors (such statements don’t work at all in reference to Plato’s Dialogues). The main gain after this important philosophical failure is Socrates’ growing confidence in the course of a conversation that knowledge cannot be defined without relation to truth and being.

However, in reference to truth, the issue of cultural diversity receives an unexpected clarification. Socrates in the Theaetetus discussed a phrase by Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things: of things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not". Today, we could say that it was the most ancient motto of cultural pluralism or cultural relativism. I shall invent my own vision and call it truth. Please respect it as much as a cultural masterpiece because my humble creation is one of the million treasures of wisdom. For example, some cultural minority could create their own manifesto of human life and demand from the whole global community to respect it no less than Bible.

Socrates suddenly called the position of “pluralism” concession to the crowd and carefully asked: Protagoras is wise – but why is he wiser than a pig (it has its own opinion as well)? Protagoras pronounces truth – then why the ones who consider him wrong do not?

In other words, a motto “Everyone has one’s own truth” does not work for the strict definition of knowledge. Plato’s Socrates is sure that as a result the truth turns out to be not plural but united and therefore unique. If we look for the essence of knowledge in relation to truth, the plural human opinions would not be an image of knowledge. How to make sense out of such diversity of “knowledge” – or, better, human opinions; which of them to use as a basis for upbringing of the youth? Or, as Socrates sais: “which potion of the ones the wise men made should a youth take?” Again, the participants of the dialogue answered this question with actions, not words: you have to direct your thoughts towards the truth; ask questions as long as you are capable of asking; work diligently trying to understand the essence of knowledge and truth; and only then people’s opinions will show their real value if it ever was there.

It is strange, but Socrates – well-known critic of “pre-Socratic wisdom” – exactly reproduces Heraclitus’ words about people’s opinions. According to Diogenes Laeritus, Socrates once dropped a very ambiguous remark about Heraclitus’ works: "What I understand is splendid; and I think what I don't understand is so too - but it would take a Delian diver to get to the bottom of it." I. e., in order to understand Heraclitus you have to be a man who got used to often dive and swim in deep water for a long time – in the dark and without air – and to fish out one tiny pearl after many exhausting dives.

Heraclitus, who was nicknamed “the obscure” by his contemporaries, once said: “So we must follow the common, yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own”.

For Heraclitus such “wisdom of their own” or “private opinion” almost equals falling sickness. An amazing thought: a grey crowd consists of people, each of whom has one’s own private opinion; everyone does one’s best to be different from the others and live according to one’s own standards. This very desire “not to follow the common” creates a man of the crowd. And the other way around, the imperative “to follow the common” singles a man out of the crowd, and the danger is that he would be alone against the crowd, like a sage or a missionary. Heraclitus himself was like this: he encouraged to follow the common law (“world logos”) while sitting and crying in the town square in Ephesus, being misunderstood and unheard.

Availability of the global experience of cultural diversity is a very important discovery of the XX century. But the example about Heraclitus and Plato’s Theaetetus is crucial as a reminder of a significant difference between the principle of cultural diversity and a slogan “Man is the measure of all things”.

The reminder is heard from the ancient classical epoch: cultural diversity is nothing if it is not looked upon by a man in search for truth because only such man is capable of the true choice between values. A clarification of this kind is definitely in the spirit of the Russian philosophy, which does not forget that there is the one and only world where cultural diversity appears; the only truth, and the only life. Cultural diversity is there and will be there; it is great that it has appeared. But the most important thing is not a discovery of endless information field. This field has to be discovered, it is a significant event; but even dozens of lives are not enough for a man to master it. Facing cultural diversity it is important not to lose the ability to understand and make a conscious choice; and in any case we cannot forget the idea, which is a commonplace for psychologists: extra information noise is harmful for understanding.

Another most important principle of the modern information policy aimed at information equality is general access – particularly, to sources of information on arts. Contemporary databases on music, painting, literature, sculpture, architecture, theater are right here – in the internet or in a shop, costing a couple of Euros: it is a phenomenon of incredible cultural importance because it expands capabilities of a researcher or a student beyond compare. These databases earned deserved respect; and in some technocratic circles they are called “knowledge bases”. However, the example of art again clarifies the term “knowledge” used in reference to the global art with admirable ease.

In the classical philosophical tradition, followed by the works of the Russian philosophers Solovyov, Bulgakov, Ilyin, Leontiev and others, art was never interpreted as information, i.e. formalized data passed down as a message. It is simply nonsense from the point of view of classical esthetics. Solovyov writes neither more no less than “ art is called to portray and object from the point of view of its final state” – i.e. art is a mysterious and miraculous event of appearance of the innermost meaning of the world, a man and a thing; moreover – eschatological sense. This appearance is an appearance of truth; and Solovyov follows Hegel calling art one of the three kingdoms of truth together with philosophy and faith.

From the Russian philosophical esthetics comes a strong need for ministry and self-sacrifice in art, which are expected not only from an artist creating a piece but also from his spectator. Forgetting about creative act and labor will indeed be harmful first of all for a spectator because art does not come easy, and a spectator has to work hard in order to understand a piece of art.

This is true, and we may notice this significant substantial clarification of the principle of general access do databases.

From I.Ilyin’s article “What is art? To S.V. Rakhmaninov” (1939): “Art is ministry and joy. Joy… It is not accessible for everyone, and modern human kind does not search for it. It is born out of sufferingand overcoming. Not out of boredom demanding entertainment; not out of empty soul, which does not know with what to fill its emptiness; not out of fatigue and exhaustion demanding new exciters and unusualpoignancy. Modern mankind en mass as well as its elite part knows only how to tire themselves, get bored and suffer from internal emptiness… An artist spiritually suffered and created. He suffered not only for oneself, and created not only for oneself but also for others, for all and everyone. Finally, he has nurtured and saw the light. He has created: through him the “essence” by which he has healed himself and gained wisdom”.

In the case of databases all work involved – and purely technical one – is often done only by a digitizer and not by a student. After paying 100 rubles for the full set of European painting of XVII century a student may fatally mistake art for a compartment in the general history catalogue, a bag of presents scattered around for his personal consumption, where classical painting, for example, falls under “Erotica in arts”. However, in arts as well as in knowledge, accessibility does not mean availability; if we forget about creation and labor, about a need to make conscious choice, we will be dealing with something different than art.

Let’s imagine that on Sunday Spectator 1 would watch 24 hours of concerts dedicated to the jubilee of Mozart, drinking tea and complaining about absence of commercial breaks to go to the toilet. Spectator 2 would go to Conservatory instead where he would listen to live performance of two chamber pieces by Mozart. He would spend less than an hour closely listening and watching. Out of the two Spectators only the latter would be dealing with music; the former would enjoy pleasure and limitations of general access.

I would like to say that in the case of art it is especially clear that, of course, a definition of a “knowledge database” is terminologically wrong. Digital copies as they are don’t carry any knowledge; it may appear there only for the person who will know how to use it.

My comments about the important terms of “knowledge society” and “digitalization of art” are called to underline the importance of provisions of the UNESCO World Report, and cultural policy corresponding to the UNESCO mandate. The provision of “knowledge societies”, proposed in no later than 2003, makes us think that incredibly expanded access to global cultural recourses again raised the acute question about acquirement of knowledge today, which demands – to greater extent that before – abilities and skills of spiritual and moral work, which no global cyberspace itself can form.

Information is transformed into knowledge by the human ability to understand and choose: only selected and comprehended information becomes knowledge because in this case it is imbued with personal attitude and has acquired personal and public value. It is important to remember that the factor that brings people together is not information or the illusory global diversity to become wiser but the spiritual work, which transforms information into knowledge valuable for both a person and society.

According to Plato and Aristotle (and to Augustine, Spinoza and many other thinkers in the sphere of classical philosophy), the essence of a human being is simple, and comes down to “reason” (nous, intellectus) and “free will”. (As Aristotle writes in Peri psyches: “a combination of reason and free will makes a man”). “Free will” does not have the meaning that is ascribed to it today: it is not power used by a man to get what he wants. Free will is an ability to confirm or deny being – someone else’s or one’s own; and ability to call some things existent and others inexistent. Therefore, free will is a basic and elementary ability of human attitude towards being: there is nothing simpler and stronger. Information is nothing if it is not endued with being by confirming or denying; only free will endues it with being and thus transforms into knowledge. Therefore, the foundation for provision about “knowledge societies” should be the understanding of the fact that the need to use free will in choosing values is a basic need for oneself and one’s country.

Reason (nous), according to Aristotle, is a unique phenomenon, which “is not connected to any body organ”. Nous is separated from both higher and lower parts of a soul: just like being, “it is separated form everything”, and therefore capable of connecting to everything – or in other words, “think about everything”, “understand everything”. Spinoza in his Ethics has done very much: he repeated for his contemporaries the main provisions of the Aristotle’s doctrine about soul, one of which is a thesis about the highest status of “reason” (nous) or “intellectus” in Latin: intellectus is stronger than any other part of soul. The highest ability of a human reason is “understanding”, or “intuitio” in Latin: it encompasses the highest human power, which is bigger even than the ability to choose between values, and definitely much bigger than the ability to produce various human opinions.

Ethics and wisdom still master the human way in life. Ethics (or moral) is responsible for the choice of values; wisdom (as one of the two virtues of the upper part of soul, according to Aristotle) is measured by the ability to understand. I am using the chance to speak from this rostrum in order to repeat again the textbook truth of classical philosophy in reference to the very important event of our time: adoption of the global ideology of “knowledge societies”. Diversity of human opinions is the way to disconnection; choice of one’s own values is the way to self-awareness and self-esteem; understanding each other, the secret of true human power, is still the only way to integration.