ABSTRACT
With respect to wisdom, the focus will be upon the work of sociologist Monika Ardelt, whose empirical study of wisdom as a developmental ‘ideal type’ has gained much prominence in wisdom psychological literature. With respect to moral formation, the focus will be upon pastoral and moral theologian Timothy O’Connell, whose work on discipleship will be seen to intersect with Ardelt’s picture view of wisdom in a variety of important ways. Wisdom is to be understood here as an ‘ideal type’ towards which one’s personality gradually develops through an ongoing process of reflective integration of one’s experience. Wisdom then is a developmental ideal – it is not something that one ‘has’ or ‘owns’, rather it is a state of one’s person, a total and embodied trait towards which one can grow over the course of one’s life.
