ABSTRACT
The central theme of the book contemplates the relation of wisdom and art. The exploration of this topic, though, departs from methods of historical chronicle or psychological investigation by being configured within a different lens of narrative. Standing apart from the methodological dualism wherein the researcher stands apart from the principal question of their inquiry, contemplation upon wisdom and art in this study stands in intimate relation to the researcher’s story, one wherein the question would not have become foregrounded were it not for the presence of formative experiences in my narrative. Such experiences, while sculpting my narrative were also, following Bruner (1991, 2004) and Beattie (2019), the basis for the construction of its reality. While stories in my early life formed memories which remained unsaid, they also endured eventually seeding my later intuition in this study that the question of the relation of wisdom and art was in the same instance nurtured by such primordial presences or “vague fragments” (Merton, 1998b, p. 12) in my early life. Forming Chapter 1, reflections upon such fragments mark an engagement with a narrative presence in my study, one guided by the thesis, introduced in A Necessary Letter, that we cannot do contemplative inquiry unless we engage with the imperative of the personal. Although the personal is marked by narrative in my writing, it is in addition configured within an aesthetical presence, which together with the former shapes part of what I view as the fundamental ethos of an arts informed contemplative study.
