The inspiration for paradoxical wisdom has its roots in the winsome wit of the gadfly of Athens...old Socrates. The one who chose to drink the Hemlock and die rather than live a lie.
Well, as it is written "it is appointed for each man to die but once" so who am I to say if he did not choose wisely:)
What is relevant here is that Socrates understood the limits of his own wisdom which paradoxically made him wise. And that is the point here. To accept that we don't know as much as we think we know. Mark Twain observed a few thousand years later that "the problem with most of us is we know too much that isn't so."
Not to complicate the issue of knowing with wisdom but knowing you are not wise makes you wise I surmise...at least in the paradoxically wise sense.
The key to living wisely is to live the paradox...of knowing yet not knowing. That is the essence of paradoxical wisdom. Test the riddle of the oracle at Delphi yourself....ask: "Am I wiser than Socrates?":) Who knows what you will discover.
Have fun...
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