The History of the Definition of "Wisdom": Grammatical Dilemma and Its Breakthrough --- From Essential Inquiry to Genetic Description

Philosophy is said to be "the love of wisdom," yet throughout the long tradition of Western philosophy, "wisdom" has lacked a rigorous, non-circular definition. This paper argues that the history of Western philosophy's definitions of wisdom follows a discernible recursive trajectory---from classical ontology through modern epistemology to contemporary linguistic analysis---where each attempt at definition fails to escape circularity but thereby reveals the structure of that circularity more clearly. This is not due to any lack of effort on the part of philosophers, but to the inherent structural limitation of the grammar of the "What is..." question itself. Drawing on Wittgenstein's philosophical turn, this paper introduces the framework of quxiang bilei (image abstraction and analogical correlation) from classical Chinese philosophy, reconstructing it as a meta-cognitive loop of image abstraction, analogical correlation, and verification, and provides a genetic grounding that demonstrates its logical priority over all symbolic systems. On this basis, the paper proposes that wisdom is not an object awaiting conceptual definition, but the sum total of effective "images" sedimented through the quxiang bilei loop across the historical process of human existence; philosophy is the reflection on the modes of image abstraction and the reverence for the "unimageable field." This genetic description brings an end to circular definition and realizes a grammatical shift from the inquiry of "What is..." to the exploration of "How does it come to be?" In the age of artificial intelligence, this framework helps delineate the ontological boundary of current weak AI (narrow AI) characterized by "knowledge without wisdom," and reveals the methodological potential of Chinese philosophy as a meta-analytical tool. At a deeper level, quxiang bilei inherently embodies epistemic awakening (the self-awareness of the limits of one's own cognitive operations), self-awareness of the limits of reason, and ultimate reverence for ignorance and the background of existence. It confronts deep-seated problematic tendencies of modern civilization such as rational inflation and the uprootedness of knowledge, while emphasizing cognitive humility and the maintenance of ontological boundaries.