The knowledge every person is individually obliged to seek is only that required by their actual situation: the duties of worship, lawful dealings, and states of the heart that presently apply to them. Communal obligations like medicine or advanced jurisprudence need only be covered by enough people in a community, not everyone.
Sciences are sorted not by prestige but by where they lead: knowledge is praiseworthy when it draws the learner toward right action and the afterlife, and blameworthy when it harms or distracts from that end. The same subject can shift categories depending on the quantity studied and the purpose it serves.
Knowledge pursued for wealth, status, debate victories, or access to rulers becomes a spiritual liability rather than a merit, because the intention behind study determines its value. The outwardly learned can thus be among the most endangered, mistaking reputation for righteousness.
Teaching carries specific obligations: the teacher must show compassion, correct gently and by indirection, model what he teaches, and withhold advanced material from those unready for it. The student reciprocally owes humility, purification of motive, and reverence that treats the teacher as a guide for the soul, not merely a source of facts.
A taste for disputation, clever argument, and defeating opponents is treated as evidence of a diseased motive rather than intellectual strength, since it feeds the ego and distances the arguer from sincere inquiry. Viewed this way, the heat of a controversy signals danger to the arguer's own character before any question of who is correct.