Silence

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Hello and welcome to Overthink
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The philosophy podcast where we chatter about all manner of things about which we should perhaps keep silent.
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I'm Ellie Anderson.
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And I am David Peña-Guzmán.
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Ellie, I know you know this about me and it came up in our podcast before, but I will a competitive collegiate debater.
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Just a little flex.
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No, it's what?
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What would you mean a little flex?
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It's a major flex.
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No, it's a little flex because it allowed me to pay for part of my studies.
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I went to college at the University of Nevada Reno on a debate scholarship, and so between that and working my part-time job and you know, doing well just that.
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Really that's how I paid for my education.
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And I don't know if you know anything about competitive collegiate debate, Ellie.
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I mean, I'm a philosophy professor and like half of our majors come from a debate background, so I do know some things about debate.
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But have you ever witnessed one?
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No, I don't actually know if I've ever been to one.
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I was like, I didn't have time for debate when I was in high school, since I was so into theater and as well as in college.
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So I had my different kind of performance.
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Anyway, continued college debate.
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Well, yeah, so college debate.
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I participated in a kind of debate called parliamentary debate in college, which is a specific format where you have two teams that compete against each other at tournaments.
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And yes, we would travel.
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We were technically classified as an athletics team in the university's budget.
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So I was an athlete as a debater.
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That's so ancient Greek.
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It's like oh the agon of the mind.
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Yes.
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We would also have to get oiled up before a performance.
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And so the, the specific kind of debate that I did was two versus two, and I wanna tell you a story about a particular debate performance to use the term that you just used.
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That I did when I was, I think at this point I was a junior or a senior in college.
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Okay, and this oiled up two on two wrestling match of wits.
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The minds?
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Yes.
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Okay.
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So there was a tournament, I think it was at Biola, and the way in which parliamentary debate is structured at the collegiate level is that you actually don't know the topic that you're going to be debating until about 15 minutes before you debate.
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So the topic is announced, you find out whether you're on the pro or on the con side of the topic, or what we call the government and the opposition sides of the debate.
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And then you and your teammates have about 15 minutes to gather your thoughts, take down notes, organize your arguments, and then you head into the round where a judge is waiting for you for this agonistic showdown.
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And in, I think it was the quarter final round, I was a, I was a pretty decent debater, so I made it to the out rounds.
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And the topic for this particular quarter, final round was something along the lines of we ought to create new memorials or new ways of memorializing the Holocaust.
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And my partner and I, decided that we would kind of bend the rules of collegiate debate a little bit, and that instead of making arguments in discourse about why we should memorialize the Holocaust, that we would do a performance piece of silence.
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So we arrived in the room and um, one thing about competitive debate is that it's a timed event.
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All the speeches are timed to the second.
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So there are timers that go off, and we decided that for this topic of the Holocaust, we couldn't really rely on language to do justice to the subject matter due to the brutality and the unthinkability, the magnitude of this event that was the Holocaust.
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So what we did is during the preparation time, we decided to do the silence performance where we went up to the podium.
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Each time that it was our turn to give our speech, we started the timer and we simply held silent.
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Each speech is about eight to nine minutes, and then there are rebuttals of about four and five minutes.
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And then there are also cross-examination segments during which we were always silent.
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We didn't single word for the whole debate round.
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And when it was our opponent's turn to speak, they gave arguments both to, to reject our approach and to argue against new ways of memorializing the Holocaust.
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How quickly did they catch on to what was going on?
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And do you think there was any sense that like you had chosen to keep silent because you both felt flummoxed by the question and it was like an out?
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Um.
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We're playing, we're playing a door no saying there is no poetry after Auschwitz
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Auschwitz, yes.
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But actually like, this is a hard question that we don't feel equipped to answer.
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Absolutely not.
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We were more than equipped to debate any topic that was given to us.
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I'm not saying you weren't.
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I'm just saying like, do you think that went through the minds of the judges or did they accuse you of that?
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No, not at all.
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But it did not take long for them to catch on.
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I mean, once your opponent is giving the opening speech, they start the timer and they don't say anything for about 10 seconds.
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You'll realize that there is something different happening that requires you to attend to it in a new way.
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So it was and they did engage.
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Most of the arguments they made against us had to do with whether or not keeping silent in a debate round is an appropriate way of addressing a topic like the Holocaust.
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Okay.
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what was the vibe while you were silent?
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Like I'm thinking that this could end up being a kind of experience that is so awkward that it ends up actually not being about your silence, but about people attending to the awkward vibes in the room and to the, to the, coughs and the stomach, gurgling, et cetera.
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Yeah.
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At what point the silence become cringe.
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The vibe or the mood was very solemn, I would say.
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Um, there was an audience because all the other teams had been eliminated by us and our opponents, and so they come to watch the out rounds.
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So I would say there were about 30 to 40 people in the room watching, including coaches and other students, and everybody sort of gave themselves up to the performance.
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People held still, people didn't speak, and it created an atmosphere of collective speechlessness in communion.
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Maybe that's one way of describing it.
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So it was actually a quite a powerful event.
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And we got a lot of feedback, positive feedback after.
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You know, also because we, we, in doing so, we also, as I said, bent the expectation and the norms of competitive debate, which is that you speak.
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Totally.
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Well, and also you're enlisting the audience in a unique way, and you mentioned that this went against the norms of the debate.
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So I think from a certain perspective, your silence during this debate was an absence, right?
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It was an absence of speech, it was an absence of all of the structural elements that you would expect from a debate, aside from the literal timer, which you mentioned.
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And I think that's really important, right?
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That was, that was the one remaining part of structure.
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Yeah.
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Or I guess like you standing in front of the room.
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But I think in another sense, of course, what you're drawing attention to is that this silence wasn't a sheer absence.
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It actually was filled with all kinds of presences, and it in fact made the audience far more present than they would have been otherwise.
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And I think this gets at a really interesting conceptual point about silence, which is to what extent silence constitutes absence versus an actual presence, or by virtue of taking away certain things, making them absent, it allows other aspects of our experience to come to the fore to become present to us.
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Yeah, and I really like thinking of silence as not an absence as such, because in this particular case, it was a silence that was intentional and purposeful and replete with meaning, and neither us nor our opponents nor the audience were confused about that.
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And so everybody understood that we were making a point about the relationship between language concepts recent in the Holocaust by saying nothing and along the way, making a point about even the use of language in debate itself.
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And by the way, we won that debate, uh, and proceeded on, which, which was quite controversial, right?
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Because they handed us, the judges handed us a win.
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And one of the arguments that our opponents made is, this is not fair, because if we remain silent, we're basically agreeing.
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But if we speak, we become guilty of the violence that they're trying to avoid.
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they made a, they made a procedural argument and we beat them without even responding to it in, in speech.
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Oh my God.
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Our responses were also silence.
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So it was not just the first speech, it was the whole thing.
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Oh my gosh.
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So yeah, I guess the silence really did have meaning there.
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Today we are talking about silence.
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Why is silence connected with awe, ecstasy, and the experience of the divine?
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How does being silent reveal the inner and outer noise that so often surrounds us?
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And what are some of the forms of silence in our everyday lives?
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So we thought about starting this segment with complete silence, but we knew that you all, unlike the debate audience that was present for David's wonderful performance, would think that there was something wrong with your podcast app, which perhaps wouldn't surprise you if you use Apple Podcast, the most diva-ish podcast app out there, like Apple Podcast never wants to work.
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But we started instead this segment with crickets because I think that's the way that our culture usually represents silence, right?
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Silence itself is non representational, and so we have to represent it by some other means.
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In the case of your debate, it was your physical presence.
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Of the podcast, it has to be some form of audio because this is an audio format.
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Yes.
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Otherwise it's really unclear if it's just a broken technology.
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But I, I mean, I like the, the non representational dimension of silence.
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Although I wanna say that we need to be careful not to assume that that means that silence again, is something akin to an empty background against which positivity or presence or discourse suddenly makes an appearance.
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And there is a book that was written in 1980 by Bernard Dauenhauer called Silence the Phenomenon and its Ontological Significance, which is the first book on the philosophy of silence.
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And in this text, Dauenhauer argues that we need to resist precisely that temptation to see silence as a lack, whether that's a lack of being, a lack of the divine, or a lack of meaning, because silence, in fact, he says, always goes hand in hand with discourse.
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In fact, it is constitutive of discourse.
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Just consider the fact that there is always little silences in every discursive act.
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There are, for example, many, many silences between the words that we speak that give those words their identity, and their difference between one another and therefore their meaning.
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And those little silences are not accidental.
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In fact, they're necessary for the modulation of speech.
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You also have gaps between sentences.
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You have pauses that are key for the flow of speech, for the rhythm of discourse.
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And he points to all these silences that are peppered around discourse and that make discourse.
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He calls them intervening silence and he says, you cannot have discourse.
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That is just pure positivity.
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Cuz that would just be like a never ending squeal or a scream.
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You know?
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It's just like, ah, without any inner differentiation.
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Yeah.
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Meaning requires those gaps.
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I might also add that it requires a silent hearer, right?
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Or a silent audience.
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Maybe there are multiple hearers.
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I personally find it very annoying when people interrupt me when I'm speaking.
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Is that, is that a criticism of me?
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Oh my God.
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No, not at all.
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In fact, I feel like part of what we've had to learn to do on the podcast is be comfortable with occasionally talking over each other, that makes for a more dynamic conversation in the podcast.
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But I think the silent listener or listeners are really important aspects of discourse as well.
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Well, you have, you know, the silences between words, then you have the silent listener.
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But according to Dauenhauer you also have what he calls before and after silence, which is the silence that proceeds and that succeeds any kind of monologue or dialogue.
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So before you and I started recording there was this background silence before it began, and once we are done, we will end it.
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And so those two, before and after silence, as he says, also bookend discourse and constituted just as much as the little ones that give form to the words and the syllables and, and the sounds.
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And so discourse is nothing more than maybe actually the cessation of silence rather than the other way around.
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And what do you think about that view in relation to this point we mentioned a few minutes ago, which is that silence is non representational.
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I think a lot of things that are represented can be described as non representational because, or at least as having non representational elements, because representation of something doesn't always exhausted, and I even though silence is very tricky, we have found ways to represent it.
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So just think about the case of writing.
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When we write, we do represent silence with various kinds of orthographic marks, so we sometimes use ellipses, dot dot dot to indicate a pause or a silent moment in the flow of a dialogue.
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Sometimes it's also marked with dashes.
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And in poetry, it is often represented with just literally empty space, right?
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Like you enter, enter, enter, enter, create a gap between the written marks.
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And the idea is that that can represent a form of keeping silent.
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So it it's representable
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Yeah.
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within limits.
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But I would say that the, the silence that we represent in writing is, a transformation of silence as such.
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Right.
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I would say it's a representation of silence rather than saying that it is representational silence, if we can say that.
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So for instance, I think it's might be kind of strange even to say that there is silence in writing at all, because silence pertains to the auditory.
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Right.
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And so because writing and reading are visual media rather than auditory media, I don't know that we could really say that silence itself appears in writing.
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Rather silence is represented in writing.
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Yeah, but I mean, so is speech.
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Speech is represented in writing, and in fact, we could turn the question around and say, is there even sound in writing?
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Because by definition writing is just marks on a surface.
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There are inscriptions.
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Isn't writing and reading?
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Writing inherently silent?
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In a literal sense, yes.
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I think that's part of what I'm getting at, but at least when we're silently reading something that is written, and that is actually a pretty recent phenomenon, right?
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For much of the human history of the written word, reading was done aloud and writing was sort of this medium for the transmission of oral information.
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And it's only in recent centuries that silent reading has become the primary mode of engaging with what is written, which I personally love.
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Like I love the solitude that silent reading provides.
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I feel very grateful to be literate in a society where I have access to books and I don't have to sit around, uh, fire in a medieval nunnery and have the abbist read the Bible to me aloud.
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Yeah.
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Um, but then again, I'm the kind of person for whom all of my favorite experiences in life are one of ones of solitude and silence.
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That is surprising given that you're a podcast host who is charismatic and loves being around people and talking.
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Yeah, I, I do like to talk and I think sometimes I appear to others as being like, pretty outer directed.
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And don't get me wrong, I love being around people, but yeah, no, for me, I, I have a, an inner as someone who doesn't think that there is an authentic core self, if I were to use that language, I would say
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I have an inter core self.
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for shorthand, I would just say for shorthand that, like at my quote core, I prefer solitude to anything else.
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And I think this goes back to my Christian mystic adolescence, right?
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You know, that I used to be quite religious in my teenage years.
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But I was like the kind of religious where I would take that one Bible verse, pray without ceasing, very literally.
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And I would like be in math class or at a party and secretly praying to God.
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Um, not like a, I wasn't like a, you know, socially conservative Christian.
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I was like obsessed with Theresa Avila and, um, a lot of the other John Dunn and some of the other Christian mystics.
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I went to Christian camp three times a year, in fact.
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Three times a year?
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I thought it was just in summer.
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Yes.
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Nope.
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Summer, winter, fall.
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And our camp was up in the mountains and there were a ton of activities.
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Like it was mostly what you would expect from Christian camp, like a lot of singing with your eyes closed, worshiping God, a lot of fun flirtations with, you know, young tweens.
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Is that, is that, was that part of the training?
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I mean, it, that just, that's just what happens at Christian camp.
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But there was one part of the daily camp schedule that most people really hated, but was my absolute favorite time.
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And it was called Solo Time, but it was spelled SOUL-O.
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No.
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Yes.
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And we would just have like, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes of being alone with our souls.
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So I would bring my Bible and silently read it while beholding the mountains beyond me and feeling totally overwhelmed by the experience of what I, you know, would call at the time the divine.
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Which happened to be your soul also like.
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I, it did feel very civil.
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Like I can still, I, I can think about that experience now and automatically my heart feels an uplift.
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Like it was absolutely beautiful.
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It's an experience for which I am immensely grateful.
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Yeah.
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And I mean this language that you're using of immensity, of feeling overwhelmed, I think you also use the term, um, uplifted just now.
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Is that
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Mm-hmm.
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This is precisely how Dauenhauer talks about says that we always experience silence as a power that subdues us and to which we must abandon ourselves.
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And, um, he talks about this in the context of religion, of course, but also other forms of silence.
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And he says that one of the fundamental characteristics of our relationship to silence is what he calls yielding.
00:19:57.356 --> 00:20:23.451
When I encounter a silence, whether that's a silence in the mountains or in the depth of a private chamber, I yield to it precisely I experience it as so magnificent, as so elemental, as so much bigger and more powerful than me, that by its sheer force, the silence makes me aware of my own smallness and my own finitude.
00:20:23.817 --> 00:20:35.636
I love that because one of the things it brings to mind, apropo of our earlier part of the conversation, is this idea that silence isn't just the absence of something, but also a presence unto itself.
00:20:35.696 --> 00:20:49.586
And in this context, I would say that perhaps part of the beauty of solitude is that in not being physically around other people, you open yourself up to a different kind of otherness, right?
00:20:49.592 --> 00:20:56.576
The otherness of the natural world, the otherness of the divine, the otherness of something that feels much bigger than yourself.
00:20:56.576 --> 00:21:00.957
And that's beautiful and I like this language of yielding that you're using there or that Dauenhauer's using.
00:21:01.092 --> 00:21:15.882
Yeah, that, that one Dauenhauer is using and the yielding, I find it really compelling because not only does it make us think beyond that presence versus absence dichotomy, but it also makes us think beyond any kind of active passive dichotomy.
00:21:15.886 --> 00:21:19.332
Because you yield, you are doing an action.
00:21:19.332 --> 00:21:22.291
You're being active, but it's an act of submission.
00:21:22.662 --> 00:21:29.291
So you are actively being passive or actively giving yourself over to something that will overwhelm you.
00:21:29.622 --> 00:21:32.751
And there is a quote that captures this from Dauenhauer.
00:21:32.771 --> 00:21:36.102
He writes, silence involves a yielding.
00:21:36.491 --> 00:21:41.172
This yielding is a yielding before some power, which is beyond one's control.
00:21:41.612 --> 00:21:45.701
It is a yielding which is experienced ass motivated by finitude and awe.
00:21:46.122 --> 00:21:53.231
In performing silence, one acknowledges some center of significance of which he is not the source.
00:21:53.442 --> 00:22:06.642
A center to be wondered at, to be in awe of the very doing of silence is the acknowledgement of the agent's finitude and of the awesomeness of that, of which he is not the source.
00:22:06.882 --> 00:22:07.721
Hmm.
00:22:07.781 --> 00:22:08.652
That's lovely.
00:22:08.652 --> 00:22:15.941
And I think it really resonates with the Christian mystical tradition some of the words that Dauenhauer used are finitude and awe, right?
00:22:15.941 --> 00:22:24.040
We're motivated by our own finitude and, and that sense of awe about what is so much greater than us, the awesomeness, um, that we're not the source of.
00:22:24.445 --> 00:22:31.135
The Christian mystical tradition emphasizes the direct felt sense of the divine through silent meditation.
00:22:31.766 --> 00:22:32.996
And for the mystics.
00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:44.066
Communicating through words involves a leveling down, because God is so infinitely beyond what we could ever encapsulate with words, at most words are a pale shadow of the divine.
00:22:44.486 --> 00:22:55.705
And so we move in our spiritual trajectory according to this tradition, from vocal prayer, right from prayer allowed whether with others or by yourself to mental prayer.
00:22:56.246 --> 00:23:04.256
So you go from this prayer allowed to prayer kind of in your head, but still using words to a wordless silent prayer.
00:23:04.316 --> 00:23:08.026
This is a trajectory of prayer in Christian mysticism.
00:23:08.306 --> 00:23:17.395
And so it's not just a physical silence, but this last point, this wordless silent prayer is actually a mental and spiritual silence as well, right?
00:23:17.395 --> 00:23:19.375
You're not repeating the words in your head even.
00:23:19.375 --> 00:23:22.195
You're rather beyond words altogether.
00:23:22.661 --> 00:23:34.901
So there's this quieting down even of the mind and the opening up to an experience of ecstasy, which creates a union between the self and God, and that ecstasy necessarily exceeds language.
00:23:35.425 --> 00:23:54.836
Yeah, and this effort to create silence, whether that is by moving first from speech to language or even within language, you can try to create silence because there is a tradition in Western theology called the apophatic tradition, aka negative theology, which you see, for instance, in the writings of St.
00:23:54.836 --> 00:24:04.346
Thomas Aquinas, and according to the apophatic tradition, The divine is ineffable, as you point out, Ellie.
00:24:04.346 --> 00:24:13.736
It is infinite, it is beyond the limits of human speech and comprehension, and it's precisely for that reason that we must never speak about God positively.
00:24:13.915 --> 00:24:17.365
We can only refer to God through negations.
00:24:17.695 --> 00:24:20.455
So you can only say things like what God is not.
00:24:20.455 --> 00:24:25.286
He is not finite, he is not embodied, he is not human.
00:24:25.675 --> 00:24:43.226
And one way of reading the apophatic tradition, at least this is one way in which I think about it, is that the apophatic tradition tries to enact a kind of silence in language through negations by moving from positive to purely negative descriptions.
00:24:43.326 --> 00:24:49.776
So when you say like, God is not finite, or God is not embodied, right.
00:24:49.915 --> 00:24:50.705
Something like that?
00:24:50.705 --> 00:24:50.895
Yeah.
00:24:50.895 --> 00:25:00.605
It's a way of creating meaning in speech that performs something similar to that silence that you then see in the absence of spoken prayer.
00:25:00.905 --> 00:25:18.965
And you see the same in the apophatic tradition also through the use of superlatives where instead of saying God is good, because that's, that's already a human concept, it's not good enough for God, you have say things like God is the highest, the bestest the most, X, Y, or Z.
00:25:18.965 --> 00:25:19.986
I think just the best.
00:25:20.016 --> 00:25:20.496
Yeah.
00:25:20.645 --> 00:25:29.165
Well, but even best, again, it's, it's kind of not bestest for God, but again, a way of using language to try to get out of language.
00:25:29.195 --> 00:25:30.776
David's version of St.
00:25:30.776 --> 00:25:33.036
Thomas Aquinas, God is the bestest.
00:25:34.506 --> 00:25:39.375
God is the bestest of the bestest, um, and he is not the worstest.
00:25:41.076 --> 00:25:41.346
Yeah.
00:25:41.346 --> 00:26:04.776
And this tradition of negative theology, which you certainly see in Christianity, but you also see versions of in Judaism and Islam as well, I think is a way of getting at a certain conception of a supreme singular God without bringing that God down to the level of an individual being or a human being.
00:26:05.226 --> 00:26:07.056
And this is a bit different from.
00:26:07.641 --> 00:26:20.000
The conception of silence that you get in Buddhist thought where there's a tradition of noble silence because Buddhism is an agnostic religion and certainly not a monotheistic religion.
00:26:20.750 --> 00:26:31.461
And there perhaps kind of similarly to your debate story, David, the tradition of noble silence has to do with not responding to unanswerable questions.
00:26:31.611 --> 00:26:37.701
So indicating that there is a kind of ineffable, but in quite a different way from this tradition of negative theology.
00:26:38.391 --> 00:26:45.540
And there's different ways that different Buddhist traditions conceptualize silence, or I shouldn't say conceptualize, but like treat silence perhaps.
00:26:46.590 --> 00:26:47.431
or use
00:26:47.851 --> 00:27:05.931
Yeah, I would say silence is probably most important in the Zen Buddhist tradition, whereas I perhaps, unsurprisingly, being a philosopher who loves words have long been a practitioner of Vipassana meditation or insight meditation, which is more about labeling your thoughts.
00:27:06.111 --> 00:27:19.131
So there is, in the insight tradition, a practice of sort of inner speech of labeling thoughts, but that is seen as just one kind of initial and often preliminary tool for developing concentration.
00:27:19.131 --> 00:27:23.211
And after that point, words fall away in silent meditation.
00:27:23.901 --> 00:27:24.471
In this case?
00:27:24.471 --> 00:27:28.280
Can you tell me what the objective is of this falling away?
00:27:28.641 --> 00:27:29.756
Oh, the objective is Nirvana.
00:27:29.756 --> 00:27:30.365
Mm-hmm.
00:27:30.715 --> 00:27:31.205
Yeah.
00:27:31.211 --> 00:27:31.355
Yeah.
00:27:31.355 --> 00:27:40.236
And I mean, so the reason that I ask that kind of weirdly set-upy question because it reminds me of Dauenhauer's concept of deep silence.
00:27:40.266 --> 00:27:43.776
In his book on silence, he spends a lot of time talking about different kinds of silence.
00:27:44.046 --> 00:27:58.205
But one of them is deep silence, which for him refers to situations in which silence is not a feature of a subjective act or a ritual, but it is the central ingredient.
00:27:58.506 --> 00:28:09.651
And that silence then is occasionally punctured by discourse and speech, but, it carries the force of the, the act or the relationship.
00:28:09.651 --> 00:28:14.750
And he says that we find this kind of silence, for example, in religious or spiritual settings.
00:28:14.750 --> 00:28:16.310
He actually calls them liturgical.
00:28:16.310 --> 00:28:20.090
So it has, you know, it has a specific meaning in that context.
00:28:20.330 --> 00:28:25.221
But he says that we also find it in the silence of those with whom we are most intimate.
00:28:25.520 --> 00:28:40.131
Whereas sometimes you just hold a space of silence with the other person and you see a similar form of that falling away and that that can be a very meaningful, very powerful and transformative experience.
00:28:40.371 --> 00:28:51.740
And he says that when we hold together space for these forms of silence, we actually open up the possibility that something new is going to enter into our lives.
00:28:52.371 --> 00:29:02.871
And he calls it the "to be said" that, which has not yet been said, but could be said if we just hold space for the possibility of it.
00:29:03.286 --> 00:29:03.705
Huh.
00:29:04.175 --> 00:29:05.615
Couple quick thoughts on that.
00:29:05.945 --> 00:29:13.296
One is, so to go back to the point, I just wanna expand on the Nirvana point before because I think it, sort of, what you just said speaks to it.
00:29:13.655 --> 00:29:25.836
So I would say a different way of putting the importance of silence in Buddhist meditation is that part of what happens with speech is that we distinguish between things, right?
00:29:25.836 --> 00:29:30.455
And we make things seem separate, whether it's subject, predicate, different words, different sentences, et cetera.
00:29:30.846 --> 00:29:41.691
And so when, when speech falls away, what opens up is the possibility of recognizing things as interdependent, as more fundamentally interdependent than language would allow for.
00:29:42.050 --> 00:29:54.500
And ultimately, from a Buddhist point of view, what that would lead to is a recognition of emptiness right away from the idle chatter of talk, talk, talk that distinguishes that posits, et cetera.
00:29:54.770 --> 00:30:03.201
You can feel, you can experience on a deep level the sense of emptiness, but also I like that intimates point that you just mentioned.
00:30:04.250 --> 00:30:09.500
It reminds me of something that a friend of mine told me when I was asking her for advice.
00:30:09.500 --> 00:30:15.770
She was about to enter into a lifelong partnership, that form of lifelong partnership that we call marriage.
00:30:16.280 --> 00:30:22.911
And I was asking her how she knew that she wanted to marry her husband and whether she had any advice for long-term partnerships.
00:30:22.971 --> 00:30:27.770
And she said, try and find somebody who you can be silent with.
00:30:27.974 --> 00:30:35.115
And I've thought about that so many times because I think that's a really beautiful way of thinking about intimate relationships.
00:30:56.295 --> 00:31:12.075
Ellie, I am surprised that we have made it this far into our episode about silence without mentioning John Cage's musical composition 4'33" which was a highly controversial piece because it consists of silence.
00:31:12.255 --> 00:31:14.835
It was created and performed in 1952.
00:31:15.404 --> 00:31:20.984
And if you look at the musical sheet of the composition itself, it's literally empty.
00:31:20.984 --> 00:31:24.255
It's just musical paper without notation.
00:31:24.890 --> 00:31:30.539
Mm, interesting apropo of our conversation earlier about writing, representing silence.
00:31:31.079 --> 00:31:46.049
So what most people note when they remark on Cage's piece is that even though, as you say, it is a silent piece, what ends up happening is that the ambient noises of wherever it's being performed become the piece itself.
00:31:46.589 --> 00:31:55.319
And so the piece is actually new each time in a very strong sense because it's made up of the noises of the audience.
00:31:55.319 --> 00:32:03.809
And you know what other, whatever other ambient noises there are, the coughs, the stomach, gurgling, the somebody opening a water bottle.
00:32:03.809 --> 00:32:08.849
Maybe that's not like an appropriate thing to do in a symphony hall, but, you know, I love having my water bottle with me.
00:32:09.630 --> 00:32:13.349
You know, all, all those little noises a, a siren outside, et cetera.
00:32:13.799 --> 00:32:27.269
And so what we see here is a really incredible version of the point that silence actually brings presence to the fore rather than just consisting of absence.
00:32:27.299 --> 00:32:32.789
And in relation to that, I, I mentioned silent meditation practice a little bit ago.
00:32:33.390 --> 00:32:49.980
I feel like Cage's piece is interesting to think about for those of us who have done silent meditation retreats, because what you will notice if you've ever done a silent meditation retreat is that the Buddha's noble silence does not come easily.
00:32:49.984 --> 00:32:53.130
Instead, what, what happens is just like,
00:32:53.440 --> 00:32:54.970
It's a noble silence.
00:32:55.349 --> 00:33:04.890
It's an ignal silence, but it's just like a complete confrontation with every little voice in your head that you've ever had over the course of your life.
00:33:05.220 --> 00:33:13.450
All of the inner voices of teachers and people you know and haters, and you know yourself, all the different versions of yourself.
00:33:13.700 --> 00:33:24.585
Not to mention all of these other little aspects of the environment that suddenly come to the fore, the buzzing of the fly, the rustling of the person next to you.
00:33:24.585 --> 00:33:33.974
In my case, I did a meditation retreat in Switzerland one time in the Alps, and there were these goats outside whose bells were just like constantly ringing.
00:33:34.305 --> 00:33:37.994
Another time I did a meditation retreat at a gorgeous temple in Thailand.
00:33:37.994 --> 00:33:47.474
Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, for those of you who have maybe been to Chiang Mai and there are all these tourists outside cuz it's like a tourist hotspot that also has a meditation center on site.
00:33:47.714 --> 00:33:58.934
And so you're hearing people chattering about and walking around the temple as you're kind of immersed in this, it so far from the mental silence or the spiritual silence that the Christian mystics talked about.
00:33:59.535 --> 00:34:18.855
Well, and that's an important point to keep in mind that the image that we have of silence as this abyssal blackness or as this kind of trans lucid vast emptiness is impossible to enact in a world that is beaming with life and with sound and with just activity.
00:34:18.855 --> 00:34:44.492
And this is something happened in our debate version of the Cage 4'33" piece, our rendition of it in debate terms, which is that when I was standing in the podium in front of a room full of judges and audience members, every little ambient sound became amplified, and you became aware of it precisely as an eruption that became hyper significant.
00:34:44.496 --> 00:34:51.001
So I'm here now just talking about the fact that the timers would go off, and it was almost a catastrophic
00:34:51.547 --> 00:34:51.896
Mm.
00:34:52.322 --> 00:34:54.692
eruption of sound into this performance.
00:34:55.172 --> 00:35:08.132
But even little things like I remember I was hungry and my stomach grumbled in the middle of my silence performance, and I, I just didn't, I was hoping that people wouldn't have heard that.
00:35:08.157 --> 00:35:20.487
And it's interesting to see how attuned we can become, especially over the course of actively practicing silence to how much, not only noise, but also chatter there is in our everyday lives.
00:35:20.487 --> 00:35:26.594
And so you're right that we can't live, or at least that it's not, not a requirement that we live in a truly silent world nowadays.
00:35:26.594 --> 00:35:29.923
And that's definitely something that you find in spiritual traditions.
00:35:29.929 --> 00:35:32.954
Like in in practicing meditation.
00:35:33.074 --> 00:35:38.804
It's not a matter of literally finding a perfectly silent room of being in a sensory deprivation tank.
00:35:39.014 --> 00:35:43.213
It's about how you relate to the noises around you, and definitely to the noises within.
00:35:43.693 --> 00:35:53.983
I mean, this just makes me think about how hard it is to really come by in our modern world spaces that are truly marked by profound silence.
00:35:53.983 --> 00:35:56.262
Something we talk about in our episode on hearing.
00:35:56.773 --> 00:35:57.523
You're right.
00:35:57.793 --> 00:36:04.333
And, and yet we seem to be, in some ways drawn, or we need some of these spaces.
00:36:04.333 --> 00:36:10.572
We need moments of silence and we curate spaces that produce that experience for us.
00:36:10.842 --> 00:36:16.842
So think about churches, um, which I, one way to think about them is as architectures of silence.
00:36:17.172 --> 00:36:23.922
Think also about restrooms, uh, whether that's in public buildings or in our private homes, the term restroom.
00:36:24.043 --> 00:36:29.112
It literally comes from a space for quietude or for resting.
00:36:29.652 --> 00:36:30.443
Oh, whoa.
00:36:30.643 --> 00:36:31.003
Yeah.
00:36:31.003 --> 00:36:31.242
Yeah.
00:36:31.242 --> 00:36:31.693
It, it's.
00:36:31.693 --> 00:36:32.443
Euphemism.
00:36:32.592 --> 00:36:38.202
Yeah, it's, it's a place where you're supposed to have calmness and quietude without disruption.
00:36:38.202 --> 00:36:39.913
And the same thing is true of closets.
00:36:39.943 --> 00:36:51.913
Um, they're meant to be anechoic places, places without an echo, so that even if there is sound generated by the subject in a closet, it's supposed to absorb it and sort of eat it away.
00:36:52.047 --> 00:36:56.068
Which is why I am currently in my closet at the moment recording.
00:36:56.188 --> 00:36:56.398
Right.
00:36:56.398 --> 00:37:00.838
Because it's hard for us find spaces to record the podcast spaces that are quiet.
00:37:00.838 --> 00:37:02.608
Also spaces that don't have echo.
00:37:02.938 --> 00:37:15.688
And so for me it is my very small closet, which if you subscribe to your Patreon, you will be familiar with because all of our bonus videos, I'm in my closet crammed between my Birkenstocks and my button downs.
00:37:15.913 --> 00:37:16.273
Yeah.
00:37:16.273 --> 00:37:24.163
And I think that the difficulty of creating those spaces, which you and I have struggled with as anybody that listens to our early episodes, knows.
00:37:24.853 --> 00:37:28.123
It also has to do with the importance of echo cancellation, right?
00:37:28.152 --> 00:37:34.663
Uh, a closet is very good for that because there is all these clothing and objects that just redistribute the echo and again, sort of eat it away.
00:37:34.898 --> 00:37:50.262
And you know, we've been talking about the choice to keep silent, whether through going into a restroom or closet, although I don't think that sounds usually used or going on a retreat or sitting in a debate.
00:37:50.293 --> 00:37:50.623
Right.
00:37:50.623 --> 00:37:56.382
But I think also there, there's a sense in which sometimes silence is not a choice, right?
00:37:56.382 --> 00:38:03.672
And I wonder to what extent silence when it's used as a tool of submission, right?
00:38:03.672 --> 00:38:15.913
Keeping people silent is perhaps fundamentally different from the kind of silence that we're talking about as enabling, as opening up, or is it the same phenomenon, but just like with a different valence?
00:38:16.782 --> 00:38:29.833
Yielding is very different than being submitted, uh, I yield, um, um, to, to someone or to something through a subjective act that involves some element of choice.
00:38:30.103 --> 00:38:42.253
But in cases of silence, sing here, silence being a, a verb that indicates that something falls you there, there's not an opening, but much more of a closure, I would say.
00:38:42.963 --> 00:38:48.643
Although the distinction between activity and passivity in connection to silence is very difficult to maintain.
00:38:49.092 --> 00:39:02.802
And I'm here thinking about an article that I read about the history of silence in the theater, because back in the day, for a long time, I mean since antiquity all the way to the 18th and 19th centuries, audiences at the theater were very loud and boisterous.
00:39:02.802 --> 00:39:09.043
It was just sort of accepted that people didn't have to be silent when they went to see theatrical performance.
00:39:09.253 --> 00:39:10.842
But then cultural norms changed again.
00:39:11.083 --> 00:39:13.452
18th, 19th century, primarily 19th century.
00:39:13.603 --> 00:39:22.932
And now we live in a culture where as an audience member, I feel an enormous pressure to not make a noise, to not make any distractions when I am at the theater.
00:39:23.532 --> 00:39:34.273
Well, if you're, if you're in a predominantly white theater, I would say if you're in a movie theater in, in Atlanta where we used to live, like it's maybe a so I would say like, it's, it's culturally dependent, but like yeah.
00:39:34.273 --> 00:39:38.532
In as much as you're speaking broad strokes, especially in, in Europe, I think that would, that would hold true.
00:39:38.623 --> 00:39:44.833
Yeah, this is, uh, sort of European North American take, and it is about the, the theater, not the cinema.
00:39:45.222 --> 00:40:05.592
And the author of this piece, uh, Louis Pelletier, argues that if you look at the history of the design and architecture of theaters, you actually see this ambivalence around silence, where slowly through changes in which theaters are literally built, you see the enforced silencing of the audience.
00:40:05.983 --> 00:40:13.902
So, for example, they talk about how at the beginning in the history of theater, you see the, the beginnings of the separation of the audience from the stage.
00:40:14.172 --> 00:40:21.523
You see also this in the creation of the raised stage, for example, where suddenly the performers are higher than the audience.
00:40:21.702 --> 00:40:25.452
Also the creation of the perian, the curtains, all of that.
00:40:25.572 --> 00:40:40.003
And so the point that I'm trying to get to here very inefficiently through this detour into the history of theater architecture, is that there are times where it is unclear whether I am yielding or being submitted.
00:40:40.273 --> 00:40:47.143
And that is my personal experience of going to the theater where I almost feel as if I choose to go to the theater.
00:40:47.353 --> 00:40:52.632
But once I am in the theater, I am submitted by the space itself.
00:40:52.632 --> 00:41:00.643
The space just holds such an organization that it, that I actually don't feel comfortable breaking silence in the theater.
00:41:00.918 --> 00:41:14.967
For sure, which I think maybe also speaks to a collective silence being conditioned by forces of power, perhaps in ways that solitude is not like necessarily completely exempt from, but, but changes,
00:41:22.063 --> 00:41:26.563
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00:41:26.922 --> 00:41:38.202
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00:41:41.938 --> 00:41:55.407
I was really struck by something you mentioned earlier in your initial description of the debate performance that you did, which was that the audience immediately understood what you and your debate partner were trying to do.
00:41:55.918 --> 00:42:02.907
And I think that that is really an interesting way of thinking about the relation between silence and discourse.
00:42:03.148 --> 00:42:12.597
As you mentioned, Dauenhauer draws attention to the fact that silence is on a backdrop of discourse or perhaps vice versa, but they have a, a fundamental relation.
00:42:13.168 --> 00:42:21.657
And I haven't read that book, but I would strongly suspect that he's at least partially inspired by Heidegger's account of silence, because this is a point that Heidegger makes in being in time.
00:42:22.407 --> 00:42:28.257
He says that authentic silence is possible only in genuine discourse.
00:42:28.918 --> 00:42:40.438
That is, we need to have something to say, uh, deep understanding even, but choose to keep what we have to say silent in order to authentically be silent.
00:42:41.097 --> 00:42:41.257
Hmm.
00:42:41.577 --> 00:42:49.498
And in this sense, silence for Heidegger is distinct from just being quiet, from being mute, and it's distinct from mere chatter.
00:42:50.128 --> 00:42:55.978
And I find this idea interesting in part because he also in the text says that the voice of conscience is silent.
00:42:56.188 --> 00:43:02.728
He says that the call of conscience speaks solely and constantly in the mode of silence.
00:43:03.552 --> 00:43:06.773
So it's been a while since I read my Heidegger.
00:43:07.422 --> 00:43:12.432
So remind me how one speaks in the mode of silence.
00:43:13.018 --> 00:43:13.507
Okay.
00:43:13.797 --> 00:43:14.998
I mean, valid question.
00:43:16.257 --> 00:43:27.237
So for Heidegger conscience, this voice of conscience summons me to my own self, but my own self isn't a thing out there in the world.
00:43:27.327 --> 00:43:33.268
It's not an object, rather it's a summons to my own possibility.
00:43:33.777 --> 00:43:45.088
And so, so myself or the quote, authentic self, you might think a little bit back to our Living Your Truth episode where we discussed this a bit, goes far beyond the existing realm of objects in the world.
00:43:45.297 --> 00:43:48.478
And even though Heidegger wouldn't like me using this metaphor, I find it a useful one.
00:43:49.108 --> 00:43:56.338
I would say the voice of conscience is almost summoning me to that divine that we talked about Christian mysticism.
00:43:56.547 --> 00:44:00.947
And you mentioned too, David, that idea of the what is unsaid was that it?
00:44:00.947 --> 00:44:02.708
Yeah, the to be said
00:44:02.818 --> 00:44:03.538
To be said.
00:44:03.717 --> 00:44:13.827
I think that's really interesting here because I think that's a different way of conceptualizing how Heiddeger is seeing the voice of conscience as this silent call to your own possibility.
00:44:14.068 --> 00:44:22.708
Maybe Heidegger was the original proponent of SOUL-O time from your Christian Mystic, uh, like girl and boy camp, whatever it was called.
00:44:23.047 --> 00:44:28.003
He, although he does not like the metaphysical notion of the soul, but yes.
00:44:28.003 --> 00:44:28.813
Or of the divine.
00:44:28.827 --> 00:44:32.697
So he would be really upset with your reference to the divine and my concept of the soul.
00:44:32.697 --> 00:44:33.418
No, I don't know.
00:44:33.418 --> 00:44:37.018
Later Heidegger would be down with the divine, but not with the soul.
00:44:37.228 --> 00:44:37.588
Anyway.
00:44:37.588 --> 00:44:40.777
this is a time to debate early versus late Heidegger.
00:44:41.248 --> 00:44:53.637
No, but I mean also Heidegger is known in philosophy for being a parapet philosopher who would go on this long lonely walks where he would hold silence as a way of thinking.
00:44:54.027 --> 00:44:59.367
The revealing of being, or the manifestation of being that then it makes his way onto his writings.
00:44:59.592 --> 00:45:03.898
I've in fact been on that very walk that he would take in the black forest.
00:45:03.898 --> 00:45:05.068
Heidegger has this hut.
00:45:05.163 --> 00:45:05.367
Really?
00:45:05.367 --> 00:45:05.697
I've heard that.
00:45:05.697 --> 00:45:06.628
It's kind of crappy.
00:45:06.777 --> 00:45:07.858
I've heard that it's bad.
00:45:07.980 --> 00:45:10.739
Dude, what pretentious Europeans are you talking to?
00:45:10.800 --> 00:45:13.230
It is, it is like amazingly beautiful.
00:45:13.230 --> 00:45:15.599
But, but is it long?
00:45:15.599 --> 00:45:18.989
Cause I, somebody told me that it's just like a, a really short walk and then you were back at the
00:45:19.400 --> 00:45:21.090
It is indeed short.
00:45:21.420 --> 00:45:22.679
I will say I had a great time.
00:45:22.679 --> 00:45:25.230
I went with my friend Jacob now like over a decade ago.
00:45:25.440 --> 00:45:30.849
But I think with all due respect to my friend, I probably would've preferred to do it SOUL-O.
00:45:30.869 --> 00:45:34.860
So, um, but I have indeed done that walk.
00:45:35.429 --> 00:45:46.079
But, okay, so the phrase that you used for the Call of Conscience in Heidegger is that it speaks solely and constantly in the mode of silence.
00:45:46.139 --> 00:46:11.155
And so you're right that Dauenhauer draws a lot from Heidegger I mean, there is no way around that if you're doing a book on phenomenology and silence, not to talk about heider and also about Merleau-Ponty and Dauenhauer says that not only is silence active, but that it summons you to a kind of activity that opens up your own potential for further activity.
00:46:11.155 --> 00:46:15.295
And that's what you said earlier, that silence summons me to possibility.
00:46:15.565 --> 00:46:32.735
So when I am confronted by a genuine silence, at the same time, I become aware of my freedom and my freedom to choose a new path moving forward, or to choose who I want to be is that the sense of possibility that you find in Heidegger, because that's how Dauenhauer talks about it a bit.
00:46:32.735 --> 00:46:37.650
Yeah, I do think that is a fair characterization of it.
00:46:38.159 --> 00:46:48.539
A way that I tend to think about it and I acknowledge that my interpretation here might be overlaid by some of my other commitments, including an interest in meditation as we talked about earlier.
00:46:48.539 --> 00:47:09.750
But I think a little bit about it in the sense of a witness consciousness of the fact that no matter how much chatter you're experiencing in your quote inner life or your external surroundings, there's always a witness at the heart of yourself.
00:47:10.260 --> 00:47:17.835
And I'm using that language metaphorically here because the witness is not some kind of little person inside your brain.
00:47:17.835 --> 00:47:18.255
Yeah.
00:47:18.644 --> 00:47:32.594
Nor nor does it like reside in a particular but a way of thinking about that perhaps this is where we must fall silent actually, is on the, notion the witness or the self because it, we can only ever get at it, I think, in sort of indirect language.
00:47:32.925 --> 00:47:49.009
But yeah, I think that witness consciousness is, is useful to think about these moments in our life where we sense ourselves as separate from our surroundings, quote, kind of collect ourselves and return to our daily life with a new outlook.
00:47:49.969 --> 00:47:53.659
Yeah, and I mean, I, I thinkwe could use the, the language of silence.
00:47:53.929 --> 00:48:19.518
We could also use the language of pause for thinking about that, you know, those where you take yourself momentarily to keep with the temporal framing that you put on it, and take yourself out of the flow of the routine, of the everyday catch glimpse of yourself for a moment, take stock in who you are and then move forward slightly transformed even if you then go back into the same routine.
00:48:19.518 --> 00:48:25.688
But that transformed by virtue of having had that pause, that silence, that moment of reprieve.
00:48:26.103 --> 00:48:26.313
Yeah.
00:48:26.313 --> 00:48:26.583
Yeah.
00:48:26.793 --> 00:48:33.664
And I, I think that also gets at this idea of whether silence is active, passive, or beyond the binary between the two.
00:48:33.664 --> 00:48:45.934
Perhaps revealing the insufficiency of thinking about passive and active in the way we usually do, because you might interpret silence as a moment of passivity before you act, and you might not be entirely wrong there.
00:48:45.934 --> 00:48:53.793
But I think there's a way of conceiving of silence itself as beyond that binary, as you said, with with Dauenhauer kind of yielding.
00:48:54.094 --> 00:49:00.259
However, I do wanna note that silence can appear to be pretty passive and in ways that are morally and politically unconscionable.
00:49:01.563 --> 00:49:14.764
Somebody that you and I know back from grad school, David Adam Knowles, actually wrote a book called Heiddeger's Politics of Silence about how Heiddeger, who of course was a Nazi, was unconscionably silent about the Holocaust after its occurrence.
00:49:14.764 --> 00:49:22.983
So he had, I think, according to Knowles' a very different take on silence around the Holocaust than you and your partner did.
00:49:22.983 --> 00:49:23.224
Right?
00:49:23.509 --> 00:49:24.139
Right, right.
00:49:24.324 --> 00:49:33.349
Because he just wanted to pretend like he had not ever been a Nazi, and he actually never even announced his national socialist as affiliations.
00:49:33.353 --> 00:49:36.619
He just sort of stopped talking about it publicly as if to hope that it would go away.
00:49:37.429 --> 00:49:39.889
Maybe his voice of conscience should have been a little bit louder there.
00:49:40.858 --> 00:49:41.349
Yeah.
00:49:41.449 --> 00:49:42.918
Have actually said something instead of been.
00:49:43.128 --> 00:49:43.398
Yeah.
00:49:43.398 --> 00:49:49.338
It should have screamed and opened up a space for a possibility, including the possibility of resistance.
00:49:49.579 --> 00:50:04.309
And it is just so difficult to think about Heiddeger in connection to silence, in connection to the Holocaust, because silence plays such a strong role in his philosophy and in his philosophy of language is thinking about language as this opening up of being.
00:50:04.458 --> 00:50:05.028
Yeah.
00:50:05.329 --> 00:50:16.699
And yet to put that in the context of his silence in the face of Nazim and his, you know, he gave speeches where he would end them with heil Hitler and he spoke openly.
00:50:17.088 --> 00:50:25.668
Uh, so it's not just that he was silent, it's that he also was a vocal proponent of Nazi ideology in various cases.
00:50:26.114 --> 00:50:30.934
Although of course, and this is not to absolve him from, from what he did say, definitely not.
00:50:31.114 --> 00:50:47.373
But I think actually a, a lot of the abhorrent of Heiddeger's actions here were in the silence because the, the period of silence around national socialism and his former speaking vocally about it constituted the vast majority of his career.
00:50:47.373 --> 00:50:47.673
Right.
00:50:47.679 --> 00:50:49.623
Post, post 1930s.
00:50:50.043 --> 00:50:50.284
Yeah.
00:50:50.284 --> 00:50:58.713
Pose the thirties and I think there are a few, and there are a few episodes of some of his students and readers confronting him afterwards.
00:50:58.713 --> 00:50:59.853
Herbert Marcuse did.
00:50:59.853 --> 00:51:00.213
Yeah.
00:51:00.213 --> 00:51:13.873
And, uh, being deeply dispirited that, that Heiddeger, the German philosopher just didn't really seem to care that much, um, either to speak against or to speak against his silence.
00:51:14.418 --> 00:51:17.748
So I wonder where this leaves us on the question of silence.
00:51:18.438 --> 00:51:25.818
Perhaps it goes without saying that by mentioning Heiddeger's approach to silence, and I mentioned Heidegger, you know, in some other episodes as well.
00:51:26.239 --> 00:51:33.349
I personally don't hold the view that his political beliefs mean that we should completely write him off as a philosopher.
00:51:33.349 --> 00:51:37.248
That's a view that I don't have full space to develop here.
00:51:37.248 --> 00:51:39.409
Um, although I'm happy to confront it elsewhere.
00:51:40.039 --> 00:51:56.239
I think that Heiddeger is a very, very valuable philosopher and that he has abhorrent political views that we should be open about and resist, and that it's an active space of interrogation to find out to what extent his philosophy is, let's say, shaped through his abhorrent political beliefs.
00:51:56.659 --> 00:52:10.969
But I think on this point, with respect to silent specifically, we can ask like if the voice of conscience is silent, if it's summoning us to our own possibility, is that a double-edged sword, right?
00:52:10.969 --> 00:52:18.768
Because it doesn't actually give us any content around whether conscience is summoning us to the quote, good or to the quote, bad.
00:52:18.768 --> 00:52:24.438
Heidegger would consider good and bad conscience to be derivative notions of conscience, which itself is silent.
00:52:25.184 --> 00:52:28.784
Yeah, and I mean this also is an argument that we can make in.
00:52:29.233 --> 00:52:50.264
Connection to Heiddeger's, general existential philosophy, especially in the early stages of his career where he advocates being resolute in the face of death, uh, without really telling us what that means or what kind of political orientation, uh, to drive that resoluteness because there are many ways conservative and, and otherwise to be resolute in the face of death.
00:52:50.264 --> 00:52:53.233
So there is maybe too much room for ambiguity.
00:52:53.233 --> 00:52:57.494
But your question, Ellie, about where this leaves us in connection to silence.
00:52:57.704 --> 00:52:59.384
I think it can be framed in two ways.
00:52:59.594 --> 00:53:06.833
One is to go toward maybe the ethical realm in connection to the call of conscience, which we've been talking about.
00:53:07.284 --> 00:53:15.403
Another one is to go in the direction of ontology, perhaps, which is where Dauenhauer takes us.
00:53:15.813 --> 00:53:40.173
And Dauenhauer basically makes the argument that the value from within the standpoint and the precinct of philosophy of thinking about silence is not just that it reveals something about us, about who we are, about what we can do, about how we communicate, but rather about the very nature of being and as, as Heiddeger would say, Being as such.
00:53:40.653 --> 00:54:02.284
And Dauenhauer says that if you really do a systematic, rigorous analysis of silence, what you discover is that Being with a capital B, again, this all encompassing term for all that is ought to be understood as a dialectic between the determinate and the indeterminate.
00:54:02.643 --> 00:54:09.393
And that's true of human existence, the existence of human beings for whom being is a question.
00:54:09.693 --> 00:54:13.684
But it is also true of the being of nature or the being of being.
00:54:14.539 --> 00:54:31.969
All being is just this dancing back and forth between moments of concrete determination where something takes a particular shape and then moments of in determination where the boundaries of that previous determination sort of get a little blurry and then a new determination takes place.
00:54:32.028 --> 00:54:40.398
So he draws this somewhat abstract, but I think quite interesting ontological lesson from his study of silence.
00:54:41.148 --> 00:54:46.739
And I also wonder to what extent we might actually say that silence.
00:54:47.898 --> 00:54:52.219
Is not the space for ethical and political inquiry.
00:54:52.969 --> 00:54:59.119
And maybe I'm, maybe I'm loading the question by putting inquiry in there, or ethical and political action.
00:54:59.298 --> 00:55:12.708
I think there can certainly be forms of ethical and political action that are silent, but I think those would constitute silence as a form of discourse, perhaps, rather than the negative of discourse.
00:55:13.018 --> 00:55:25.159
And, and the reason I say that is I'm thinking a little bit about Kierkegaard here on the notion of faith in the sense that for Kierkegaard, the realm of ethics is the realm of discourse about laws, norms, et cetera.
00:55:25.699 --> 00:55:31.998
But beyond that, there's this realm of faith, which I can't remember if he explicitly relates to silence or not.
00:55:32.838 --> 00:55:33.168
Yeah.
00:55:33.168 --> 00:55:36.048
That about which we must be silent.
00:55:36.054 --> 00:55:38.989
And that has to do with a fundamental kind of inwardness.
00:55:39.237 --> 00:55:39.568
Yeah.
00:55:39.568 --> 00:55:50.728
And that inwardness for Kierkegaard does presuppose the elimination of the social world and the elimination, let's say, of a socially legible position about the world.
00:55:50.757 --> 00:56:04.257
So for a character guard, the highest expression of faith is embodied in the image of a solitary subject in the presence of God with nothing else around.
00:56:04.378 --> 00:56:08.097
And that relationship must always be one of silence.
00:56:09.208 --> 00:56:12.688
And with that, we can go forth and be silent before the official credits.
00:56:12.688 --> 00:56:18.478
I want to thank David, your student, Camden Kent for some research that he did for us for this episode.
00:56:21.855 --> 00:56:23.594
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