I. HEGELIAN CLAIMS CONCERNING COMPLETE EXPRESSION

Alexandre Kojève, in his lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, spells out what is involved in Hegel’s claim to have achieved Science or absolute knowledge. To achieve absolute knowledge is to comprehend both the totality of the World as it is and has come to be at the end of the real process of historical evolution and also oneself as living in this definitive world. Hegel both comprehends himself through understanding the totality of the historical process and comprehends this totality through understanding himself. His consciousness is thus just as universal and total as is the historical process which consciousness reveals through itself. This “fully self-conscious consciousness is absolute knowledge, which, by being developed in discourse, will form the content of . . . Science, of that Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences that contains the sum of all possible knowledge.”¹

Kojève continues:

For Hegel, then, Reality = Revealed Reality = Truth = Logos. All truth can and should be expressed by words. The truth is the real revealed by knowledge, and this knowledge is rational and conceptual. As such it is expressible by reasonable discourse. In Hegel’s own words, “what is called the unutterable is nothing else than the untrue, the irrational, what is merely meant [but is not actually expressed].”³

Not only the truth of things but also the truth of deeds can be fully expressed. The deed, like the thing, is something determined and universal. It is a theft, or a brave deed, or an act of mercy. And “what it is can be said of it.”⁴ Or again: “If one had the Notion, then one would also have the right word.”⁵ In short, for Hegel the unsayable, bare particular is destined to disappear. The particular is unsayable or unknowable precisely because it itself is ontologically evanescent.⁶

The saying in which the real is articulated is not, for Hegel, all of a piece. In the Phenomenology’s masterful chapter on religion, Hegel describes the progression beginning with the speech of the Oracle, rising through that of the cultic hymn, the Bacchic frenzy, the athletic festivals, the epic, and the tragedy, and culminating in comedy. Comedy itself gives way to revealed religion. And revealed religion in turn yields to Science or absolute knowledge. Thus, the several sorts of discourse are hierarchically ordered. The complete expression of reality takes place in philosophical discourse, the discourse of absolute knowledge.

Though Hegel does not make silence itself thematic in the Phenomenology, clearly he does not there consider it to be a positive phenomenon.⁷ Silence is, quite simply, a deficiency to be overcome. In its own right, it has no ontological significance. For him, silence elucidates nothing about reality.

The Hegelian position on speech and silence is developed with modifications by Stanley Rosen. A contemporary close student of both Hegel and Plato, Rosen recognizes that Hegel, and Marx too, makes the scope of speech total. This total speech guarantees the full synthesis of certitude and knowledge into absolute knowledge or Science. But, in fact, as Rosen admits, there is no actual total speech. “We must therefore discover a kind of speech which, in the absence of a complete speech, nevertheless serves to distinguish philosophy from sophistry.”⁸

Complete speech, Rosen says, is tantamount to silence. Only the gods have complete speech. But, since complete speech amounts to silence and silence is the condition of beasts, gods who do not engage in incomplete speech are virtually indistinguishable from beasts. Rosen concludes:

Human existence then, according to Rosen, is a harmony of desire, which draws us to things, and speech, which expresses our partial detachment from things. Speech, by articulating desire, makes explicit our detachment from things. Desire, on the other hand, gives substance to language by drawing us to the things from which we are distanced and thus combats an inclination to solipsism. Speech and desire, then, are correlative.

As human desire cannot be complete, so its correlate, human speech, can never be complete. But this incompleteness need not lead to sophistry. Man can speak about the goal of wisdom, that is, of complete or perfect speech. This goal, Rosen says, is accessible even though it is unaccomplishable.¹⁰ “Speech that is genuinely about completeness, . . . speech . . . which functions in a healthy or sane way to articulate desire, guided by the ideal of perfection, . . . is philosophy.”¹¹ Philosophy, therefore, is speech in the light of the formally or ideally visible model of complete speech, in the light of wisdom. It is the supreme sort of human speech, even if it remains essentially partial.

Human speech is rational, then, only if it both preserves continuity between will or desire and itself and at the same time preserves the gap between itself and complete speech. The incomplete speech depends for its own intelligibility upon the ideal of complete speech which it itself makes visible both as an accessible ideal and yet as one which is unaccomplishable.¹²

By contrast, according to Rosen, silence as such makes no positive contribution to intelligibility. We may feel at times that we need silence to overcome the pain of incessant chatter. Rosen says that the relief which silence brings us at these times symbolizes the ultimate silence in which completed speech would culminate. But such silence, he says, is a spurious remedy. “Silence is not the explanation man desires, but the negation of explanation. With respect to intelligibility, silence is subordinate to speech, since speech points out silence, points to silence within itself. Without speech, silence would be invisible, it would be nothing.”¹³

The intentional analysis given in Chapter Three provides the basis for assessing the accuracy of these claims made by Hegel and, following him in part, by Rosen.

The twofold key Hegelian claim—that there is some supreme discourse, Science for Hegel and philosophy for Rosen, and that this supreme discourse stands in opposition to a silence which discourse must overcome if it is to achieve its own fullness—is in no way confirmed by the intentional analysis of silence. On the contrary, that analysis unearths evidence against this claim.

On the one hand, the complexity of the phenomenon of silence, together with the multiple levels and shapes of discourse, reveals that, contrary to Hegel, no particular shape or level of discourse can be said to express the totality of that which is expressible. Each shape of discourse expresses something which in principle cannot be expressed in another shape. What cannot be uttered in one shape of discourse motivates the move to another shape. And no shape fails to motivate moves to other shapes.

This same complexity and multiplicity shows that just as no particular shape of discourse can articulate the totality of that which is articulable, so, contrary to Rosen, no particular shape unequivocally makes the totality more accessible than do the other shapes. No particular shape fully sublates the expressive power of any other shape. In sum, the intentional analysis of silence does display multiple shapes and levels of discourse and a certain founding-founded relation among the several levels and shapes. But the analysis also shows an interdependence among these levels and shapes that precludes any particular shape from possessing either the autonomy or the scope requisite for being given unequivocal primacy. For, to paraphrase Merleau-Ponty, whatever power of articulation one gains in one direction by moving to some specific level or shape of discourse, one loses in another direction.

On the other hand, the intentional analysis of silence makes clear that each level and shape of discourse acquires and retains its identity only by virtue of the specific sorts of silence with which it is conjoined. This is as true of philosophical discourse as of every other sort of discourse. Rather than overcoming a silence which is fundamentally hostile to it, each particular sort of discourse depends for its existence as a distinctive sort upon silence. Each empirical set of utterances actually gains in intelligibility precisely insofar as it respects the determinateness of the shape of discourse to which it belongs. And this determinateness comes about at least in part by virtue of silence. Silence, then, far from intrinsically threatening to destroy or to obstruct discourse, actually is a necessary component in extending the capacity of discourse to bring reality to utterance.

Because Rosen’s attack on silence is rather typical of the tendency among many philosophers to deprecate silence as something irrational which is to be overcome by the rationality of speech, his argument is worth examining in a little more detail. Rosen recognizes that human speech is rational only if it preserves continuity between itself and something else. But he mistakenly identifies this something else as desire. Silence, though, supposedly contributes nothing to the rationality of speech. It is simply subordinate to speech. Without speech, Rosen says, silence is nothing. What Rosen overlooks is the fact that without speech there is no human desire qua human either. Unarticulated desire is no less invisible, as human desire, than is silence without speech. On Rosen’s argument, then, desire, like silence, would have to be subordinate to speech. It could not be that which positively contributes to the rationality of speech. But there is no reason to speak either of human desire or of silence without discourse. Nothing in the intentional analysis suggests that silence can be independent of discourse. Quite the contrary. Just as Rosen will admit that something other than speech, namely, desire, contributes positively to the rationality of speech, so he has given no reason for denying that silence also positively contributes to the rationality of discourse.¹⁴

The sort of denigration of silence represented by Rosen’s attack appears to rest upon the illegitimate acceptance of the notion of complete speech as an accessible even if unaccomplishable goal. Rosen’s own talk about complete speech reveals, through its inconsistency, the difficulties involved in this notion. He says: (1) Complete speech is tantamount to silence; (2) complete speech is that accessible goal which secures human, that is, incomplete, speech from sophistry; and (3) silence is subordinate to speech. Obviously these three propositions are not mutually consistent.

Nonetheless, the lure of a definitively satisfying, even if unaccomplishable, goal toward which our speech can move is unquestionably attractive. This appealing, satisfying terminus ad quem logically requires a fully impoverished, unsatisfying terminus a quo whence our speech proceeds. Silence has customarily served as that which fulfills this logical requirement. But unfortunately for Rosen, his position suffers from two major defects. First, as he suggests when he says that complete speech is tantamount to silence, complete speech is not speech. Either the phrase “complete speech” is a metaphor or it appears to be countersensical. Second, even if the phrase “complete speech” makes sense, the phenomena do not support the claim that it refers to something accessible. Without that support the denigration of silence is gratuitous.¹⁵

Nonetheless, consideration of what led up to these claims about silence and complete speech, both in Hegel’s own work and in Rosen’s variation on it, lends confirmation to substantial parts of the account of the connections between discourse and silence given in the intentional analysis. In the Phenomenology, as I mentioned, Hegel describes different sorts of discourse, for example, cult, epic, tragedy, comedy. Different things can be brought to utterance in different sorts of discourse. In epic discourse, for example, the world of the gods and the divinized or universalized heroes of the nation are brought to articulation. But the minstrel who speaks the epic is not brought into what is said. This limitation restricts what can be said in this mode and actually leads to contradictions. But by the same token, though Hegel does not make this explicit, this limitation, by being determinate, also makes it possible to articulate that which is articulated. What can be uttered in epic is not identical with what can be uttered in any other mode of discourse.

Further, what Hegel takes to be the deficiencies of some mode of discourse are located precisely within the discourse itself. They are not forced upon the discourse bv something distinct from discourse, for example, silence. According to Hegel himself, a man who experiences these “deficiencies” in discourse of a particular sort can lapse back into an “inferior” sort of discourse, for example, from epic discourse to cultic discourse, and then rise again to this still deficient epic discourse.¹⁶ This cycle can be repeated indefinitely.

In short, on Hegel’s own account, movement back and forth from one kind of discourse to another is possible. This holds good for all kinds of discourse short of Science. Thus, except for Science, no kind of discourse can complete itself within itself. Hegel’s account, then, despite its obvious differences, is not toto coelo opposed to my account of the “and so forth” which characterizes discourse belonging to any particular shape or level. To go beyond the limitation of one shape, or more accurately, to bring to utterance that which cannot be articulated at one level or shape of discourse, one must cut, or silence, the “and so forth” belonging to that shape. Further, on my account the shapes of discourse are not ultimately hierarchical. Therefore, no kind of discourse, here specifically Hegelian Science, is exempt from a silencing. And a return to an “earlier” level or shape is not necessarily a lapse, as Hegel would have it.

Thus, if one deletes Hegel’s untenable claim that complete speech is a possibility, along with the hierarchy of kinds of discourse implied by this claim, the Hegelian account meshes rather nicely with the results of the intentional analysis of silence. That is, a “deficiency” in what is utterable in some particular shape of discourse is a necessary condition for the emergence of another level or shape. But equally necessary for the emergence of this other level or shape is a cut in the “and so forth” of the first shape. Without both of these condition, there would be no motivated possibility of the emergence of a new sort of discourse. In its salvaged form, Hegel’s recognition of different kinds of discourse and the relative insufficiency of each kind supports, even if only obliquely and partially, two fundamental findings which emerge from the intentional analysis of silence. First, no unequivocal ontological priority can be given to either discourse or silence. Second, neither discourse nor silence is self-standing as an intelligible phenomenon.

Something substantial can also be salvaged from Rosen’s account. Rosen himself clearly recognizes that human discourse is not self-standing as an intelligible phenomenon. To maintain its own sense, it must remain in tension with “something else.” Rosen rightly sees (1) that this “something else” is not some passive conscious performance like perceiving, but rather must be an active performance, (2) that this active performance aims at something which is not necessarily a determinate object, and (3) that this “something else” involves risk for that with which it is in tension, namely, discourse. Though Rosen is mistaken in identifying this “something else” as desire, he corroborates my account of the function of silence, of that which is in tension with discourse. More than that, he places proper emphasis on the risk which this “something else” introduces into what I, following Husserl, call the signitive domain. In doing so, he helps to place in proper relief the riskiness of silence, a feature of silence which tends to be insufficiently taken into consideration.

II. HUSSERL AND HUMAN DISCOURSE

Human discourse is also misrepresented, though from a different angle, by a thesis which can be extracted from Husserl’s thought concerning language and speech. But the examination of this thesis, like the foregoing examination, helps to clarify the requirements which an acceptable ontological interpretation of silence must satisfy.

The thesis I wish to consider can be put as follows: All expression of meaning, all speech or discourse, is essentially complete in soliloquy. A corollary of this thesis is that all utterances are simply exteriorizations, by way of indications, of already complete expressed meanings.

This thesis rests upon key Husserlian considerations already developed in Logical Investigations. First, Husserl distinguishes between indication and expression. Something is properly an indication only if and where it in fact serves to point out something other than itself to some thinking being other than the speaker.¹⁷ The structure of indicating, then, is: A calls x to B’s attention by way of p (the indication), where A ≠ В and p ≠ x, All indication is therefore necessarily bound up with communication. By contrast, expression has no intrinsic connection with communication. An expression is quite simply “a descriptive aspect of the experienced unity of sign and thing signified.”¹⁸ Subjectively, an expression consists of a physical phenomenon, namely, one or more phonemes, and an act which confers meaning and possibly intuitive fullness on the phoneme or phonemes.¹⁹ Objectively, what is given in expression is the expression itself, its meaning, and its objective correlate.²⁰

Husserl further distinguishes between essentially occasional expressions, namely, expressions whose meaning can become clear only through the actual circumstances in which they are uttered, and objеctive expressions, namely, expressions whose meaning is firmly fixed simply by what he calls its manifest pattern. Examples of occasional expressions are personal pronouns, demonstratives, and words like “later,” “yesterday,” and “above.” Examples of objective expressions are expressions in abstract science or mathematics.²¹ In principle, though not in practice, Husserl says, all essentially occasional expressions can be replaced by objective expressions.²²

The second consideration upon which the thesis in question here rests is the claim that in solitary speech or soliloquy “the meaning of ‘I’ is essentially realized in the immediate idea of one’s own personality.”²³ What Husserl apparently means is that in solitary life the meaning which the expression “I” has for me is immediately apprehended. I grasp the essential features of “I” in their ideal unity. The occasionality of the word “I” arises only in the context of interpersonal speech, where this word does not have the fixed status of an expression like “quadratic residue” or “triangle.”

For Husserl, then, the essence of meaning is in no way affected by the concrete meaning-conferring experience. Rather, the essence of meaning is seen “in its ‘content,’ the single self-identical intentional unity set over against the dispersed multiplicity of actual or possible experiences of speakers and thinkers.”²⁴ These meaning-intentions, together with their verbal expressions, are fundamentally independent of the psychological content involved in the empirical manifestations of the meaning-intentions which occur in actual speaking or writing.²⁵

From these two claims it is but a short step to the thesis that all articulation of meaning, all speech or discourse, is essentially complete in soliloquy. That is, in principle neither meaning nor the expression of meaning gains or loses anything, as meaning, by reason of the condition of either the author or audience involved in the empirical occasion of its utterance. In fact, in James Edie’s words, “Husserl speaks most of the time as if transcendental consciousness were . . . above and beyond any particular language, the absolutely sovereign ‘observer’ and ‘constitutor’ of all objects.”²⁶

Obviously, this Husserlian thesis is akin to the Hegelian complete speech thesis. In the Husserlian version, there is both a well-constituted realm of ideal meanings and a stable realm of objective expressions which is at least in principle capable of containing every possible expression of meaning. Or in other terms, every possible meaning can be given objective expression. What can be articulated, including the articulation of the occasion of its articulation, can in no way depend for its content upon the occasion of its utterance.²⁷

On this view, the motivation to engage in interpersonal discourse in its several shapes would in no way have anything to do with fundamental limitations concerning the range of predicative activity available in soliloquy. What can be expressed soliloquously is coextensive with what can be expressed at all. In no way, then, does the motivation to engage in indication involve an attempt to extend the scope of the realm of expressible meaning. Concrete indications, that is, interpersonal speech or writing, can only be motivated by contingent considerations. For example, since it happens to be the fact that В is ignorant of objectively expressible x, A will utter objective expression p to indicate x to B. On the thesis under discussion, these contingent considerations, namely, B’s ignorance, A’s uttering of p, and the components of discourse which point to this occasion of discourse, namely, what Husserl calls the essentially occasional expressions, can neither add to nor substract from the realms of objective expression and meaning because they are all replaceable, in principle, by actual or possible members of those objective realms.

All the objections to the Hegelian complete-speech thesis, with appropriate modifications, apply to the Husserlian version of this thesis as well. There is no need to repeat them here. But it is nonetheless useful to examine in some detail the claim that everything expressible is expressible in principle in soliloquy. This claim is unacceptable for several reasons.

First, the notion of soliloquy at stake here does not take into account that the speaker is a member, albeit a unique one, of his own audience. This gap, resident in the human speaker, allows for the phenomena of someone saying more than he himself understands and of someone forgetting what he said at one moment with the consequence that his text utterance does not mesh with his earlier one. Neither of these phenomena are compatible with the notion of soliloquy in us here. The soliloquous “I” required by the Husserlian thesis could have no such gap. But every human author experiences his discourse as so gapped. Complete speech, then, cannot be concrete human discourse.

A second, and similar, reason for not accepting the Husserlian claims is found in the criticism which Jacques Derrida makes of Husserl’s radical dissociation of expression from indication. Derrida argues that this radical dissociation is required not by directly experienced phenomena but rather by Husserl’s insistence upon the ultimate primacy of the self-presence of consciousness to itself in the immediate, punctiliar present.²⁸ But as Derrida goes on to show, Husserl’s own analysis of internal time consciousness and intersubjectivity calls this primacy of self-presence in the present into serious question.²⁹ There is no phenomenological justification for granting this primacy to the present. Rather, what Husserl’s analyses reveal is that all perception, meaning, and expression of meaning are intrinsically temporalized.

Derrida proceeds to show that expression and indication are indissolubly linked. All speech, whether in soliloquy or dialogue, involves auto-affection and temporalization.³⁰ The self-presence of consciousness to itself in the present is itself derived from, rather than originative of, temporalization. Thus, the concept of the monadic, soliloquous “I” is “undetermined by its own origin, by the very condition of its self-presence, that is, by time.’ ”³¹ But without such a concept of the monadic “I,” the notion of complete speech in the Husserlian sense is empty.

Evidence brought forth by Merleau-Ponty provides a third reason for rejecting this Husserlian thesis. Merleau-Ponty points out that there is an experienced difference between understanding the speech of others and solving a problem by discovering an unknown quantity through its relationship with known ones. This difference reveals that our own thoughts can be enriched by the speech of others. And this enrichment is precisely an enrichment of expressible meaning.³²

Closer examination shows that this interpersonal speech is not merely the passing of well-formed thought through an alien medium, namely, speech, from one person to another. Rather, at least in what Merleau-Ponty calls authentic speech, and in what I in Chapter Two called fresh discourse as opposed to traditional sayings, there is for both the speaker and the hearer a thought in speech which could not come to be for either of them without the actual discourse. In Merleau-Ponty’s words:

Even if Merleau-Ponty underestimates the power ot the sedimented meaning of words, he is correct in noting that those meanings are changed by actual speech and writing. There is no reason for claiming that all these changes in meaning can be replaced with ideal expressions. Thus the claim that everything expressible is in principle expressible in soliloquy runs aground.³⁴

These three closely related objections to the Husserlian thesis in turn lend support to the findings of the intentional analysis of silence. First, the gap discernible within the human speaker meshes both with the discrimination of several shapes within the soliloquous level of interpersonal involvement in discourse and with the detected difference between soliloquy on the one hand and monologic interpersonal discourse on the other.

Second, Derrida’s argument that all speech, whether soliloquous or dialogical, involves the auto-affection and temporalization of the speaker buttresses claims made in Chapter Three about the temporality of silence. There it was shown that discourse without silence would be merely atemporal language and silence without discourse would collapse into either empty muteness or nonsignitive vision. But genuine discourse and silence, in their inextricable interconnection, are ingredient in the living of the multiple modes of interpersonal involvement of which people are capable. And as was seen in Chapter Two, to inhabit too few of the types of discourse is to lead a stunted life. It is to be insufficiently temporalized and self-affected.

Third, the differences between interpersonal speech and soliloquous discursive thought to which Merleau-Ponty calls attention support the distinction among the several levels of interpersonal involvement in discourse presented in Chapter Three. In fact, the material which surrounds the passage quoted above shows that Merleau-Ponty in effect has recognized several of the shapes of discourse described in the course of the intentional analysis of silence.³⁵ And these distinctions, Husserl notwithstanding, bear not only upon the act of meaning but upon the meant content as well.³⁶

Nonetheless, even though the Husserlian theses concerning complete speech and the scope of soliloquous expression turn out to be unacceptable, the general thrust of the Husserlian position does help to specify the sort of ontological interpretation of silence which is required. The Husserlian position emphasizes that actual discourse, whether speech, writing, gesture, or of any other sort, inasmuch as it is indication, cannot contain within itself its own full authentication even as discourse. Nor can the authentication be provided simply by adding further discourse of the same sort to that which has already been uttered. The full authentication of discourse as discourse, then, must involve something other than discourse. That is, the full sense of any concrete discourse, even apart from the question of referential adequacy, depends upon something other than the discourse taken alone. It must satisfy the requirements of the shape and level to which it belongs.

Now this something else cannot, in the final analysis, be something fully within the power of the speaker or interlocutors. If it were, then discourse could only reveal the interlocutors. It could not be said to reveal anything over which they did not have control. A pure conventionalism, of course, might make such a claim, but there is no experiential foundation for it. In fact, that a pure conventionalist theory of discourse can be coherently formulated is dubious.

But if (1) discourse needs something apart from itself for its full authentication, (2) this something is not exhaustively within the power of the interlocutors, and, as Derrida has noted, (3) there is no hard cleavage between discourse and objective expression of meaning, then human discourse cannot be considered as basically a tool, separable from and at the disposal of the interlocutors.³⁷ And if discourse and silence mutually involve one another, then neither is silence simply a tool available to the interlocutor at will. In fact, the basic thrust of the Husserlian position is that objective expression of meaning has speakers in its sway rather than vice versa. If discourse is not separable from the expression of meaning and if discourse is not a tool, then it is not too much to say that discourse, and its conjoined silence, has man in its sway rather than vice versa. If this is the case, then the ontological interpretation of silence must account for how it is that that which is an active intentional performance and its “object” can be that which holds sway over the performer.

The discussion of the Hegelian and Husserlian versions of the complete speech thesis makes at least one further contribution to this study. If human speech or discourse is essentially incomplete, then one must ask what is the ontological significance of this essential incompleteness. One must likewise ask how the ontological interpretation of silence should deal with the fact that the speech with which silence is conjoined is incomplete speech. If speech cannot complete itself and if there is no silence without speech, then just as there is no complete speech so there is no reason to think that there is any such thing as complete silence either.

III. TWO THESES CONCERNING DISCOURSE EXTRAPOLATED FROM SARTRE’S BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

The Hegelian and Husserlian themes which I have considered minimize the importance of interpersonal involvement in discourse by subordinating it to some sort of complete speech. In the Husserlian version, the importance of the actual performances of the interlocutors for the coming to be of meaning is, in fact, minimized to the vanishing point. Discourse and the place of interlocution is also disparaged in two theses which can, with different degrees of legitimacy, be extrapolated from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.³⁸ The standpoint of these theses differs from that of the Husserlian thesis but the disparagement is just as thorough. In essence, from the “Sartrean” standpoint hearing, precisely as hearing, makes no distinctive, irreplaceable contribution to the coming to be of meaning.

The first “Sartrean” thesis to be considered is straightforwardly Cartesian. Sartre writes:

Sartre goes on to say that whereas Husserl would define intuition as “the presence of the thing (Sache) ‘in person’ to consciousness,” he himself has shown that intuition should be defined as “the presence of consciousness to the thing.”⁴⁰

From these passages the following “Sartrean” thesis can be extrapolated: The proper culmination of discourse is its own abolition in intuition.

Intuition, unworded reflective vision, is said to be essentially independent of discursive argument and deduction. If that is the case, then it is essentially independent of any sort of discourse. Not all discourse is either deduction or discursive argument, but, in the usual understanding, these sorts of discourse are the prime cases in which discourse involves knowing. If they indeed do not involve knowing, then there would be no good reason—on the accepted view with which Sartre is here concerned—for taking any other sort of discourse as being pertinent to knowing. Thus, it follows that the “Sartrean” claim in question here amounts to saying that intuition is essentially independent of all discourse. Further, intuition serves as the criterion against which discourse is measured. Discourse is of value, on this thesis, just to the extent that it is conducive to an intuition which is not presently enjoyed.

Obviously, this Cartesianesque intuition performs much the same task which complete speech performs for Hegel and Husserl. Insofar as this is the case, the arguments given above for rejecting complete speech theses count against this first “Sartrean” thesis.⁴¹ But Sartrean intuition is not a special form of speech. It is not speech at all. And since it is not, a further objection to this thesis can be raised.

Simply put, the objection is: What positive contribution can my discursive activity and its object make to the coming to be of the intuition of something if no traces of either that activity or its object can be proper constituents of that intuition? Discourse, in the Sartrean scheme, is spoken of both as an instrument and as a sign. Even if the differences between instruments and signs are ignored here, a thing can be recognized as an instrument or sign only if that for which it is an instrument or sign is already at least partially in mind.⁴² Thus for discourse to be a sign or instrument, and consequently to have anything to do with knowledge, it must be recognized as that which can culminate in intuition. Intuition would have to be present at least in anticipation for discourse to signify it or to be recognized as promoting its occurrence.

Conversely, if intuition can be anticipated and if discourse can be recognized as a means or pointer leading to it, then one must be able to recognize the connection between them. It is not at all clear that one can avoid infinite regresses if one tries to make sense of the recognition of this connection. Is this recognition an intuition? Or a deduction, or some other sort of discourse?

But even on the assumption that one can make sense of this connection between the signified or the end and the sign or the means, serious problems for this thesis remain. The recognition of the connection between intuition and the discourse which is instrumental to achieving it or signifies it requires that the means or pointer not be fully effaced. In principle, the instrument or pointer can always be reactivated. For if intuition can be anticipated, and if discourse contributes positively to its occurrence, then intuition will have to contain, as proper constituents of itself, traces of that discourse.⁴³ Granted these traces may be ignored or considered inconsequential, but if discourse positively contributes to the coming to be of intuition, then traces of it must remain in intuition. If this is so, then at least some actual intuitions are not essentially independent of discourse. Discourse would have to be at least a positive necessary condition for some intuitions, a necessary condition which the intuition itself grasps.

Suppose, though, that one insists upon the radical independence of intuition from discourse. Then the intentional objects of intuition might well be radically independent of those of discourse. If that were the case, then the “Sartrean” position would entail that the connection between these different sorts of performances and their corresponding objects is not merely contingent but also never be more than fortuitous. Instead then of a mind-body dualism, there would be a discursive consciousness—intuitive consciousness dualism. The performances of each, to be sure, would be ultimately irrelevant to the performances of the other. But then saying that one, the discursive, pointed to or was a means to the intuitive would be simply wrong.

A second, more dubiously “Sartrean,” thesis concerning discourse can be extrapolated from remarks of his in Being and Nothingness concerning our relations with others. After saying that “conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others,”⁴⁴ Sartre later argues: “Language is not a phenomenon added on to being-for-others. It is originally being-for-others, that is, it is the fact that a subjectivity experiences itself as an object for the Other.”⁴⁵ Now the project of the for-itself is always to overcome its alienation, to achieve autonomy. Whether it ever definitely achieves this autonomy is beside the point. The constancy of the attempt gives sense to everything that a person does vis-à-vis the other. One might then conclude, as many commentators on Being and Nothingness do, that this autonomy is always sought at the expense of the other.⁴⁶

On this basis, one can ground the following claim concerning the shapes of interpersonal involvement in discourse: Monologue is the fundamental shape of interpersonal involvement in discourse from which all other shapes, in the final analysis, derive their meaning. Monologue is still discourse or language. As such, in Sartrean terms it is still being-for-others. But in monologue the author has greater autonomy—and reflection is required for autonomy—than he has in any other shape. On the strength of the first “Sartrean” thesis discussed above, one would have to say that monologue itself is destined to be effaced when intuition occurs. But so long as language or discourse in any shape makes sense, as being interpersonal, it does so insofar as it is either derived from or ordained to monologue. In effect, then, the motive for engaging in discourse of any sort is first to achieve monologic autonomy and from thence to achieve intuition.

At this point, it is appropriate to return briefly to Sartre’s reformulation of the Husserlian definition of intuition. Intuition, he says, is the presence of consciousness to the thing. Consciousness is always active and, in intuition, actually reaches the thing directly. In discourse, too, the speaker as speaker is active. In monologue, he is most a speaker and least a hearer, least “passive.” Thus, whatever shapes of discourse a person engages in, in this “Sartrean” scheme they all have an orientation to monologue as the primordial shape.

This second “Sartrean” thesis might be taken to claim merely that, whatever the shape of discourse in which a person participates, he does so in such a way that he can maintain himself as one who can, properly speaking, be the author and not merely the audience of discourse. But then the thesis would be trivial. He who could only be a hearer and never a speaker could in fact never, properly speaking, be a hearer. Even to be a hearer one must be capable of being an author. On this interpretation, then, the second “Sartrean” thesis would amount to no more than the tautologous claim that all of my hearing is geared to my speaking.⁴⁷

If, however, this thesis is taken, as it appropriately should, in a nontrivial sense, then it makes a claim of capital importance about what transpires in interpersonal discourse. It asserts, that, at bottom, every level and shape of human dialogical discourse in the final analysis owes its sense and point to its furtherance of monologue. To engage in nonmonological discourse, then, finally makes sense only insofar as it contributes to bringing the discourse as a whole more completely under by control, more completely into that which approximates monologue, than would be the case if the particular nonmonological discourse under consideration were omitted. If this quest for maximal monologue is to make sense, then it would further have to be the case that whatever meaning can come to be articulated in any of the levels or shapes of discourse can, in principle, be articulated in monologue.⁴⁸

This second thesis, taken in a nontrivial sense, is unobjectionable from a logical standpoint. It is neither nonsensical nor countersensical. But it is a thesis about factual matters. And the available factual evidence provides considerably stronger grounds for rejecting the thesis than for accepting it. First, people generally do not consider all the different shapes and levels of discourse in which they engage to be fundamentally ordained to the establishment or maintenance of monologue. Rather, the poverty of a life lived without participation in many shapes of discourse is widely recognized. And part of this recognition is that what enriches life is effective surpassing of the confines of the monological shape.

To be sure, mistaken views can and sometimes are both widespread and persistent. But views which are widespread and persistent even when examined enjoy a presumption in their favor which should be set aside only in the face of extensive and unambiguous evidence in support of a competing claim. There is no such body of evidence available to support this “Sartrean” thesis.

Second, the “Sartrean” thesis that conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others follows from Sartre’s claim that the primordial relation between the for-itself and the in-itself is negation. When this claim is coupled to Sartre’s definition of intuition as the presence of consciousness to the thing rather than as, in the Husserlian version, the presence of the thing “in person” to consciousness, then one can conclude that meaning can emerge to full fruition only to the degree that the for-itself is autonomous both vis-à-vis things and other for-itselves.

Experience shows, however, that there is no good reason to assign unqualified primacy to negation as the basic relation between consciousness and the world. Even if one rejects the claim that negation is simply a modification of affirmation, there is strong evidence for maintaining that affirmation is at least equiprimordial with negation. That is, experience shows that for a full intending of at least some objects both affirmation and negation are necessary. To intend the world as a totality, both affirmation and negation are required.⁴⁹ If this is the case, then there is no basis for saying that conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others, that monologue is the fundamental shape of interpersonal involvement in meaning, or that meaning can emerge to full fruition only to the degree that the individual person establishes his autonomy vis-à-vis both things and other persons.

Once again, however, the examination of theses which finally turn out to be unacceptable yields positive benefits for developing an acceptable ontological interpretation of silence. Several substantial, closely related contributions can be extracted from these “Sartrean” claims.

First, these theses, together with the Sartrean definition of intuition, emphasize the human initiative which is involved in discourse as well as in intuition. On these theses, discourse is pertinent to the coming-to-be of new meaning. Even if, as the theses would have it, the contribution of discourse is only instrumental, it is nonetheless a positive contribution. Discourse is required to broaden the scope of the meaningful. And if the intentional analysis presented in Chapter Three is correct, then silence, too, is required for the expansion of the scope of the meaningful, because there is no discourse without silence. Thus, silence in its own right can be seen to make a positive contribution to the scope of the meaningful.

But, if I am correct in holding that the experiential evidence shows that there is no reason to assign preeminence to monologue, then there is reason for holding that each of the multiple levels and shapes of interpersonal involvement in discourse has its own distinctive and irreducible place in the domain of discourse. If this is the case, then in the light of the intentional analysis of silence one can see that the several ways in which silence maintains an oscillation and tension among these levels and shapes likewise make distinctive and irreducible contributions to the scope of the meaningful which can appear in the domain of discourse. Thus, each of the multiple ways in which silence appears is not merely instrumental to the coming to presence of meaning but is rather an irreplaceable way in which some meaning can come to be at all. Further, each of these shapes of discourse and ways in which silence occurs is a manifestation of human initiative. This initiative does not merely bring about a new relation of the person to meaning. It brings about new meaning itself.

The examination of these “Sartrean” theses yields a second positive benefit for the present investigation. It shows that no human achievement is so complete that it is either self-contained or self-sustaining. Sartre points out that knowledge or intuition always refers beyond itself back to the knower as an unintuitable concretely existing human being. And so, even though there is a truth of knowledge, which knowledge puts one in the presence of the absolute, this truth is still strictly human.⁵⁰ To be present to the absolute, Sartre says, is not to be one with the absolute. Further, in the passage cited above, Sartre says that an intuition which has been attained in the past but which is not a present mode of consciousness leaves behind precepts which are the results of operations formerly effected and which I presently use. Intuitions, then, come to be, refer beyond themselves, and pass away.

If intuition is neither self-contained nor self-sustaining, and if my criticism of the first “Sartrean” thesis is sound, then discourse, too, is neither self-contained nor self-sustaining. Both discourse and knowledge reveal that their occurrence always takes place in conjunction with something other than itself. Both are in tension with something which manifests that neither of them is a “once and for all” achievement. Further, even if intuition or knowledge were the superior achievement, an achievement to whose occurrence discourse was merely instrumental, knowledge is revealed as no less irrecusably temporal than discourse is. All the more is this the case if, as my argument against the first thesis maintained, no independence or unequivocal primacy is to be assigned to intuition or knowledge over discourse.

But my criticisms of these theses notwithstanding, both of them themselves entail that each of the determinate performances which, together with their specific respective determinate objects, enter into the consitution of the predicative domain is intrinsically temporal and lacking in self-sufficiency. This consequence meshes nicely with important features of the intentional analysis of silence. Specifically, it meshes well with the characterization of silence as a cut which establishes and maintains an indissoluble tension or oscillation both between intuitive and pictorial performances on the one hand and signitive performances on the other, and also among the several levels and shapes of discourse. As they stand, these “Sartrean” theses entail that all predicative performances having determinate objects refer in multiple ways beyond those objects not solely for their truth but even for their very meaning. This referring is ineluctably temporal and thus the full panoply of meaning is not present once and for all but rather is emergent. These theses further entail that the multiplicity of levels and shapes of discourse which enter into the constitution of the full scope of meaning is in the final analysis irreducible.

One last point should be made before I summarize the achievements of this chapter. From the Husserlian position, one discovers that discourse has something of the character of a response or reply. That is, both utterance and its content appeal to something beyond themselves for their authentication. From the “Sartrean” position, one learns that this responsiveness cannot be construed as simple subservienee. Human discourse does issue in new meaning. What is true of discourse is likewise true of silence, of that which establishes and maintains the gap between the domain of discourse and the flanking domains of pre-predicative and postpredicative experience.

IV. CONTRIBUTIONS TO AN ONTOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF SILENCE

The examination in this chapter of theses drawn from Hegelian, Husserlian, and Sartrean sources yields the following results as first steps towards an acceptable ontological interpretation of silence. (1) Every performance, whether of discourse or of silence, belonging to the signitive domain is temporal, incomplete, and lacking in radical autonomy of meaning. In short, no complete speech or complete silence is a human performance. Complete speech and complete silence are not only unachieveable but are also inaccessible to men. (2) There is no good reason for assigning ontological priority to discourse over silence. Each makes an irreducible contribution to the sense of the other and to that of the entire domain of signitive performances. (3) Actually occurring signitive performances are all in some measure indicative, in the Husserlian sense. To the extent that they are indicative, that they refer beyond the signitive domain, they cannot contain within themselves their own full authentication even as discourse. (4) That which can authenticate discourse is not exhaustively within the power of the interlocutor. Thus, neither discourse nor silence can be properly construed as a pure tool or conventional sign. (5) Since there is no sharp cleavage between discourse and silence, on the one hand, and that which gives them their authentication, on the other, and since all actual signitive performances are in some measure indicative, there is reason to say that men are under the sway of the signitive and that which authenticates the signitive rather than that men possess, control, or manipulate the signitive domain. (6) But even so, human initiative in discourse and silence is required to broaden the scope of the meaningful. This initiative does not merely bring about a new relation between the interlocutors and meaning. It brings about new meaning itself. (7) Risk belongs to everything in the signitive domain. Discourse, the shapes of discourse, and silence are all, as active performances, intrinsically risky.

I assume that an examination of the signitive domain sheds light on being itself. That is, insofar as being is intelligible to man, its distinctive features are discoverable through a study of the elements which constitute the signitive domain, a domain through which man mediates his encounter with being. If this assumption is granted, then these seven results make several notable contributions to the specification of what can count as an acceptable ontological interpretation of the phenomenon of silence.

First, in the manifestation of meaning, man is both an initiator and a respondent. Neither of these dimensions can be subsumed under the other. That is, neither his initiative nor his response is unprepared for by the other. Apparently, then, the meaning of being itself cannot be made manifest except through both initiative and responsiveness on the part of man. If this is the case, and if discourse and silence are not correlative opposites but are inextricably interwined, then each of them enters into the constitution of both initiative and responsiveness. That is, silence, as well as discourse, is ingredient in both the initiative and the responsiveness which is required for man to manifest the meaning of being.

Second, men and that which authenticates their signitive performances are bound together by the signitive domain. That is, there can be no fully human encounter with being except through the mediation provided by the signitive realm. This signitive domain, of course, is neither fully other than me nor fully me or mine. By the same token, the signitive domain does not merely either mediate me to myself or bind me to itself. It binds me to something beyond both me and itself, namely, to being. But no dimension of either me or being in principle transcends that to which elements of the signitive domain can refer. If every dimension of both me and being is a manifestable dimension, then every dimension can be articulated in the signitive domain, even though no dimension can be exhaustively manifested. Now since silence enters into the constitution of every shape of the signitive domain, it enters into the bond between man and being. If silence is complex, then so is this bond.

Third, all signitive performances necessarily involve risk. Part of the riskiness of signitive performances, of course, has to do with the issue of truth or falsity in their ordinary senses. But much more is at stake here. If new meaning comes to be through some signitive performances, then the unavoidable riskiness involved in everything novel is at play. If new meaning is abstained from, then the risk of ossification is run. Performances of silence, too, belong to the signitive domain. They are no less risky than are performances of discourse. Again, the risk can be either that of the novel or that of ossification. The riskiness involved in signitive performances, if considered together with the fact that the signitive domain is involved in all encounters between man and being, shows that both being and man are such that no encounter between them can be without risk. Each in its own way is at the mercy of the other.⁵¹ Silence, as well as discourse, brings to light the riskiness of their encounters, encounters which are, to be sure, unavoidable.

Finally, the overall effect of these seven results and their contributions to the specification of an appropriate ontological interpretation of silence is to emphasize the thoroughly temporal character of man, being, and the signitive domain which mediates their encounters. Initiative, responsiveness, encounterings, and riskiness all involve temporality. This temporality is neither a mere form nor all of a piece. It itself is complex. Thoroughgoing temporality does not rule out the omnitemporal. But the omnitemporal, as Husserl saw, is not the atemporal. However, the ontological significance of the phenomenon of silence is to be interpreted, any acceptable interpretation must make clear that being is in all respects temporal.

With these clarifications in hand, I can now turn to the works of recent thinkers who have explicitly recognized silence as a positive complex phenomenon which deserves to be given an ontological interpretation.