I. THE TWO REGIONS OF DISCOURSE

Discoursing is a double-rayed act. A utters p about x to B (where A and B may, but need not, be distinct persons). The essential doubleness of this ray allows for a shifting of emphasis between two general regions of discourse. If the primary ray is directed to the subject matter, the x, then the utterance belongs to the region of topic-centered discourse. If the primary ray is directed to the audience of the discourse, the B, then the utterance belongs to the region of interlocutor-centered discourse. So far as I can tell, the rays are never of equal primacy. One is always subordinate to the other.²

The difference between these two regions or discourse are numerous. However, singling out two of the most prominent differences is enough for present purposes.

One salient difference between the topic-centered and the interlocutor-centered regions follows straightforwardly from the different objects toward which the primary ray is directed. In interlocutor-centered discourse, the primary responsibility of the participants is to care for one another’s individual needs and aspirations. But in topic-centered discourse, both the author and the audience have as their primary responsibility the task of ensuring that the subject matter is adequately expressed. How these respective primary responsibilities are discharged is an essential element in determining whether an utterance articulates what is to be uttered, when it is to be uttered, and how it is to be uttered. For each of these regions of discourse, though, the primary responsibility in one region is a not inconsequential secondary responsibility in the other region.

The recognition of the distinctive primary responsibility belonging to each region of discourse can introduce a higher degree of sophistication into the discussion of a number of complicated issues. For example, such a recognition would help to refine the terms of debates like that concerning the dissemination of pornography and the First Amendment provisions of the United States Constitution. What it is permissible to say in topic-centered discourse might not be permissible in interlocutor-centered discourse, and vice versa.

Paul Ricoeur provides a lead which can be modified to describe a second salient difference between these two regions. Interlocutor-centered discourse is, at bottom, ostensive and refers focally to the participants’ spatiotemporal situation. Interlocutor-centered utterances refer to something which (1) belongs to the dialogical situation at hand precisely as an element of that situation and which (2) can be designated either by pointing or by ostensive components of the utterance itself (for example, some adverbial demonstratives). As ostensive, this sort of discourse equiprimordially points back to the actually involved interlocutors. Topic-centered discourse, by contrast, is focally nonostensive and refers beyond the interlocutors’ situation to what can be called a world. In this context, a world is a unitary ensemble of actual and possible referents which can be referred to, in principle, by any person whatsoever. Whenever the reference of an utterance is intended in such a way that it escapes the confines of the interlocutors’ situation, then the discourse projects a world. Utterances which focally intend a situation belong to the region of interlocutor-centered discourse. Utterances which focally intend a world belong to the region of topic-centered discourse. To paraphrase Ricoeur, the coming to language of the sense and reference of topic-centered discourse is the coming to language of a world. But the coming to language of the sense and reference of interlocutor-centered discourse is the coming to recognition of the participants in their concrete, situated individuality.³

Thus in interlocutor-centered discourse the author of the utterance and his audience (1) are acquainted with one another, (2) share a common spatiotemporal situation, and (3) do not and need not concern themselves with how their discourse would be taken by those who do not share their situation. By contrast, in topic-centered discourse the first two of these conditions are irrelevant. And contrary to the third condition, in topic-centered discourse no present or future person is in principle excluded from becoming part of the audience. In fact, only the factual condition of death rules past persons out of the audience.⁴

Interlocutor-centered discourse, then, is born and dies in a particular situation. The effacement of the situation is the effacement of the focal referent of interlocutor-centered discourse. Topic-centered discourse, in principle, does not depend for its life upon the continued existence of the situation in which it was initially uttered. Among other things, this difference between these two regions of discourse accounts for the indecency or silliness of treating interlocutor-centered discourse as though it were topic-centered or of insisting upon engaging in topic-centered discourse when one’s interlocutors are, with justification, interested in engaging in interlocutor-centered discourse.

These two regions are not closed to one another. What is focally intended in the one is horizonally intended in the other. Therefore, topic-centered discourse can be converted into interlocutor-centered discourse and vice versa. For example, assume that “The moon is full” is a topic-centered utterance. A couple in love might convert that utterance into part of a private code they use only when they are alone with each other. Conversely, an intimate conversation among lovers might be recorded and made available for anyone to read or hear. But for present purposes, the distance between these two regions is more important than their proximity.

The significance of the fact that topic-centered discourse refers to a world and not merely to a situation is clarified by noticing that the detachment from confinement to a particular situation, a detachment which is expressed by the very sense of topic-centered discourse, can move in several directions. The individuation of the author of the utterance may be heightened, with a concomitant extension of his audience beyond the bounds of those who share his situation. An artist might well exemplify this sort of detachment. Or the detachment of both the author and his immediate audience may withhold from effective manifestation their respective individuating characteristics, characteristics which distinguish them from other persons. This sort of detachment allows either the author or the audience or both to represent some absent persons or groups as well as to be present themselves in the discourse. Or again, the detachment of the participants in the discourse may transform all the determinations which tend to distinguish one person from another into an abiding communion. An example of this sort of detachment is that of a community of monks engaging in communal worship.

It follows that whether an utterance belongs to the region of topic-centered discourse or to that of interlocutor-centered discourse is not fully at the discretion of its author. The aim of the author, the way in which the audience understands the utterance, what is uttered itself, and the context in which it is uttered all enter into the constitution of a particular utterance as belonging to one or the other region. The multiplicity of the elements at play here accounts for the possibility of both deception and error concerning the region to which an utterance belongs. The author is, in principle, neither more nor less prone to err about such matters than is any member of his audience.

The regions of topic-centered and interlocutor-centered discourse differ in many other ways, for example, in appropriate style, vocabulary, length of the string of utterances on a given occasion, choice of allusions, and reasons for interrupting. But for the present purpose of uncovering the complex correlation between silence and discourse, the differences between these two regions need not be described further. Considering some of the principal types of discourse which are found in these regions is more profitable.

II. TYPES OF INTERLOCUTOR-CENTERED
DISCOURSE

Within the region of interlocutor-centered discourse, the region in which the primary ray of the act of uttering is directed to the audience rather than to the subject matter, three types of discourse can be usefully distinguished: familial discourse, discourse with friends, and discourse with acquaintances.⁵ For present purposes, not much is to be gained by discussing the distinction between the first two. So I will deal here only with the difference between discourse with acquaintances on the one hand and discourse with family or friends on the other.

Precisely how some particular person or group of people draws the distinction between family, friends, and acquaintances and whether a person has or even wants a family or friends are irrelevant issues here. What does matter is that these distinctions can be and have been drawn and that they reflect discernible differences among types of interlocutor-centered discourse. Only those differences which are pertinent to the elucidation of the phenomenon of silence in its constant conjunction with discourse will be noted here.

Utterances belonging to discourse among acquaintances always begin and perdure with a certain provisional character. The background silence, the fore-and-after silence, against which these utterances stand out and unfold, is fragile. The fore-silence which opens the way for discourse with acquaintances always has the sense of containing a proviso that the discourse can be fittingly cancelled or at least interrupted at any moment when the motivation, in the Husserlian sense of the term, for a shift to either familial discourse or discourse among friends arises.

Consider, for example, the situation in which, while I am talking with an acquaintance, a friend of mine comes upon the scene and indicates that he wishes a word with me. If I continue to engage in discourse with acquaintances, after motivation for a shift is present, I will be pressing my utterances into an expressive space now claimed by the utterances predelineated in my friend’s beckon. This crowding of the expressive space occurs even if motivation for my continuing the discourse with my acquaintance is also present. Of course, the claim of my friend need not and sometimes should not be honored. But my friend’s claim is there with effective weight and with the sense that, all things being equal, it should have priority. Thus, the very fore-and-after silence within which the discourse among acquaintances unfolds already carries the sense that it may at any time have to yield the right of way.

In contrast, the fore-silence which opens the way for familial discourse or discourse among friends has the sense that what it opens the way for deserves to run its full course, to override casual claims from acquaintances, and to be esteemed for its worth even when it yields temporarily to urgent claims from acquaintances. This difference between discourse among acquaintances and discourse among family or friends is confirmed by the contrast between the experience of having interlocutor-centered discourse with an acquaintance interrupted by one’s beloved and having interlocutor-centered discourse with one’s beloved interrupted by an acquaintance.

Similarly, the after-silence in which discourse among acquaintances terminates is qualitatively different from the after-silence in which the discourse of family or friends stops. The after-silence at the end of a string of utterances belonging to familial discourse or to discourse among friends suspends but does not terminate the discourse. In an important sense, discourse among friends or family, so long as the relationship endures, never ends but is only interrupted. But the after-silence in which a particular set of utterances among acquaintances terminates carries the sense of bringing the dialogue to a full stop. The dialogue is not suspended. It is finished. The present set of utterances and its after-silence provides only the minimal motivated anticipation or expectation that one will again converse with these same people. And if a second dialogue should occur, it will appear as one which is as discontinuous with the first dialogue as any two dialogues between the same people can be.

An extreme example of discourse among acquaintances is the brief exchange of pleasantries in which one engages while buying a newspaper in a hamlet through which he is passing for the first time and to which he expects never to return. Of course, in real life the line between friends and acquaintances is not clear-cut. Therefore, the after-silence of much actual discourse among acquaintances is only more or less final. Conversely, ties of friendship and family can slacken to the point that conversations of this sort come close to termination rather than mere suspension. This absence of clear-cut demarcations among different sorts of relationships accounts for the possibility of the confusion and pain which can be experienced when one partner in a dialogue takes another to be his friend and speaks accordingly, but the other partner considers the conversation to be simply one between acquaintances.

Another difference among these types of interlocutor-centered discourse concerns the connection between their respective utterances and deep silence. Obviously, what was said in Chapter One about the silence of intimates holds good for the deep silence conjoined with the utterances of both familial discourse and discourse among friends. It does not hold for the deep silence conjoined with discourse among acquaintances.

Utterances belonging to each type of interlocutor-centered discourse also have their own proper connection with the silence of the to-be-said. Each type of utterance has its own “bounds of propriety” to observe. Each type of interlocutor-centered discourse has its own peculiar way of manifesting that the primary responsibility of the interlocutors is to take care of one another’s needs and aspirations. To discharge this responsibility whatever is said needs to find authentication in the unsayable, silent to-be-said which is correlated to the type of interlocutor-centered discourse to which the utterance belongs. Quite simply, some of what is to be said is to be said to friends or family but not to acquaintances, and vice versa. Though the “bounds of propriety” cannot be given any linguistic formulation which is even remotely comprehensive, what these bounds are for one type of discourse is manifestly different from what they are for other types. What is to be uttered, when it is to be uttered and how it is to be uttered all vary depending upon whether the interlocutors are acquaintances, friends, or members of the same family.

Tact, good sense, and the silence of the to-be-said do not merely restrict utterances. They also call for utterances. The respective “bounds of propriety” belonging to each type of interlocutor-centered discourse can be transgressed by not saying what was called for as well as by saying what was uncalled for. One can be less forthcoming with his family or friends than he should be. One can fail to exchange appropriate greetings, etc., among acquaintances. These considerations confirm what was said in Chapter One about tact and good sense (le bon sens) and their connection with silence.

III. TYPES OF TOPIC-CENTERED
DISCOURSE

In topic-centered discourse the primary responsibility of both the author and the audience is to ensure that the subject matter is appropriately expressed. Further, since topic-centered discourse focally refers to a world, it involves an explicit detachment of some or all participants from confinement to a situation. This detachment can move in several directions. These points were all mentioned before. The detachment involved in topic-centered discourse can release the participants into one or more of those “areas” customarily spoken of as the world of art, the world of politics, the world of religion, etc.⁶ If this clue from ordinary usage is followed and several types of topic-centered discourse and the worlds to which they refer are distinguished, then the description of the connection between silence and discourse can be substantially refined.

To achieve this refinement, the customary, standard distinctions which have been drawn among types of topic-centered discourse will suffice. The list of types need not be exhaustive nor the discussion of any particular type elaborate. But attending to the prominent differences between the following types of topic-centered discourse will prove useful: scientific discourse, technological discourse, political discourse, moral discourse, religious discourse, and artistic discourse.

Obviously, to engage in one type of discourse a person has to refrain from, to be silent in, other types of discourse. Such a remark, however, is abstract to the point of triviality. But the observation upon which it is based can be rescued from triviality by noticing just how silence, that particular yielding in the face of finitude and awe which binds and joins, is connected with each of these types of topic-centered discourse. A key consideration here is to determine the sort of temporality which reigns in the various worlds to which these types of discourse refer.

Scientific Discourse

The type of discourse in question here is employed in what has come to be called “normal” science, science which assumes an objective universe which science endeavors to describe and explain.⁷ One central feature of the world to which scientific discourse refers is that, on the one hand, it has no privileged moments and, on the other hand, it is concerned with abstract, general objects and not with particular objects. For example, a particular drop of water has scientific interest only as an instance of water. It has no interest by reason of its being this drop of water on this particular petal in this particular light. The same condition holds for scientific interest in a bird or a man.

To say that the world of science has no privileged moments is to say that beginning and ending moments of the processes with which science concerns itself have no more weight than does any intervening moment. In fact, it is to deny that there is any fundamental legitimacy to thinking in terms of beginning, middle, and end. One consequence of the absence of qualitative differentiation in the temporality of the processes and objects studied by science is that, in principle, whatever is uttered appropriately about the world can be appropriately uttered at any moment. Of course, the discourse can describe sequences of states of affairs. But in principle these sequences and the discourse referring to them are ahistorical. The date of their occurrence in history is fundamentally irrelevant. The history of scientific discourse, as history, is of no scientific interest.

Similarly, the particular is of scientific interest only as an instance of the general. An experiment is of interest, not for what happens to and among its elements considered in their particularity, but for what it manifests about the general. Whatever is peculiar to the particular is to be ignored. The discourse which refers to the experiment is properly scientific only insofar as it refers exclusively to the general.

A second, closely related, feature of scientific discourse is that it expressly refrains from referring to any world other than its own. For example, any reference to a world populated by particulars taken in their particularity is taken to be a lapse from scientific discourse which contaminates the discourse. As a consequence, scientific discourse ensures its own purity by taking as irrelevant the specific identity of both its author and its audience. In principle, though it does not explicitly deny worlds other than its own, it does not positively acknowledge any of them.⁸ Nor, of course, does it positively acknowledge the legitimacy of any discourse except scientific discourse.

The silence which is conjoined with scientific discourse involves a setting aside by the participants of the articulation of everything which individuates them as persons and of their respective interests in the particular as particular. No claim arising from any form of particularity is granted. But this asceticism does not terminate in isolating those who perform this kind of yielding. Rather it binds and joins them to all others, of whatever era, who are or may become similarly ascetic. It binds them to a community which is in principle open to every man and in which, in principle, no distinctions can be drawn among particular men. In so doing, this ascetic yielding binds and joins the community of scientists to a world which always is as it is and which is always sovereignly indifferent to whatever is transient, whether particular person, thing, or event.

The silence which opens the way for scientific discourse, opens the way for utterances which are, in the final analysis, neither mine nor yours, neither those of a Frenchman nor of an Argentinean. The utterances, in principle, simply employ the scientist as mouthpiece. And he both knows and positively appreciates that one mouthpiece is interchangeable with another.

What motivates the silence which opens the way for scientific discourse is the recognition of the limitations weighing upon even the richest of particular things or events and the most favorably endowed individual persons. Each of these is both transient and deficient in something possessed by another. Each particular tends to block the recognition of other particulars, to confine what can be uttered by or about one particular to that which others find irrelevant either for themselves or about other particular things. These recognized manifestations of finitude are correlated to an awe. The awe arises from the realization that particulars hang together in patterns and constitute a universe. This universe and its patterns are recognized as having been there before the individual person came on the scene and as destined to endure beyond his lifetime. Through being a mouthpiece for this abiding universe, the individual can give the discourse in which he participates a permanent significance which is tied to the universe and which can survive both his own death and the forgetting of him in his particularity by all other persons. This particular mode of the experience of finitude and awe motivates the silence against which scientific discourse unfolds.

Technological Discourse

What Heidegger says about technology and science in his essays “The Question Concerning Technology” and “The Age of the World Picture,” as well as elsewhere, is, I think, extremely important and basically sound. But here I wish to limit myself to considering some more obvious and less controversial features of the type of discourse belonging to technology. To begin this description, I follow, with some modifications, clues provided by Gabriel Marcel.

In The Decline of Wisdom, Marcel points out three intertwined characteristics of what he calls techniques which transform the world. These techniques are: perfectible, transmissible, and both specialized and tending to further specialization.⁹ A technique is perfectible insofar as it tends to bring about the highest possible ratio of output to input. It is transmissible to the extent that an ever larger number of people can perform the technique. Transmissibility would be maximal when no person need perform the technique and the entire performance can be given over to a machine.¹⁰ A technique is specialized to the extent that it has minimal side effects.

Technological discourse refers to the ensemble of techniques of this sort and the objects upon which they are exercised. The object to which technological discourse ultimately refers is a universe conceived of as a stock of indefinitely plastic raw material.¹¹ Apparent qualitative differentiations within the universe are irrelevant. Only quantitative ones are significant.¹²

One important characteristic of the world to which technological discourse refers is that in it the future has unequivocal primacy. The future in question here, however, is not vague or fundamentally indefinite. Rather, it is a foreseeable, predelineated future. It is the not-yet, the about-to-be. Techniques and their products, as well as the discourse which refers to them, are all meant, from their inception, to be replaced. In fact, the product is not the end to which the technique is the means. Each is rather a moment in the progressive exploration of the plasticity of the universe of raw material.

A second important characteristic of the world of raw material is rather paradoxical. In this world, the technologist has his own purposes and works his will. The products are products he elects to bring about. But his purposes are admissible only so long as they further technological transformations. This world requires that he have purposes of his own, but his purposes are sanctioned only so long as they are “stages on technology’s way.”

The silence which is conjoined to technological discouse is a two-fold yielding or restraint. To engage in technological discourse one must refrain from attending to any apparent qualitative differentiations in one’s topic except those which are themselves technologically induced. That is, only those differences which arise from the application of technological processes are appropriate referents for technological discourse. But the attention to even these differences is caught under the requirement of a second dimension of the restraint or yielding which is intertwined with this sort of discourse. To engage in technological discourse one must refrain from considering any of his purposes or achievements as anything more than transitory moments in a process which proceeds according to its own inner momentum. His achievements, whether discursive or fabricational, are to be assessed as moments destined to be absorbed in the larger process without leaving a discernible abiding trace.

This second dimension of the yielding in question here can be put in another way. The background silence against which a particular technological utterance or set of utterances unfolds is such that the savoring of what has just been said or achieved is held to a minimum. What matters is the opening for the next utterance. The silence in which a technological utterance terminates, then, is more similar to intervening silence than it is to after-silence. That is, without the pre-delineated next utterance the present utterance with its silence lacks full sense.

The silence connected with technological discourse also binds and joins the participants to a distinct community, the community of men dedicated primordially to the exaltation of Man or the Spirit of Man. This exaltation is seen as consisting in the power to shape the universe to the will of Man. Power over matter is manifested by the ease of transforming it. Technology is not, then, geared to satisfy the will of some particular man or men. Their wills and purposes are subordinate to a sort of general will of Man, to the Spirit of Man, which transcends the partialness of each man.

Technological discourse and the silence which opens the way for it is partially motivated by the recognition of the limitations, the finitude, of the individual man’s purposes and achievements when taken alone. Unaided by a discipline to which he subordinates himself, he is a victim both of the universe and of his own limitations. The other dimension of the motivation for engaging in technological discourse and the silence which permits it is awe in the face of man’s ability to control his own finitude through the practice of a disciplined way of interacting with the universe. The exploration of this awesome capacity is the task to which the community bound together in technological discourse and its conjoined silence is dedicated.

Technological discourse, however, has a paradoxical character which is worthy of notice. It is both modest and ambitious. The individual participant in the technological discourse is required, as a condition of participation, to be modest about his own performances. But, likewise as a condition of participation, he is required to be so ambitious for the technological program and its anticipated achievements that he will not acknowledge any definitive limits either to the submission which he will give to the program or to the power which can be amassed by Man.¹³

Obviously, and not surprisingly, the distinction between scientific discourse and technological discourse is obscure, in part, because one and the same person engages in many types of discourse. In this respect, none of the distinctions drawn between types of discourse can be ironclad. But the distinction between scientific discourse and technological discourse present a special difficulty. Today, the interdependence in practice of so much of science and technology tends to make each of these types of discourse take on characteristics of the other type. Nonetheless, a distinction such as I have drawn between them is fruitful both for present and for other purposes.

Political Discourse

Ongoing political discourse refers to a world and an originary discourse which have an unmistakable beginning. That moment of origin enjoys a privileged position. What is uttered subsequently is assessed against the original utterance taken as a standard of legitimacy. However, the originary discourse cannot arbitrarily take just any shape. As Aristotle, Montesquieu, and Rousseau all recognized, the founding discourse must fit the founding community and the circumstances to which it is addressed if it is to acquire authority. But once the founding discourse is accepted as founding, then subsequent discourse is measured against it.

Political discourse, however, whether founding or extending, is not in any fashion oriented to an ending in which the discourse would be complete. The primary task to every state is to be stable and endure.¹⁴ In principle, neither the world to which political discourse refers nor the discourse itself has an intrinsic final terminus.

Political worlds can and do, of course, fade away or fall apart. One world is replaced by another. But nothing about either the temporality or the content of political discourse, qua political, can be said to entail its replacement by another specific political world. That is, neither the author nor the audience of political discourse can, so long as their discourse is political, attempt to bring their discourse either to a unique culmination or to a definitive conclusion. The ending of a political world and the discourse associated with it can be noticed only by those who inhabit another world. But both the author and the audience must always at least implicitly refer political utterances to the origin of their political world.

Putative political discourse which does not satisfy the foregoing requirement that political discourse not aim for an ideal culmination is, for example, talk about a thousand-year Reich, or the culminating classless society, or some of Hegel’s talk about Napoleon. Talk of this sort may satisfy the formal requirements for scientific discourse, regardless of its truth or falsity or consistency. But, because of the temporality of the world to which political discourse refers, such talk cannot refer to a political world.

Unlike scientific discourse, political discourse by nature seeks to accommodate within itself the other types of topic-centered discourse. It also seeks to ensure the preservation of the entire region of topic-centered discourse against the claims of interlocutor-centered discourse. But in the course of accommodating the other types of discourse, it also seeks to circumscribe their scope and exercise and to determine their respective importance. Political discourse, then, tends to take its world as a “world of worlds.”¹⁵

The silence which is conjoined to political discourse involves a special binding and joining of the present author and audience to the “founding fathers” of their political community. What is uttered in the present is meant to prolong, preserve, and develop what was initidated in the beginning. Not to keep one’s utterances under the aegis of the discourse of the founding fathers is to revolt. To place one’s utterances under the aegis of the political discourse of aliens is to commit treason. Whatever has intervened between the founding fathers and the present, a listening to and heeding of the originating discourse is always called for. The heeding, of course, is not a repeating. But it does involve deference.

This deference, a kind of restraint,¹⁶ also points to the sort of finitude and awe which is implicated in the silence conjoined with political discourse. Since what the present participants in political discourse utter can be legitimate only if it has its roots in some founding discourse, no present utterance can approximately aspire to autonomy. On the other hand, since the founding discourse can have current efficacy only by virtue of present utterances, the present participants confront in awe the fact that without their own utterances, the political world into which they have been introduced is doomed. Thus the necessary dependence upon the moment of origin is coupled with an irremediable fragility. Present political utterance, then, unfolds against a twofold silence: the silence which lets the founding discourse be heard anew, and the silence which opens the way for that which, however founded it is in the origin, is fresh, never uttered before, and yet destined to yield to a subsequent, dependent, but fresh political utterance.¹⁷

Moral Discourse

Like the world to which scientific discourse refers, the world to which moral discourse refers is one with no privileged moments. In both of these worlds everyone, or at least all those who are in the same position in these worlds, can and should utter the same thing. Of course, if the moral world changes or if there are different positions in the moral world, then what is to be uttered about these differing circumstances is itself different. But it belongs to the very sense of moral discourse that if Brutus had been an English contemporary of Bishop Butler or Butler a Roman contemporary of Brutus, then both of them could and should have made the same moral utterances. And if the moral world has dimensions which do not change, then everyone can and should utter the same thing about those dimensions.

Unlike the scientific world, however, the moral world is such that all of the discourse which refers to it involves appraisal. For appraisal to be possible, what is referred to must have some element which in fact belongs to it but whose place could have been taken by some other equally contingent element. Thus, if something deserves approval, then at least some component of it could have been replaced either by another component which would render it still deserving of approval or by a component which would render it not deserving of approval. But nothing can belong to the moral world which does not require that the discourse which refers to it involves appraisal. Moral discourse, then, refers to a world whose structure is such that whatever can or does transpire within it requires for its complete sense that it be appraised in terms of how it might have been otherwise. Nothing in the world of science allows for this kind of appraisal.

More specifically, for this appraisal to be possible, what transpires must be taken as involving in some fashion human conduct over which some person has control. The conduct may be that of ignoring or neglecting, but some controlled conduct must be involved. This necessary condition for appraisal shows that the moral world, in contrast to the scientific world, is intrinsically man-marked. That is, nothing can have complete sense in the moral world except that which necessarily requires an appraisal of the human conduct involved in what transpires.¹⁸ But the man who is at the center of the moral world is not a particular man. It is Everyman or Any-appropriately-placed-man.

The man-marked character of the moral world to which moral discourse necessarily refers differs, however, from the focus on human doings in political discourse. The claim of privilege for some utterances and the moments to which they refer, which privilege is a necessary feature of political discourse, is in principle disallowed in moral discourse. The utterances of political founding fathers are not sources of legitimacy in moral discourse. Political utterances, like any other utterance bearing on the appraisal of human conduct, must be measured in moral discourse against the standard constituted by that which everyone should utter. In the moral world political discourse cannot provide its own legitimation.

This general characterization of what distinguishes the moral world and the discourse which refers to it from other worlds and types of discourse can be usefully supplemented by noticing that the history of moral discourse reveals a rather clear distinction between two sorts of such discourse. A ready, and somewhat rough, way to indicate this distinction is to say that one sort of moral discourse aspires to be an expression of episteme, whereas the other aspires to be an expression of phronesis.¹⁹ The former bears striking formal resemblances to scientific discourse; the latter to political discourse. It is episteme-resembling moral discourse which most obviously can clash with political discourse.²⁰

The relevant point here is that each of these two sorts of moral discourse is conjoined with a distinct sort of silence. The silence conjoined with science-resembling moral discourse involves a yielding of all references, or of as much reference as is possible, to the particularizing features of the moral world. This yielding is oriented to opening the way for utterances having universality or at least maximal extension in their reference to men, the kind of conduct under man’s control, and the appraisals of what transpires in the moral world. The silence conjoined with politics-resembling moral discourse, in the face of the particularizing features of the moral world, restrains the quest for universality or maximum extension. This restraint leaves room for utterances having maximal intension in their reference to the conduct subject to man’s control and the appraisal of what transpires in the moral world.

Probably no actual developed moral doctrine, not even that of Kant, has been exclusively expressed in only one of these sorts of moral discourse. But in principle, it is at least emptily possible that such a case could occur. If it did, regardless of which of these two sorts of discourse was employed, the discourse would still be moral because whatever is uttered has the sense of being that which could and should be uttered by anyone appropriately positioned in the moral world.

The silence which is conjoined with moral utterance involves a yielding of one’s own particular appraisals of controlled human conduct to the court constituted by the appraisals which anyone can and should utter. My appraisal is a moral utterance only insofar as its very sense is that it is irrelevant to its legitimacy that it is my appraisal rather than anyone else’s. This yielding of one’s appraisal to the court of universal appraisal has the effect of binding and joining the man who engages in moral discourse to the omnitemporal community of appraisers. In this community, in principle, all those who occupy the same position enjoy unqualified equality. My appraisal, if it satisfies the court to which it is yielded, achieves a status it could not have achieved had it not been submitted to that court.

Further, the silence which opens the way for moral discourse is motivated by the recognition that both the conduct which men control and the appraisals of that conduct by particular men could be other than they are. That is, neither the particular conduct nor the particular appraisal is legitimated by the mere fact that it has occurred. Things could have transpired differently. This recognition is a recognition of finitude. My conduct and my appraisals are seen to require a legitimation which I cannot given them by myself.

But the recognition that my conduct and my appraisals could be other than they are likewise engenders an awe which motivates a silence. The awe arises in the face of the twofold realization that the world is, at least to some extent, what human conduct makes it to be and that the appraisal of human conduct is simply a human and not a necessitated appraisal. The silence which involves the acknowledgment of this sort of finitude and awe opens the way for utterances aimed at fashioning the world in a way in which it need not be fashioned. And these utterances, insofar as they belong to moral discourse, themselves aim to be utterances which any appropriately positioned person can and should utter.

Religious Discourse

Like political discourse and unlike moral discourse or scientific discourse, religious discourse refers to a world in w hich the moment of its inauguration is a privileged moment.²¹ Other moments hark back to the beginning moment, which, although it may be expressed in legend rather than being assigned to a date in a supposedly neutral time, is sufficiently well defined that no other moment can be mistaken for it. But unlike the world to which political discourse refers, the world of religious discourse has an end which is envisaged from the outset. The end, like the beginning, is a privileged moment. In some cases, the beginning and the end coincide. If they do, then the temporality of the world is essentially circular. In other cases, the end is distinct from, and generally better than, the beginning. But in every case, both the beginning and the end of the world to which religious discourse refers are singled out from other moments. They are recognized as having an importance which surpasses that of other moments. Religious discourse, like political discourse, cannot unequivocally grant that in the final analysis its utterances are to be measured against the standard constituted by moral discourse, the standard constituted by what everyone can and should utter in appraisal of human conduct.

Religious discourse, like political discourse, seeks to accommodate within itself all other types of discourse and their respective referents, whether these be interlocutor-centered or topic-centered. But in this accommodation, religious discourse, again like political discourse, seeks to circumscribe the scope and exercise of other types of discourse and to determine their respective importance. In short, religious discourse, like political discourse, tends to refer to a “world of worlds.”²²

In terms of the scope and role which each of them can have with reference to other types of discourse, political discourse and religious discourse cannot be distinguished. But the distinction can be drawn between them by virtue of the differences between the silences to which they are respectively conjoined.

The silence which goes with religious utterances binds and joins them to an originary utterance. The originary utterance is itself understood as a response to the manifest appearance of that which is greater than man, that which is divine. It likewise binds and joins the present utterances to all past and future religious utterances of the same religion which occur between the beginning and the end. That is, each religious utterance is taken to be a repetition of what has been uttered ever since the beginning and is to be uttered until the end. The present utterance is religious only so long as it is bound in this way to past and future utterances. To utter something different in religious discourse is to blaspheme. The present utterance is also joined to the end, whether the end be taken as an utterance, for example, the Last Judgment, or as the cessation of the possibility of utterance. Thus religious utterances in the between-times are understood by the participants themselves to get their full sense and justification only in conjunction with and in subordination to the beginning and the end.

The specific mode of finitude and awe that is constitutive of the silence which is conjoined with religious discourse consists in the paradoxical recognition by the utterer both that he is to utter what has already been uttered and that his uttering it matters mightily. In awe he realizes that regardless of what else has or will transpire he himself is called to respond to the divine. But he is likewise aware, and this is the recognition of finitude, that the only satisfactory response is precisely that which both has been made by his predecessors’ and will be made by those who come after him. And this regularly repeated response itself occurs only within the space enclosed by a well-determined beginning and end.

On the basis of the difference between the kind of silence conjoined with religious discourse and that conjoined with political discourse, the differences between the two “worlds of worlds” to which they respectively refer becomes clearer. To state the difference crisply, the silence of political discourse opens the way for an utterance which must be “Pelagian”; the silence of religious discourse, for one which must be “anti-Pelagian.”

Though political discourse with its silence always claims to be legitimated by the deeds and words which founded the political community, this discourse is always new. It always utters what has never been uttered before. And the responsibility for this new utterance rests upon the present author. He is responding to the founding utterances, but his response is to make its own unique contribution. In this sense, he must be “Pelagian.” He must save himself by his own efforts if he is to be saved at all.

Religious discourse with its silence, on the other hand, eschews uttering the novel. The participants’ responsibility is precisely to utter what has already been uttered and is to be uttered hereafter. They must be “anti-Pelagian.” If they are to be saved, they must submit to what has been granted to them. To introduce something novel is to court destruction.

Artistic Discourse

The set of objects populating the world to which artistic discourse refers is fundamentally distinct from the objects populating the worlds to which other types of topic-centered discourse refer. Of course, one and the same perceptual “thing” can be an object in more than one world as, for example, a Lorenzetti crucifix is for a Christian, an Italian nonreligious patriot, and a nonreligious, politically unengaged art lover. Among the distinctive characteristics of the objects populating the world to which artistic discourse refers are the following:

(1) These objects are distinct and complete unities. They are not open-ended processes. (2) Each object always leaves room for a person concurrently to have a sensible and responsible commitment of basically the same intensity and permanence to a multitude of other artistic objects. I can, for example, esteem and cherish concurrently both Picasso’s Guernica and T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land. In this respect, these objects differ from political states and, probably, religions, which tend to preclude their participants’ adhering simultaneously to more than one political state or religion. (3) These objects require some sensuous embodiment if they are to come to presence, either in perception or in memory. In this respect they differ from mathematical and logical objects. (4) These objects can be lost and rediscovered. They can appear and disappear, in principle, any number of times without suffering any transformation into a different object. Again, in this respect these artistic objects differ from political states. A state which has disappeared, which has no living members, can never be resurrected as the same state it was of old.

The world which is constituted by objects of this sort and to which artistic discourse refers is a world whose temporality is marked by a plurality of privileged moments. These are moments in which either a fresh object is first brought to presence or an old, once absent, but still fresh object is brought back to presence. There can be any number of such moments. With respect to one another, in principle, none of these moments is absolutely privileged. But some privileged moments can be major and some minor. The occurrence of privileged moments cannot be deduced or inferred from previous moments, whether privileged or not. No one can say in advance when a privileged moment will occur, or that it is due, or what it would involve. In fact, a privileged moment can be recognized at the earliest only once it is underway. And quite possibly it can be recognized as privileged only retrospectively.

Much the same point can be seen by noting that a fresh object is not merely one which comes to be for the first time. Nor is it one which is merely not a copy of a previous object. In this context, an object is fresh only to the extent that it both is not the expression of what has already been expressed or directly prepared for in other artistic objects, and is the expression of that which is the point of departure for a sequence of expressions. The greater the freshness of the expressions for which it serves as point of departure, the more privileged is the moment of its first appearance or of its reappearance after being absent.

Some nontrivial consequences follow from the consideration of the object’s freshness. First, neither the author of the object nor any segment of the object’s actual, as opposed to possible, audience can guarantee the freshness of the object. Second, no segment of the object’s actual audience can definitely certify it as stale. Third, authors can express something fresh even if they do not aim to do so. Fourth, what was once fresh may not always be fresh, but it may become so again. That is, the freshness of the object is not an intrinsic property of the object nor is it exhaustively determined either by the author or by any actual present audience.²³

There are obvious and important distinctions to be made within the sphere of artistic discourse. The discourse of the performing arts is markedly different from that of the nonperforming arts such as sculpture. Similarly, the discourse of the primarily visual arts is quite different from that of the primarily aural arts. And both of these are noticeably different from the discourse of the dramatic arts. But these differences need not be explored here. It will be sufficient simply to point out key characteristics of the silence which is involved in all artistic discourse.

The yielding conjoined to artistic utterance is that which surrenders what is customary or habitual, what has gone before and is now sedimented in routine. Artistic discourse is bound by the requirement to overcome the tendency to blindness which commonplace discourse threatens to induce. Far from being merely a gratuitous form of play, artistic discourse must overcome the referential values of routine discourse in order to allow new expressions of the meaning of reality to be articulated.²⁴

The yielding at play here binds author and audience to one another in a unique way. The bonds between them are not pretested by time. Or better, their relationship is not mediated by what is already established as a definite and settled medium in which author and audience can meet. In the yielding which is intertwined with artistic utterance, both author and audience assume risks. The author risks being either unintelligible or not understood. The audience risks either wasting its resources or having its stable world shaken.

This yielding, with its peculiar binding and joining, is motivated by a twofold recognition. On the one hand, every previous human utterance and deed, taken either singly or in collections, is seen to have failed to articulate or even to prepare for the articulation of what is presently available for utterance. On the other hand, both the author and audience take themselves to be capable, for the first time ever, respectively of uttering and of hearing something new. Together they embark upon a new venture.

But even in embarking upon this new venture, all the participants confront in awe the inexhaustibleness of that to which their utterances refer. The universe is unencompassable in discourse and, with greater or lesser rapidity, reveals the need for new utterances. Even that which the present audience and author are capable of expressing is recognized from the outset as that which sooner or later will have to yield to another, unforeseeable utterance. Thus, the new utterance itself at the very moment of its origin, is infected with that silence which reveals not merely the finitude of previous artistic discourse but precisely its own finitude.

This brief delineation of significant differences among types of topic-centered discourse and the specific silences which are conjoined with each type provides further evidence of the complexity of the positive phenomenon of silence. But it leaves open the question of how these multiple worlds hold together so that individual people can inhabit several or all of them at the same time and so that communities of people who give different weights to these several worlds can not only endure but even prosper. Indeed, as John Stuart Mill hints, it may be that they actually enrich each other’s lives by the diversity of the weights which each person or group assigns to the worlds they respectively inhabit. This issue, naturally, is not confined to the region of topic-centered discourse. It extends to the question of how the topic-centered and the interlocutor-centered regions are held together and yet are preserved in their distinctiveness.

Further reflection on the silences which are conjoined with the several types of discourse provides a lead to at least part of the solution to this question. It shows that, in the terms used in Chapter One, each of these silences is a kind of fore-and-after silence. That is, each of them opens the way for an utterance which is not merely a continuation of the preceding string of utterances. Further, these silences bring to a close a string of utterances belonging to a specific type of discourse. And, finally, each of these silences can be said to be the background against which an utterance or sequence of utterances unfolds.

But if silence is a positive, and not merely a negative, human performance, then what determines whether and when one type of discourse, with its conjoined fore-and-after silence, is to give way to another type? This is tantamount to the pun-sounding question: What silences these several particular silences and that for which each serves as a filigreed background? That is, what calls for the termination of, say, the fore-and-after silence against which a particular act of religious worship with its utterances unfolds and the subsequent opening for a fore-and-after silence against which a particular political discussion can be articulated?

That some such “thing” does silence these particular silences is indicated by the evident poverty of a life lived almost exclusively in either the interlocutor-centered region of discourse or the topic-centered region, to say nothing of the poverty of a life lived almost exclusively in only one or a few types of one of these regions. At least part of that which measures the scope to be allotted to each type of discourse, that which silences particular silences, is tradition.

IV. TRADITION AND THE TWO REGIONS OF DISCOURSE

Tradition includes, of course, sedimented utterances, for example, sayings, which show up in utterances belonging to every type of discourse, whether interlocutor-centered or topic-centered. They infect, at least at some levels, every sort of discourse. But tradition itself is not simply a set of sedimented utterances plus sedimented ways of doing things. Rather, it is at bottom an allotment, understood both as a process and as the result of a process. Tradition allots to each “thing,” each world, and each type of discourse both its space and time in which to appear and its relative weight. The weight of each need not be directly proportional to its extent. For example, religious discourse may be allotted a briefer span than political discourse but still be allotted greater weight. But in allotting to each “thing” its place to appear, tradition likewise restrains it, keeps it from usurping something else’s place.

I will not attempt to give a detailed account of tradition here. For present purposes it is enough simply to note some of its principal characteristics. Tradition has no clear-cut points of origin, transition, or termination. But it is nonetheless unquestionably a temporal phenomenon. Tradition is the synthesis of a vast multiplicity of human performances. But no individual person can autonomously ensure that any of his particular performances will have effective weight in it. That is, in addition to unifying a multiplicity of performances, tradition exercises a selectivity both in what it preserves and in how it evaluates what it preserves. Even though this selection and evaluation come about through human performances, they cannot be attributed exclusively to the explicit choices of identifiable individual people. Tradition, to use Ricoeur’s distinction again, does not belong exclusively to either a situation or a world. Rather, it somehow makes both situations and worlds possible. How tradition contributes to the possibility of both situations and worlds will become clearer in the light of the ontological interpretation of silence which will be formulated in Chapter Six.

Tradition, then, is fertile. It provides for those who live under its sway (1) some of the necessary antecedents for present and future discourse; (2) a loose but not indeterminate orientation for subsequent utterances; (3) a guide to what is appropriate subject matter for each of the regions of discourse; and (4) clues to the bounds of acceptable rhythms for the shuttling between the regions of interlocutor-centered and topic-centered discourse.

It makes no sense to speak about the first human utterance. Every utterance follows in the wake of some utterance that has gone before. To be an utterance, a human performance must both have discernible utterances as antecedents and be compatible with the orientation furnished by those antecedents. Tradition supplies both the antecedents and the orientation.

Similarly, there is no evident justification for claiming that there is some ahistorical foundation for the discrimination between the regions of interlocutor-centered and topic-centered discourse in terms of the subject matter appropriate to each, or in terms of their relative dignity, or in terms of the appropriate allocation of time and space to each of them. Nonetheless, it is commonly acknowledged, in deed if not in word, that the regions must be distinguished in at least some of these respects. It is likewise generally acknowledged that to lead a normal life a person must shuttle both between these two regions and among at least some of the types of discourse within each region. While no positive fixed rules mandate the adoption of one or more well-defined rhythms of shuttling among types of discourse, the sway which is to be given to any particular type or region of discourse has at least fuzzy limits. It is tradition which reveals and maintains these limits. In this sense, as indicated above, tradition prevents any world of discourse from achieving absolute hegemony over other worlds. No world, not even that of politics or of religion, is permitted to be the unchallenged “world of worlds.” By the same token, tradition preserves each world. It ensures that no world’s space will be taken over by another world.

Tradition, then, conserves and saves but also forgets and sloughs off. It retains, but it does so in such a way that it provides a future. Tradition is a fertile point of departure, but it is no more than a point of departure. If the future utterances for which tradition prepares the way do not go beyond this point of departure but rather merely repeat what tradition retains, then tradition ossifies. In these respects, the relationship between tradition and the present and future utterances for which it prepares the way is comparable to that which obtains between langue or language and parole or speech.²⁵

First, as language gives unity to speaking, so tradition gives unity to multiple occurrences of present discourse. Present discourse aims at becoming part of that interrelated ensemble of linguistically formulated judgments, in Husserl’s broad sense, which are time and again accepted, verified as true, or at least confirmed as meaningful. In effect, present discourse aims at becoming part of the tradition which future generations of people will accept. Like parole, then, present discourse makes sense only if it is fitted into a context larger than itself, a context which involves discourse other than that in which the present authors are engaged.

Second, language is not a function of the speaker but rather is passively assimilated by the individual. Similarly, tradition does not get its specific intentional efficacy exclusively from the discourse of any presently performing person, but rather, tradition is presupposed for the intentional efficacy of any present discourse and in fact contributes an efficacy of its own. This relationship explains in part why we are unable completely and definitively to determine just what our discourse will mean and to ensure that our audience will understand it in precisely the way we try to prescribe.

From another standpoint, the dependence of present discourse upon tradition for its intentional efficacy is part of the reason the author is never the unqualifiedly best interpreter of his own discourse. Present discourse, then, is not engaged in at the expense of tradition but rather takes its point of departure from tradition and acquires its own full significance in and through its connection with tradition.

Third, tradition, like language, evolves. But no person or group of persons can be cited as having full control over either the pace or the direction of the evolution. With respect to language, the French Асаdemy is guided as much as it guides. With respect to tradition, a far more complex matter than language, something like the French Асаdemy has not even been tried. Nonetheless, tradition, like language, is both invigorated and modified through present discourse. Present discourse is necessary for the maintenance of lively tradition.

Finally, like language, tradition limits both the scope and the degree of newness which can be effected by present discourse. But this limitation is not lamentable. Rather, it is a necessary condition for present discourse to achieve enduring efficacy. Far from cancelling the freedom of present authors, tradition enables their freedom to have an influence which outlives them. In fact, like language, tradition provides both for continuity and for the change which continuity necessarily implies. Thus, to use de Saussure’s distinctions again, tradition, like language, has both synchronic and diachronic dimensions. As such, tradition is not an immobile system. It is an open texture which requires newness or change to survive.

But from a different standpoint, tradition bears striking similarities to silence, as well as to langue. In one respect, tradition, like silence, involves a yielding, here to the claims of what has gone before, which also involves a binding and joining. Tradition binds the new generation of people to the older generation.²⁶ Adherence to tradition is motivated by finitude and awe. On the one hand, an awareness of the vastness of reality which a person must confront with relatively meager resources evokes a sense of finitude. On the other hand, awareness of the riskiness involved in one’s capacity to do something new evokes awe. In another respect, tradition, like fore-and-after silence, is the background against which present and future utterances of all types unfold. And like the deep silence of the to-be-said, tradition is the unutterable criterion which both authorizes utterances and provides norms for their interpretation.

Tradition has these characteristics because it itself is in part constituted by silence. But it itself is not silence. Tradition itself must be silenced if it is to remain fertile and not ossify. It is so constituted that it calls for continued renovation. To paraphrase the Lutheran dictum: Tradition is always to be reformed. This renovation could not occur if tradition itself were not conjoined with silence.

What silences tradition is not the new utterance as utterance. It is that active performance which allots to tradition its place as old utterance conjoined with its own proper sort of silence. In so doing, this performance is itself an act of silence. Of course, the allotting of tradition as old utterance to a bounded place, far from abolishing tradition or rendering it impotent, preserves it as powerful. For, as I said above, the new utterance can be an utterance only if it has been prepared for by previous utterances. But it can be new only if the old is restrained within a delimited place.

In summary, the investigations presented in this chapter have extended the results achieved in Chapter One. They have shown that just as discourse has many facets, so too does silence. Each distinct facet of discourse, whether of present discourse or of the sedimented discourse of tradition, shows itself as conjoined with a distinct aspect of silence. These aspects of silence, like the facets of discourse, are positive and not privative phenomena.

But a crucial question remains: What is the unitary sense of the complex phenomenon of silence? The investigations in these first two chapters have shown its complexity. But the essential features which characterize silence in all of its ways of appearing can be established only by an intentional analysis of silence.