I. SILENCE AND THE NOETIC-NOEMATIC SCHEME

In trying to identify the noetic and noematic correlates in the phenomenon of silence, one could take a clue from the obvious connection between silence and discourse. One might then propose that the noemata of silence are the same as those of the utterances to which the silence is correlated. The intentional matter both of these utterances and of silence would then be the same. On this proposal, what distinguishes silence from discourse is the quality of the noesis, the intentional act, and nothing else. The x which is either uttered or kept by silence from being uttered is the same.

In other words, the apparently obvious candidate for the noematic element in silence is the set of all the things, all the expressions—verbal, gestural, or musical—which it is motivatedly possible for the author of an utterance to employ or refrain from employing. Abstaining from employing any or all of these expressions is on the face of it a positive performance and thus an act which could be taken to be the noetic correlate of the phenomenon of silence. Silence then would be the positive abstinence from employing some determinate expression.

Before this proposal is assessed, two clarifications should be made. First, the only expressions which are candidates here for the noematic element of silence are those which it is motivatedly, not merely emptily (merely noncontradictorily or noncountersensically), possible for some specific utterer to employ. Thus the set of expressions which are motivatedly available for the violinist Isaac Stern both to play and to hear include many expressions which are not motivatedly available for the young child either to employ or to hear. Second, the proposal in question presupposes an already constituted realm of determinate expressions. Exactly how such a realm would come about or be internally structured is irrelevant here. The relevant point is that, on the proposal at hand, both every occurrence of silence and every actual utterance would be exhaustively dependent for their motivated possibility upon an antecedently established predicative realm containing determinate expressions as its elements.

Several considerations arising out of the description of the manifest occurrences of silence, considerations which led in Chapter One to the identification of the aspects of fore-silence and deep silence, stand in the way of accepting this proposal. The basic problem is that the proposal cannot account for all occurrences of silence. Three cases of silence will illustrate this point. The proposal appears to work well in the first case, creaks in the second, and falls apart in the third.

In case 1, A abstains from uttering x to make way for an uttering of y by A or someone else, where x and y are both determinate members of the set of motivatedly employable expressions.² In this case both the utterances in question and the occurrence of silence clearly depend exhaustively upon the domain of the predicative as an already constituted domain containing determinate expressions. The proposal in question seems to handle cases of this sort with ease.

In case 2, however, suppose that y is not presently determinate. For example, I meet someone and give him a chance, by abstaining from employing all presently determinate expressions available to me, to utter something new, something that I presently have neither any notion or experience of nor any specifiable reason to think that this somebody can utter. Instead of, as in case I, uttering or abstaining from uttering some determinate x to someone, I simply keep silence before him. Whether or not this person does or even can avail himself of the opening I provide for something new to be uttered, I have accomplished silence and can say that “he had his chance.” Parenthetically, so far as I can tell, this someone can be one’s own self. For example, a poet can “get quiet” to see whether he can say something new even to himself.

About what, in case 2, am I silent? I am silent about the set of already determinate motivatedly performable or expectable utterances for the sake of some not presently determinate but hopefully to be determined utterance. Here the silence before y is of a different character than the silence before y in case I. In case I, the silence is close to intervening silence inasmuch as the y is substantially predelineated by the x. This predelineation is precisely what is absent in case 2. Further, in case 1, fulfillment of the intention is virtually assured, whereas in case 2 fulfillment is much more open to doubt.

If genuine cases of this second sort exist, as evidently they do, then the proposal under consideration here must be interpreted as presupposing only a set of determinate expressions to which additions can be made. If the proposal is to be defended, it cannot be taken to require that the set of determinate expressions already be complete. How such additions must be understood to come about if the proposal is to be saved will be indicated after case 3 is presented.

Case 3 involves an experience of deep silence. For present purposes I will concentrate on the mode of deep silence called liturgical silence in Chapter One. But a consideration of other modes of deep silence would also yield cases of the third sort. In some instances, liturgical silence leaves room for the uttering of some possible but not presently determinate expressions. But it does not thereby either explicitly expect such an utterance or even necessarily hope for one. That is, some liturgical silence does not call for an expression to be uttered to ful-fill it. Whatever it is that the abstaining here intends, no particular utterance as such is necessary to fulfill it. The worshiper abstains from uttering expressions for the sake of what is, in intention, not necessarily utterable.³

What is of special interest in cases 2 and 3 is that the silence intends something not presently determinate. Silence here intends the nondeterminate. How can I silently intend the nondeterminate?⁴ I can do so only by abstaining from employing any element of the concrete set of determinate expressions available to me.

Given the protentional dimension of all attending to what is determinate, here a concrete set of determinate expressions, the abstaining is a severing or detaching from absorption in the set of actual and motivatedly possible expressions in which I had been living. It involves a change of interest. In principle, the set of motivated determinate expressions in which I had been living is inexhaustible. That is, in principle, without shifting from that set I could engage in and abstain from utterance forever. The severing is an interference with the stream of utterances and silences which would “naturally” follow, in a sense akin to Husserl’s sense of “and so forth,” from what had hitherto been uttered or constituted as utterable. The silence involved in cases 2 and 3 appears as a rupturing of this sort of “and so forth.”

Can the proposal under consideration here—namely, the proposal that every occurrence of silence and every actual utterance are exhaustively dependent for their motivated possibility upon an antecedently established predicative realm containing determinate expressions as its elements—handle the ruptures involved in cases 2 and 3? What has been said thus far would seem to indicate that even the silences involved in cases 2 and 3 follow upon and in some sense presuppose the prior uttering of some determinate expression as the foundation of their possibility. That is, apparently something old has to have been uttered before way can be made for something new.

In fact, the way in which this proposal would have to handle these ruptures is precisely by claiming that whatever followed the ruptures already belonged to the inner horizon, in a sense of this term akin to Husserl’s, of the concrete set of determinate expressions available to the interlocutors. The new would have to be simply an actualization of possibilities either fully resident or at least substantially delineated in the set of old, determinate expressions. In effect, then, the change of interest, the severing of the “and so forth” would amount to no more than a shift from remaining content with previous possessions to an exploration of what those possessions might generate as further possessions. Since a thing’s inner horizon is given with the thing and is available for exploration, then the silences, the ruptures, involved in cases 2 and 3 as well as the something new which is uttered could be said to be dependent upon an already established realm of determinate expressions for their motivated possibility.

This sort of application of the proposal to case 3, however, is patently unacceptable. By hypothesis, no new determinate expression is intended by the silence involved in case 3. Whatever is intended by this silence simply cannot be construed as belonging to the antecedently established inner horizon of old, determinate expressions. Even if the uttering of some new expression does occur, the new expression cannot be construed as being fundamentally dependent upon the old, because the occurrence of the new expression is not essential for the fulfillment of the silence which ruptures the “and so forth.”

A further consideration of the silence which opens the way for uttering something new likewise shows that the application of the proposal to case 2 is not satisfactory. This point can be illustrated by modifying case 2. Instead of noticing the silence which, after the uttering of x, opened the way for the hoped for but not presently determinate y, consider what opened the way for the now already determinate x. What is the shift of interest involved there? The shift which initially opens the way for any discourse whatsoever is that which Husserl describes as the move from pre-predicative experience to predicative experience.⁵

The domain of discourse can be established only if there is a shift away from the pre-predicative, spontaneous exploration of one’s surroundings. In principle, one could continue simply attending pre-predicatively to his surroundings ad infinitum. The cut which interrupts the “and so forth” of this spontaneity is a radical shift in interest. This cut is required if any expression is to be possible.

If this is correct, then a certain kind of silence is a necessary condition for any expression whatsoever. This kind of silence, by interrupting the stream of pre-predicative experience, makes expression possible but it does not predelineate any specific set of determinate expressions. Nor does it abstain from any specific moment of pre-predicative experience, which specific moment might be taken as sufficient to elicit some predelineated determinate expression. Rather this originary silence simply detaches one from absorption in spontaneous, pre-predicative experience. This kind of silence, of course, is not a sufficient condition for expression. Unless perception had occurred there would be nothing to express. But this silence is a necessary condition.

Now if these considerations are brought to bear upon case 2, the following points become clear. First, even if the silence which detaches from the “and so forth” of the stream of determinate expressions x to open the way for a hoped-for y somehow belongs to the inner horizon of x, the kind of silence which is a necessary condition for any expression whatsoever cannot be part of the inner horizon of x. This fact undercuts a necessary presupposition of the proposal under consideration, the presupposition that prior to any silence or actual utterance there is an already constituted realm of fully determinate expressions. The only way to save the proposal seems to require the claim that the silence which opens the way for the predicative domain and the silences which occur once the predicative domain has been inaugurated are not aspects of the unitary phenomenon of silence but rather are different phenomena. I can find no good reason to accept this claim.

Second, even if one grants the claim that there are these two unrelated silences, the further claim needed to apply the proposal to case 2, namely, that both the y and the silence which opens the way for it are fully dependent upon x, is gratuitous until it is specified just what it is about x that motivates its own interruption. In the absence of such a motivation, one could effectively maintain that y and the silence that opens the way for it are fully dependent upon x only by collapsing case 2 back into case I. But such a collapsing is ruled out by hypothesis. There is, then, no apparent reason for assigning any priority other than a temporal one to x over y and the silence which opens the way for y. And temporal priority is inconsequential in this context.

Thus the proposal being considered cannot satisfactorily account for the silence which is requisite for the emergence of the domain of discourse, or for the occurrence of some new expression available for utterance, or for the silence which arises in connection with the domain of discourse.⁶ Even though silence and the domain of discourse are clearly intertwined, there is no foundation for claiming that silence in all of its dimensions is founded upon a realm of expression. The suggestion that abstaining could be identified as the noetic correlate in silence and that some set of determinate expressions could be identified as its noematic correlate is not acceptable.

All that one can say, on the basis of the examination of the three cases given above, is that silence is an abstaining from some previously engaged in stream of experience. As such it is an act rather than a spontaneous performance. The peculiar act quality or noetic element constitutive of silence is the severing or detaching from some specific set of performances, predicative or pre-predicative, which in principle could continue indefinitely without interruption. But to say this is to provide only a formal characterization of the noetic correlate involved in silence.

Similarly, at this level of analysis, one can only give a formal characterization of the noematic correlate. The “and so forth” of a specific set of performances which is abstained from is no more than a formal characteristic of that from which silence originates. This “and so forth” obviously is not everything that the severing intends. The discussion of the three cases above shows that, at least in some cases, silence is a positive phenomenon, whose “noematic correlate,” whatever it is, is not merely the noematic correlate of a determinate expression which an author refuses to utter.

But at this level of analysis nothing determinate can be specified as the intentional matter of silence. If no intentional matter can be identified for every occurrence of the phenomenon of silence, then a fortiori the noematic correlate can be no more than merely formally specified. Since a determinate intentional object is not involved in each and every occurrence of silence, some occurrences of silence—case 3 is an example of such an occurrence—involve no determinate noematic phases.

Thus, an analysis of silence in terms of the noetic-noematic scheme yields little more than sheerly formal characteristics of the phenomenon of silence. Nonetheless, the application of this scheme to the phenomenon of silence has not been useless. It has revealed the point of departure for the abstaining involved in silence. It has allowed the specification of that abstaining as a severing or detaching. And finally, it has shown that, however intimately silence is associated with the domain of discourse, there is no justification for saying that silence is in all respects exhaustively founded upon an already constituted realm of expression.

Thus a noetic-noematic analysis does go some way toward clarifying the formal sense of the phenomenon of silence. But it leaves open major questions concerning both the motivation for silence and its intrinsic material sense. The next three sections are addressed to these two issues.

II. THE GENESIS OF SILENCE AND DISCOURSE FROM THE PRE-PREDICATIVE DOMAIN

For the second, genetic, stage of the intentional analysis of silence, the point of departure is again the evident close connection between silence and discourse. The actual structure of discourse, as mentioned in Chapter Two, is: A utters p about x to B, where A and В are usually but not necessarily different persons. The analysis naturally falls into two parts: the genesis of p from x, the genesis of the predicative from pre-predicative, will be dealt with here; the genesis of interpersonal discourse, in the next section.

In Appendix III of the Crisis, Husserl writes:

I take it for granted that Husserl is correct here in identifying both the commonality of the surrounding world and the recognized multiplicity of persons as necessary presuppositions for all discourse. The questions now are: What motivates the shift from the inactive empty possibility of discourse to actual discourse? And what development of sense occurs through this shift which inaugurates the unfolding of the sociohistorical sphere in discourse?

A further useful clue can be gleaned from Husserl, though his concerns in this context are clearly different from what is at issue here. The shift from the inactive empty possibility of discourse to actual or motivatedly possible discourse is a shift from the non-thematic to the thematic. Now, to make thematic is

These clues provide the basis for proposing that the motivation for the shift to actual discourse lies in the capacity of what is given pre-predicatively to be made thematic, coupled with the availability of other persons to whom the discourse can be addressed. Making something thematic, by itself, is not enough to move into the predicative domain. But it does constitute what is made thematic as something determinate.

Actually the shift from the inactive, empty possibility of discourse to motivated discourse involves three distinguishable cuts or severings. The first is an “exclusive looking-at-something which consequently notices nothing else.”⁹ This cut segments the pregiven whole¹⁰ of spontaneous, pre-predicative experience, rendering each theme determinate. There is a sense in which the severed themes are made “mine,^יי thus lifting the anonymity which characterizes non-thematized spontaneous, pre-predicative experience.

The second cut is that which cancels the putative exclusive “mine-ness” of my determinate themes and conversely opens the way for recognizing that what another thematizes in his perceptual experience can become available to me. It is this second cut which penultimately lays the foundation for and motivates discourse. Thus, the first cut opens the way for a individualized, differentiated world as the totality of that which can be made determinate. The second cut opens the way for this differentiated world to be a social one. And together they provide almost everything necessary for the constitution of the sociohistorical world.¹¹

It should be noticed, however, that both of these cuts interrupt what I called in Section I an “and so forth.” The first cut interrupts the anonymous stream of passive, nondeterminate, pre-predicative experience which apparently could, in principle, flow on indefinitely as non-thematic. This cut itself does not constitute any particular determinate theme but is presupposed for any such constitution. The cut itself, however, precipitates out one’s own individuality as an individual self which can thematize this stream of passive experience.¹² But this precipitated self is itself senseless and empty until it actually the matizes. And even when this self is rendered senseful by thematizing the passive stream of experience, the realm of the predicative, of expression, has not yet been reached.

The second cut interrupts the self’s thematizing activity and acknowledges that there are other selves who thematize.¹³ Thus, though the individual self could in principle uninterruptedly and indefinitely explore the set of determinate objects together with their determinate or determinable horizons which are constituted by its own thematizing, it realizes that this set cannot exhaust the possibility of thematizing. And in fact other thematizing, which itself cannot exhaust the possibility of thematizing, occurs.

The second cut, unlike the first, interrupts a stream of determinations. It opens the way for encountering determinate thematizations performed by other thematizers. Though this cut occurs prior to entry into the predicative domain, it provides the basis for both uttering and listening. It has the effect of shifting from the “and so forth” of what falls within the range of one thematizer’s unaided exploration to a concern for what can be thematized only with help from another thematizer. This cut, together with the first cut, opens the way for thematizing determinate objects as, in principle, public objects. But these cuts are still not sufficient, of themselves, to open the way for discourse. For discourse to be possible a third cut is required.

This third cut suspends the entire stream of perceptual experience by distancing the thematizer from what has up to now absorbed his thematic interest. This cut opens the way for signifying performances or discourse properly so called. It is neither an element of discourse nor does it enter positively into the actual constitution of determinate elements of discourse. Rather it suspends the peculiar “and so forth” which characterizes thematized perceptual experience, thus providing space for mediating perceptual experience through symbols and signs.¹⁴

This third cut is motivated by the recognition that perceptual experience is, in principle, incapable of ascertaining with confidence any more than that there is a common world. Within perceptual experience, what the sense or content of that public world might be can only be hypothetical. Exhaustive reliance upon the “and so forth” of perceptual experience cannot remedy this situation. The only remedy is to attempt to overcome or at least mitigate the restrictions imposed by the specific perspectivai character or perceptual experience. These recognized restrictions are enough to motivate and give sense to this third cut. And this cut, when joined to the first two, is sufficient to found a motivatedly possible domain of discourse.

The first two cuts and the performances for which they open the way make possible and actually achieve the constitution of what might be called determinate intentional matter. In effect, they constitute a world as the totality of differentiated and differentiatable objects of perceptual experience. Each of these two cuts is directly oriented to the elaboration of the differentiations which can be made on the basis of originary, passive, spontaneous, anonymous experience.

The third cut, however, interrupts the entire “and so forth” of the perceptual, concrete experience of a differentiated world. In so doing, it does not primordially aim at further elaboration of differentiations of fundamentally the same sort. Rather it opens the way for the self to mediate its perceptual experience both to itself and to other selves through symbolic performances which can be both initiated and received.

Though an argument might be made which would show that even the first of these three cuts is indeed an occurrence of silence, I will limit myself to claiming that at least the third cut is unquestionably an occurrence of silence. By limiting my claim in this way, I clearly respect the common sense view that silence and discourse are intimately intertwined. But more importantly, by restricting my claim, I respect the distinction between the perceptual and pictorial performances of consciousness on the one hand and its signitive performances on the other. The cut which decisively opens the way for the shift from perceptual performances to signitive performances is of special interest because of its role in opening the way for the entire domain of discourse, for opening the way for the sociohistorical world. It is precisely this third cut which is the originary fore-silence mentioned in Chapter One.

This analysis, thus far, has explicated sufficiently the p and the x in the formula for discourse: A utters p about x to B. That is, the analysis has shown how something comes to be sayable. Now attention can be turned to the A and the B. What can this analysis of silence reveal about the authors and the audience involved in discourse?

III. THE GENESIS OF THE INTERPERSONAL
DIMENSIONS OF BOTH SILENCE AND
DISCOURSE

The complex domain of discourse permits the identification both of distinct levels of interpersonal involvement in discourse and of cuts, or silences, between the levels. There are three basic levels, each of which is itself complex.¹⁵ The first level of discourse is that which is effected with some degree of anonymity. It is the level of soliloquy, taken in a broad sense. Both the author of the utterance and the member or members of the intended audience are not fully thematized as unique individuals.

The Level of Soliloquy in the Broad Sense

The level of soliloquy is itself complex, appearing in three distinct shapes. The description of the complexity of soliloquy will be facilitated by drawing examples from Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Her soliloquy contains a number of different sorts of sentences. Some express generalizations, others explanations, or counterfactuals, or quotations, or wishes, or specific clock-time locations, etc. Several sentences have no definite grammatical subject. A few rare sentences indicate some reflection, in the form of either of a plan or of an evaluation. These different sorts of sentences illustrate at least in part how complex soliloquy is.¹⁶

One shape in which the level of soliloquy appears is that in which the perceptual, imaginative, or pictorial theme to be expressed, though now suspended by the cut which opens the way for the predicative domain, fully regulates and determines the discourse. Discourse here is merely anonymous soliloquy. In this shape, discourse can signify only determinate themes. It cannot signify determinate thematizings. In this shape, everything expressed is in principle that which could be uttered by anyone to anyone. On the one hand, whoever engages in this shape of discourse does not, in so doing, express anything of his own specific individuality. On the other hand, the question of the sameness or otherness of the A who utters with respect to the В who hears does not even arise. Examples of this shape show up in Molly’s soliloquy in those sentences with no determinate grammatical subject. The grammatical subject is “you” in the sense of “they” or “I-or-any-one,” in the sense of the French on.

A further important aspect of this anonymous soliloquy is that no elaborated temporal scheme is at play. Discourse in this shape utilizes only the grammatical present tense which simply has the force of “now or any time.”

In individualized soliloquy, a second shape in which the first level of interpersonal involvement in discourse appears, there is some specification both of the author and of the audience. But what is uttered is merely the “sayings” which have been received from tradition and simply taken over unchanged. Through the traditional “saying” the discourse here is released from the dominance of the immediately available pre-predicative phenomena. But responsibility for the discourse is not yet thematically identified as belonging to the actual author. The author, even though he recognizes his individuality, is still basically a mouthpiece for uttering that which it goes without saying is now to be uttered. In this shape, tradition is a point of departure from which the author has not departed. It is a fertility which has not yet been activated. Examples of this shape of discourse are found in some of Molly’s generalizations (“They’re [men] so weak and puling when they’re sick.”), explanations (“That is why we had the standup row over politics.”), and quotations from Boylan and Leopold Bloom.

It is worth noticing that discourse in this shape involves an explicit differentiation between the past and the present, although the future is not yet explicit. Similarly, the pronomial scheme available to the author is now partially differentiated. Molly can speak of I and he and they, but there is still no well-defined, individuated second person pronoun available. In fact, neither the you nor the he is thematized as a full-fledged person. The only determinate member of the audience is the author. Discourse in this shape is still soliloquous. But it is no longer anonymous.

A third shape in which this level of interpersonal involvement in discourse appears is the most improverished of all shapes of discourse. This shape is that in which prereflective chatter occurs. This chatter is a sort of daydreaming which appears to go on often in us when we are not thinking about or attending to any specific thing. That is, discourse in this shape has no stable theme. We apparently “wake up” to this chatter already in progress and, unfortunately for purposes of analysis, the awakening transforms the chatter. Once awakened we find it even harder to recall what was going on in this condition than to recall what took place in many dreams. We recall only that something was going on and that it might very well have made some sense.

This shape of discourse shows no discernible trace of either pronomial or temporal discrimination. It is more accurate to say that upon “awakening” I found a discoursing in me rather than to say I found that I was discoursing. This shape of discourse is, in a strict sense, presoliloquous.

Just how the three shapes of this first level are connected to one another is not completely clear. In terms of the actual structure of discourse—namely, A utters p about x to B, where A and В are usually but not necessarily different persons obviously the shape of prereflective chatter barely manifests this structure, the shape of anonymous soliloquy manifests it somewhat better, and the shape of individualized soliloquy manifests it better than either of the other two. Just as obviously, to progress from anonymous soliloquy to individualized soliloquy a cut or silence seems required. But the difficulty involved in trying to focus on prereflective chatter obscures whether these higher shapes replace chatter or simply hide it by being laid over it. Nonetheless, however this nontrivial difficulty is to be resolved, what is common to the three shapes of soliloquy in the broad sense is that the B, the audience involved in the structure of discourse, is basically unthematized.

In sum, in all the shapes of this first level of interpersonal involvement in discourse, the discourse is at bottom regulated and determined by themes which are already fully settled prior to present discourse. Neither the author nor the audience is sufficiently explicit to provide an effective counterweight against a fundamental absorption in themes which are given as already settled and to be taken for granted as the full scope of what is available for discourse. At this level, either the immediate perceptual or imaginative context or that dimension of tradition which is constituted by the sedimented “sayings” and topics for discourse holds full sway. The uttering is no more than a reuttering of what has already been made available for discourse or a minimally reflective response to one’s immediate environment.

Nonetheless, even the themes which are given in this way are given as constituted by the thematizing performances of multiple thematizers. This fact motivates the cut which interrupts the absorption in the “and so forth” stream of these preestablished determinate themes. This cut, which I will call personalizing silence, opens the way for making the thematizing itself thematic for discourse, that is for a second level of interpersonal involvement in discourse, a level on which the thematizer or thematizers, qua thematizers, can be explicitly recognized and signified. This is achieved by opening the way for the noetic component to be explicitly articulated. All the components of the basic structure of all discourse, namely, A utters p about x to B, where A and В may be either the same or different persons, can now be given explicit recognition. Thus the way is opened for a shift from discourse which is fully under the sway of that which is other than, anterior to, and substantially independent of those who can presently engage in discourse, under the sway of the “contents” of tradition, to discourse which, at least in part, depends, not merely for its occurrence, but also for its sense upon the present authors as those who are responsible both for the uttering and what is uttered.

Personalizing silence, the cut between these two levels of interpersonal involvement in discourse, does not correspond to any of the aspects of silence identified in Chapter One. Rather it is a distinct aspect in its own right. It is that aspect of silence by virtue of which discourse is released from the dominance of preestablished themes, by virtue of which it becomes possible for discourse to be claimed as that for which one can and does take some responsibility. This way in which silence appears is in fact the aspect from which the sense of the intervening silence discussed in Chapter One is proximately derived.

Explicitly Bipolar Discourse and Silence

At the second level, discourse is, with lesser or greater explicitness, thematized both as someone’s discourse and as addressed to some thematized audience. Discourse at this level is explicitly bipolar. It is intrinsically interpersonal. Unlike the third level of interpersonal discourse, which will be dealt with below, interpersonal discourse at this second level, bipolar discourse, in principle requires the specification of two discrete, determinate poles, namely, the author and the audience. Each of these poles is understood to have its proper role in the discourse. One is to utter, the other is to hear.

Of equal importance, at this level the persons involved in the discourse are understood to exercise initiative and control over the discourse. The participants explicitly determine which of the two rays of the act of discoursing, the ray emphasizing the x or the ray emphasizing the B, gets priority. Similarly, what the audience is prepared to hear exercises control over what is uttered, and vice versa.

Writing also first becomes possible at the level of bipolar discourse. Writing itself involves a cut which allows for a greater distancing of both what is said and that about which it is said from the author on one hand and the audience on the other. The cut which opens the way for writing comes to be motivated only at this level. Only when both the author and audience are thematized can the shift to writing make sense. More specifically, only when one attends sufficiently to both the author and to the audience to notice that each itself has a horizon does it make full sense to introduce the distance required for writing.

The cut which opens the way for writing, though, does not introduce any substantially new dimension into the phenomena of discourse or silence. Writing remains a special case of discourse. It is a most important capability, to be sure. But writing, for its sense, remains fundamentally dependent upon speaking, gesturing, etc., especiaily insofar as the latter are not mere soliloquous repetitions of traditional utterances.¹⁷

The second level of interpersonal involvement in discourse, the level of bipolar discourse, is itself complex. It appears in two basic shapes, monologue and dialogue. There is a discernible cut between them, which I will call interpersonalizing silence. In the first shape, monologue, the author claims maximal control over the discourse and minimizes the audience’s initiative. But even here the author cannot claim exhaustive control. On the basis of the recognition of other thematizing selves, who can thematize other things than he does or expects to do on his own, the author has to acknowledge the audience’s initiative, however minimal it may be. Otherwise there is no monologue, only soliloquy. This same recognition of other thematizers also motivates the author to cut off his monologue. This cut, interpersonalizing silence, opens a space for another self to address the initial author.¹⁸

Interpersonalizing silence opens the way for dialogue, the second shape of discourse at this level. In this shape there is the permanent possibility of both a shifting of roles (the hearer becomes the author) and a blocking a some utterance (the audience leaves). This blocking is not of itself a cut of the sort in question here, for the audience may simply “turn the dial” to another speaker. The kind of cut at play here is also the penultimate foundation for the possibility of a shift from bipolar discourse, discourse in which the hearer is distinct from and in correlative opposition to the author, to the third level of interpersonal involvement in discourse, namely, codiscourse. This third level will be dealt with below.

Interpersonalizing silence opens the way not only for another self to engage in discourse but also for the original author to change audience, change topics, or change the priority of the two rays of the act of discoursing. In this sense, too, occurrences of interpersonalizing silence interrupt the “and so forth” of specific monologues.

The depth of the cut which occurs between these two shapes depends upon the sort of case in which it occurs. In case I of the noetic-noematic analysis, the cut is incomplete and rather superficial. The discourse which follows such a cut is simply a more or less attenuated monologue. In case 2, the cut is more radical and genuine dialogue results. No case 3 silences occur at this level of interpersonal involvement.

Occurrences of case I silence, it is worth mentioning here, involve what might be called I-he discourse. The he is partially determinate but is still taken to be someone for whom substitutes can readily be found. Occurrences of case 2 silence involve what can be called I-you discourse. The you is more determinate than the he. That is, substitution, if possible at all, is more restricted than in occurrences of case I silence.

Codiscourse and Silence

The first two levels of interpersonal involvement in discourse, namely, the level of soliloquous discourse and that of personal bipolar discourse, together with the cut between them, are foundational for a higher level of discourse, codiscourse. In codiscourse the distinction between author and audience is sublated. There is no longer an I-you. There is now a we. Any observers of the discourse are in principle irrelevant.¹⁹ Examples of such codiscourse are the discourse between intimates (in hate or indifference as well as in love), making music together, and participating in festivals or rituals.

Deindividualizing silence, the cut which inaugurates this third level, is the interruption of all the streams of expressive performances which are properly identifiable as the autonomous utterances of some proper subset of the set of participants in the discourse. Such streams of utterances are those which some one or several persons can accomplish regardless of what their fellow participants in the discourse do. The streams of utterances which occur at the second level of interpersonal involvement in discourse are, of course, in practice intertwined with other streams. But in principle they are separable streams belonging to individualized selves. At the third level of interpersonal involvement, however, there are in principle no such separable streams.

What remotely motivates deindividualizing silence and the level of interpersonal involvement for which it opens the way is the spontaneous, pre-predicative experience of the commonality of the referent, the x, to which the participants in discourse refer in their utterances, in p. Most proximately, what motivates the inauguration of this third level is the anticipation that synchronic discourse can bring to expression something which cannot be articulated diachronically.²⁰ In other words, what motivates the cut is the anticipation that codis-course or we-discourse can articulate what is in principle inarticulable by any bipolar discourse, however interwoven the multiple strands of such discourse might in fact be.

If one focuses on the cut which opens the way for this third level of discourse, he finds that it interrupts the “and so forth” of the stream of all bipolar discourse, which contains at least implicitly the claim that at least one individual is exercising autonomous control over that stream. Bipolar discourse involves the claim that it is important that it is I, and perhaps also you, who exercise initiative in uttering whatever is uttered. That is, some self fundamentally on his own inherent or acquired authority determines when, where, how, and to whom what is expressed is in fact expressed. Deindividualizing silence suppresses this claim.

A shift of focus from this cut to the discourse which occurs at the third level shows that discourse here requires a more or less explicit relinquishing of autonomous control to that which is neither properly mine nor some specific other’s. This yielding of autonomy does not imply what is usually meant by “heteronomy.” Nor is it merely a yielding to the claims of x as the subject matter or referent of p. Rather it is a yielding of autonomy for the sake of an interpersonal relationship which is more profound than that which can be established under the sway of autonomy. What elicits discourse at this level is acknowledged, by the character of the discourse itself, to be a relationship among selves for which properly autonomous performances by the several selves involved might well be necessary conditions but could not be sufficient conditions. I suggest that an antecedent requirement for entering into codiscourse, with the attendant yielding of autonomy, is that which in another contex would be called emotional or psychological maturity or, in still another context, political maturity.²¹

It is of course possible, in actual existence, for a single self to engage in codiscourse. In such cases, what he utters is not primordially “his” but is what he comes to be able to utter as a member of a community of some sort. He says no more and no less than “we” could and would say. He performs the music, engages in the ritual, etc., in such a way that what he does could, without modification, belong to codiscourse. What is crucial here is that, without the at least horizonally envisaged and intended coperformers, uttering what he does in the way he does utter it would make no sense.

Within the level of codiscourse derivative cuts can occur, cuts in some ways comparable to those found at the level of bipolar discourse. These derivative cuts, which open the way for the several participants in codiscourse to utter different components of the total discourse, do not reinstitute bipolarity. Rather their sense is to emphasize the specificity of the we-ness of the coperformance and the intrinsic interdependence both of each participant and of each utterance in the codiscourse. In short, these derivative cuts establish roles for the several participants.

The cut or silence which interrupts the “and so forth” of the level of bipolar discourse and opens the way for the level of codiscourse is the last cut which falls completely within the scope of the sphere of discourse or predication. The three levels of interpersonal involvement in discourse, namely, soliloquy, bipolar discourse, and codiscourse, together with the cuts between these levels, namely, interpersonalizing silence and deindividualizing silence, jointly exhaust what is to be found within the sphere of the signitive.

But the sense of this third level of discourse and the cut which opens the way for it needs further exploration. What is articulated at least implicitly in codiscourse is precisely the commonality of the principal referent, that “whole” to which the discourse in its several components refers, and the in principle commonality of all thematic determinations effected on this whole. From this standpoint, then, both the level of soliloquous discourse and that of bipolar discourse are oriented for the completion of their sense to the level of codiscourse. Discourse at the third level is the flowering of that which occurs at the other two levels. What this means is that all living in the domain of discourse calls for participation in all three levels, though there is, of course, a shuttling within the sphere of discourse from one level to another. Each level coimplicates the others, but every particular utterance occurs at one specific level.

The cut which opens the way for the level of codiscourse has at least one important feature which distinguishes it from the other cuts within the domain of discourse. The other cuts all had the effect of progressively making the discourse more explicitly the performance of a progressively well-defined and individualized self. That is, the other cuts render the act of discourse a performance progressively more explicitly polarized between autonomous participants. The cut opening the way for codiscourse changes the direction of this movement. The previous movement toward discrete individuality is now changed to one toward interpersonal coalescence.

Curiously, though, if one raises the question of the deliberateness of the cuts or silences within the domain of discourse, he finds that the cut toward codiscourse and interpersonal coalescence is no less deliberate on the part of the several participants than is any of the other cuts within this domain. The individual who performs this cut and moves to the level of codiscourse does not thereby truncate or cancel any of his capacity for discourse. Rather, he experiences a deepening of that capacity. But great care must be exercised in speaking of deliberateness in conjunction with any dimension of the domain of discourse. I will say a bit more about this matter in the final section of this chapter.

The cut which opens the way for codiscourse, deindividualizing silence, does not correspond to any of the aspects of silence identified in Chapter One. It opens the way for a shift of the ground which proximately authorizes the signitive intention involved in any utterance whatsoever. It is the counterpart of the aspect of personalizing silence detected between the level of prepersonal or soliloquous discourse and the level of bipolar discourse.

Some Intermediate Results

The discriminations within the general domain of discourse made in the previous paragraphs clarify or confirm some considerations concerning discourse and silence which are found in Chapters One and Two. First, the aspect of intervening silence and several of the features of the aspect of fore-and-after silence can now be seen to depend for their sense upon the more fundamental constituted sense of the three levels of interpersonal involvement in discourse and the basic cuts between these levels. All intervening silences and many fore-and-after silences are performed in the service of an already inaugurated stream of discourse occurring at one of the three specific levels of interpersonal involvement. The recognition of this dependency dispels the obscurity which lingered over the discussion of intervening silence, fore-and-after silence, and the connection between them in Chapter One.

Second, nothing uncovered thus far in the intentional analysis of silence necessarily requires a modification of the claim in Chapter One that silence can appear as malign as well as benign. Discourse at any level of interpersonal involvement as well as the cuts between or within these levels can be experienced either as painful, arduous, or hateful, or as enhancing, facilitating, or lovable. This claim concerning affective polyvalence will remain intact even at the conclusion of the intentional analysis. It is an issue which must be addressed by the ontological interpretation of silence.

Third, the three levels of interpersonal involvement in discourse and the cuts between them are found both in interlocutor-centered discourse and in topic-centered discourse. The shuttling between levels and the shuttling between the interlocutor-centered and the topic-centered regions are distinct shuttlings which may but need not be coordinated. Likewise, the connection between tradition and these several levels holds good regardless of which region the discourse belongs to.

There is, however, a kind of apex at which topic-centered and interlocutor-centered discourse effectively fuse. An affectively benign example of this is a case in which lovers share each other’s work in developing some particular world of discourse. Perhaps the Curies were a case of this sort. An affectively malign example of this is fratridical warfare. In the former case, a kind of hypermeaningfulness or superdetermination accrues to all of the discourse involved. In the latter case, a madness leaves the onlooker or overhearer dumbfounded. These extremes, too, call for ontological clarification.

IV. AT THE CLOSE OF DISCOURSE

Finally, the genetic intentional analysis of silence must deal with the close of discourse. The entire domain of discourse, with its several levels, is in one sense inexhaustible. Discourse can in principle go on interminably. This is the “and so forth” character of the motivated domain of discourse itself. But the domain of discourse is widely experienced as either insufficient or incomplete, as unable to cope definitively with God, or with immediate perceptual experience, or with what it is to be a self, or with love, etc. Some instances of such experiences were described in Chapter One in connection with deep silence. Sometimes discourse is experienced as too removed from perceptual experience, sometimes as too wedded to it. What is important here is that there is also a widespread experience of the pointlessness of trying to remove the experienced insufficiency or incompleteness of the domain of discourse taken as a whole by living within its “and so forth.”²²

Such an experience can be given a number of interpretations. But the experience of discourse’s lack of total adequacy is itself distinctly evident and motivates a final cut which interrupts the “and so forth” of the entire domain of motivated discourse. This final cut, terminal silence, closes the domain of discourse. It differs from the other cuts which have been identified in that it does not open the way for making anything determinate, either about the topic or about the author or audience, expressible. While interrupting the entire set of performances belonging to the domain of discourse, terminal silence is itself nonetheless tied to that domain inasmuch as it is motivated by the experienced limits of what can be accomplished in discourse.

The deep silence described earlier has the structure of terminal silence. But terminal silence is also linked to an aspect of after-silence. After-silence involves the savoring or digesting of some discourse. This digesting, which adds nothing determinate to the discourse qua discourse, is the cut in the stream of discourse which allows a specific string of utterances to achieve its existential weight. In fact, this digesting not only makes possible but requires that the preceding string of utterances acquire an existential value. As a digesting, after-silence is linked to and gets its ultimate sense from terminal silence because this digesting is tantamount to acknowledging the pointlessness of expanding the string of utterances which it follows.

Further, this final cut, which is a terminal surd beyond all determinate, motivated discourse, is linked with the cut which opens the way for the entire domain of predicative experience or discourse. That opening cut, originary silence, establishes the gap between perceptual and pictorial intentional performances on the one hand and signitive performances on the other. Terminal silence confirms the uncancellability of that gap now that the gap has been established.

Terminal silence does not, of itself, obstruct further discourse at any level. It is as compatible with subsequent discourse as originary silence is compatible with subsequent perceptual experience. But in closing off the domain of motivated discourse, terminal silence reveals at one and the same time both that the scope and power of discourse are limited and that discourse is a well-defined, irreducible realm. Thus, while terminal silence does not eliminate subsequent discourse, it “changes the sign” of all discourse.

With the appearance of terminal silence, another element of the respective senses of interpersonalizing and deindividualizing silence comes to light. Each of these can now be seen not only as opening the way for an expansion of the domain of discourse but also as acknowledging the insufficiency of the previously constituted level or levels of discourse. Parenthetically, it is worth noting that since both of these non-terminal silences do bear the sense of closing off some previously constituted level of discourse, either of them can be mistaken for genuine terminal silence. Such a mistake, which would preclude moves to either the third or to both the second and third levels of interpersonal involvement in discourse, either is a consequence of immaturity or is pathological.

The experience of terminal silence is the experience of a postpredicative, postexpressive terminal surd. It can be, and has been, interpreted in various ways. For example, there are skeptical interpretations as well as mystical ones. But this surd must be interpreted somehow. It confirms the radical incommensurability of the two domains of intentional performances, the domain of the signitive and the domain of the perceptual and pictorial performances. Some account of the relation between these domains and of the sense of the incommensurability between them is therefore clearly required. I will propose an interpretation in Chapter Six. But here it should be noticed that the interpretation one gives to terminal silence and the uncancellable gap between the two domains of intentional performances which this silence manifests, whatever that interpretation is, will rebound upon and modify the sense of each and every utterance he employs or hears.

On the basis of this intentional analysis of silence and its conjoined discourse, one can recognize the principal features of the temporal structure of the phenomenon of silence taken as a whole. This analysis clearly shows that the temporal structure of silence comes to light only in conjunction with the temporal structure of both the different types of discourse, as discussed in Chapter Two, and the multiple levels and shapes of interpersonal involvement in the signitive domain. Without the conjunction of discourse and silence, discourse would collapse into mere untemporalized language and silence would collapse into mere muteness or non-signitive vision.

The multiple ways in which silence appears in conjunction with discourse allows the identification of three irreducible moments or parts in the temporal structure of silence. First, silence in all of its aspects originates or opens the way for something. It is a point of departure for the entire domain of discourse. But silence does not merely open the way for this domain as a whole. Silence, by its second moment, spreads out the domain by making possible the shifts from shape to shape and from level to level within the domain of discourse. Its second moment, in a variety of ways, preserves the movement within discourse which was inaugurated by virtue of silence’s first moment. Finally, by virtue of its third moment, silence not merely closes off discourse but also turns discourse in its complexity back upon its point of departure. That is, silence, precisely in its closing off of discourse, establishes the unity of the domain of discourse taken as a whole. In so doing, it likewise situates it in the context of the entire range of human experience. Discourse arises within the broad range of experience by virtue of silence, expands in its several types and shapes by virtue of silence, and culminates as a unitary domain by virtue of silence. In its unfolding, in turn, discourse makes it possible for silence to appear as senseful.

With the identification of terminal silence and the recognition of the temporal structure of silence, the intentional analysis of the genesis of silence as a positive, senseful phenomenon is complete.²³ The fundamental characteristics of the phenomenon of silence as a whole can now be formulated. In preparation for that formulation, it is useful to summarize here the prominent features of silence which this analysis has revealed:

(1) Silence in all of its aspects is a motivated cut which interrupts some already constituted stream of variegated, determinate experience. (2) Silence of itself does not necessarily intend some already determinate discourse as that which is specifically required to fulfill it. (3) Each different way in which silence appears opens the way for a distinctive modification in the way in which our surroundings are experienced. That is, the surroundings are successively experienced as “anonymously” articulable, as articulable by me, as articulable by me and others, as articulable by us, and as articulable but only incompletely. (4) The complex domain of discourse is both bounded by and stratified by aspects of silence. (5) Some but not all of the aspects of silence are oriented toward expanding the range of possible determinate discourse. That is, some but not all of the distinct ways in which silence appears are performed in the service of discourse. And (6) even though silence is a cut interrupting a stream of determinate experience and as such is not necessarily a performance directly intending some particular determination, there is nonetheless a discernible genesis of the sense of silence. The full sense of silence, even though silence is not a strict correlate of discourse, can be constituted only in conjunction with attention to the multiple motivatedly possible strata of the domain of discourse.

Any defensible formulation of the sense of silence, and any satisfactory ontological interpretation of that sense, must respect these features.

V. ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF THE
PHENOMENON OF SILENCE

Any formulation of the sense of silence obviously occurs within the domain of discourse, a domain inaugurated, elaborated, and circumscribed by silence. Given the limited scope and power of the domain of discourse, no formulation of the sense of silence can be regarded as exhaustive. But the same limitation infects all discourse, including discourse about discourse.²⁴ The conundrum posed by this fact does not of itself proscribe discourse. Such a proscription would have to be the consequence of a specific interpretation of the relation between the domain of signitive performances and that of intuitive performances. That interpretation, itself unutterable, is not devoid of all plausibility. It is that skeptical interpretation which is so radical that it does not even announce itself. But prior to adopting it, one is entitled to engage in discourse, even discourse about silence, so long as he does so with this conundrum in mind.

The intentional analysis of the phenomenon of silence presented in preceding sections of this chapter basically confirms, with some augmentation, the characteristics of silence which were identified in Chapter One and under whose aegis the descriptions in Chapter Two took place. It is convenient here to review the results of Chapter One and to make explicit the augmentation that accrues to those results by virtue of the intentional analysis.

The description in Chapter One yielded the following provisional formulation of the fundamental characteristics of silence: (1) Silence is an active human performance. But (2) it cannot be an act of unmitigated autonomy. (3) Silence involves a yielding following upon the awareness of finitude and awe. The yielding involved in silence is peculiar inasmuch as (4) it is a yielding which binds and joins.

The intentional analysis confirms, first, that silence is an active performance. It further brings to light that silence is founded upon prepredicative experience and is itself foundational for both predicative experience and postpredicative experience.

Second, the intentional analysis significantly clarifies what is involved in saying that silence cannot be an act of unmitigated autonomy. Originary silence is motivated by the intuitive, prepredicative experience of living in surroundings with other selves. Personalizing, interpersonalizing, and deindividualizing silence all reveal that the concretely constituted sense of the experience of intersubjectivity is open to modification. That is, the performance of these several cuts leads to modifications of the recognized basis for discourse and so changes the sense of the implied authorship of a particular utterance. In other words, each of these cuts has the intrinsic sense of delimiting the scope and depth of any claim which can be made concerning the autonomy of the author or audience in discourse in any of its shapes. Conversely, performances of these cuts open the way for modifications in the sense of intersubjective discursive interaction. In so doing, they show that the ways of living with others are multiple. Terminal silence, by closing off the entire domain of discourse and affirming its insufficiency or incompleteness, requires that some ontological interpretation of the significance and existential weight of the several possible ways of living with others be offered.

Thus, the intentional analysis reveals that silence presupposes recognized intersubjectivity, that silence shows a multiplicity of possibly constitutable senses of the experience of intersubjectivity in discourse, and, finally, that silence requires an ontological interpretation of the significance and existential weight of these several senses. Silence, then, not only presupposes intersubjectivity but also is required for the concrete clarification of the sense of intersubjectivity.

Third, through the intentional analysis, the sense of the claim that silence is a yielding which follows upon an awareness of finitude and awe can be made more precise. The yielding in question here is a suspension of the claim upon subsequent performances which arise from the motivated “and so forth” of previously constituted streams of determinate intentional performances, whether signitive or perceptual or pictorial. This suspension or interruption has something of the character of discipline. It is motivated in two basic ways.

On the one hand, the suspension is motivated by the recognition of the finitude of any set of particular performances intending determinate objects of any specific sort. On the other hand, the suspension is motivated by the recognition that whatever determinate stream of performances I am in fact living in is not the only stream in which I can live. The awareness of my capacity to suspend or interrupt the present stream in which I am living for the sake of a not yet determinate different stream, together with my awareness of the capacity of others to do likewise, is the awareness of awe in the face of the wide but limited range and scope of possible human performances.

In actual existence, the weight of each of these motivations can vary. But neither can be fully absent from any appearance of silence. Parenthetically, I would suggest, without arguing that point here, that it is variations in the experienced weight of these motivations which partially account for the different emotions we experience in the course of our active intentional performances.

At any rate, the analysis of silence makes it clear that the yielding involved in silence is a motivated suspension or interruption of the “and so forth” of some determinate stream of intentional performances. This motivation is the awareness of finitude and awe which is encountered precisely while engaging in an already constituted stream of performances.

Fourth, the results of the intentional analysis also make it possible both to spell out in more detail what it means to say that silence is a yielding which binds and joins and to amend this claim. Originary silence and terminal silence, when taken together, initiate, maintain, and circumscribe the domain of discourse as a well-defined domain. As such, it is a domain in which its several levels and elements are themselves bound and joined together. Personalizing, interpersonalizing, and deindividualizing silence, each in its own way, bind a set of utterances to its author. Each likewise binds the author, through the utterances, to the audience in some specific manner. And terminal silence binds him who encounters it to interpret somehow the uncancellable gap between perception and discourse.

But silence also severs and holds apart. The several levels of the domain of discourse are held apart by one or another of the aspects of silence. The gap between the streams of my perceptual and pictorial performances and that of my signitive performances is established and maintained by silence.

Thus, instead of simply saying that silence is a yielding which binds and joins, one should say that silence is a cut, a suspension or interruption, which establishes and maintains the indissoluble tension or the incessant oscillation (1) between perceptual and pictorial performances on the one hand and discursive performances on the other, (2) among the motivatedly possible modes of living with others, (3) among the several levels and shapes of discourse itself, and (4) between one’s streams of perceptual and predicative experience on the one hand and his interpretation of the gap between them on the other.

In addition to providing grounds for both clarifying and amending the earlier formulation of the fundamental characteristics of silence, the intentional analysis has brought to light two other traits which should be incorporated into a refined formulation of the sense of this phenomenon. First, though the domain of discourse is bounded by and stratified by silence, silence is not in all respects a strict correlate of discourse. A fortiori, silence is not, in all of the ways in which it appears, exclusively founded upon discourse considered as a well-defined, determinate domain of experience. Second, the intentional performance of silence need not in all cases be directed toward a determinate object as that which is required for its fulfillment. In fact, a consideration of the implications of the analysis of the motivation for and intrinsic sense of silence shows that only in impure cases of silence is there an already determinate object which is intended. Something determinate is always the point of departure for the performance of silence. Thus silence is a founded performance. But in many cases, and especially in those which mark major transitions, the performance of silence does not ask for fulfillment by some determinate object.

This last trait of silence has a bearing upon how one is to understand the standard formulation of the intentionality thesis. All consciousness, on this formulation, is consciousness of x. Performances of silence, though, do not focally intend an χ which can properly be called a determinate object. I readily admit that there is in fact no pure nondeterminateness and I will argue in Chapter Six that there is no complete determinateness. But what matters here is that, on the basis of the analysis of silence, one must recognize that the focal χ referred to in the intentionality thesis does not always have the characteristics which are ascribable to determinate objects precisely by reason of their determinateness.

On the basis of these six considerations established by the intentional analysis performed in this chapter, the intrinsic sense of the phenomenon of silence can be summarized as follows: (1) Silence is a founded, active intentional performance which is required for the concrete clarification of the sense of intersubjectivity. In its pure occurrences, (2) it does not directly intend an already fully determinate object of any sort. Rather, motivated by finitude and awe, (3) silence interrupts an “and so forth” of some particular stream of intentional performances which intend determinate objects of some already specified sort. As such, (4) silence is not the correlative opposite of discourse, but rather establishes and maintains an oscillation or tension among the several levels of discourse and between the domain of discourse and the domains of nonpredicative experience.

This summary does not claim to capture exhaustively the sense of silence. But what it does capture is no longer provisional. The intentional analysis has made it secure. The ground is now laid for investigating the ontological significance of the phenomenon of silence.