PREFACE

SILENCE is a complex, positive phenomenon. It is not the mere absence of something else. Poets and other thinkers throughout recorded history have, with greater or lesser explicitness, recognized this fact. Archilochus, Pindar, and Sophocles knew it. Both Eastern and Western mystics have long known it. Many philosophers have, in one way or another, acknowledged it.

Twentieth-century philosophy has by no means overlooked the phenomenon of silence in either its complexity or its positivity. In 1913, for example, Max Scheler wrote: “Persons, in fact, can be silent and keep their thought to themselves, and that is quite different from simply saying nothing. It is an active attitude.”¹ Silence also figures prominently in the works of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. It is by no means absent from the thought of Marcel.

To my knowledge, the most explicit and concrete detailing of the great variety of ways in which silence phenomenally appears is to be found in Max Picard’s The World of Silence.² In this relatively short, but wide-ranging, provocative, evocative book, Picard points out how silence belongs somehow to almost every dimension both of man’s activity and of the world he inhabits. For Picard, silence is a force, a constitutive principle distinct from but associated with other forces, such as spirit and word, in the constitution of the human world. That is, silence is an ontological principle.

But The World of Silence does not pretend to be systematic. The term “silence” is used in several different ways. Moreover, no attempt is made to clarify the fundamental features of the phenomenon of silence. And there is no explicit formulation of the ontological significance of silence.

Thus, so far as I know, no one has heretofore proposed to give a well-developed account of both the phenomenon of silence and its ontological significance. This is precisely what my work claims to provide. While my account owes a great deal to the works of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Marcel, and Picard, its focus is constantly on the phenomenon of silence itself.

Building upon the fact that silence is always connected somehow with discourse, I find in my investigations that the complexity of discourse must be attended to if the complexity of silence is to be discovered. However, although I have described discourse at some length, the basic questions which have guided my whole study are: What is silence? And what is its ontological significance?

I do not claim that this is the definitive work on silence. In fact, my study of silence leads me to argue that, strictly speaking, there can be no such thing as a definitive work. Nevertheless, this study, thorough and comprehensive, effects a progressively more profound understanding of the phenomenon of silence.

In Chapter One, I distinguish and describe a number of more or less generally recognized aspects of silence and formulate an initial, provisional, but basically sound account of the fundamental features of silence. Chapter Two is devoted to showing the distinctive ways in which silence appears in conjunction with distinct regions and types of discourse, significantly expanding the recognized range of the phenomenon of silence beyond that noticed in Chapter One. The first two chapters provide the evidence required for undertaking the intentional analysis of silence presented in Chapter Three. The resulting well-founded account of the essential characteristics of silence is then tested against the insights into and claims about silence which can be drawn from the works of some major nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers. In Chapter Four I consider theses in which the importance of silence fails to be reflected. In Chapter Five I consider theses which do manifest its proper character. The investigations in both of these chapters furnish important clues concerning what a sufficiently comprehensive ontological interpretation of the phenomenon of silence must cover. Armed with the results of the intentional analysis of the phenomenon of silence and with the clues gleaned from the thought of other philosophers, I present and begin the defense of my ontological interpretation of the significance of the phenomenon of silence in Chapter Six. I conclude my defense in Chapter Seven by showing that my interpretation is suitably comprehensive and by illustrating its fruitfulness.

I acknowledge, of course, that my ontological interpretation of silence does not amount to an all-encompassing ontology. No one phenomenon can provide a basis for such an ontology. For example, a detailed examination of the phenomenon of love, or of hope, might well lead to substantial modifications in the ontological account I am advancing. Such a study, for instance, might well justify claims concerning the question of God which go well beyond what very little I am entitled to say on the basis of the study of silence. Nonetheless, what the phenomenon of silence leads to, ontologically, is secure and would have to be given place in any more inclusive ontology. Thus, though there are substantial ontological issues which I must leave unresolved, the ontological claims which I do make here are well founded.

This study has been in progress for several years. Throughout that time I have been heartened by the interest and support of Herbert Speigelberg. I am most grateful to him. Calvin Schrag, Michael Zimmerman, and John Granrose have also helped me by their incisive criticisms of parts of the text. To them, also, I am deeply thankful.

I want to thank the editors of the following journals for permissions to make such use as I needed of articles of mine which they had previously published: Research in Phenomenology, “On Silence,” 3 (1973): 9-27, and “Silence—An Intentional Analysis,” 6 (1976): 63-83; The Review of Metaphysics, “Renovating the Problem of Politics,” 29 (1976): 626-641, and “Discourse, Silence, and Tradition,” 23 (1979): 437-451; Philosophy Today, “On Speech and Temporality,” 18 (1974): 171-180. And, finally, I want to thank Ellen Johnson for preparation of the typescript.