Between muteness and wisdom: a meditation on silence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51660/riftp61388Keywords:
silence, listening, contemplation, wisdom, philosophy as a way of lifeAbstract
Silence seems to resist any attempt at definition: to name it is already to interrupt it. This essay proposes a philosophical meditation on its paradoxical and multifaceted nature, exploring the Pythagorean, Heraclitean, Plotinian, and Nietzschean traditions to show that silence is not mere absence but an active form of presence and listening. Faced with the temptation to reduce it to muteness —the absolute negation of being and discourse—, an eloquent silence emerges, operating at the very heart of philosophical thought, as a condition for contemplation, simplicity, and the living concept. The essay concludes by proposing a distinction between silence in discourse, which is the proper space of philosophy, and the silence of discourse, which is the threshold —never permanent, always fragile— of wisdom.
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