Philosophy Commons^™

Silence (And Its Voluble Partner), Andrew Taylor

Research outputs pre 2011

Silence may traditionally have been golden, but how is it valued today? Can it survive the impact of a technology which can, and does, bring the apparently irresistible seductions of noise to the remotest parts of the world, and which invades the most reclusive aspects of our lives? And what place has silence in a culture such as ours which classifies it as "unproductive"?

But what is silence anyway?

Professor Taylor considers two ways in which, from the Romantic period onward, silence has been conceived. One tradition equates silence with Truth itself; the other considers it the condition which enables …