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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
It would be fascinating to trace out in more detail the role of silence in modern thought. However, my aim here is necessarily limited to a selection of comments on silence rather than a comprehensive analysis of how this far from straightforward topic has been tackled.
There are, of course, varieties of silence. In an interesting paper in which he looks at silence in the work of Rudolf Otto and Harold Pinter, Bernard Dauenhauer notes that silence “does not always manifest itself as ‘safe’ and ‘benign’. It can, for example, be terrifying, menacing or awesome. Silence can express many states of mind, both trivial and profound and in spiritual training a distinction is often made between the silence of mouth, mind and will. And Arthur Danto, in an essay on “Silence and the Tao” makes a distinction between reaching and being reduced to silence.” One way of looking at silence, though naturally it is not applicable to every manifestation of this phenomenon, is to view it as what happens when metaphor fails.
If the methodology of Religious Studies is empathetic, is such empathy not likely to lead towards a situation where silence rather than words is what is encountered? And if this is indeed the case, how, if at all, can the discipline function in a situation where, apparently, metaphor cannot operate? Before attempting an answer, I think we need briefly to review something of the conceptual centrality which metaphor has claim to.
28 Dauenhauer, op. cit., p 19. Further ideas on the varieties of silence can be found in Tannen, Deborah and Saville‐Troike, Muriel (eds.) Perspectives on Silence, New Jersey: 1985Google Scholar.
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35 Ibid.
36 Muller, F Max, Contributions to the Science of Mythology London: 1897, Vol. 1 p 68fGoogle Scholar, as quoted by Cassirer, op. cit. p 109.
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38 Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, New Jersey: 1951, pp 474–5Google Scholar.
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40 John Wisdom, “Gods”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1944/5, p 185f.
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44 Ibid.
45 McFague, op. cit. p 28.
46 Steiner, George, After Babel, London: 1975, p 23Google Scholar.
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53 See Otto, op. cit., Appendix III, pp 190‐193 on “original Numinous Sounds”.
54 Rene Descartes, Private Thoughts.
55 Hinnells, John R, “Religion and the Arts”, in King, Ursula (ed.) Turning Points in Religious Studies, Edinburgh: 1990, P 270Google Scholar.
56 Ibid., p 257.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Babin, op. cit., p 120.
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66 Ibid. The profound affect of literacy on consciousness in general (and religiousness in particular), has been explored by Walter J. Ong (see, for example, his Orality and Literacy, the Technologizinq of the Word, London: 1982)Google Scholar, and Jack Goody (see his The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, Cambridge: 1986)Google Scholar.
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68 Stockhausen's essay on “World Music”, tr. Bernhard Radloff, appears in The Dalhousie Review, Vol. 69 no 3 (1989), pp 318–326.Google Scholar See my “Utility, Understanding and Creativity in the Study of Religion”, New Blackfriars, [Vol. LXXIV] 1993 pp 1420,Google Scholar for some thoughts on how his ideas might be applied to Religious Studies.
69 Postman, Neil, Amusing Ourselves to Death, London: 1986, p.10 & p 15Google Scholar.
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71 Bowker, John, The Religious Imagination and the Sense of God, Oxford: 1978, p 177CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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