Philosophy Today

Streng considers the question of the ontology of silence in the light of work he has done on mysticism. In an earlier essay, he concluded that mystical language has both a descriptive and an evocative function. The evocative function is to "evoke a change in the attitudes and mechanisms of apprehension within the mystic adept." In this paper, he turns his attention to St. John of the Cross' Ascent of Mount Carmel and the dialogue in the Mahayana Buddhist text The Eight-Thousand Line Perfection of Wisdom Sutra. After showing both important similarities and important differences between these two religicus paths, Streng develops some consequences for an ontology of silence. What follows is the concluding portion of Streng's paper.

Gilkey's paper had two parts. Part I, Analysis and Theses, is reproduced here only slightly altered. Part II, Narrative, though extremely rich and moving, is heavily summarized. Then his concluding remarks are presented practically in the precise form in which he presented them.

Godlove argues that Dauenhauer, whatever the merits of Silence,suffers from a fundamental confusion about the topic of silence itself. Godlove's paper is presented here in its entirety.

Pellauer's programmatic study neatly differentiates what he takes to he a proper phenomenology of religion from the works of W. Bede Kristensen, Cornelius Bleeker and Gerhard van der Leeuw. Following Husser's lead, but leaving aside Husser's idealism, Pellauer suggests that Husserl provides a useful theoretical model of experience, one which is "hypothetically applicable to all human experience." Pellauer then critically explores Husser's model. This exploration opens the way for Pellauer to suggest important ways in which the phenomenon of silence should he examined, ways not developed in Dauenhauer's study. What follows is the slightly edited second half of Pellauer's contribution.

McCarthy provided the audience with a concise summary of the basic approach and central theses of the common text. He then posed two substantial questions. The first concerned the possibility of extending the analysis of discourse and silence to deal with non-senseful "utterance." The second dealt with the relation between the concept of silence proposed by Dauenhauer and Ricoeur's concept of distantiation. What follows is an edited version of his paper.

What follows is a revised version of Dauenhauer's original response to the panelist's presentations.