Volume 28, 2018
Philosophical Anthropology
Tadeusz Kobierzycki
Pages 79-85
On the Philosophy of Human Silence
Thinking Within the Limits of Words and Things
A man is born as a double entity – silent and speaking. We find the notion of silence in the ancient philosophy of Homer and Plato, in the religious thought (Hindu, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity) as well as in modern European philosophy (e.g. Bacon, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Kotarbiński, Elzenberg etc.). Silence can be described as: 1) anthropological-theological function (helps identification or divine-human projection), 2) communicative-interpersonal function (preventive measures for speech in the community-loneliness relation) 3) ethical-aesthetic function (it supports or weakens the semantic functions of words) 4) economical-ontological function (deontologizes or ontologizes silence and thinking) 5) creative function – helps to communicate serious issues (limits or rejects the talk of unserious matters) It is the condition, the mask or the symbol of truth.