Secrets

Overthink

Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2021

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What’s this episode about? Shh, it’s a secret. Just kidding! In episode 39, Ellie and David take a deep dive into the concepts of secrets and secrecy. Some thinkers have argued that keeping secrets is destructive for the self, while others say that keeping secrets lets us feel like we have something (alt: a space?) for ourselves, that isn’t shared with other people. Moreover, the telling of secrets is often a key to creating a sense of trust and intimacy between BFFs or romantic partners. However, keeping secrets also often raises an ethical question — is it ever morally right to disclose another person’s secret, and if so, when? Ellie and David conclude with a discussion of government secrecy and its implications for public trust; how much transparency is too much?

Works Discussed

Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Should I Tell My Friend’s Husband She’s Having an Affair?”
Sissela Bok, Secrets
James Edwin Mahon, “Secrets vs. Lies: Is There a Moral Asymmetry?”
Anne Dufourmontelle, In Defense of Secrets
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
Jacques Derrida, “Répondre — du secret, 1991-2 seminar”
Georg Simmel, “The Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies”
Giovanna Borradori, “Between transparency and surveillance: Politics of the secret"
C. Thi Nguyễn, “Transparency is Surveillance”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm David Pena Guzman.
0:08.2	And I'm Ellie Anderson.
0:10.1	Welcome to Overthink.
0:11.8	The podcast were two friends, who are also professors, put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.
0:18.4	Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.
0:29.1	David, I'm guessing that you, like most people, have some secrets, am I right?
0:34.9	Absolutely not.
0:36.0	I am an open book. With like the maniacal laugh.
0:39.3	Yeah, an open book with tons of footnotes.
0:44.3	I actually feel like I don't have that many secrets.
0:48.3	But like I'm sure I do have some, you know, and have kept things in the past.
0:51.3	Well, I know you have some.
0:53.3	What? You know I have some because you know, and have kept things in the past. I know you have some.
0:54.9	What?
1:00.8	You know I have some because you know my secrets or because you know that I must have some.
1:05.2	Well, I know some of your secrets after 10 years of friendship.
1:12.6	You know, there have been those drunken discussions at the end of a night out where secrets are shared bidectionally. So you just let out a secret, which is that I have been drunk at least once in my life.
1:18.6	Well, that's not really a secret. We spent our 20s living in a big city together. Yeah.
1:24.0	So I don't have tons of secrets, but I do have some of them. And I really have to trace this back to me being an openly queer man who was in the closet for a super long time. You know, I came out when I was 17, 18, and then more fully when I was 19, sort of completely.
1:46.5	And I vowed... It was a gradual opening of the closet door.
1:48.9	Yeah, it was like, what's the English word for when it makes that sound like,
1:53.1	creak?
	...

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