Silence

Overthink

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

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2023

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

*cricket noises* In episode 75 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss silence and its connection with awe, ecstasy, and the experience of the divine. They talk about David’s experience staying silent during a collegiate debate and Ellie’s practice of meditation as it relates to silence. How does being silent reveal the inner and outer noise that so often surrounds us? They talk about Christian mysticism, Dauenhauer's deep silence, and Heidegger’s call of conscience and explore the various forms of silence that shape our everyday lives.

Works Discussed

St. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica

John Cage, 4’33”

Bernard Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and its Ontological Significance

Rupert Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

Richard Kostelanetz, Conversing with John Cage

Louis Pelletier, “Silence please! A brief history of silence at the theater”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Dōgen Zenji, Shōbōgenzō

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, and welcome to Overthink.
0:15.2	The Philosophy podcast where we chatter about all manner of things about which we should perhaps keep silent.
0:22.1	I'm Ellie Anderson. And I am David Pena Guzman. Ellie, I know you know this about me and it came
0:29.0	up in our podcast before, but I was a competitive collegiate debater. Just a little flex.
0:34.7	No, it's what do you mean a little flex? It's a major flex. No, it's a little flex. No, what would you mean a little flex? It's a major flex.
0:39.2	No, it's a little flex because it allowed me to pay for part of my studies.
0:44.0	I went to college at the University of Nevada Reno on a debate scholarship.
0:48.0	And so between that and working my part-time job and, you know, doing, well, just that, really. That's how I paid for my education. And I don't know if you know anything about competitive collegiate debate, Ellie. I mean, I'm a philosophy professor and like half of our majors come from a debate background, so I do know some things about debate. But have you ever witnessed one? No, I don't actually know if I've ever been to one. I was like, I didn't have time for debate when I was in high school since I was so into theater and as well as in college. So I had my different kind of performance. Anyway, continue. College debate. I participated in a kind of debate called parliamentary debate in college, which is a specific format where you have two teams that compete against each other at tournaments.
1:31.6	And yes, we would travel.
1:32.6	We were technically classified as an athletics team in the university's budget.
1:37.3	So I was an athlete as a debater.
1:40.1	That's so ancient Greek.
1:41.6	It's like, oh, the agon of the mind.
1:44.7	We would also have to get oiled up before a performance.
1:49.6	And so the specific kind of debate that I did was two versus two.
1:53.9	And I want to tell you a story about a particular debate performance, to use the term that you just use, that I did when I was, I think at this
2:02.9	point I was a junior or a senior in college.
2:05.5	Okay.
2:05.8	And this oiled up two on two wrestling match of wits.
2:10.1	The minds, yes.
2:11.6	Okay.
2:11.9	So there was a tournament.
	...

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