Telling Silence: Thresholds to No Where in Ordinary Experiences

Charles E. Scott

Nov 2023 · State University of New York Press

About this ebook

In Telling Silence, Charles E. Scott speaks of silence, often indirectly, in such ways as to create occasions in which people might become more aware of silence in their experiences of themselves and the world around them. The core question of the book is: how can people be aware of silence without turning it into a thing and losing it? Lack of awareness of silence is lack of awareness of a major dimension of lives, both human and nonhuman. Attunements with silence enable attunements with being alive in the fragility that invests even the strengths of living beings. Telling Silence performs this attunement in descriptive accounts and instances of non-reflective awareness, awareness that does not deliberate or ponder. In twenty-three "fragments," poems, stories, and ways of thinking and speaking are brought together to intensify intimations of silence telling of itself.

About the author

Charles E. Scott is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Vanderbilt University and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of numerous books including Living with Indifference, The Lives of Things, and The Time of Memory.