Abstract

Though it fills the better part of our lives, the conduct of silence is elusive in the oeuvre of most philosophers. To find it, one must search for corollaries that fill conceptual interstices. This chapter positions Oakeshott, better known for his valorization of conversation, as a major twentieth century thinker of the vital role silence plays in our lives. In his effort to recover a multiplicity of ways of thinking in the face of unfettered rationalism, Oakeshott balanced a capacity for faith in the unspoken with his healthy skepticism. The chapter focuses on Oakeshott’s deep and evolving engagement with Negative Capability and Negative Theology. Alongside John Keats, Evelyn Underhill, and Susan Sontag, it reconstructs the rudiments of what it calls aesthetic silence from Oakeshott’s thought.