The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
Hoping* to continue keepin' it minimal in 2018



In 1771 appeared Abbé Joseph Dinouart's  L'art de se taire.

Or, as TiR likes to think of its title: The Dummy’s Guide to Keeping Your Mouth Shut.

Or maybe even better: Getting Over Yourself: a User’s Manual.


From Chapter One, Englished in TiR's typically half-assed way:

In the conduct of everyday life, the discretion required to keep genuinely silent is no less a virtue than is the practical skill of speaking well.  

 There is no more merit involved in explaining well the things one knows than there is in keeping well and truly quiet about the things of which one knows nothing. 

Sometimes, a wisely kept silence is worth more than a philosopher's argumentation: in the former case, silence teaches a lesson to the insolent, and admonishes the sinful .. . . 

 Even if you have a general inclination towards staying silent, you must still mistrust yourself: A burning passion to say a thing should often be considered sufficient reason to redouble ones efforts to keep it unsaid.

A nice summary of what all Dinouart had to say about the principles behind not-saying-anything (in "Silence, the Utmost in Ambiguity" (2010), by Mario Perniola), can be found here.





                                                                    * (and, as usual in all realms, probably failing foolishly)
posted by TiR at 7:01 AM