Philosophical Silence and Spiritual Awe

by Angelo Caranfa

"There exists a language of the intelligence, which has come down to us as the language of the word," declares René Huyghe. "Art, however, is a language of the spirit, of our feeling as well as our thinking nature, our nature as a whole in all its complexity."3 This essay addresses the education of intelligence or the word in the philosophy of Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), and the instruction of the spirit in the art of Henri Matisse (1869-1954), so as to clarify human existence in its wholeness or totality. Jaspers and Matisse reject the split between the word and the spirit, and instruct us that the way to completion or self-realization is through a life lived in silence and in spiritual awe. Without silence, according to Jaspers and Matisse, it is impossible to philosophize or create, and therefore to learn.