{"id":75280,"date":"2026-11-12T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-12T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=75280"},"modified":"2026-11-10T22:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T21:02:08","slug":"the-unspeakable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/the-unspeakable\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unspeakable"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In antiquity, <em>\u00c1rrh\u0113ton<\/em> referred to the ineffable\u2014that which could not be spoken or communicated. In <em>Histories (Book II<\/em>,) Herodotus writes of his journey through Egyptian initiation sites: \u201cBut regarding this\u2014though I know full well what takes place there\u2014let silence prevail.\u201d Today, there are no longer walls or guardians to keep the esoteric separated from the exoteric. And yet, despite this total exposure, we still quote Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, a century ago, wrote: \u201cWhereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.\u201d Anyone who has ever kept a secret knows that the protection referred to here does not apply to the secret itself, but to the person who bears it. We ourselves suffer harm when we turn what is an <em>\u00c1rrh\u0113ton,<\/em> something unutterable, into a <em>Rh\u0113ton\u2014<\/em>something spoken. In the Russian-Ukranian conflict, the drone\u2019s eye brings unspeakable suffering and horror to screens across the globe. The unspeakable is imprinted in us; by watching, we give it voice. This constitutes a form of global self-wounding. It creates a situation where everyone\u2014victims, perpetrators, and witnesses alike\u2014needs healing. \u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Translation<\/strong> Laura Liska<br><strong>Image<\/strong> Protests on Maidan Square in Kyiv on February 19, 2014. Photo: Mstyslav Chernov, CC BY-SA 3.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In antiquity, \u00c1rrh\u0113ton referred to the ineffable\u2014that which could not be spoken or communicated. In Histories (Book II,) Herodotus writes of his journey through Egyptian initiation sites: \u201cBut regarding this\u2014though I know full well what takes place there\u2014let silence prevail.\u201d Today, there are no longer walls or guardians to keep the esoteric separated from the exoteric. And yet, despite this total exposure, we still quote Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, a century ago, wrote: \u201cWhereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9159,"featured_media":75032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8796],"tags":[11857,11858,8819],"class_list":["post-75280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","tag-ausgabe-44-2026-en","tag-english-issue-46-2026","tag-seeds"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75283,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75280\/revisions\/75283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}