Silence’s Paradox

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall, this is an excellent, compelling, well-thought out and well-written essay. 

The essay purports to argue Shūsaku Endō's Chinmoku paradoxically provides a corrective to "pragmatist deliberative contexts" in three different manners and proceeds to use Weil and Wittgenstein's philosophical understandings of suffering to illuminate Endō's novel's approach, which is, as the author notes, "when immanent suffering is inevitable, practices of embodied silence can be the only way to speak" (75-76).

I only have two issues with the essay, and I'm not even sure they need to be addressed, so much as points for the author to reflect upon and maybe comment upon in the text.

Silence has a great deal of scholarly literature about it in Japanese. This essay uses no Japanese-language sources. Similarly, the author reads Silence through western philosophers, most notably Weil and Wittgenstein. While Shūsaku Endō certainly has received a good deal of English-language scholarship as well, and this novel in particular engages the intersection of Japanese philosophy and Catholic theology, the choice to engage the novel solely on Western terms through western ideas and languages could and should at least be addressed in the introduction. What makes Weil, Wittgenstein and the others useful for understanding a Showa-era Japanese text? I want to be careful here - the analysis is both useful and worthwhile, but explain the choice of approach, do not assume it is self-evident. Otherwise it comes across as arbitrary.

Similarly, the name of the author is Shūsaku Endō, with macrons over the first u and the o. This is correct Japanese. Please spell the name of your subject author correctly.

Second, the conclusion seems a bit rushed, and leaves Silence behind. I would have welcomed a bit more of a summary and conclusion in lines 638-656. We end up with Kierkegaard and Derrida and Abraham, which is not where the abstract suggested we would end up. It's no problem that they are included, but bring us back to Fr. Rodrigues and Endō.

 

Author Response

Thank you to the reviewer for their comments and I have made three changes in response. Firstly, I added a bit more to explain why the juxtaposition between Silence, Weil and Wittgenstein’s thought produce a common concern, regarding the second world war context as well as their shared interest in a propaedeutic for deliberation. I also added a bit more when citing how Endō’s emphasis on embodied pain cuts across cultures (line 419 in this most recent file). Second, I also updated the author’s name with corrected diacritical marks throughout, except where they were absent in other publication titles. Third, I adjusted the concluding paragraph, but did not expand significantly. I understand the intent of the recommendation, but my aim was to apply shared emphases in Silence, Wittgenstein and Weil that clarify a gap in pragmatist deliberative thought. So, I felt it important to finish where it did.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

See my attached review. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you to the reviewer for their detailed feedback. To the first general point, I have tried to make the ‘problem of pragmatic dialogue functioning a quasi-theodicy’ a bit more explicit at a few points. To that end, I have clarified that I am responding to an ambiguity in Pihlstrom that is shaped by pragmatism more broadly. So I do not want to put Pihlstrom on one side or another of my argument. Rather, I aim to affirm more prominently his own interest in seilence's value.

I have added a little more to note that the distinction between acknowledgement and recognition can be confused, but they are being differentiated consistently here.

I have also clarified that Pihlstrom engages Wittgenstein and silent acknowledgement earlier on in the main essay cited and he returns to the theme in his conclusions.

I have added a few more points about the hidden churches, and Jesus’s silence. So there is a bit more on those points in the book. But I did not want to go too much further, given I outlined what I think is an intentional ambiguity in Endo’s novel that it is not quite clear if God is ever speaking. There is a paragraph on this at line 406 in this latest revised file.

I have gone through the reviewer’s line by line comments and amended for clarity as recommended. A few further notes on those revisions.

• I clarified the sentence noting the absence of explicit Christian symbols in the book’s ending. My view is that the imagery in the appendix is more ambiguous.
• A bit more was added to clarify how embodied practices of silent acknowledgement differ to philosophical arguments in the Wittgenstein section. However, some of the distinction the reviewer is asking for is provided in the next section on Weil. And this is also discussed a bit differently now in the final section from line 572 in the current file.
• I added a bit on Ferreira to cite that there may well be some overlap with Rodrigues, but I have maintained the differences and clarified the contrast with Rodrigues in the novel.
• My understanding is that the journal’s style is in-text, so have stayed with that referencing format.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revisions are adequate.