Chances are you're too young to remember Carly Simon's tune 'No Secrets' from her 1972 album No Secrets, in which she sings to her lover "We have no secrets, we tell each other everything." However, telling everything - all those past lovers, all those hidden fantasies - may not be the best recipe for a healthy relationship. The song's refrain ends, "Sometimes I wish... that I never knew, some of those secrets of yours." Perhaps we are in danger of discarding this wisdom, in a society where everything that is hidden is looked upon with suspicion, and transparency is hyped as a great virtue.
We are frequently assaulted by calls for transparency. A quick Google search on the need for transparency' delivers lists of reasons why more transparency is needed, especially in business, politics, and education. I am sure many readers recognise the boss calling for a process of transparency'. Yet philosophical inquiry will reveal that transparency intrudes upon privacy, kills spontaneity, and robs the individual of interiority. In the Age of Transparency, interiority, secrecy, and Hermetic hiddenness are forms of resistance.
Hypervisibility
Calls for 'transparency' betray an optical preference - a hidden assumption that the only knowledge that is worthwhile is knowledge for which the evidence can be seen. This can be summed up in the expression 'Seeing is believing'. Other ways of knowing become secondary. Walter Benjamin further pointed out that the Scientific Revolution of Copernicus and Galileo set us on a course leading to an "optical connection to the universe" (One Way Street and Other Writings, 1979, p.111). And we talk about 'eye-witnesses', even when the witnesses relate testimony that was only ever heard, never seen.
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The Two Dennises
Hannah Mortimer observes a close encounter of the same kind.
Heraclitus (c.500 BC)
Harry Keith lets flow a stream of ideas about permanence and change.
Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
Is Driving Fossil-Fuelled Cars Immoral?
Rufus Duits asks when we can justify driving our carbon contributors.
Abelard & Carneades Yes & No
Frank Breslin says 'yes and no' to presenting both sides of an argument.
Frankl & Sartre in Search of Meaning
Georgia Arkell compares logotherapy and atheistic existentialism.
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray, now ninety-two years old, was, among many other things, one of the most impactful feminists of the 1970s liberation movements - before she was marginalised, then ostracised, from the francophone intellectual sphere.
Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, weâre not insignificant.
The Present Is Not All There Is To Happiness
Rob Glacier says donât just live in the now.
Philosophers Exploring The Good Life
Jim Mepham quests with philosophers to discover what makes a life good.