### Menu

- [Home](/)

- [About](/about/) [Contact](/contact/)

- [Open Access](/open-access/)

- [Peer Review](/peer-review/)

- [Editorial Board](/editors/)

- [Journal Archive](/archives/)

- [News](/blog/)

- [Religious Theory](/religioustheory/)

- [Search](/search/)

- [Submissions](/submissions/)

### The New Polis

                    ![The New Polis is an online publication dedicated to critical theory, social analysis, and political philosophy and theology.](https://files.jcrt.org/images/tnp.webp)

The New Polis is an online publication dedicated to critical theory, social analysis, and political philosophy and theology.

                    ![The New Polis Journal is a peer-reviewed academic journal publishing cutting-edge work in political philosophy, social theory, and related fields.](https://files.jcrt.org/images/tnpj.webp)

The New Polis Journal is a peer-reviewed academic journal publishing cutting-edge work in political philosophy, social theory, and related fields.

	Whitestone Foundation

### Get in touch

The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT) is a publication of The Whitestone Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation registered in the state of Colorado.

[Contact Us](/contact/)

---

[Built with Eleventy](https://www.11ty.dev/) | Design: [HTML5 UP](https://html5up.net/) | Maintained by [Adam DJ Brett](https://adamdjbrett.com) | [Credits](/credits/)

[Listed at Duotrope](https://duotrope.com/magazine/journal-cultural-religious-theory-20464?ref=lst-7vbKB-7r3u0g8&pc=L-7VBKB)

        JCRT
        The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory

      JCRT

          The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory

- [Home](/)

- [Archives](/archives/)

- [17.2](/archives/17.2/)

# The Irreducible.

            Jean-Luc Marion

               January 1, 2018

                 |  doi.org/10.17613/j69qg-b0e39

               Download Article

               Download Citation (RIS)

               Download Citation (JSON)

## Abstract

that which we cannot speak, must we remain silent? Probably-especially if we understand why we cannot say anything about it, and have good reason for not speaking. If there is no good reason to talk about it, then we should stay silent. Yet without this prerequisite of having good reason, we could always resort to silence simply through negligence, carelessness, or more often, bad faith. The inability to say anything, or to have nothing to say, can at times come from our decisions, explicitly or implicitly. At other times, in remaining silent, we persist under the conditions of speaking, namely, by thinking.2 Overall, if the questions we pose concerning that which we deem unspeakable are poor, and incapable of receiving an answer, it remains possible, instead of abolishing them without further trial, to interrogate them in such a way that we might find in them another formulation; a first sense, the original utterance of which was spontaneously prohibited.

## Table of Contents

© the author(s). Free to read; see the [copyright notice](/copyright/) for reuse terms.

          Keywords:

            religion

            metaphysics

            silence

            god

            Share Openly

[The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT)](https://jcrt.org) is an online, peer-reviewed, academic publication published by [The Whitestone Foundation](http://thewhitestonefoundation.org/), a 501c3 corporation located in Boulder, Colorado. ISSN 1530-5228. Articles are open access under a [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) license; authors retain copyright. Indexed by [EBSCO](https://www.ebsco.com/). Listed with [Duotrope](https://duotrope.com/magazine/journal-cultural-religious-theory-20464?ref=lst-7vbKB-7r3u0g8&pc=L-7VBKB). Website © The Whitestone Foundation dba The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 1999-2026.

[JCRT](https://jcrt.org/) | [The New Polis Journal](https://journal.thenewpolis.com/) | [The New Polis](https://thenewpolis.com/) | [Esthesis](https://esthesis.org/) | [Wild Globalization](https://wildglobalization.com/) | [The Whitestone Foundation](https://thewhitestonefoundation.org/)

[The Whitestone Foundation](https://thewhitestonefoundation.org/)