The Silence of Thinking: Heidegger and Klee

This brief essay challenges the 20th-century philosophical perspective that portrays silence as a refuge in a world threatened by nuclear catastrophe and cultural upheaval. Heidegger situates silence within a metaphysical framework, viewing it as an essential gateway to Being—an act of listening that transcends language. However, this view risks romanticizing the unspoken depths while neglecting the urgent, unarticulated truths of the world. Heidegger’s elevation of silence as a sacred portal to Being, as a retreat that preserves the divine and inexpressible amidst modern crises, detaches silence from the pressing political and ethical realities of our time. To counter this poeticization of world-making, we argue that Klee’s concept of Gestaltung (formation)—a continuous, transformative process—stands in stark contrast to Heidegger’s notion of a static, contemplative silence. It emphasizes dynamic growth, rooted in the inexhaustible entanglement of the visible and the invisible, of form and formlessness.