The French diplomat Charles Talleyrand once remarked: “When a diplomat says ‘Yes’, he means ‘Maybe’; when he says ‘Maybe’, he means ‘No’; and if he say ‘No’, he’s no diplomat at all.” Talleyrand’s diplomatic prowess in the reign of King Louis XVI and then Emperor Napoleon I is legendary and earned him the sobriquet ‘The Prince of Diplomats’.
Talleyrand’s observation, however, captures our chief suspicion about the art of diplomacy: that it succeeds by never saying what one actually means. When we call a colleague or friend a diplomat the compliment is backhanded. It contains the veiled accusation of dissembling or dishonesty. Arguably the most skilful diplomat of our day, Peter Mandelson, attracts the shadowy sobriquet ‘The Prince of Darkness’.
If diplomacy is no better than dishonesty it would seem obvious that we should prefer clarity and directness. However, if we reflect on the work of the 20th Century’s most enigmatic philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, we see this simple solution is not simple at all.
Wittgenstein’s philosophical project was to understand language. His 1921 book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is written as a series of numbered sentences, its very structure redolent of austere, strict logic. He states his overarching view in the preface, where he declares “what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.”
Wittgenstein’s logical purity obliged him to confront the stark conclusion that the alternative to clarity is silence. Wittgenstein saw what we miss when we hanker after the simplicity we think clarity will bring – that it will also oblige us to leave many things unsaid.
The business of life is, however, rarely clear. The clarity of logic and mathematics are distant for lived life (Wittgenstein himself saw that the fact they couldn’t be wrong made them true only in a rather dull and uninteresting way). The business of life is work and play, love and hope, disappointment and despair. These are not about fixed cold facts. They are unfolding negotiations with others and the stuff of life.
This is why we should acknowledge the diplomat’s art. Diplomacy keeps conversations going and never abandons us to Wittgenstein’s cold, logical silence. Conversations heal wound, repair friendships, save love, negotiate treaties and establish peace. If this demands using words skilfully as well as clearly it is a skill worth cultivate. Silence can give us none of these.
Nick Southgate will be leading the class 'How to find a job you love' on Thursday 4 February 2010. For more information click here.
I love seeing a good word put in for diplomats, and there's nothing worse than a cold superior silence ending a discussion.
I can't help quoting Montaigne on the many ways conversation can go wrong, including a relapse into Wittgensteinian silence:
"What is the use of your setting out in quest of that which is, with a man whose pace and gait are no good? ... One goes east, the other west; they lose the main point and mislay it in the throng of incidentals. One man catches at a word or a smile. One is no longer aware of his opponent's points, so involved is he in the course of his argument, and he is thinking about following himself, not you. One man, finding his back too weak, fears everything, denies everything ..., or, at the height of the debate, rebels and is flatly silent, through spiteful ignorance affecting a haughty contempt or a stupidly modest avoidance of contention."
No one could call Wittgenstein spitefully ignorant, but I've never liked the way his silence is held up as proof that he must have discovered something the rest of us can't even glimpse. Perhaps he just ran out of things to talk about.
Anyway thanks for a great post! Sarah
Posted by: Sarah_Bakewell | January 23, 2010 at 01:32 PM