Leading a Worthy Life. Leon R. Kass

story, the new self-consciousness manifested in the discovery that “their eyes were opened and they saw that they were naked” was a breakdown of protective shame, a new self-reflective doubleness in the soul that shattered the unselfconscious being-together of immediate experience. The act of concealment (the fig leaf) was an effort – an unsuccessful one – to recover the undivided consciousness of living immediately that we human beings so rarely enjoy – save when, thanks to love and friendship, we are able let down our guard, shed our public faces as namable and complete beings, and enter wholeheartedly and unreflectively into life’s immediate and present possibilities. But, note well: the dialectic of reticence and exposure that guide the pace and extent of self-disclosure is governed solely by growing trust and intimacy, and it differs greatly from the calculated need- or fear-driven controlled release or withholding of information that governs nonintimate speakers. Indeed – and this is another crucial point overlooked by enthusiasts of virtual intimacy – intimate speech is not a means of exchanging information but rather of disclosing souls, of revealing who we are (also to ourselves) by eliciting the blossoming self-revelation of a friend or beloved.

      As already noted, the two modes of being are correlated with two modes of communication: the explicit, clearly articulate, perfectly transparent, no-beating-around-the-bush “speech-about,” and the largely tacit, feeling-tinged, translucent and incomplete “speech-to” of mysterious self-disclosure. The desire for clarity and transparency – a form of objectification – is the enemy of intimacy; lovers shun the bright light of the clear and distinct, but relish the concealment of the half-light where their unavoidably incomplete and therefore indistinct thoughts and sentiments can be conveyed, often silently. Those who complain, rightly, that the purely articulate mode of Internet exchange leaves out crucial nonverbal communication do not always appreciate the profundity of what is missing. The so-called nonverbal cues are not just a different way of speaking; they are gifts of spontaneous, unselfconscious, and wholly embodied engagement with the other. An immediate gesture of acceptance and encouragement (or the opposite) is deeper and truer than speech can ever be about the mystery of self and the power of love.

      No one knows and shows this truth better than Tolstoy, who fittingly does not argue for it (as I am doing) but enables us to witness and embrace it wholeheartedly. I commend to your attention especially Levin’s (successful) proposal to Kitty in Anna Karenina and the account of the speech between the married Pierre and Natasha in the First Epilogue to War and Peace. (Both are excerpted in Mrs. Kass’s and my anthology, Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying.)