In her Ethical Silence, Professor Sergia Hay bestows a compelling and much-needed analysis of Kierkegaard’s axial concept of a 'second ethic.' In addition, the author lays out a groundbreaking account of the connections between this second ethic and Kierkegaard’s pronouncements on both indirect communication and the ethical value of silence. Remarkably, this erudite volume is so clearly and gracefully composed that it warrants a space on the bookshelves of both novice and advanced students of the Danish firebrand.

Gordon Marino, St. Olaf College

Kierkegaard wrote that freedom, and by extension goodness, is always 'communicating.' Sergia Hay points to the many ways in which silence shapes Kierkegaard’s communications to us. She highlights the power of the silence that so permeates the authorship, its ambiguities and paradoxes, and probes its aims. This is a wise, frank, and persuasive text—one that locates silence not only in the hiding places of the aesthetic, nor in the sublime reaches of religious transcendence, but at the core, and the limit, of our ethical striving.

Vanessa Rumble, Boston College