Is silence golden?

Is Wittgenstein’s famous aphorism, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”, a profound truth? Or is it a banal truism, along the lines of “That which you cannot move, you must leave where it is”? It may sound platitudinous, but if you think about what exactly lies beyond the limits of language, matters soon become much more opaque.

Last week’s FT Weekend Magazine Column (19/20 January)