From Where Do Our Cries Come?
On Our Double Plight and Paradoxical Freedom
Heidegger writes that “our greatest plight is our lack of our sense of plight,” “our greatest need our lack of our sense of need,” “our greatest concealment our lack of our sense of concealment.” All hiddenness is a double hiddenness.
Our greatest ignorance is our ignorance of our ignorance.
The greatest censor is not the one we know and fear, but the one we don’t, our inner censor.
Likewise, according to rabbinic commentaries, the Israelite enslavement could only end once the people cried out. It was their failure to recognize their slavery for what it was that kept them enslaved. Their cry revealed their plight, and their revelation brought their liberation.
To bring to light is the inception of freedom.
But how do we bring to light what is hidden? And is it a choice? A cry implies a phenomenon on the brink of agency—it comes from within and yet is nearly involuntary.
Most of the Israelites, say commentaries, never left Egypt. Perhaps they never cried over their slavery. Perhaps they were simply unlucky to have “no exit” from their state of being shut down.
How do we know we would be like the minority of Israelites who did cry out?
If hiddenness is always a double hiddenness, then we must assume we would have been like those who did not cry out. Only then, in affirming that we would not have left Egypt, paradoxically, can we cry over the fact that we would not have cried. In so doing, perhaps our tears will come, and in so coming bring our liberation.
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