As graduates, you have now not only successfully completed your studies. You have also become authors – if not before, then certainly now. When you see the titles of your work in a moment, you may experience a range of different feelings. But there is something you all now possess in a very particular way, something that remains invisible: your secret. I mean this literally: you all now have a secret. What is this secret? Well, when you write a philosophical piece, most of what matters remains unsaid. Of course, there is a text that everyone can read. But there is also everything you struggled with, everything that did not make it into your work, all the possibilities, conversations, worries and sacrifices. All of this is your secret.

Why is this worth mentioning? Well, I believe that secrets help constitute our identity. Your identity does not consist in the flags you wave or the masks you wear. Your identity consists, to a considerable extent, of your secrets. The writer Deniz Ohde makes this point the following way:

“Every child, at some point, begins to keep certain things secret from others – especially from their parents or other primary caregivers. … At first, it may hide experiences from kindergarten, the rules of games invented with other children, daydreams in which flying is possible … Then, these games slowly become something serious. Suddenly, the child begins to regard them as a private sphere that is none of the parents’ business. Then it keeps its first crush secret, keeps also dreams at night to itself, locks the bathroom door, … begins to maintain an inner dialogue … This is the foundation of the self. The secret is a crucial aspect of individuation. It creates a space in which a person can be entirely on their own, a realm that belongs to them alone and to which others have no access. The secret a person keeps with themselves is a means of affirming their sense of self.” (This is my rough translation from German.)

In my view, the secret of authorship is a hidden place that, essentially, only you can enter. This place consists of at least four different “rooms”.

The first is the room of shame. Here you will find all the things you discarded, perhaps out of shame, because you thought you would not want to be read in their light. There are many things we do not say out of shame.

The second is the room of freedom. Here you will find everything you consciously decided to leave out. You had the choice not to say something, and so it remains hidden, yet continues to exert an influence as an unrealised possibility. Perhaps, at some point, you will return to this room to take up one or two of these possibilities.

The third is the room of the unsayable. Here you will find everything that cannot be put into words. Perhaps this is the most important room of all, if we think in the spirit of Wittgenstein. It is also where you will find the most personal aspects of your experience, which come alive when you struggle to express them – even if, in the end, they remain unsayable.

The fourth is the room of friendship. Here you will find all the networks you have woven in the course of your work, connecting yourself to others. As the saying goes, it takes a whole village to raise a child. In a certain sense, the same is true of philosophical writing.

And then, of course, there is the finished product: your work, the text that others can read. This is no small part of the whole, but neither is it the largest. Depending on how you feel on a given day, you may look at your text with affection or with dismay. But your work as an author has made you much greater than the text itself. You now carry this secret with you, these rooms to which you can return again and again because, I believe, you are at home in them. In a fundamental sense, they are your identity. Not an identity that manifests itself in the waving of flags or in belonging to a group, but one that lives on in your authorship, sustained precisely by what remains unspoken and what cannot be spoken.

During the this even, we will be discussing at length the question of the political functions of philosophy. In this context, speaking of secrets might seem like an escapist gesture. Yet the opposite is true. In my view, the possibility of keeping things secret gives rise not only to an essential part of our identity, but also to a realm of freedom: personal freedom and freedom of thought. This freedom is something each of us can attain only for ourselves. That is to say, only you can attain it. But cultivating and protecting this freedom – that, in my view, would be one of the noblest tasks of politics. For a free society must protect not only the right to say something, but also the possibility of keeping something to oneself.

And perhaps this is precisely where a particular form of trust between us can emerge. If we grant one another the possibility of having such a hidden space of freedom, we do not need to know one another completely in order to grant one another that freedom. This applies especially to those we call our political opponents.

I hope that you will always be able to return to this place of secrecy and freedom, and that you will do so gladly. We offer you our heartfelt congratulations, and we do so in the hope that we may play a part in enabling you to return to this place.