MARTIN BUBER: I AND THOU
MARTIN
BUBER: I AND THOU
AN EXPOSÉ
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Martin Buber’s major philosophic work is the widely read I and Thou, a collection of essays
published in 1923. It talks about the inter-human and the social relationship.
It presents how people enter in a relationship and what kind of relation he/she
has. Buber emphasizes the I-Thou
relationship as a relationship of dialogue. The genuine dialogue begins when
one enters into communication with the other by becoming aware of his/her
totality. It is a communication where other person is perceived as one’s
partner. The true turning of a person to the other includes this confirmation,
this acceptance. Such confirmation does not mean approval, but by accepting
him/her as a partner in genuine dialogue, one affirms the other as a total
being.
Buber’s major theme is about human
existence as defined by the way in which he engages in dialogue with the other,
with the world, and with God. Thus this paper will attempt to expose the
twofold relationship of the I-Thou
and the I-It, showing its core in the
Eternal Thou as well as when and how
it can be identified in a relationship.
Brief
Biography
Martin Buber (1878-1965) was an
Austrian-born Jewish philosopher. Buber’s family was Orthodox, but Buber was
subsequently influenced by the writings of Kant and Nietzsche. Buber
collaborated with early Zionists, and worked as editor of Die Welt, a
Zionist political paper. Buber later left Zionist work, favouring Hebrew
humanism over a political Jewish state. Buber wrote I and Thou in 1923.
When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Buber abandoned his teaching
position at Frankfurt and fled to Palestine. Buber rekindled interest in
Hasidism, an eighteenth and nineteenth Jewish mystical movement. He taught
anthropology and sociology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem through the 1940s
and later died in Jerusalem.[1]
Although born a Jew and was conscious of his Jewish background, he was however
a remarkable figure in the Frankfurt University nevertheless wrote four of his
works in German and only one in Hebrew.
Buber
called himself a “philosophical anthropologist” in his 1938 inaugural lectures
as Professor of Social Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
entitled “What is Man?” in Between Man and Man. He states that he is
explicitly responding to Kant’s question “What is man?” and acknowledges in his
biographic writings that he has never fully shaken off Kant’s influence. As an anthropologist
he wants to observe and investigate human life and experience as it is lived,
beginning with one’s own particular experience; as a philosophic
anthropologist he wants to make these particular experiences that elude the
universality of language understood. Any comprehensive overview of Buber’s
philosophy is hampered by his disdain for systemization. Buber stated that
ideologization was the worst thing that could happen to his philosophy and never
argued for the objectivity of his concepts. Knowing only the reality of his own
experience, he appealed to others who had analogous experiences.[2]
1.0
KANT’S COPERNICAN REVOLUTION
Kant’s aim in his preface to the Second Edition of The Critique of Pure Reason, critical philosophy was
to make philosophy, for the first time, fully scientific. The fundamental
question remains, whether or not metaphysics can become true science?[3]
Kant believes that philosophy needed a revolution like that of Copernicus.
Kant’s Copernican revolution will do for our reason what Copernicus did for our
sight.[4]
While earlier philosophers centres knowledge
in the Object – so that the mind perceives the object. The new way is to expect
that the object conforms to the mind; thus making the Subject the center of
knowledge. Knowledge is thus a creation of the mind, and much of what we
consider to be reality is shaped by the perceiving mind – the mind actively
organizes received sensations by imposing its conditions on the object – to
create knowledge.[5]
Kant expounded a new hypothesis concerning the
relation between the mind and its objects. He proposed that what makes
knowledge possible is that the mind’s objects must conform to the structure of
the mind. He agreed with Hume that our knowledge begins with experience, but
unlike Hume, Kant saw the mind as an agent, structured in such a way that it
imposes its way of knowing on its objects. It actively organizes our
experiences. Thus, thinking involves not only receiving impressions through our
senses but also making judgments about what we experience. So, instead of
asking how our knowledge can conform to its objects, we must start from the
supposition that objects must conform to our knowledge. Only in this way can we
justify the claim of metaphysics to possess knowledge that is necessary and
universal.[6]To
sum up, Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy is the result of his reading
Copernicus’ theory of Science. Copernicus changed the geocentric conception of
the universe into a heliocentric one. Analogically to Copernicus, Kant inverts
the relationship between the subject and the object in a way that the subject
knows only what he “produces” in itself in accordance with his own plan. From
this view, however, Copernican revolution is the central point to his
Metaphysics.
1.1 Three Fundamental Questions about Man
Immanuel
Kant’s philosophical treatise is a work that attempts to use reason to examine
reason. Kant is concerned with the question of how we know what we know. This concern have been put in three
questions, which his entire work has sought to answer: What do I know? (Epistemology); What should I do? (Moral); What
am I allowed to hope? (Metaphysics).[7]
1.2 Epistemology: Phenomena and Noumena
A major impact of
Kant’s critical philosophy was his insistence that human knowledge is forever
limited in its scope. This limitation takes two forms. First, knowledge is
limited to the world of experience. Secondly, our knowledge is limited by the
manner in which our faculties of perception and thinking organize the raw data
of experience. Kant distinguished between phenomenal realities, that is;
the world as we experience it, and noumenal reality, which is purely
intelligible, or non-sensual, reality.[8]In
this way, Kant divides the world into a world of the senses and a world of the
intelligibles.
The phenomenal
world according to Kant is that world that we perceive and have the ability
to conceptualize, the world as it appears to us. We can broaden our perspective
to the general human point of view, and it is this position that we have an
appreciation for the notion of objectivity. The objective world is constructed
from our human and cultural consensus and shared knowledge. However, in the
long run, we cannot break out of our own individual perspective; we always
perceive the world from our own individual point of view.[9]
At variance with the phenomenal world
is the noumenal world. According to
Kant, the world of the noumenal reality
consists of things-in-themselves. These things exist for themselves and as such
their existence is not dependent on our experiencing them. Kant argues that, we
can never have knowledge of this world, since it is forever out of our grasp
because we cannot venture out of our own world.
Here, Kant insists on the limits of the competence
of the understanding. The categories cannot determine their own applicability;
the principles cannot establish their own truth. Understanding alone cannot
establish that there is any such thing as a substance, or that every change has
a cause. All that one can establish a priori is that if experience is to be possible, certain
conditions must hold. But whether experience is possible cannot be established
in advance: the possibility of experience is shown only by the actual
occurrence of experience itself. The analytic shows that there cannot be a
world of mere appearances, or object of sense that do not fall under any
categories. But we cannot conclude from this that there is a non-sensible world
that is established by the intellect alone. To accept the existence of
extra-sensible objects that can be studied by the use of pure reason is to
enter a realm of illusion, and in his ‘transcendental dialectic’ Kant explores
this world of enchantment.[10]
1.3 Moral: Categorical Imperatives
Immanuel Kant’s theory of ethics is considered deontological for several
reasons: first, Kant argues that to act in the morally right way, people must
act according to duty (deon). Second,
Kant argued that it was not the consequences of actions that make them right or
wrong but the motives of the person who carries out the action.[11] He believed that certain types of actions (including murder, theft, and
lying) were absolutely prohibited, even in cases where the action would bring
about more happiness than the alternative. For Kantians, there are two
questions that we must ask ourselves whenever we decide to act: (i) Can I rationally will that everyone
act as I propose to act? If the answer is no, then we must not perform the
action. (ii) Does my action respect
the goals of human beings rather than merely using them for my own purposes?
Again, if the answer is no, then we must not perform the action. (Kant believed
that these questions were equivalent leading to the formulation of a supreme
principle of morality, referred to as the Categorical Imperative.
This Categorical Imperative determines
what our moral duties are. It has three different formulations as captured in
the questions above.
(1) Act only on that maxim
through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal
law (of nature).
(2) Act in such a way that
you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any
other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.
(3) Act as though you were,
through your maxims, a law-making member of a kingdom of ends.
The Fundamental Principle of Morality: For Kant the will acts from Duty when it is determined solely by respect
for the law, independently of inclination, and without regard to the
agreeableness or the consequences of the action prescribed. Therefore the first
fundamental principle of morality is: “Let
the law be the sole ground or motive of thy will.” In other words, to
determine a person’s morality is to look beyond the person’s actions and their
consequences in order to examine the person’s motives and intentions. The only
motive that should be taken as a sign of good character is the motive of duty.
This is the only way to avoid being led by mere accident or other inclinations
(sympathy, desire, honor, esteem, etc.) to the performance of actions which are
dutiful. Thus for Kant, any action that does not proceed from the pure motive
of duty lacks a moral content[12]
1.4 Kant's Metaphysics
The
main topic of the Critique of Pure Reason is the possibility of metaphysics,
understood in a specific way. Kant defines metaphysics in terms of “the
cognitions after which reason might strive independently of all experience,”
and his goal in the book is to reach a “decision about the possibility or
impossibility of a metaphysics in general, and the determination of its
sources, as well as its extent and boundaries, all, however, from principles”.[13]
Thus, metaphysics for Kant concerns a
priori knowledge, or knowledge whose justification does not depend on
experience; and he associates a priori knowledge with reason. The project of
the Critique is to examine whether, how, and to what extent human reason is
capable of a priori knowledge.
All knowledge is knowledge of self. All learning travels the path of
self-understanding. The ancients translated this truth into a moral dictum:
“know thyself.” Any philosophical
approach to unravelling the puzzle of self-knowledge must travel through Kant’s
critical philosophy. His Critique is
the eye of the needle through which the camel of self-knowledge must travel in
order to enter the kingdom. Thus, let us look back on the path we have
travelled paying special attention to this question so that we will better be
able to see what options are open to us by way of contemporary responses to
Kant’s philosophy of self-knowledge. We shall focus on the first paralogism of
pure reason for this noble quest
The Paralogisms of Pure Reason aims to show that any
attempt to deduce facts about the mind or self, on purely rational grounds and
independently of all reference to sensory experience, is doomed to failure. A
paralogism is a certain sort of invalid argument. Here, the illusions of a priori
or rational psychology is treated. Whereas empirical psychology deals with
the soul as the object of inner sense, rational psychology treats of the soul
as the subject of judgement. For Kant, rational psychology admits to be a
science built upon the single proposition “I think”’. It studies the
transcendental subject of thinking, “the I or he or it (the thing) which
thinks” is an unknown X, the transcendental subject of the thoughts. The ‘I
think’ which is the text of rational psychology is the expression of the
self-consciousness inseparable from thought.[14]One of the ways that pure reason erroneously
tries to operate beyond the limits of possible experience is when it thinks
that there is an immortal Soul in every person. Its proofs, however, are paralogisms,
or the results of false reasoning.[15]
The soul is substance; every
one of my thoughts and judgments is based on the presupposition "I
think." "I" is the subject and the thoughts are the predicates.
The logical subject is a mere idea, not a real substance. Unlike Descartes who
believes that the soul may be known directly through reason, Kant asserts that
no such thing is possible.[16]
Descartes declares cogito
ergo sum, but Kant denies that any knowledge of
"I" may be possible. "I" is only the background of the
field of apperception and as such lacks the experience of direct intuition that
would make self-knowledge possible. This implies that the self in itself could
never be known. (Why should we think an immaterial being, a world of
understanding and a highest of all beings, even though we can never know them
as they are in themselves, refutation of ontological argument?). Like Hume,
Kant rejects knowledge of the "I" as substance. For Kant, the
"I" that is taken to be the soul is purely logical and involves no
intuitions. The "I" is the result of the a priori consciousness continuum not of direct intuition a posteriori.[17]
2.0
REVOLUTION OF MARTIN BUBER
In view
of the revolutionary influence of the work “I and Thou,” it ranks as an
epoch–making book, even for our generation. It represents the source of
philosophical cum theological
investigation on the human person; the self in relation to the other. Prior to
his new idea about solving the problem of defining the being - man, man is
conceived as “Homo sapiens,” who by
nature is inclined to a social life with others. Aristotle makes a ground mark
definition of man as “Zoon politikon”
– a political animal. Man in the state of nature, according to Thomas Hobbes is
“wolf unto man.” For the sake of
peace he must relinquish his right to secure the goods of life, in what is
known as social contract theory.
Many philosophers would readily read
the work of Martin Buber – the I and Thou
- in the light of a seeming response to Kant’s definition and speculations
about the nature of man. Reason for Kant presents answers to the questions of
what is within the cognition of man. The categorical imperatives, stipulated by
reason answers the question of what and how man must act. And lastly the
questions about what to hope for present the concepts beyond or outside the
ambience of man’s full cognition of things to be known in themselves. Attempts
at investigating such would amount to an illegal exercise of reason. However,
Martin Buber thought these as insufficient to define man: “Certainly Kant in
his anthropology has neither answered nor undertaken to answer the question he
puts to anthropology – What is man?”[18]
His concept of man as “Homo dialogues”
serves as a bridge for gaining in some way knowledge of the self in relation to
the Thou. He tried to distinguish
between the “I and Thou” and “I and It” existence, thus introducing a
thrust into inter-subjectivity which is a function of self-consciousness - man
for him is the being who faces or encounters an “other” and constructs his
world from the dual acts of relation and distances. Hence, Buber advocates for
spontaneity in relationships as a replacement for the moral concepts which
Kant’s would readily submit.
Buber saw Kant’s categorical
imperatives or his moral concepts as proposing a perspective founded on reason
which conceives principles that would undermines in the name of treating
individuals with respect, separation and isolation.[19]
Buber would rather than trend the line of his predecessors answer the question
– what is man? ‘as a being in dialogue’.
2.1 From
Human Being to being Human
For some time, the essence of Being and what
it means to be, to think and to act in late modern life and culture have
increasingly taken on an ethical dimension. The problem of difference and
multicultural societies, has added urgency to the question of rethinking the
place of human beings in the world and the ethics that could follow from such a
re-conceptualization. What complicates the situation further is the question of
what kind of ethics the twentieth century needed in the face of the error,
terror and horror of the pre-second world war conflicts and the ultimate
dreadfulness of the war itself: one based on the centrality of the human and
fundamental ontology? Or another that would also include animals? Or perhaps
one that offers more capacious environmental ethics with the global environment
at stake? Many philosophical discussions of these issues have been informed by
Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, the idea that underlies his philosophy in
particular. The inequities and violence of history tilted towards an absolute
expurgation of genuine dialogue. This forms part of the reasons why Buber
underscores the urgency and need to leave behind the ontological, anonymous
Being in order to develop a revolutionary ethics of dialogue.
Of course by this very fact, Buber
pitches his idea as a disguised critique of Kant’s elusive Being and therefore
leaving the purview of metaphysical realm. This means that for Buber, there
must be a revolutionary shift from the “ego”
the state of Being to a state of being human based on dialogical
relation/encounter between the Being and the Thou. By this the distinctive “dignity” of the human person comes
from the ways humans participate in the events of being. This dignity of human
does not lie first in rationality or criticism it has produced, nor in
spirituality and the culture of values it has engendered. It is “higher” than these
human values in a very specific sense; it points beyond the human to the value
and worthiness of Being. The human only lends itself to a dialogical relation
thus releasing the Being from the Self-overpowering egoistic clutches. Being
makes possible and encounters the Thou
precisely by the very way in which humanity reaches out to humans, withdrawing
and refusing itself so that the time-space is opened for Beings to be, co-exist
and to be “said” in their co-existence. This withdrawal and refusal is the way
the being “says” Beings: a mirror image of human Beings being human that allows
beings to be brought into words-dialogue. The “saying” makes the said possible
but makes it possible in a way that brings into reality a relation with the Thou, marking the said with silence and
withdrawal. Buber consistently ascribes the capacity for the saying exclusively
to dialogue on the submission that the thought of “human Being” without “being
human” is inimical to ethics and humanity
2.2
Philosophy of Dialogue
The menace of the revolutionary quest of
modern era regarding autonomy and subjectivity gave rise to the Martin Buber
philosophy of dialogue. His idea of dialogue is rooted in a deep reflection on
the societal disruption which eventually led a hallmark event in human history
such as the Second World War. Buber’s unique contribution is his introduction
of the concept of dialogue. By so doing Buber proffered a solution to enduring
problem man, namely wars, sectarianism, religious crisis and political unrest.
These mishaps lucidly points to the fact that man has poor or limited knowledge
of himself and the others. Buber however addressed this through his philosophy
of dialogue.
Buber’s philosophy of dialogue was
greatly influenced by Kant’s critical philosophy. His philosophy of dialogue in
a nutshell is seen in his appeal to experience. For him, it is only through the
experience of the other, that we can come to know something of the other, this
position is however contrary to Kant’s categorical imperative as the principle
for action, thus Buber advocated for spontaneity of relation. According to him,
the rule of moral action is to be in continual relation. Thus, any limitation
of the “Thou” or the particular “Thou” will be unprofitable. Hence, it
necessarily follows that the “Thou” is to be treated as an end itself, although
it cannot be wholly consummated. Buber held that the essential building block
of community is found in the concept of dialogue. In contrary to what people
often think of dialogue as mere exchange of words, he posited that dialogue
transcends conversation which occurs in respect to human relation. For him,
that the idea of dialogue is of immense importance if a real connection between
participants who engage in any form of converse is to be attained. Hence, in
dialogue both participants is therefore expected to dispose themselves to be
agent of potential change in others, and to ready as well to be changed by the
other (The Thou).
In his view, this fundamental fact of human existence has been overlooked
by scientific rationalism and abstract philosophical thought. Thus he posited
that all creation especially man is by nature connected to ‘the undivided
primal world’ which precedes form, as a child to the womb of the human mother.
But in order to enter into personal life, man exchanges this spiritual
connection for the natural connection with the world which he must find for
himself by seeing and hearing and touching and shaping it. Thus he makes effort
to establish relation through ‘experience’ and ‘encounter’. This is attained
either through the I and It and I and Thou relationship.
2.3 The
“I and It”
Buber posits that in accordance with this
twofold attitude man conceives the world in twofold; the world of Thou and the world of It. In the world of Thou, through encounter, man meet what exists (beings) and becomes
a being; what exists is opened to him in happenings, and what happens affects
him as what is. This world is said to be unreliable because it takes a
continually new appearance, and is not set in the context of space and time.[20]On
the other hand, man perceives what exists round about him (things and beings as
things), and what happens round about him (events in space and time). Thus, he
perceives an ordered and detached world which is to some extent a reliable
world; this world is the world of It.
The primary connection of man with the world of It is comprised in ‘experiencing’ and ‘using’; it is man’s object
and its reliability sustains man “without It
man cannot live, but he who lives with it alone is not a man.”[21]
However, man creates obstacles to his relation through the decrease of
his power to enter into relation by developing ,more and more, the ability to
experience (acquisition of items of knowledge through indirect experience), and
use (specialized utilization through reduction of man’s use of the world). By
so doing man, in relation to his fellow-men, separates the I from the It thereby
divides his life into two aspects; one of institutions (It) and the other of feelings (I).While
Institutions refers to our outside world or society (politics, market,
economics), which is a well ordered and harmonious structure; Feelings are
within, where life is lived and man recovers from institution; it describes our
internal states like emotions, pleasure, pain. This two life sometimes run into
boundary conflicts (when the wanton feelings break in on objective
institutions), but with the united goodwill it may be settled. However, the
separated It of institutions is an
animated clod without soul, and the separated I of feelings an uneasily fluttering soul-bird, neither of them
know man, nor the person, nor mutual life, and neither of them has access to
real life; Institutions yield no public life, and feelings no personal life.
Thus, as a result of this dissatisfaction, man falls into distress and
advocates for the dissolution and destruction of institutions, and the
re-establishment of a community of love founded on the “freedom of feeling”
such that, people out of free and abundant feeling wish to live together. But
this is unrealistic because the true community arises from men, living mutual
relation with a living Centre, and, their being in living mutual relation
(including feeling) with one another. Therefore, the true community is built up
out of living mutual relation, but the builder is the living effective Centre.
True public and true personal life are two forms of connection. In that they
come into being and endure feelings (the changing content) and institutions
(the constant form) are necessary; but put together they do not create human
life: this is done by the third, the central presence of the Thou, or rather, more truly stated, by
the central Thou that has been
received in the present.
According to him, the “It” of the “I and It”, refers to the world of
experience and sensation.[22]
It fundamentally refers to the world as we experience it. Hence, the
relationship that exists in the “I and It” can be said to be passive in a
certain sense. It contrasts, the word-pair “I and Thou” emphasizes the world of
relations. In the light of the above summation, it becomes clear that any form
of relation that is capable of generating dialogue is referred to as the I and Thou while on the other hand any relation which lacks the
nitty-gritty features of dialogue is thus referred to as I and IT. In the I and thou relationship, one relates
with and experience the other as another person as a person and not an It. However, in terms of the I and It relationship parties relates to
and experience each other as object or merely as means to achieving a desired
goal. Buber thus characterizes the ‘I and Thou’ relation as ‘dialogical’ and
the ‘I and It as ‘monological’. He established in the first part the two mode
of engaging the world. The first he called “experience” the (I and It). In
experience, man collects data, analyses it, classifies it, and theorizes about
it. The object of experience is the It of I and It. It is a thing to be
utilized, thus the relationship which exist between the I and It is that of the
subject ‘I’ and the object ‘It’.
2.4. I
and Thou
Buber also speaks of another mode of
relation, which we must necessary make use of in order to be truly human, this
he called the I and Thou. In which we
enter into relationship with the object encountered, we participate in
something with that object, and both the I
and the Thou are transformed by relation between them and other is
encountered in totality or entirety. I-Thou
is a relation of subject-subject. Men, in the I-Thou relationship, are aware of each other like having a unity of
being. They do not perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated
qualities. Instead, they engage in a dialogue involving each other’s whole
being. “The primary word I-Thou can
only be spoken with the whole being.”[23]
The subject-subject relation affirms each subject as having a unity of
being. When a subject chooses, or is chosen by the I-Thou relationship, his act involves the his whole being. Thus, the
I-Thou relation is an act of
choosing, or being chosen, as a subject of a subject-subject relation. The
subject becomes a subject through the I-Thou
relation, and the act of choosing this relation affirms the subject’s whole
being.[24]In
the I-Thou relationship, on the other
hand, the relationship is genuine because it is between the person and the Thou that addresses him. This Thou is not anymore a thing among other
things of the universe; the whole universe is seen in the light of the Thou, and not the Thou in the light of the universe.[25]
Buber also says that the I-Thou relation
is a direct interpersonal relation which is not mediated by any intervening
system of ideas. “No objects of thought intervene between I and Thou.”[26]I-Thou relation is a direct relation of
subject-subject, which is not mediated by any other relation. Therefore, I-Thou is not a means to some object or
goal, but it is an ultimate relation involving the whole being of each subject.
Buber further states that the I-It
relationship is maintained with only part of us in it. There is always a part
of us that remains outside the relationship and views it from some vantage
point. In the I-Thou relationship, on
the other hand, our whole being must be involved. When I attempt to hold back
any part of me that is not a participant, but a spectator. It is a sure sign of
the I-It. This means that I-Thou relationship carries with it much
greater risk than the I-It, since
there is no withholding of the self-possible, as in the I-It. In the I-It situation,
the part of the self that remains outside the relationship cannot be endured by
the other party because he cannot reach it. In the I-Thou relationship, there is no such security because the Thou of the I is addressed with the whole of the I. In the I-Thou
relationship, therefore, everything possible is risked without any defensive
position being left to which the I
can withdraw in case of need. However, this is not the only risk involved in
the I-Thou situation.[27]The
Thou who is addressed cannot be viewed
“in the context of any causal, deterministic framework”[28].
He must be encountered in the full freedom of his otherness, an otherness that
is addressed and that responds in the total unpredictability of human freedom.
The moment the responses of the ‘Thou’ are calculated, the moment the ‘I’ asks
itself what impression its speech and being will make on the ‘Thou’, it is
relating to an ‘It’ instead of to a ‘Thou’.[29]
Because
of this, Martin Buber tells us, there is never a present for the ‘I-It’
relationship, only a past. This is because all objective knowledge about a
human being is knowledge about this past, of what he has been rather than of
what he is. If the present moment is to have genuine novelty, if it is not
perfectly determined by the events of the past, then it must be possible for
the present to produce a break within the past in the form of response that
could not have been calculated from the knowledge of the past. In the ‘I-Thou’
relationship, we are, therefore, genuinely living in the present because we are
prepared for any and every response to our address, the expected as well as the
unexpected - and it is this that constitutes genuine listening. [30]
2.5 I and Thou Eternal
According to Buber, God is the eternal Thou.
God is the Thou who sustains the I-Thou relation
eternally. Encounter leads, ultimately, to the Eternal Thou. In the I-Thou relation between the
individual and God, there is a unity of being in which the individual can
always find God. The eternal therefore lies inherent in every encounter. Buber
finds a place for religion outside of rationality in the mode of relation. In
his words; He who serves his people in the boundlessness of destiny, and is
willing to give himself to them, is really thinking of God.[31]
In the language of the Bible, “those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength.”[32]The
scientific age has shown that God cannot fit within the world so long as we are
trying to understand the world logically. We can never find God through
experience, for within the realm of experience we come to know things only by
gathering and analysing this data with our reason. Justification of God’s
existence comes through an I-Thou
relationship:
That before which, in which, out of which, and into which
we live, even the mystery, has remained what it was. It has become present to
us as Salvation: we have “known” it, but we acquire no knowledge from it which
might lesson or moderate its mysteriousness. We have come near to God, but not
nearer to unveiling being or solving its riddle. We have felt release, but not
discovered a “solution”. We cannot approach others with what we have received,
and say “You must know this, you must do this.” We can only go, and confirm its
truth. The Word of Revelation is I am that I am. That which reveals is that
which reveals. That which is, is and
nothing more. The eternal source of strength streams, the eternal contact
persists, the eternal voice sounds forth, and nothing more.[33]
The whole point of relation is that
it cannot be analyzed, described, or reduced down to qualities in space and
time. Naturally, this makes it very difficult for Buber to convey the
intricacies of the concept to his readers. The eternal Thou is
not an object of experience, and is not an object of thought. The eternal Thou is
not something which can be investigated or examined. The eternal Thou is
not a knowable object. But, the eternal Thou can be known as
the ‘absolute Person’ who gives unity to all being. However, life is an endless transition from
the ‘Thou’ to the It and back to the Thou.[34]
Sooner or later, the time comes when
even the most cherished Thou recedes, when a spiritual tiredness overtakes the
most authentic I-Thou relationship
and turns it into the I-It. Buber
uses the notion of love as a means of elucidating relation. Most people believe
that love is a feeling, when really it is more like a cosmic force. Love is
something we live in rather than lives in us. And we are transformed by it. It
is only love understood in this way that captures relation between two people.
When we love someone we see that person as unique. But even in love the Thou must inevitably fade periodically
into an It. As soon as you see your
loved one as beautiful, kind, funny, the loved one has ceased to be a Thou. Still this does not mean that love
cannot endure, but that it constantly oscillates between actuality and
potentiality (This fleeting nature of relation between human beings leads us to
yearn for God, the eternal Thou) but
what about hatred? Buber says that relation, by definition, can only be
directed toward a whole being. But hatred, by its very nature, cannot be
directed toward a whole being. We cannot hate a whole person, only a part of a
person. Still, he admits, whoever hates directly is closer to being in relation
than someone who neither loves nor hates at all. Buber contends that
the I-Thou relation between the individual and God is a
universal relation which is the foundation for all other relations. Meeting
with God does not come to man in order that he may concern himself with God,
but in order that he may confirm that there is meaning in the world.[35]
If the individual has a real I-Thou relation with God, then
the individual must have a real I-Thou relation with the
world. If the individual has a real I-Thou relation with God,
then the individual’s actions in the world must be guided by that I-Thou relation.
Thus, the philosophy of dialogue may be an instructive method of ethical
inquiry and of defining the nature of personal responsibility.[36]
Buber
equates the I-Thou relationship with
seeing and meeting the Thou as a
person, or as an “end in itself”. It includes a mutual reaching towards and
confirming of each other. For Buber, God is at the heart of every human
encounter. He is the “Eternal Thou”
that is experienced in every genuine meeting between two people with a
commitment to dialogue rather than a particular goal or outcome. But we cannot
demand a dialogic attitude from another. The I-Thou relating is a likely and we can be available for dialogue,
but trying to manipulate the Thou towards
dialogic relating is moving towards an I-It
mode, it is seeing the Thou as a
means to an end. Methods are important but they are best to emerge naturally
out of the dialogue with the Thou
PANEL
The question is, how is it with the I – Thou relationship between men? Is it
always entirely reciprocal? Can it always be, may it always be? Is it not –
like everything human – delivered up to limitation by our insufficiency, and
also placed under limitation by the inner laws of our life together?
CONCLUSION
This work
has been able to expose Martin Buber’s philosophy of personal dialogue; one
which emphasizes a dialogic inter-subjectivity of the whole person. His major
theme is that human existence may be defined by the way in which we engage in
dialogue with each other, with the world, and with God.
He makes a radical distinction
between two basic attitudes of which men are capable; ‘I – Thou’ and ‘I – It’.
While the former designates a relation between subject and subject, a relation
of reciprocity and mutuality, the later describes a relation between subject
and object, a relationship of separateness and detachment; involving some form
of utilization or control, the object being wholly passive[37].
However, God is the ‘eternal Thou’ who sustains the ‘I – Thou’ relation eternally. Buber
explains that the ‘I – Thou’ relation
between the individual and God is a universal relation which is the foundation
for all other relations. Thus, if the individual has a real ‘I – Thou’ relation with God, then the
individual must have a real ‘I – Thou’
relation with the world; and the individual’s actions in the world must be
guided by that ‘I – Thou’ relation.
Therefore, the philosophy of personal dialogue may be an instructive method of
ethical inquiry and of defining the nature of personal responsibility.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anscombe, Elizabeth Ethical
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Gregor Smith. London and Glasgow: Colins Clear-type Press,1947.
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Buber,
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INTERNET
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OTHERS
Badou,
Eustache Ephrem K. M.,“Modern Philosophy” (Lecture handout at Department of
Philosophy, Dominican Institute, Ibadan, Nov. 2016)
Bellotti, Tony, Lecture note by Peter Rickman.
Louisse, Bien F.
Llanes, Lecture note on Introduction to Philosophy: I and Thou: Martin Buber’s
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[1]Buber,
Martin. I and Thou.Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1970.
[2]Martin
Buber (1878—1965) http://www.iep.utm.edu/buber/
[3]Cf.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by J.M.D Meiklejohn,
(South Austria: eBooks@Adelaide, 1855), p.7. Hereafter: Immanuel Kant, Critique
of Pure Reason.
[4]Cf.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason,p.8.
[5]
Cf. Eustache Ephrem K. m. Badou, “Modern
Philosophy” (Lecture handout at Department of Philosophy, Dominican
Institute, Ibadan, 2014) p. 61
[6]
Cf. Samuel E. Stumph,o p. cit. p. 306-307.
[7]Cf.
Eustache Ephrem K. M. BADOU,“Modern
Philosophy” (Lecture handout at Department of Philosophy, Dominican
Institute, Ibadan, Nov. 2016), p.58,
[9]
Tony Bellotti, Lecture note by Peter
Rickman, p. 8
[10]
Cf. Anthony Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy Vol.III: The Rise of
Modern Philosophy, p.105.
[12]
Rev.Fr. Emmanuel Nnadozie, OCD. An
Introduction to Major Ethical Theories in Philosophy: Lecture Note.
Dominican Institute 2012
[13]
Mary Gregor , (trans.), Critique of Practical Reason , (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), p.121.
[14]
Cf. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Critique
of Pure Reason, (Cambridge University Press 1998) pp.158-159.
[16]
https://www.the-philosophy.com/kant-critique-pure-reason-summary
[18]
Martin Buber, Between man and man, trans.,
Robert Gregor Smith (London and Glasgow: Colins Clear-type Press. 1947), p. 152
[19]Steven
M. DeLue,Martin Buber and Immanuel Kant
on Mutual and the Liberal State. Miami University 118.2006 Trivium
Publications, Amherst, New York
[20]Buber,
M., I and Thou, translated by Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1958),pp.33
[21]Buber,
M., I and Thou, translated by Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1958),pp.34
[22]Buber,
M., I and Thou, translated by Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1958), p. 23
[23]Bien Louisse F. Llanes, Lecture note on
Introduction to Philosophy: I and Thou:
Martin Buber’s Philosophy of Dialogue. Saint Francis Xavier College
Seminary, Inc. September 7, 2015.
[24]Bien Louisse F. Llanes, Lecture note on
Introduction to Philosophy: I and Thou:
Martin Buber’s Philosophy of Dialogue.
[25]Bien Louisse F. Llanes, Lecture note on
Introduction to Philosophy: I and Thou:
Martin Buber’s Philosophy of Dialogue.
[26].
Buber, M., I and Thou, translated by Ronald Gregor Smith (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 26.
[27]Bien Louisse F. Llanes, Lecture note on
Introduction to Philosophy: I and Thou:
Martin Buber’s Philosophy of Dialogue. Saint Francis Xavier College
Seminary, Inc. September 7, 2015.
[28].
Edwards, P. et al., TheEncyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. I
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. & The Free Press, 1967), 410.
[29]Bien Louisse F. Llanes, Lecture note on
Introduction to Philosophy: I and Thou:
Martin Buber’s Philosophy of Dialogue. Saint Francis Xavier College
Seminary, Inc. September 7, 2015.
[30]Bien Louisse F. Llanes, Lecture note on
Introduction to Philosophy: I and Thou:
Martin Buber’s Philosophy of Dialogue. Saint Francis Xavier College
Seminary, Inc. September 7, 2015.
[31]Martin
Buber, I And Thou, Trans., Ronald Gregor Smith (Edinburgh: T. And T. Clark.
1958), p. 106
[32]
Martin Buber, I And Thou, Trans., Ronald Gregor Smith (Edinburgh: T. And T.
Clark. 1958), p. 110
[33]Martin
Buber, I And Thou, Trans., Ronald Gregor Smith (Edinburgh: T. And T. Clark.
1958), p. 111/112
[34]
Edwards, P. et al., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. I (New York: Macmillan
Publishing Co., Inc. & The Free Press, 1967), 410.
[35]Martin
Buber, I And Thou, Trans., Ronald Gregor Smith (Edinburgh: T. And T. Clark. 1958), p. 115
[36]Cf.
Martin Buber, I And Thou, Trans., Ronald Gregor Smith (Edinburgh: T. And T.
Clark. 1937), p. 115
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