HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS ACCORDING TO
MARTIN BUBER
By
Volney Fernandes, SDB
Under
the Guidance of
Fr. Banzelao Teixeira, SDB
A
Paper Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Bachelor’s
Degree in Philosophy
March
2017
DIVYADAAN
Salesian
Institute of Philosophy
Nashik 422 005
INDIA.
Table of Contents
Chapter
Page
INTRODUCTION
Relationship
is a much discussed and reflected theme in philosophy. The reason for choosing
this topic is basically to know the importance of human relationships. On this topic
many questions arise in my mind with regard to relationships. Some of these
are: What is my relationship with God, Man and World? What is it that holds a
relationship? Does a human being really need any relationship or can he or she
just live like an isolated person? Why do a boy and a girl fall in love and
what is it that attracts each other? With all these questions in my mind I make
my (‘saga’) journey in writing this dissertation
The
prime reason for doing this dissertation is for the benefit of me and the
other. Because that is what relationship means, one doesn’t keep things to
oneself but shares it with the other. In turn, one gets his/her ideas clarified
and also gets to know about it better and also the ideas and opinions of
others. And if I’m not wrong or mistaken this is how all the knowledge one has
gained of this world is passed down from one person to another through all the
ages. Relationships greatly concern me if there were no relationships I don’t
think anyone or anything would have existed on this world. In relating with the
others we realize that relationships are not something in the air but they lead
to something transcendental and this by my faith I can say is ‘God’. So in this
dissertation my search is a dual search i.e. relationship with humans and with
God.
This
dissertation is divided into four chapters and a conclusion. The first chapter
is speaks about the influence of Buber’s grandparents that affected the
formation of his initial life and the different religions that influenced his
philosophy. It also speaks of the famous incident that led him to his theory of
I and Thou. The second chapter speaks
of the “I-Thou” and “I-It” relationships. Buber tells us to transport ourselves
from collectivism and individualism to genuine community which involves
reciprocal relationships. This chapter is the crux of his philosophy. The third chapter speaks about the core of
human relationship: Love. Love is a I-Thou relationship which has its climax in
the sacrament of marriage. Love is an important emotion and affects the outlook
of the person towards life. The fourth chapter deals with Buber’s understanding
of God. God is the only Thou. We cannot understand Him by our senses. He moves
us to our goal which is eternal life.
In
this chapter I will deal with Martin Buber’s birth and early life, his
profession as an editor of Der Jude,
the birth of his theory ‘I and Thou’,
and finally concludes with the various religious movements he entered and made
his precious contribution to them.
Martin
Mordechai Buber, the 20th century Jewish philosopher, was born at
Vienna in 1878. His house oversaw Danube River. He
had a broken childhood as even before he was 3 years old his parents separated,
and he was sent to live with his paternal grandparents at Lemberg in Galicia.
This had a depressing effect on him even in his youthful days.
His
grandfather Solomon Buber besides being a landowner and a rich merchant was a
man of liberal education and a renowned Talmud scholar. His grandmother Adele
was a highly educated woman who introduced him to language, culture and literature.
Martin Buber learned to speak and write Hebrew; he was introduced to wisdom of
the Bible and educated in the rich spiritual tradition and deep piety of
Judaism.
As
a child Buber's favorite language was Greek. His philosophical education was
established in particular on a thorough reading of Plato in Greek. He spoke
German, Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, English, French and Italian and read in
addition to these Spanish, Latin, Greek and Dutch.
He
entered school at the age of 10. Before that he was privately tutored chiefly
in language by his grandmother because of his inclination and talent and
because of his grandmother’s language centered humanism. At
the age of 14 Buber left his grandparents’ home and went to live with his
father who had remarried and settled in Lemberg.
When
he was 17 he joined the University of Vienna to study philosophy and the
history of art. After Vienna he went to the University of Berlin, Leipzig and
Zurich. The vast shift which the European philosophy underwent had its impact
on him. He lived in Berlin from 1906 until 1916, and worked as an editor in a
publishing house. At the same time he was also engaged in freelance writing. In
1916, he founded and edited a periodical called Der Jude which became a leading organ of German speaking Jews in
their quest for the spiritual and cultural basis of Zionism. Buber began his
public career as a German writer and spokesman for Zionism, which was a
political movement aimed at the unity of the Jewish community. A few years
later he became disillusioned with the politics of the Zionist movement and
decided to live in solitude and attempted to find a new direction which had a
deeper meaning. He stayed in solitude for 5 years where he devoted his life to
spend in meditation and private study. During this time he came across the
Hasidic teachings. As he progressed in the study of Hasidism it had greater
significance for him because it emphasized the need of a strong interpersonal
relationship which was in turn to become the central theme of his
philosophy. In 1938, Buber left for
Jerusalem where he was appointed as the professor of social philosophy in the
Hebrew University and at the age of 73 he retired from this college. In 1952,
he got the Hanseatic Goethe prize at the University of Hamburg. In 1953 he
received Peace prize of the German book Trade in Frankfurt am Main. In 1963 he
received Erasmus Prize at Amsterdam for his contribution to the spiritual unity
of Europe. In
1965, he slipped in his bedroom and fractured his leg. From then he was
confined to bed. On Sunday, June 13, 1965 at 10:45 in the morning, he left for
his creator. He was buried at the Hill of Rest in Jerusalem.
One
morning Buber believed that he experienced a strong mystical experience. On
that day a young gentleman named Mehe came to him. He was to join the army soon
but he had a tough time and so needed Buber's guidance. Buber graciously answered all of his
visitor’s questions. After the young gentleman left, Buber felt disturbed.
Although he answered most of his questions, he felt that in his strong mystical
experience he ignored the unexpressed question that was really disturbing the
young gentleman, who didn’t know how to articulate his soulful question.
Buber’s reserved happiness kept him
from being intimate with the visitor. This incident led Buber to abandon
mysticism as a way of dealing with the reality of the world. Instead it led
Buber to contemplate on the mystery and dynamics of dialogue. There is genuine
dialogue – no matter whether spoken or silent–where each of the participants
really has in mind the other or others in their present and particular being
and turns to them with the intention of establishing a living mutual relation
between himself and them.
According to Buber, genuine dialogue
goes beyond an exchange of words or information; a real meeting between
persons establishes a deep but reciprocated living relation between the
dialogue partners. Here, authentic dialogue is more than just a possibility in
life; it is the deepest and basic way persons develop. For Buber, understanding
the nature of relationship towards others is essential to develop an authentic
human existence.
In his personal development Buber
absorbed and synthesized both the culture of the West and the Hasidic
religiosity of the East. In his early childhood the Jewish upbringing by his
grandparents had a lasting experience on him in his later years. From his grandmother
he learned the humane gentleness and from his grandfather he acquired a
thorough knowledge of the Hebrew language, religion, tradition and folkways.
Along with this, the hardships of his early years ignited in him a deep
religious restlessness. To the outside world his restlessness was expressed as
an “out-going soul element” as a vital spiritual force.
He writes about this:
‘Religious experience’ was the
experience of an otherness which did not fit into the context of life. It could
begin with something customary, with consideration of some familiar object, nut
which then became unexpectedly mysterious and uncanny, finally lighting a way
into the lightning- pierced darkness of the mystery itself. But also, without
any intermediate stage, time could be torn apart- first the firm world’s
structure, then the still firmer self- assurance flew apart and you were
delivered to fullness. The ‘religious’ lifted you out. Over there now lay the
accustomed existence with its affairs, but here illumination and ecstasy and
rupture held without time and sequence. Thus your own being encompassed a life
here and a life beyond, and there was no bond but the actual moment of the
transition.
Despite
the orthodox atmosphere of his grandparents’ home he began to have doubts about
structured Judaism. As a young adolescent, Buber came to feel estranged from
the forms and structures of the traditional Judaism in which he had been
brought up. At one of the ceremonies organized by his grandfather, instead of
the customary discourse on a passage of the Bible, Buber gave a talk on
Schiller (a philosopher). Later he also gave up saying his daily prayers.
Zionism was a movement in the Nineteenth
Century. Its goal was to re-establish the Jewish people as a nation in its
homeland in Palestine.
The Nietzschean effect was reflected in Buber's turn to Zionism and its call
for a return to roots and a more wholesome culture. At the invitation of the
Zionist leader Theodor Herzel in 1901 he became the editor of Zionist weekly die welt (The World). But soon a
struggle of opinions occurred between them. Buber favoured an overall spiritual
renewal and, at its core, immediate agricultural settlements in Palestine, as
against Herzel’s emphasis on diplomacy to bring about the establishment of
Jewish homeland secured by public law.
Consequently
Buber stepped down from his post as editor; he remained a Zionist but generally
stood in opposition to the official party policies and later to the official
state polices of Israel. He was among the early heroes of a Hebrew University
in Jerusalem. In 1916 Buber founded the influential monthly der Jude (The Jew), which he edited
until 1924, this magazine became the central forum for practically all Jewish
scholars. In its pages he advocated the unpopular cause of Jewish Arab co-operation
toward a binational state in Palestine.
Together with his philosophy of
dialogue, Martin Buber is best known for making Hasidism a part of the thought
and culture of the western world. Hasidism during the eighteenth and nineteenth
century was a popular mystical movement in the East European countries.
The Hasidic movement arose in Poland in
the eighteenth century. The founder of Hasidism was Rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer
(1700-60), who is more commonly known as the Baal-Shem-Tov, the master of the
good name of God. The Hebrew word Hasid means ‘Pious.’ It is derived
from the noun hesed, meaning loving kindness, mercy, or grace.
The real essence of Hasidism is revealed not so much in its concepts as in the
three central virtues which are derived from these concepts: love, joy, and
humility. For Hasidism the world was created out of love and is to be brought
to perfection through love. Love is central in God’s relation to humans and is
more important than fear of God, justice, or righteousness. The fear of God is
only a door to the love of God. It is the respect which one has before a loving
father. God is love, and the capacity to love is human’s innermost
participation in God. This capacity is never lost but needs only to be purified
to be raised to God Himself. One cannot love God unless he loves his fellow
men. For the same reason the love of God and the love of man is to be for its
own sake and not for the sake of any reward.
Humility for Hasidism means a denial of
self, but not a self-negation. Man is to overcome the pride which grows out of
his feeling of separateness from others and his desire to compare himself with
others. Thus, Hasidic humility is a putting off of man’s masked self inorder
that he may affirm his true real self. Humility, like joy and love, is attained
most readily through prayer. Prayer is the most important way to union with God
and is the highest means of self-redemption. Hasidic prayer, however, was not
always prayer in its most ordinary sense. Sometimes it took the form of
traditional prayer, at other times it is understood as mystical meditation or
an ecstatic intuition into the true nature of things.
Through Zionism he gained new roots in
the community, but it was only through Hasidism that the movement which he had
joined took on meaning and content. One day on reading a saying by the founder
of Hasidism about the fervour and daily inner renewal of the pious man, he
recognized in himself the Hasidic soul, and he recognized piety, as the core of
Judaism. This experience occurred to him in his twenty-sixth year. As a result
of it, he gave up his political and journalistic activity and spent five years
in isolation studying Hasidic texts.
In
this chapter I have focused not only Buber’s intellectual influence and
developments but also the events that had a great influence on Buber's personal
life and on his thought.
In
his early life he was greatly influenced by his grandparents. As Buber was much
influenced by his grandfather he had grown spiritually well and he had mystical
experiences. But one incident changed his whole view to reality where he gave
up on mysticism and began with his philosophy of relationship (I and Thou).
Martin
Buber is known for his work ‘I and Thou’.
In this chapter I would like to deal with the two fold nature of encounter that
Martin Buber speaks about which is ‘I-Thou’
and ‘I-It’. ‘I-It’ relationship is based on detachment from others and involves a
utilitarian approach, in which one uses the other as an object. ‘I-Thou’ relationship is concerned about
the other person and doesn’t treat the other as an object.
Martin
Buber in his central work ‘I and Thou’
begins with the assertion to man the world is twofold, in accordance with his
twofold attitude.
It represents man’s authentic and inauthentic attitude towards the world.
Buber calls these fundamental postures the I-Thou
and I-It attitudes.
These attitudes are represented by two primary words which he said as I-Thou and I-It. Since such utterance and meeting of the primary words involve
reference to another to whom they are addressed, they are relational terms, not
isolated words. Thus the primary words are the combination of I-Thou and I-It. As a man speaks the primary word I-Thou or I-It, the world
exists for him as an I-Thou world or
an I-It world.
The
confrontation of I and world is not something fixed or permanent; it is
dependent on primary words spoken by man that is, on two basic attitudes he can
adopt with respect to the world.
“Primary words do not describe something that might exist independently of
them, but being spoken they bring about existence.” If Thou is uttered the I of the primate word I-Thou is also uttered together with it.
So
also is the case of the I of the primary word I-It. It must be noted, that an ‘I’ wholly for itself is an
unreality, an abstraction. Only a person can address Thou or It to something
that stands over against him. The two primary words are not always ‘spoken’,
but ‘I-Thou’ is always lived as
elemental union; and I-It is always
consciousness of something and involves a separation of subject and object.
The
primary word ‘I-Thou’ points to a
relationship between person and person, subject and subject, a relationship of
reciprocity involving a living encounter. Whereas the primary word ‘I-It’ points to a relation of person to
a thing, of subject to object, involving use, dominion and control. The Thou,
however, comes through grace and cannot be intentional. Yet, when the Thou is
encountered, the ‘I’ must go outside of itself to do so, for there must be a
direct relation, and the Thou responds to the encounter.
Buber writes:
Between
you and it there is mutual giving; you say Thou to it and give yourself to it,
it says Thou to you and gives itself to you. You cannot make yourself
understood with others concerning it, you are alone with it. But it teaches you
to meet others, and to hold your ground when you the solemn sadness of its
going it leads you away to the Thou in which the parallel lines of relations
meet. It does not help to sustain you in life; it only helps you to glimpse
eternity.
Buber
calls ‘I’ corresponding to the It-world Eigenwesen
(individual), differentiating it from the ‘I’ of the Thou-world, which is
person. The individual makes his appearance by differentiating himself from all
other individuals. His identity is found by distinction from other individuals.
According to him, individuality consists in being conscious of oneself as the
subject of experiencing and using. As the subject of an object it constantly
borders on something.
He writes:
The
person becomes conscious of himself as sharing in being, as Co-existing, and
thus as being. Individuality becomes conscious of itself as being such-and-such
and nothing else. The person says, ‘I am,’ the individual says, ‘I am such-and-such’.
‘Know thyself’ means for the person ‘know thyself to have a being’, for the
individual it means ‘know thy particular king of being’. Individuality in
differentiating itself from others is rendered remote from true things.
Because
the person is concerned only with his/her own interest and utility- his/her
kind, race, genius and ability- he/she looks upon reality outside of himself/herself
as a thing to be owned and used.
The characteristics of individuality are self-differentiation and appropriation
which are proper to the It-world.
The
I of an I-Thou relation is identified
solely by entering into interpersonal encounter with other persons who equally
are identified only by relationships. On this level the deepest meanings of
existence are disclosed; a person becomes involved with other people or with
the things around him/her as a person to person, as a subject to a subject.
The aim of a person is to find the source of true life. Coming in contact with
Thou we are stirred with a breath of the Thou, that is, of eternal life.
This kind of encounter can only exist when the I speaks with its whole being,
but a whole being exists only when the I is able to enter into a dialogue with
the Thou.
Human beings taken by them are an abstraction. They can
be understood only as being in the world. The animals have an environment that
constitutes the things which concern it in the total situation available to it.
Humans alone have a world. The animal is conditioned by its surroundings and
needs. Humans, although conditioned by the world, are able to condition this
world and transcend its necessities. This means they free. The principle of
human existence manifests itself as a relationship between humans and the
world. Hence the principle of human existence is not something static but
dynamic.
Primary words do not describe something existing
independently, but being spoken, they bring about existence. If Thou is said,
the I of the primary word I-Thou is
said together with it. So also the case of the I of the primary word I-It.
To speak of the primary word I-Thou
means to enter into a relationship. I-It
can never be spoken with the whole being because it distances one human from
another and remains unbridged. The difference between these two attitudes is
not determined by the object that is over against a person but by the way he
relates to this object.
The I-Thou
relationship, on the contrary, is “fulfilled not in the soul but between I and
Thou.”
If someone speaks I, one has spoken the I of the primary word I-Thou with the whole being, for its
stands in immediate relationship with the other whom he addresses. When one
speaks It, in the sense of the primary word I-It,
it has the world of experience and use. But when one speaks Thou, in the sense
of I-Thou, it does not possess the
world as something, but stands to it in a personal relationship.
An I-Thou
relationship is nothing but the personal relationship between two persons. To
be is to be related: everything in the world is being with others. One can
become whole only by entering into relationship with another self. All real,
true, living beings, is to be found in the sphere of an I-Thou relationship.
Relationship is the place of the reality of humans.
In it, the I meets the Thou not as
something thought or imagined, but as the actuality. The other becomes a Thou
only when the simple subject-object attitude ceases. If the other is regarded
merely as the object of his knowledge, experience, use of enjoyment, it may
gain comfort and security, but it will not know what it is to be genuinely human.
Buber is of the opinion that the I-Thou
relationship is, at the same time, an act of freedom and grace. The human part
of relationship consists in doing justice to the situation and not neglecting
it. It’s not in ones power to cause another to become Thou for him. The Thou
meets persons in spontaneous encounter and the person can freely and
deliberately enter into dialogical relationship with it.
Buber says that the heart of personal life, which
attains its fullness only in the personal relationship with others, is a
meeting which we cannot control, but which we can expect at any moment. Thus
the I-Thou relationship happens
unexpectedly. Thus the I-Thou
relationship bears the mark of a mystery.
Hence Buber says the goal of relationship is relationship itself.
This is a miraculous event that happens in our everyday life in our personal
encounter with the other.
While the I-Thou
relationships is of realization and relationship, the I-It
relationships is one of utilization, separation and detachment from the subject
in which the subject is manipulated, controled and exploited. Since I-It is the primary word of experiencing
and using, and the I-It relation
takes place properly within man and not between man and the world, the I-It relationship is one of experience
and use. Hence it is totally
subjective and lacking in reciprocity. It is the typical subject-object
relation.
The I-It
relation has no present content, since it is concerned with objects of use and
experience which are always directed towards a future end. While the I-Thou relationship happens and the Thou
meet one spontaneously without preplanning, the I-It relationship can be purposely planned and determined.
The I-It
world is partial and indirect and deals with what is already past. The I-It relation, as well as the object of
knowledge, is a part of what has already been or become. While the I-Thou is characterized by personal
presence and immediacy and constitutes the real world-order, there is no
element of presence and immediacy in the I-It
world.
The I of the primary word I-It has only the past. Thou is present. Only as the Thou becomes
present, does presence come to the being.
The man, who occupies himself with experiencing and using the world, lives in
the objective presencelessness and I- solitariness. The being of It is no being
continuing in presence but an objective being; it is a being of the past. The world of experience and use is a problem
for the human being to live the life of the spirit.
While in the I-Thou
word, the I accepts the Thou in its personal existence, for authentic
existence. In I-It one adopts an
impersonal attitude towards persons, thinking of them as it were objects.
However Buber does not reject the It-world. By the
fact that he calls the I-It a primary
word, he recognizes the validity of I-It
attitude, in persons. The primary word I-It
belongs to the language of common experience, the language of science. The
It-world is the realm of science, the world of knowledge. By science Buber
understands the whole of analytical discipline in every field- physics,
chemistry, etc. The development of these natural sciences has led us to a new
historical situation as destiny of humanity.
The It-world is set in the context of space and time.
Even though science provides us with all new technologies, Buber is clear that
the I-It world does not constitute
the totality of human life but only one aspect of it. Persons does not meet his
Thou in it. If one has to become a
true self, it must often enter the world of relationship where persons meet as
I and Thou, and where there are mutual self-disclosure and fellowship.
The
interhuman relationship is one of the basic category of Buber. Relationships
occur strictly in the interpersonal of the
I and the Thou. The primary
reality in which humans achieves their real being is the interpersonal
relationship. The essence of human existence is rooted in one person’s turning
to another, as another, to communicate with each other. When two human beings
‘happen’ to one another, it cannot be sought neither in the subjective nor in
the objective sphere. It is a dimension which is accessible only to the two who
are engaged in the encounter. Reality is not within the individuals who enter
into relationship but between them.
Mundackal
claims that “The interhuman relationship means more than sympathy or a
psychological event such as a fraternal relationship between two men in their
work or the recollection of an absent comrade. By the sphere of interhuman,
Buber means what actually confronted by the other.” For Buber, interhuman relations are not primarily a
matter of feeling but that they’re not becoming an object for each other.
Buber criticizes two predominant errors of our times,
namely individualism and collectivism. “Individualism and collectivism
understands only a part of man. Individualism sees man only in relation to
himself and doesn’t advances to the wholeness of humans, and collectivism do
not see man at all; it sees only the society.”
Individualism considers the relationship as a
process that happens in the one and the other partner. According to
collectivism, it occurs in a general world which embraces both partners and all
other individuals. Individualism is an attempt to emphasize ones
self-sufficiency and independence by seeing another in relation to oneself. As
a result, it ignores the interpersonal aspect of a person and excludes
reciprocal relationship by reducing it to individuality. In individualism one
seeks for security from his exposed state of despair and dread and resorts to
glorifying his solitary state. The result is chaos, isolation and egocentrism. Humans
are called to accept ones isolation as the basic fact of human existence. For
the individual withdraws oneself, by cutting himself off from all others. Cut
off from every worthwhile relationship, one becomes lost in a void.
Collectivism is on the other end of the scale. The
process of collectivism begins as an exaggerated reaction against
individualism, as a struggle against the idealistic concepts of sovereign,
world-embracing, world-sustaining, world-creating I.
In collectivism, one feels as if he/she is carried by the collectivity which
lifts them out of the feeling of loneliness, lostness and fear of the world, and
ensures them of their safety and security which they long for. This is an
attempt to escape from despair, loneliness and responsibility by becoming engrossed
in the mass and group activities. Here one finds that they are incapable of a
direct relationship with the other. The individual desperately clings to
collectivity, and adapts itself to the will of the collective people and finds
security by accepting the code of behavior of the society.
A
state of liberation from individual isolation and faceless collectivism is
brought about only through personal encounter. In individualism, the person is
attacked by the ravages of the fictitious, for one has only an imaginary
mastery of his/her situation. In collectivism, the person surrenders oneself by
renouncing ones personal decision and responsibility. In both, the person is incapable
of breaking through the other. For there can be genuine relationship only
between genuine persons in community.
According to Buber, individualism lacks mutuality
and collectivism swallows the individual and one’s responsibility. He therefore
proposed genuine community as an alternative. Collectivism has a hold on the modern
society, which can be defeated only by the rebirth of the community, by a
richly structured society made up of free persons bound in reciprocal
relationship. The individual becomes self in personal encounter; one exists as
a person only in so far as one steps forth into living relationship with the
other person. Buber holds that a true community binds the relationships with
other members of the community that constitutes oneself as a self. True
personal being is fulfilled not in isolation but in community.
Buber understands community in a personalistic way
as involving reciprocal relationships between persons, rather than as a system
of external institutions. It is the goal and culmination of the I-Thou relationship. In the unity
between two persons can a person become aware and actualize ones unique self.
True community arises from the fact that people take their stand in a positive
and direct relationship to one another. A true community is a union of I’s and
Thou’s bound together in a cluster of interpersonal relationships and mutual
concern. Buber distinguishes true community from society which corresponds only
to collectivity. The members of a community, unlike that of a society, live in
communion with one another and constitute a living fellowship.
The life of humans finds its meaning and fulfillment
in a community of persons living in mutual personal relationships. It involves
direct and positive relationship among its members. Their interests are
heterocentric i.e., in others, and in themselves only for the sake of the
other. Vital dialogue is what makes a true community. It is the common
acknowledgement of selves and mutual bonds. Persons, while remaining free and
responsible, are mutually related in a community which means they are free and
self-responsible among themselves.
For Buber, a community is essentially religious in
nature. Because it requires the relationship to God as its living center, whose
manifest presence interpenetrates and transforms the members. The genuine
community arises not so much form the efforts of individuals to meet one
another as persons, but from their efforts to enter into a meaningful
relationship with the living, self-giving God.
“The extended lines of relationships intersect in the eternal Thou”
This chapter according to me is the crux of his work
“I and Thou”. This chapter speaks
about the two relationships the I-Thou
and I-It relationships. In inter
human relationships; reality is something which is between two individuals in a
relationship. Buber criticizes individualism
and collectivism as it is not capable of entering into a genuine relationship.
For this Buber gives a solution which is a genuine community where the
individuals can come together as a richly structured society made up of free
persons bound in reciprocal relationship who involve themselves in a direct and
positive relationship.
This
chapter deals with the meaning of reciprocity where we see that a reciprocal
relationship can never be an I-It
relationship it is always an I-Thou
relationship. Love is something beyond feelings. And it culminates in the
sacrament of marriage where ones Thou affects the others Thou in which they
participate, respond, reach out for the other in responsibility and give each
one its own freedom.
The
key to understand Buber’s philosophy of interpersonal relation is the notion of
reciprocity.
The context in which he posits the notion of reciprocity is the I-Thou relation itself, and he
introduces it in the first part of his famous work I and Thou.
There
is thus an initial equality of status between the one who addressed and the one
so addressed. Here the I-Thou
relation stands in such a sharp contrast to the subject-object relation
precisely because, as Buber describes it, the latter takes shape in some sense
before its terms, as “between” (zwischen). “Through
the Thou a man becomes I.”
The
idea of reciprocal interaction emerges in Buber’s writing out of his
consideration of the unique nature of the effects of the I and the Thou on each
other. This interaction was constructed as two identifiable, if not separate,
actions, ‘I-affecting-Thou and Thou-affecting-I.’ Buber sometimes expressed
this reciprocal interaction by means of sets of verbs in the active and passive
voices: “Relation means being chosen and choosing, suffering and action in one;
gazing and being gazed upon, knowing and being known, loving and being loved.”
Buber writes: “Relationship is mutual. My Thou acts
on me as I can act on him.”
“Reciprocity belongs to the very essence of the I–Thou relationship for without
it no relationship is possible. No I–Thou relationship can be complete without reciprocity.”
Relationship comes into being only in the reciprocal saying of the Thou; it is
on account of this that the I and the
Thou become partners in a
relationship.
Buber calls reciprocity the gate which leads us into
the presence of the world. A
one-sided demand fails to see the reciprocal conditioned nature of
relationship; the course of a relationship loses its meaning, if one partner
tries to impose oneself on the other. Everything one-sided contact would remain
only at the level of I–It relation.
Buber admits that there are many degrees in
mutuality and that many I–Thou
relationships, by their very nature, may never unfold into complete
reciprocity. But relationships are perfect, only if they are endowed with
complete mutuality.
It is in the I–Thou
relationship that one discover that each one is fundamentally equal, that everyone
has a unique value, and that in the encounter with the unique Thou, once own
existence is authenticated.
Buber says that the I and the Thou are the bearers of reciprocity whose reality
makes us to recognize mutual love. For love does not invalidate the I; on the
contrary, it binds the I more closely to the Thou. Thus love cannot be
conceived without reciprocity.
Buber presents love and marriage as the most basic
forms of I-Thou relationship. Love,
in its authentic sense, is the realizing of interpersonal relationship. It is
not just a matter of felling. Feeling occurs within person as a psychological
phenomenon. But love, as the full actualization of the I-Thou relationship, is concerned with the meeting. But if love is
only concerned with the feeling and not with the meeting than Buber says that,
one has misunderstood love. Humans have feelings, but love happens. Feelings dwell
in humans but humans dwells in ones love. It means that one’s individuality is
caught up in the influence of a lager relationship.
Love does not cling to an I as if the Thou were its object. Love
essentially belongs to the world of I-Thou
relationships which, in Buber’s view, is ontological, not psychological.
Real love can only be with one’s whole being and it
involves being wholly turned towards the other, the beloved, in the otherness,
uniqueness, equality and self-reality. Love without dialogue, without response
and responsibility, without reaching out to the others is not love.
Buber defines love as responsibility of an I for a Thou.
Feeling does not entail any responsibility for the other. But love involves
equality of the partners, from the smallest to the greatest. Thus love is
understood in its essential connection to the responsibility for the dialogic.
Every lover’s life is circumscribed by the life of the beloved. Love cannot be
genuine without being grounded in the I-Thou
relationship. But the dialogic cannot be identified with love. Love is an ontic
fact; it is always basically present in the dialogue in its content. Love is
the supreme instant of the dialectic force that sets us in contact with the
other. Love cannot exist without full freedom and entire participation. When
love remains with itself, without reaching out to the other, love is no longer
love.
The
word ‘love’ is often used on various and distorted sense. It manifests only a
relationship in appearance. Another distorted form of love is the erotic love
which, though it may take the mask of the dialogic, seeds only its own
satisfaction and use. The love of dialogue knows real otherness and implies
pure reciprocity. The lover and the beloved accept each other in their
singularity and confirm each other. Such love implies total acceptance, for in
genuine love one accepts the other wholly as he/she is.
Buber
conceives married love as the climax form of the I-Thou relationship and interhuman encounter. For it involves the
recognition and confirmation of each other’s uniqueness and it affords the
greatest degree of intimacy. The life of dialogue is excellently illustrated in
marriage which is a decisive union of one with another. In genuine love, the
partners receive the common event from both sides at once. In authentic married
relationship, one partner fully accepts the fact of the existence of the other.
The lover does not incorporate or assimilate the beloved into oneself or
attempt to restrict her/his freedom. He accepts the other totally and
faithfully and turns to the other in freedom. One
cannot pretend that the other does not exist. “That
is the basic principle of marriage and from this basis it leads to the insight
into and acknowledgement of right and the legitimacy of otherness.”
Freedom and
legitimacy are the basic principles that should govern the personal
relationship between man and woman. The unity of spirit and nature is realized
in marriage. Man and women who are open to each other share the Thou in each
other’s being. Marriage is a form of community in which both natural and
spiritual elements work together. The partners in marriage cannot escape real
confrontation, real engagement with each other. Buber says the only thing to do
is to prove oneself in it of fail in it.
According
to Buber, the marriage relationship is not one of feeling or Eros. Humans
appeal to Eros because they have forgotten the meaning of Agape. The lover, who
makes an object of the other, degrades the other by using the marriage partner
as a means to his/her gratification. Here one partner loves only oneself
through the other. One is not at all present to the other. The common phrase
‘object to love’ illustrates the erroneous attitude which is at the root of so
many unhappy, inhibited and unfulfilled marriages. In such degenerated love,
the partners do not meet each other as equals. The I-It attitude of use and experience prevails in it. True love and
marriages involve the revelation of the Thou to one another by two human
beings. Only thus can the marriage bond be renewed. Thus the Thou is at the
basis of marriage.
The lover does not say to the beloved, you are loved, but I love you. It is
“the metaphysical and metapsychical factor of love to which feelings of love
are mere additions.”
Feelings are important in marriage, but they do not constitute its essence.
Love may or may not include sexual attraction and may express itself in sexual
desire. But sexual desire is not love. Married love, therefore, must fall
within a real unity of two persons, within essential relationship.
Marriage
as a confirmation of otherness cannot guarantee us against pain, but must be nurtured
in faith. Love survives in a mutual trust of the benevolent partners. That
miraculous trust is fortified by our limitless yearning for perfect
companionship.
Reciprocity
belongs to the spirit of I-Thou relationships
without which relationships are impossible. Reciprocity is not something which
one can be a perfectionist in it because each one in a relationship has one’s
own strengths and weaknesses. If a relationship is one sided than it is an I-It relationship. Reciprocity is
impossible if one partner feels that he/she should be superior or have control
over the relationship. In a relationship both the partners must be able to
co-operate with each other and understand each ones faults and failures.
Love
is one of the most profound emotions known to human beings. And it is many times,
wrongly understood. Love is realizing the relationship with the other. And its
actualization is in the I-Thou
relationship. For intimate relationships to grow and become healthy and lasting
reciprocity is a must. In a loving relationship one must understand the other as
the person and not impose oneself on the other. The apex of the I-Thou relationship is seen in married
love.
The ‘I-Thou relationship’ theme is central to
Buber’s understanding of God. For Buber, God is the “Eternal Thou.” God is the only Thou which can never become an It. This chapter talks about the
relationship that God holds towards the other. Human relationships may have a
utilitarian element and treat the other as an It, whereas for God it is a
genuine relationship with the other; God cannot be used as a means towards an
end.
For Buber, God is the eternal Thou whom man meets in the true life of dialogue. The term ‘eternal
Thou’ is not a substitute for the word ‘God’ but it is the clarification of the
term ‘God’. The inborn Thou is expressed and realized in each
relation, but it is consummated only in the direct relation with the eternal Thou.
Behind every single Thou whom we meet
in the world, there is the eternal Thou who
is the ground of all I-Thou encounters.
We address the eternal Thou in each Thou we encounter. In every genuine
relational event, the eternal Thou is
present. Buber explains:
The eternal Thou can by its nature never become It; for by it cannot be established in
measure and bounds, not even in the measure of the immeasurable, or the bounds
of boundless being; for by its nature it cannot be understood as a sum of
qualities, not even as an infinite sum of qualities raised to a transcendental
level; for it can be found neither in nor out of the world; for it cannot be
experienced, or though; for we miss Him, Him who is, if we say ‘I believe that
He is’ – ‘He’ is also a metaphor, but ‘Thou’
is not.
The eternal Thou by its nature can never become It. Thou is not just a matter of our
attitude. Thou is a perfection, not of our side of the relation alone, but of
the other as well. Just as the self can become itself only through the gift of
the other, likewise the other can become itself only through the gift of the
self.
This Thou is
met by every man who addresses God by any name whatever, for he is present in
all meetings, underlying them, making them possible, gathering them up and
fulfilling them.
Every finite Thou points beyond
itself to the eternal Thou. Buber
thinks that it is only in our existence as persons, in our encounter with the
finite Thou’s that we meet the eternal Thou.
The eternal Thou can’t be sought but
can only be encountered.
Every Thou is
a pointer to the eternal Thou; by
means of every particular Thou the primary
word addresses the eternal Thou. Men
address the eternal Thou with many
names. Later the names took refuge in the language of It: men were more and more moved to think of and to address their
eternal Thou as an It. But all God’s names are holy, for in
them He is not merely spoken about, but also spoken to.
Buber in the final section of I and thou,
clarifies the I-Thou relationship
between God and man as the primary reality of dialogue. The central
significance of the close association of man’s relationship with God to his
relationship with his fellowmen.
Buber says that both relationships are essentially similar since both signify
the direct turning of an I to a Thou and
both find their fulfillment in actual reciprocity.
Every real relation with a being in the world is
exclusive. As long as the presence of the relation continues, the cosmic range
is inviolable. But as soon as the Thou
becomes It, the cosmic range of the
relation appears as an offence to the world, its exclusiveness as an exclusion
of the universe.
Unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional
inclusiveness are one in God. One who enters in relation with the absolute is
concerned with nothing isolated, neither things nor beings, neither earth nor
heaven: but for one everything is gathered up in the relation. To step into
pure relation is not to disregard everything but to see everything in the light
of Thou. God
can be met in and through the world, but He can’t be sought or inferred. He
cannot be sought because He is to be found everywhere. Rejecting
the world does not help people to reach God; but one who sees the world in Him
stand in His presence. God is ‘wholly other and He is also wholly the same, the
wholly present.’ He is the Mysterium
Tremendum but He is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than
my I.
Buber calls the living encounter with the Absolute
the pure relationship. This happens when we ourselves let our being open to the
unconditional mystery which we encounter in every sphere of our life.
The Holy is not a separate and secluded sphere of being. It is open to all
spheres of being and it is that through which they find their fulfillment.
By entering into the I-Thou relationship
with everything that confronts us, we are encountering Being itself as a
presence, the eternal Thou himself,
whose presence irradiates all spheres of reality. Since the eternal Thou is manifested in them, one
addresses the eternal Thou in saying Thou to any of the spheres.
The God-man dialogue has two sides. Man knows only his
own side of this dialogue. He cannot understand the other side, but he can find
the signs of the Absolute in the existence of the others. Man meets the eternal
Thou in and through the world and his
fellowman. According to Buber, the world and the life in the world is not an
obstacle on the way to God but the way itself. Nothing separates us from God,
it is through the world we enter into relationship with God. Man cannot truly
communicate with God unless he communicates with the other. God’s encounter with
man is never apart from man’s dialogical relationship with his fellowman. Our
relationship with the eternal Thou
begins in our earthly relationships, in our humble devotion and service to man.
By this Buber doesn’t disregard the direct relationship to God. He wants to highlight
that the essential relationship to God finds its complement in the essential
relationship to man.
God cannot be grasped by our senses he can only be
met in the life of dialogue. God is the eternal Thou, where man meets Him
in the meeting. 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.
This meeting is possible by not running away from the world but by living with
the creation that He has created and by communicating with the other beings.
The eternal Thou can’t be sought but
can only be encountered.
As I read
the philosophy of Martin Buber I partially understood the significance of human
relationships. It came to me as a realization that one can’t know a
relationship fully because it is a mystery and a mystery can’t be known fully
but it can only be lived. Our whole life begins with a relationship where we
are born into a family after which we spread our relationships with all the
people whom we meet. To be is to be related. Everything in this world is being
with the other. This world is a wholly intertwined connection of beings.
With the
advancement of science and technology we can see that the person is becoming
‘I’ centered and treats others as objects, whereas Buber thinks of the other as
a subject and not an object. In today’s world we see each one is concerned
about oneself and at the most concerned about one’s own close friends and
family. Buber thoroughly criticizes individualism and collectivism and speaks
of living in a genuine community where there is love, peace and harmony among
others. As I thought about this, it dawned on me that individualism is like
atheist and collectivism is like the Marxist regime.
The
I-It relationships and the I-Thou
relationships are inter related. We as humans move from I-It
relationships to I-Thou relationships and
vice-versa. Our world is a world of opposites. If we had never known what an I-It
relationship was, we would have not known what an I-Thou
relationship is. It is only when we make this connection we realize that both
are required to live in this world. One cannot totally be forgotten. It’s
because of both these relationships there is rise and fall in this world in
keeping with our finite world. We are called to be perfect but none can be in
this world but we always strive to be perfect and in this process we will
surely fall into one of the either relationships. And this is brings beauty in
human relationships. I am convinced that humans can’t live in isolation but we
require the other to help us to increase in the perfections God has given us.
Also, God is an important being in the formation of relationships without which
we would have not come to know about I-Thou
relationships because he is the cause of I-Thou
relationships.
I would
like to end my dissertation under the wisdom of Martin Buber by saying it’s
only because of the I-Thou
relationships this world is in potency and moving to the final act the ‘Eternal-Thou’.
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Otherness and Being Oneself. New Delhi: Intercultural
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Tomy Paul Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness
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Francis J. Lescoe, Existentialism with or
without God (New York: Alba House, 1974) 135.
Padstow Cornwall, “Martin Buber,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 9, gen. ed. Edward Craig (London:
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Maurice Friedman, The Life of Dialogue,
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