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.

CHAPTER ONE

LIFE OF MARTIN BUBER

1.0 Introduction

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.

1.1 Early Life

Martin Mordechai Buber, the 20^th century Jewish philosopher, was born at Vienna in 1878. His house oversaw Danube River.[1] 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.[2]

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.[3] 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.[4]

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.[5]

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.[6] At the age of 14 Buber left his grandparents’ home and went to live with his father who had remarried and settled in Lemberg.[7]

1.2 Youthful years till Death.

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.[8] 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.[9]

1.3 The Birth of I and Thou Theory.

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.[10]

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.[11]

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.[12]

1.4 Religion

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.[13] 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.[14]

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.[15]

1.4.1 Zionism

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.[16] 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.[17]

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.[18]

1.4.2 Hasidism

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.[19]

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.[20] 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.[21]

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.[22]

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.[23]

1.5 Conclusion

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).

CHAPTER TWO

ENCOUNTER

2.0 Introduction

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.

2.1 Two Fold Nature of Encounter

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.[24] It represents man’s authentic and inauthentic attitude towards the world.[25] Buber calls these fundamental postures the I-Thou and I-It attitudes.[26] 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.[27]

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.[28] “Primary words do not describe something that might exist independently of them, but being spoken they bring about existence.”[29] 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.[30] 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.[31]

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.[32] 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.[33]

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.[34] The characteristics of individuality are self-differentiation and appropriation which are proper to the It-world.[35]

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.[36] 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.[37] 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.[38]

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.[39]

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.[40] 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.[41]

The I-Thou relationship, on the contrary, is “fulfilled not in the soul but between I and Thou.”[42] 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.[43]

2.1.1 The I-Thou 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.[44]

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.[45]

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.[46] Hence Buber says the goal of relationship is relationship itself.[47] This is a miraculous event that happens in our everyday life in our personal encounter with the other.[48]

2.1.2 The I-It Relationship

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.[49] 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.[50]

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.[51]

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.[52] 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.[53] The world of experience and use is a problem for the human being to live the life of the spirit.[54]

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.[55]

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.[56] The It-world is set in the context of space and time.[57] 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.[58] 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.[59]

2.2 Inter Human Relationship

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.[60]

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.”[61] For Buber, interhuman relations are not primarily a matter of feeling but that they’re not becoming an object for each other.[62]

2.2.1 Individualism and Collectivism

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.”[63]

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.[64]

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.[65] 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.[66]

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.[67]

2.2.2 Genuine 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.[68]

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.[69]

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.[70]

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.[71] “The extended lines of relationships intersect in the eternal Thou”[72]

2.3 Conclusion

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.

CHAPTER THREE

RECIPROCITY

3.0 Introduction

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.

3.1 Meaning of Reciprocity

The key to understand Buber’s philosophy of interpersonal relation is the notion of reciprocity.[73] 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.[74]

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).[75] “Through the Thou a man becomes I.”[76]

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.” [77]

Buber writes: “Relationship is mutual. My Thou acts on me as I can act on him.”[78] “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.”[79] 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.[80]

Buber calls reciprocity the gate which leads us into the presence of the world.[81] 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.[82]

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.[83]

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.[84] 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.[85]

3.2 Love

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.[86] Love does not cling to an I as if the Thou were its object.[87] Love essentially belongs to the world of I-Thou relationships which, in Buber’s view, is ontological, not psychological.[88]

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.[89] Buber defines love as responsibility of an I for a Thou.[90] 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.[91]

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.[92]

3.2.1 Married Love

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.[93] One cannot pretend that the other does not exist.[94] “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.”[95]

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.[96]

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.[97] 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.”[98] 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.[99]

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.[100]

3.3 Conclusion

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.

CHAPTER FOUR

GOD: THE ETERNAL THOU

4.0 Introduction

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.

4.1 The Eternal Thou

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’.[101] The inborn Thou is expressed and realized in each relation, but it is consummated only in the direct relation with the eternal Thou.[102] 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.[103] 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.[104]

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.[105]

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.[106] 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.[107]

4.2 God man dialogue

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.[108]

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.[109] 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.[110]

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.[111] 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.[112] 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.[113]

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.[114] 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.[115] 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.[116]

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.[117]

4.3 Conclusion

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.[118] 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.

CONCLUSION

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’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Wiltshire: Cromwell Press, 1999.

Buber, Martin. Between Man and God. London: Collins Clear-Type Press, 1947.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Friedman, Maurice S. Martin Buber and the Eternal. New York: Human Sciences Press, 1986.

Friedman, Maurice S. Martin Buber’s Life and Work. London: Search Press, 1982.

Friedman, Maurice S. The Life of Dialogue. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1976.

Kakkattuthadathil, Tomy Paul. Otherness and Being Oneself. New Delhi: Intercultural

Publications, 2001.

Lescoe, Francis J. Existentialism with or without God. New York: Alba House, 1974.

Mundackal, James. Man in Dialogue. Kerela: Little Flowers Study House, 1977.

Schilpp, Paul and Maurice Friedman, ed. The Philosophy of Martin Buber in The library of living Philosophers, Vol 12: La Salle: Open Court, 1967.

Vermes, Pamela. Buber on the God and the Perfect Man. United States of America: Scholars Press, 1980.

Cornwall, Padstow. “Martin Buber,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 9, Edward Craig (gen. ed.), London: Routledge, 1998.

INTERNET SOURCES

“I and Thou,” http://www.sparksnotes.com/philosophy/iandthou/summary.html, 13/7/2016.

[1] Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work (London: Search Press, 1982) 3.

[2] Tomy Paul Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself (New Delhi: Intercultural Publications, 2001) xxiv.

[3] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself xxiv.

[4] Francis J. Lescoe, Existentialism with or without God (New York: Alba House, 1974) 135.

[5] Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 8.

[6] Paul Schilpp and Maurice Friedman (eds.) The Philosophy of Martin Buber in The library of living Philosophers, Vol 12, (La Salle, Open Court, 1967) 5.

[7] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, xxiv.

[8] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, xxiv- xxvi.

[9] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, xxvi.

[10] “I and Thou,” http://www.sparksnotes.com/philosophy/iandthou/summary.html, 13/7/2016.

[11] “I and Thou,”

[12] “I and Thou,”

[13] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, 15.

[14] Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Robert Gregor Smith (London: The Fountain Library Theology & Philosophy, 1974) 30-31.

[15] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, 16.

[16] Padstow Cornwall, “Martin Buber,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 9, gen. ed. Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998) 867.

[17] “Martin Buber,” in Britannica Encyclopedia, Vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1979) 359.

[18] “Martin Buber,” in Britannica Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1979) 359.

[19] Maurice Friedman, The Life of Dialogue, (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1976) 16.

[20] Friedman, The Life of Dialogue, 16-17.

[21] Friedman, The Life of Dialogue, 22.

[22] Friedman, The Life of Dialogue, 22-23.

[23] Maurice Friedman, The life of Dialogue, 16.

[24] Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958) 15.

[25] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, 117.

[26] Buber, I and Thou, 15.

[27] Buber, I and Thou, 15.

[28] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, 118.

[29] Buber, I and Thou, 15.

[30] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, 119.

[31] Buber, I and Thou, 50.

[32] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, 119.

[33] Buber, I and Thou, 86.

[34] Buber, I and Thou, 87.

[35] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, 120.

[36] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, 120.

[37] Buber, I and Thou, 85.

[38] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, 120.

[39] James Mundackal, Man in dialogue, (Alwaye: Little Flower Study House, 1977) 76-77.

[40] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 77.

[41] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 77-78.

[42] Buber, I and Thou, 106.

[43] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 80.

[44] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 104.

[45] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 105-106.

[46] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 106.

[47] Buber, I and Thou, 85.

[48] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 106.

[49] Buber, I and Thou, 56.

[50] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 88.

[51] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 90.

[52] Buber, I and Thou, 26.

[53] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 90.

[54] Buber, I and Thou, 57.

[55] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 91.

[56] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 92.

[57] Buber, I and Thou, 50.

[58] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 93.

[59] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 96.

[60] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 134-135.

[61] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 137.

[62] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, 153.

[63] Buber, Between Man and Man, 200, 202.

[64] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 191.

[65] Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, 105.

[66] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 191.

[67] Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, 243.

[68] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 196-197.

[69] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 197.

[70] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 198-199.

[71] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 201-202.

[72] Buber, I and Thou, 99.

[73] The word reciprocity means also mutuality for Buber.

[74] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, 177.

[75] Kakkattuthadathil, Otherness and Being Oneself, 178.

[76] Buber, I and Thou, 44.

[77] Buber, I and Thou, 76, 103.

[78] Buber, I and Thou, 30.

[79] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 123.

[80] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 123.

[81] Buber, I and Thou, 131.

[82] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 123.

[83] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 123-124.

[84] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 124.

[85] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 125.

[86] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 208.

[87] Buber, I and Thou, 28.

[88] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 208.

[89] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 209.

[90] Buber, I and Thou, 29.

[91] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 209.

[92] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 209 – 210.

[93] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 210-211.

[94] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 211.

[95] Buber, Between Man and Man, 84.

[96] Buber, Between Man and Man, 83.

[97] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 211.

[98] Buber, I and Thou, 65.

[99] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 211- 212.

[100] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 212.

[101] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 220.

[102] Friedman, The Life of Dialogue, 70.

[103] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 220-221.

[104] Buber, I and Thou, 143.

[105] Robert E. Wood, Martin Buber’s Ontology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969) 99.

[106] Buber, I and Thou, 99-100.

[107] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 221-222.

[108] Buber, I and Thou, 99.

[109] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 225.

[110] Buber, I and Thou, 103.

[111] Buber, I and Thou, 103- 104.

[112] Wood, Martin Buber’s Ontology, 91.

[113] Buber, I and Thou, 103-104.

[114] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 225.

[115] Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber and the Eternal, (New York: Human Science Press, 1986) 19.

[116] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 225-226.

[117] Mundackal, Man in dialogue, 227-228.

[118] Buber, I and Thou, 147.

The Gift

Friday, 3 March 2017

HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS ACCORDING TO MARTIN BUBER. MY PAPER WORK...