On Feb. 1 we up again with previous guest and PEL blogger (and Twitter/YouTube master) Daniel Horne to discuss Martin Buber. Listen to the episode. Buber is known as a religious existentialist, much like Kierkegaard, which means he's concerned with our fundamental relation to reality, and thinks that our individual attitude has some impact on our being, on whether we're living "authentically" or not.
For Buber, this means recognizing the fundamental orientation or experience as interpersonal, and specifically one-on-one. As with Hegel, we don't start out as fully formed egos, little balls of greed with desires and maybe rights, but in sort of a formless mass with the rest of humanity, just a part of nature. We don't get self-consciousness, or real personhood, until we're recognized by another. But while Hegel's picture of this is of a life-or-death struggle between master and slave, Buber thinks it's a matter of love, of connecting with someone so that their subjectivity "fills the sky," so that all the rest of the world you see (metaphorically) through their eyes or, better yet, in their light. Through this process I see myself: this is how the "I" is formed.
Buber thinks that these I-You experiences ("Thou" is just a bad translation; the "You" in German is "Du" which is familiar, intimate, without the archaic overtones that "Thou" has in English) are fleeting. As soon as I stop connecting with you and start to see you as an individual person, contrasted with other individual people, and thinking about your particular qualities, then I've made you into an "It" instead of a "You." So once we have self-consciousness, then we have I-It relations, which includes the whole of science and reason. I-You is the primal relation, like Quality for Pirsig or the primacy of perception for Merleau-Ponty. Buber was very familiar with Eastern traditions as well, so while he denies that it's mystical, it does sound Taoist.
So this human relation is epistemically primary, a necessary grounding for science (something like this seems the primary lesson from phenomenology like Merleau-Ponty's). It also has ethical implications, with its echoes of Kant's doctrine that we not treat people as means, but only as ends in themselves. But it's not a matter of reasoning out ethical rules, and Buber despite being known as a Jewish thinker eschewed the rule-based aspect of Judaism and wanted to create a simpler, more common-sense version of it made primary our personal relationship with God. Much as for Schleiermacher, for Buber, scripture is something inspired by the same kind of religious feeling that we all have access to, and we should engage in dialogue with it instead of tried to read it as making literal, binding factual and moral claims. The I-You relationship is the template for our relationship with God, Buber says: through every You we experience the Eternal You. This even applies to atheists (from p. 76):
But when he, too, who abhors the name, and believes himself to be godless, gives his whole being to addressing the Thou of his life, as a Thou that cannot be limited by another, he addresses God.
The upshot is a call to be spiritual and centered, embracing this world, not the otherworldly, acting ethically through awareness of the constant presence of God. Though this might sound like Spinoza's view of God as all the universe, the important element is again, we can have a personal relationship with this.
So this is where it gets tricky. The Hegelian doctrine of self is common to a number of thinkers in this tradition, but for Buber, it's not just other people that we can have the I-Thou experience with, but scenes of nature, or works of art, particularly ones that we're making at the time. So apparently the real reaction of the think we're relating to isn't essential, which brings up the question of what's even required when we're with other people: Buber makes it clear that the teacher-student or psychotherapist-patient relationship can also be personal and healing in this way, but in those cases, the healed most assuredly is not taking up the position of the healer. Add to this that some of Buber's examples (given through other works; I and Thou came fairly early in his career and he spent some time trying to explain it through other works, even though he felt himself to have produced the original in a kind of spiritual inspiration and didn't want to edit it to clarify things) of I-Thou are meeting eyes with across a crowded room or sitting next to someone at a bus stop without talking, and Buber has introduced a lot of room for us to be deceived and self-indulgent in merely thinking that we've had such an experience.
However, as a phenomenologist, Buber can't really allow the question in of whether we could be deceived, and so even the existence of God becomes not something amenable to evidence or really an objective matter at all. However, he insists that it's not subjective either; the place that this phenomena occurs is before there is such a distinction to be made, before there is a subject which is then experiencing the world. All that latter talk is within the realm of the I-It, and it's current society's near-total obsession with that perspective that makes us so spiritually poor and politically and morally messed up.
or 
I’m very excited about this episode (now that I’m caught up). I’m very interested in existentialism. I wish I was familiar with this text and had some input to share. I don’t. I am curious about the Taoist-ishness of it as I have always felt a lot of connection between (at least certain flavors of) existentialism and Taoism (and stoicism for that matter) and I hope that there is some mention or elaboration of why Buber sounds that way to you in the actual episode.
Good luck tonight.
-Nate Johnson
p.s. I hope you guys can do Man’s Search for Meaning one day.
is there some theme in Frankl that you don’t find in the existentialist philosophers that have been previously covered here?
Well, MSFM isn’t the typical philosophical text, even by Existentialisms standards, so in that sense, at the very least, I think it brings something to the table that the previously covered works don’t. To me, it’s more of a practical book by intention, than a philosophical text, the first two thirds being memoir. It focuses more on some more-or-less stoic ideas that don’t seem to come up in the other texts the podcast has covered. It’s a lot less interested in authenticity and more with freedom, for instance. Also, given Wes’s interest/knowledge in psychoanalysis, I’m very interested in hearing any views he has on Logotherapy as a practice.
Hi Nate,
We didn’t get a chance to hit upon Buber’s early study of Taoism much at all. or at least, not in the ways you might understandably like to have it addressed. On reflection, I might have found I and Thou less frustrating upon adopting a Taoist sensibility.
I would direct you to this article, which covers the issue in more depth:
http://bit.ly/UTdNXy
late to the party here, Buber is one of many modern figures who takes context and specificity so seriously that it becomes hard to continue classical modes of systematic philosophy and so a turn to philosophical anthropology starts to emerge, but he can’t quite let go of a sort of neo-Kantian desire for ethical imperatives/foundations and it might at some point be worth looking at whether Sartre was right that existentialism should be a humanism or if Heidegger was right that this kind of “mere” anthropology is a symptom of a Fall. This came up again not too long ago in Richard Rorty’s critique of Derrida’s “quasi-transcendentalism” and the question of whether on not there are Concepts (like Justice) apart from human doings.
I’m looking forward to this episode. I’m big on Thomas Merton and he often refers to “I and Thou,” arguing that our Western concept of the Eastern traditions meaning of the self, had been misunderstood and we mistake the meaning of person to be personality.
Similar to Buber he speaks of that which is inmost centered and the “apex” or “spark” different from Plotinus “alone with the Alone.” The spark for Merton is that which is the true self, the Absolute recognizing itself. In his book Love and Living he states, “Then it is seen that the ego is not. It vanishes in its non-seeing when the flash of the spark alone is. When all things are reduced to the spark, who sees it? Who knows it? If you say “God” you are destroyed; and if you say no one, you will plunge into hell; and if you say I, you prove you are not even in the ballgame” (pg10).
I understand this to be the unity or harmony with one’s self and others. To deny this is to deny not only his existence but the existence of others. In this context is how I understand the meaning of his statement “plunge into hell” but that’s my take at present. I see many similarities between the thoughts of Buber and Merton, looking forward to learning more as you wrestle this Buber’s, I and Thou!
how do you make the shift there from Merton talking about the individual and his God to unity/harmony between self and others? Protestant neo-Kantian existentialist ideas like those of Paul Tillich are probably closer to Buber than Catholic ideas around suffering and self-denial.
That’s a great question. Like Tillich, Merton was influence by Eastern philosophy and thought it was mostly untainted by the Cartesian dualistic philosophy of the mind. I’m not sure what you mean by Catholic ideas around suffering and self-denial. To be sure, there are different ways Catholicism has wrestled with what the individual or self is and what it means to be human throughout its history starting with the rejection of Docetism.
In terms of contemporary thinking, there are different ways Christianity mediates answers for the individual Christian. I think Merton was a synthesists, Tillich an accommodationist; could be a difference in the way they framed ideas and why you mention, but I’m unclear because Tillich and Merton shared common thinking on “the ground of being” or Absolute transcending human certainty — a little humor there. (I’m wrestling with Berkeleyan idealism and immaterialism!)
Picking-up on Buber, feel free if I have botched this reading up. I understand Buber to be saying one’s relation to God frames one’s relation to the other, not subjective or objective, but dynamic. However, as soon as one objectifies God (Thou becomes It) one objectifies the other. When an individual (I) is in relation to God (Thou) one will be in relation with an individual not “the other.” This seems similar to the philosophical thought that the Toa is not a thing (similar to Buber’s It) but is wu-wei, a flow in endless flux and change, similar to Zen and running thread Merton’s writing.
thanks for fleshing that out some, I guess the difference is that I don’t see where Merton was a “synthesist” in his theology and the denial (even death) of the self is deep in the Catholic mystical idea(l)s around being available to God (see for example Meister Eckhart and of course St.Paul). A more psychological/relationally minded perspective could possibly be found in someone like Henri Nouwen.
Henri Nouwen – haven’t heard his name mentioned in a while. I think his writing is more frank or one-on-one (personal), sharing his own experience of pain and suffering with the reader. It seems to me Nouwen wrestled with a life of solitude where Merton welcomed it. I would image that would have much to do with the different kinds of ministries both men had. Merton was more a cultural critic of Catholicism and capitalism, whereas Nouwen focused on life within the church and not so much outside the church. Is that the impression you have?
It’s interesting you mention, “psychological/relational minded” because Erich Fromm and Merton were very close. He went to great lengths criticizing suffering imposed due to an inhuman concept of love [paraphrasing], “let us not say they were sanctified by this concept, but in spite of it.” Um…you don’t see Merton as a synthesists…I don’t know, but appreciate your take!
my sense is that the difference was more about their personalities/experiences than their vocations, to my earlier point Merton didn’t seem to enjoy much in the way of close relationships/community, can I ask where you do find Merton synthesizing something alien to Catholicism in his theology?
I agree with you their experiences and personalities were very different but they had some things in common – Trappist monks, Nouwen lived with Peruvian people, and Cesar Vallejo was one of Merton’s favorite poets.
In attempting to answer your question, Merton criticized the Cargo Cult mentality, in that, he felt modern technologies weren’t utilized as a good for social justice or symbol of western diplomatic relations being pro humanity, but rather to control a peoples’ humanity.
A lens in religious studies is the phenomenological approach. The Sinic civilization of China through the expression of Confucian, Taoism, and Shintoism share a synthesists worldview, if I’m not mistaken. That said, Merton being influenced by D.T. Suzuki bridged (synthesized?) the west and east in his book Mystics and Zen Masters. That was big because until Merton there was no dialogue between Catholicism and eastern religions. His complaint was Catholicism hushed mysticism or religious experience; asceticism is a different story. Does this answer your question?
you said: “Thou” is just a bad translation; the “You” in German is “Du” which is familiar, intimate, without the archaic overtones that “Thou” has in English
in fact, “thou” is often still used (along with “thee”, “thine” etc) as the familiar form on “you” in some places in the north of England
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/25288/in-what-region-is-thou-etc-used-in-dialect
–R.
Hi Rinky,
To be fair, it wasn’t just Mark, but also the translator of I and Thou‘s second edition, Walter Kaufmann, who thought “Thou” was a poor translation for “Du”.
Perhaps using “Thou” is not so strange in parts of Yorkshire, but anywhere else in the Anglophone world, its use sounds rarefied and archaic. That’s simply not what Buber was striving for. Kaufmann thought about changing the title of the translated book itself to read I and You, but apparently that would have created problems with the publisher. (They thought Kaufmann’s edition might come across as a sequel, and not simply a new translation). Thus, he left the title as I and Thou, but then used “You” throughout the rest of the book.
That’s only because the rest of us English speakers have stopped using the friendly form (except perhaps for God!) – modern English speakers, with the exception of Yorkshiremen, have no friends, linguistically! “Thou”, “thee” and the rest are our English cognates of “du”, “dich” etc. I quite like that the translation uses them.
I was taught that is why old time Quakers (and maybe Amish?) used thou and thee… that is was a more personal version of you…so makes sense that it might still be heard in parts of England