"Dialogue: in between man and man" by Martin Buber,1955

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scholar, theologian and philosopher, Martin Buber is one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers. He believed that the deepest reality of human life lies in the relationship between one being and another. Between Man and Man is the classic work where he puts this belief into practice, applying it to the concrete problems of contemporary society. Here he tackles subjects as varied as religious ethics, social philosophy, marriage, education, psychology and art. Including some of his most famous writings, such as the masterful What is Man?, this enlightening work challenges each reader to reassess their encounter with the world that surrounds them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes on,
Why Ignorance is Bliss
Martin Brodsky
COMM 3210: Human Communication Theory
University of Colorado at Boulder
.
Academia is forever in paradox. The very subjects we seek to explore are not only diminished, but become tainted by our presence, until the ultimate goal of complete definition has been fulfilled. The very word define, or de fine, literally means to kill; and as we break apart the intricacies of the beautifully complex world in which we live, the possibility of putting it back together in harmony moves further from our grasp.
.
This is not to say that looking deeper than the façade is inherently harmful, for knowing these intricacies contains a beauty within itself—however, the relationship will be eternally transformed. Considering I stand waste deep in this academic quandary, I figure I might as well go deeper into this implication (along with several others whom have begun to tackle the dilemma at stake).
.
The basis upon which this analysis speaks finds its roots within Martin Buber’s theory of dialogue, which itself is a mere sprig off the phenomenological tradition of communication. Buber (1955) sought out genuine dialogue, in other words, authentic conversation that considers "the other in their present and particular being and turns to them with the intention of establishing a living mutual relation between himself and them." Though dense, this makes perfect sense, as what most would consider a ‘healthy’ relationship entails complete respect for the other—as they come—with the hope of fostering that bond into the future. But simultaneously, the difference encountered should not be embedded into your being, but rather be appreciated as an alternative lens with which the world can be viewed. Genuine dialogue stands in contrast with the idea of monologue, which encompasses those interactions where the other is of no importance: although speaking with another, there is no real interest in seeing, let alone appreciating, their unique lens on the world. The man who exemplifies "the life of monologue…is incapable of being ‘real’ in the context of the community in which he moves;" a sophisticated way of suggesting that artificiality in character makes it unfeasible to be truly connected with others (Buber, 1955).
.
The paradox of Buber’s genuine dialogue, parallel to our greater academic paradox, is that once one becomes aware that genuine dialogue is occurring, the authenticity ceases to exist. True dialogue is indeed distinguished by its momentary nature—though accepting and embracing its fleeting lifestyle heightens the significance when it does occur. So to seek out genuine dialogue is to embark on an impossible journey; it simply must appear. Similarly, the quest for knowledge can be viewed in the same light.
.
Awareness comes in varying degrees, in regards to your surroundings: at the extreme end one can be aware to a fault. Of course, knowing the proximity is overwhelmingly beneficial—problems seem to arise when you become meta-aware, or aware that you are overly aware of the surroundings. It is much better to take in what the world has to offer without being conscious of the fact that you are doing so. Obviously, the body is constantly processing sensory information—but it should be treated as our ever-beating heart, and ever-breathing lungs are—it should not be of the utmost concern. And this applies directly to the idea of genuine dialogue, and more specifically the medium in which dialogue exists—language. Echoing Buber, Hans-Georg Gadamer (1977) reflects, "the more language is a living operation, the less we are aware of it" (p.65). The cycle is perfect. The more Buber’s definition of genuine dialogue is fulfilled, the less aware those engaging in the actual dialogue should become.
.
I would like to apply this thought process to how one experiences the world, which includes the scope of academia as well (though highly specified in a particular area). I believe a dialogue exists, even when there is no sentient being to respond directly—although, many times an experience evokes an internal dialogue that otherwise would not exist. Dialogue resides within the soul, and those who "live the life of dialogue receive…something that is said, and feel approached for an answer…even in the vast blankness of, say, a companionless mountain wandering" (Buber, 1955). These interactions should be felt, as Professor Robert T. Craig stated, "viscerally," meaning they should not require retrospective contemplation to be understood; rather, the emotions aroused at the time of interaction encompass all the understanding necessary. Over-analyzing these visceral experiences fundamentally alters them within one’s mind. To see first-hand the negative effect of meta-awareness, we need not look farther than Mark Twain and his time spent on the Mississippi River: "after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the river, he discovered that it had lost it’s beauty—…when analytic thought is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process" (Pirsig, 1974, p.77). This is the curse of the scholar, or more generally, anyone seeking expertise; for, proficiency comes at the loss of an initial holistic beauty—the first impression—which in truth has only one chance to ingrain itself within a virgin mind. That initial exposure allows the subject to be placed at any point within that individual’s schemata; and further experience can only slightly amend that rooting. In the beginning, a fertile plant can only germinate in the limited area which it has been exposed to, but once it has sprouted it can lean towards the sunlight that provides further life—but it cannot relocate from that initial residence.
.
All too often, especially in our society, it seems as if the end is enough to justify the means. But in truth, the ultimate end can never really be determined, for all relationships are eternal. It may seem counter-intuitive, but even in death the context in which two persons relate is always changing; while the persons themselves may remain constant, the context in which they reside is fluid. So for an academic to set out to prove a static hypothesis is simply an arbitrary goal, because "the more you look, the more you see"—with each step towards the original hypothesis, more trail-heads become evident, leading to pathways which may have been unconceivable at the onset (Pirsig, 1974, p.109). Furthermore, one cannot say which of these alternative routes suits them best until they are at the doorstep of such. Even Buber (1955) concurs, that "out of the incomprehensibility of what lies at hand…one [path] steps forth and becomes a presence." To have a predetermined path, or intellectual itinerary, is to suppress the unknown possibility of the expansion of the mind. Once an endeavor becomes the primary focus of someone "it is no longer the will of the individual person, holding back or exposing itself, that is determinative. Rather, the law of the subject matter is at issue in the dialogue," guiding the footsteps of the journeyman himself (Gadamer, 1977, p.66). To free yourself of all inhibitions comes closest to being a guide to achieving genuine dialogue. If all dialogue became unconfined in this way, surely the amount of authenticity would increase. To be rigid and unchanging in direction prevents one to wander, in a mental sense, stopping the trails of thought from weaving around in their natural flow. Genuine dialogue occurs when the different walks of life we all stroll parallel one another, as brief as it may be; and though a rigid path can, and will, bring you along side another, the frequency will be much greater if that predetermined path is cast off.
.
Certainly, these thoughts will draw criticism—no doubt most attentively from academics themselves. The dialogic and academic paradox is footed in the fact that any deep analysis sharply contrasts the thesis presented in this paper, which itself is in complete contradiction of the very thesis contained within. However, this thesis is in no way perfect or complete. To continue Robert Pirsig’s (1974) thoughts on the analysis of experience, indeed "something is always killed. But what is less noticed—something is always created too…and it’s important also to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is" (p.77). Both academia, and the knowledge contained within, have always been a trademark of human-kind’s intelligence. They turn mysticism into rationality, continuously objectifying the world in which we can never know completely. And positively, reflection and deep contemplation have their place; nothing which we are familiar with today would exist without them. Moreover, there are times when the path should not be set free: to wander covers a great deal of ground, but it may not progress nearly as far forward as a singular trail. Those that have gone forth on these forward-oriented trails have brought back knowledge that, now, can be areas to wander for those who choose. Not to mention, it would be extremely presumptuous to say these innovators did not wander into their field of passion. No doubt: exploration, discovery, and invention have perpetuated our species to the place we currently reside, but the question still remains—have we made any ‘real’ progress? Are we any ‘smarter’ than during the eons where man and nature lived harmoniously as one (even if those times did rely on fanciful tales of creation)? These questions stand, and will forever be clinging to the coat-tails of the ones moving into the places that have yet to be journeyed to. It is an insatiable human desire.
.
Martin Buber (1955) blazed a trail with his research, and his work opened a door that had previously been locked, but ultimately he found himself deep within the nucleus of this paradox, as the harmony of genuine dialogue within may have never been realized: "the basic unity of my own soul is certainly beyond reach of all the multiplicity it has hitherto received from life." The innovators will never cease to explore—nor should they—but many times the brilliance they perspire came to be through exploration and experience. To be genuine and authentic, the only criterion forms to fit each individual differently: this can only happen when one ceases to analyze every thought and action, to let the journey lead them to their destination.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue by Maurice S. Friedman
.
Maurice S. Friedman is Professor Emeritus of religious studies, philosophy and comparative literature at San Diego State University. Martin Buber (1878-1965).was a Viennese Jewish philosopher and religious leader who translated the Old Tetament into German. He was a Zionist. He sought understainding between Jews and Arabs. Published by The University of Chicago Press, 1955 and reprinted in 1960 by Harpers, N.Y. as a First Harper Torchbook edition. This material prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.
.
Chapter 8: Community and Religious Socialism
.
True community, writes Buber, can only be founded on changed relations between men, and these changed relations can only follow the inner change and preparation of the men who lead, work, and sacrifice for the community. Each man has an infinite sphere of responsibility, responsibility before the infinite. But there are men for whom this infinite responsibility exists in a specially active form. These are not the rulers and statesmen who determine the external destiny of great communities and who, in order to be effective, turn from the individual, enormously threatened lives to the general multitude that appears to them unseeing. The really responsible men are rather those who can withstand the thousandfold questioning glance of individual lives, who give true answer to the trembling mouths that time after time demand from them decision. (Die Jüdische Bewegung, op. cit., Vol. 11. 1916-20 [1921]. ‘Kulturarbeit [1917], p. 94; Hasidism and Modern Man, ‘My Way to Hasidism,’ p. 67ff. On Buber’s relation to the Christian religious socialist movement, cf. Ephraim Fischoff’s Introduction to Buber’s Paths in Utopia [Boston: Beacon Press. 1958].)
.
The principle obstacle to the erection of true community is that dualism which splits life into two independent spheres -- one of the truth of the spirit and the other of the reality of life. True human life is life in the face of God, and God is not a Kantian idea but an elementarily present substance -- the mystery of immediacy before which only the pious man can stand. God is in all things, but he is realized only when individual beings open to one another, communicate with one another, and help one another -- only where immediacy establishes itself between beings. There in between, in the apparently empty space, the eternal substance manifests itself. The true place of realization is the community, and true community is that in which the godly is realized between men.
.
The prophets, says Buber, demanded a direct godly form of community in contrast to the godless and spiritless state. True to Jewish thought, they did not simply deny the earthly state but insisted that it must be penetrated by the spirit of true community. It would have been unthinkable to them to have made a compromise with conditions as they were, but it would have been equally unthinkable for them to have fled from those conditions into a sphere of inner life. Never did they decide between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. The kingdom of God was to them nothing other than the kingdom of man as it shall become. When they despaired of present fulfillment, they projected the image of their truth into Messianism. Yet here also they meant no opposition to this human world in which we live, but its purification .and completion.

Jesus, like the prophets of Israel, wanted to fulfill rather than do away with human society. By the kingdom of God He meant no other-worldly consolation, no vague heavenly blessedness, and also no spiritual or cultic league or church. What He meant was the perfected living together of men, the true community in which God shall have direct rule. Jesus wished to build out of Judaism the temple of true community before the sight of which the walls of the power state must fall to pieces.
.
But not so did the coming generations understand Him. In the place of the Jewish knowledge of the single world, fallen through confusion but capable of redemption through the struggling human will, came the postulation of a fundamental and unbridgeable duality of human will and God’s grace. The will is now regarded as unconditionally bad and elevation through its power is impossible. Not will in all its contrariness and all its possibility is the way to God, but faith and waiting for the contact of grace. Evil is no longer the ‘shell’ which must be broken through. It is rather the primal force which stands over against the good as the great adversary. The state is no longer the consolidation of a will to community that has gone astray and therefore is penetrable and redeemable by right will. It is either, as for Augustine, the eternally damned kingdom from which the chosen separate themselves or, as for Thomas, the first step and preparation for the true community, which is a spiritual one. The true community is no longer to be realized in the perfect life of men with one another but in the church. It is the community of spirit and grace from which the world and nature are fundamentally separated. (Martin Buber, Der heilige Weg [Frankfurt am Main: Rütten & Loening, 1919], pp. 11-44. Later reprinted in Reden über das Judentum, op. cit, without the introduction, pp. 9-11).
.
This atmosphere of the dualism of truth and reality, idea and fact, morality and politics is that, writes Buber, in which our present age lives. Corresponding to it is the egoistic nationalism which perverts the goal of community by making it an end itself. It is not power itself which is evil, Buber states, in disagreement with the historian Jacob Burckhardt. Power is intrinsically guiltless and is the precondition for the actions of man. It is the will to power, the greed for more power than others, which is destructive.
.
A genuine person too likes to affirm himself in the face of the world, but in doing so he also affirms the power with which the world confronts him. This requires constant demarcation of one’s own right from the right of others, and such demarcation cannot be made according to rules valid once and for all. Only the secret of hourly acting with a continually repeated sense of responsibility holds the rules for such demarcations. This applies both to the attitude of the individual toward his own life, and to the nation he is a member of.
.
Not renunciation of power but responsibility in the exercise of power prevents it from becoming evil This responsibility is lacking in modern nations, for they are constantly in danger of slipping into that power hysteria which disintegrates the ability to draw lines of demarcation. Only in the recognition of an obligation and a task that is more than merely national can the criterion be found which governs the drawing of the distinction between legitimate and arbitrary nationalism. (Israel and the World, op. cit., ‘Nationalism’ [1921], pp. 216-225.)
.
The mature expression of Buber’s concern with realizing the divine through true community is the religious socialism which he developed in the period immediately after the First World War. This development was decisively influenced by the socialism of Buber’s friend Gustav Landauer, the social anarchism of Michael Kropotkin, and the distinction between ‘community’ and ‘association’ in Ferdinand Tönnies’s work, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887). Community (‘Gemeinschaft’) Buber defines as an organic unity which has grown out of common possessions, work, morals, or belief. Association (‘Gesellschaft’) he defines as a mechanical association of isolated self-seeking individuals. It is an ordered division of society into self-seeking individuals held together by force, compromise, convention, and public opinion.
.
Modern western culture, states Buber, is on the way from ‘Gemeinschaft’ to ‘Gesellschaft.’ The mechanical type of social living has replaced the organic. Marxism, the dominant form of modern socialism, desires to overcome the atomization of present-day life and sees itself as the bearer and executor of an evolutionary process. Yet it is nothing other than the process of development from community to association that it is completing. For what today is still left of an autonomy of organic community of wills must, under the working of this tendency, be absorbed into the power of the state. The state will indeed guarantee justice through laws, but the power of the state will be raised to an all-controlling dogma which will make impossible any spontaneous righteousness. Community which once existed universally, and which today exists almost alone in personal life and unnoticed fellowships, will not be able to withstand the all-embracing power of the new socialist state.
.
In opposition to that socialism which promotes and completes the evolution to ‘Gesellschaft’ stands another which wills to overcome it. The first movement desires to gain possession of the state and set new institutions in the place of those existing, expecting thereby to transform human relations in their essence. The second knows that the erection of new institutions can only have a genuinely liberating effect when it is accompanied by a transformation of the actual life between man and man. This life between man and man does not take place in the abstraction of the state but rather there where a reality of spatial, functional, emotional, or spiritual togetherness exists -- in the village and city community, in the workers’ fellowship, in comradeship, in religious union.
.
In this moment of western culture a great longing for community possesses the souls of men. This longing can only be satisfied by the autonomy of the communal cells which together make up true commonwealth. But this autonomy will never be accorded by the present state, nor by the socialist state which will not renounce its rigid centralization to bring about its own decentralization, nor abandon its mechanical form in favour of an organic one. Hence the renewal of communal cells and the joining of these cells into larger communities and commonwealths must depend on the will of individuals and groups to establish a communal economy. Men must recognize that true participation in community demands no less power of soul than participation in a parliament or state politics and is the only thing that can make the latter effective and legitimate.
.
The decisive problem of our time, however, is that men do not live in their private lives what they seek to bring to pass in public. Wholly ineffective and illusory is the will for social reality of circles of intellectuals who fight for the transformation of human relations yet remain as indirect and unreal as ever in their personal life with men. The authenticity of the political position of a man is tested and formed in his natural ‘unpolitical’ sphere. Here is the germinating ground of all genuine communal-effecting force. No lived community is lost, and out of no other element than lived community can the community of the human race be built. (Martin Buber, Gemeinschaft, Vol. II of Worte an die Zeit [Munich: Dreiländerverlag, 1919], pp. 7-26. On Buber’s relation to Landauer see Martin Buber, ‘Landauer und die Revolution,’ Masken, Halbmonatschrift des Duesseldorfer Schauspielhauses, XIV [1918-19], No. 18/19, pp. 282-286; Hinweise, op. cit., ‘Erinnerung an einen Tod’ [192]), pp. 252-258, and Pointing the Way, op. cit., ‘Recollection of a Death,’ pp. 115-120; Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia, trans. by R. F. C. Hull [London: Routledge, 1949], chap. vi, pp. 46-57; and Kohn, op. cit., pp. 29-31. On his relation to Kropoekin see Paths in Utopia, chap. v, pp. 38-45. On his relation to Tönnies, see Kohn, op. cit., pp. 195-197, 348.)
.
Buber’s religious socialism is built on closeness to the land, on the meaningfulness of work and of mutual help, on the leadership of those men who can take responsibility for individual lives, on community built out of direct relationship between men and between groups of men, on the spirit of an eternal yet ever-changing truth, and above all on the reign of God. Der heilige Weg, op. cit., pp. 85-87 [my translation]. See also Martin Buber, Worte an die Zeit, vol. I, Grundsätze [München: Dreiländerverlag, 1919], pp. 5-11. 47) In this religious socialism Buber’s call for the realization of God on earth and his concern for the relations between man and man have merged into one mature whole -- the message of true community. This community starts not with facts of economics and history but with the spirit working silently in the depths. Even in 1919 Buber saw the true nature of the socialist power-state which, in the name of compulsory justice and equality, makes impossible spontaneous community and genuine relationship between man and man. True to the ‘narrow ridge,’ he refused the clamouring either-or of the modern world -- the demand that one accept the centralized socialist state because of the defects of capitalism or the capitalist society because of the defects of socialism.
.
Buber’s socialism of this period is religious but it is not ‘Utopian,’ for it does not base its claims and its hopes on any easily workable scheme or any facile trust in human nature. Rather it demands the thing that is hardest of all, that men live their lives with one another with the same genuineness and integrity as they desire to establish in the pattern of the total community. And it demands it in the face of ‘history’ and of ‘determinism’ and by the strength of the power of the spirit to come to man in his deepest need. It does not expect community to be established simply through the grace of God or simply through the will of man, but through the will of man which in extremis becomes one with the will of God.
.
The socialist power-state is not, for Buber, evil in itself any more than the capitalist state. Both are evil in so far as they prevent the springing-up of the good, the socialist state in that it makes impossible even those remnants of true community which exist in the capitalist state, the capitalist state in that the relations between man and man are indirect and perverted, based on desire for exploitation rather than true togetherness. The remedy for these evils is not the immediate establishment of some super-society but simply the strengthening of the forces of good through the will for genuine relationship and true community. The surging tides of inexorable world history are slowly pushed back and reversed by the invisible forces working in the souls of men and in the relations between man and man.