I and Thou

"It is in encounter that the creation reveals its formhood; it does not pour itself into senses that are waiting but deigns to meet those that are reaching out. What is to surround the finished human being as an object, has to be acquired and wooed strenuously by him while he is still developing. No thing is a component of experience or reveals itself except through the reciprocal force of confrontation." - Martin Buber, I and Thou (1970 translation).

I'm not even going to pretend that I understand all of the intricacies of Buber's I-Thou/dialogical philosophy. (I'm only about halfway through the book, and it's rough going.) I picked up I and Thou after reading a brief description of Buber's attempt to distinguish two modes of relatedness - I-It, and I-You (or I-Thou).

One of the main points of Buber's thesis seems to be the fundamental 'otherness' of another person - "You do not experience the human being; rather you can only relate to him or her in the sacredness of the I-Thou relation." (W) (Buber is a lot more poetic, even after translation.) Quasi-mystical knowledge-seeking aside, it's worth studying how much of what you see in an 'other' person is actually a function of what you bring to the relation. Miscommunication, misunderstanding, and misperceptions plague even the best of our relationships, resulting in the perception of possible threats to ourselves where there in fact may be none.

And if our experience of an 'other' is dependent upon what we bring to the relation (as discussed in a 5-dimensional model, or in a more mundane way), we are prompted to shoulder responsibility for potential misperceptions, and to 'put the best construction' on a relation until all room for ambiguity is gone. That is not always easy. [Aside: This is largely prompted by me beating myself up over something which I no longer have the chance to rectify and for which I may someday have to answer. Kindly don't assume that I'm preaching at you.]

I suppose the question is still... How much of what I see as You is really Me? How do I respect you and your sovereignty in a way that promotes a healthy society, while doing my utmost to avoid perceiving you as a threat, which would be detrimental to a healthy society?

I'll try to puzzle out Buber's answer to this, if there is one. To be continued...

"As long as the firmament of the You is spread over me, the tempests of causality cower at my heels, and the whirl of doom congeals." (That's Buber, as translated by Kaufmann.)