Buber In Ten Minutes

Boer in 10 minutes thinkers in the existential tradition tend to have a reputation from being atheistic and individualistic however the judaic Theologian and philosopher Martin Boer would be a clear counter example on both scores by far boer's most famous work is his short semi- poetic work I and thou which was originally published in 1923 I am thou is an example of what is sometimes called dialogical or dialogal existentialism the word dialogical is used to describe boer's philosophy because much of it revolves around the way we address each other and the world more generally we of course address each other in explicitly linguistic ways but also in terms of the general presence we offer up to each other Boer notes that this plays out in three main areas of life our relation to Nature our relation to each other and our relation to spiritual life however perhaps at first it's easiest to think of how we speak to each other for bber we speak to each other in one of two primary ways which for Boer are denoted by two basic word pairs one of these two word pairs is called I it while the other is called I thou or I you depending upon the translation let's take a minute to look at the I it first the I it refers to a predominantly objectifying way of addressing another person addressing treating someone as we would any other object any other it for instance the I it is the way that we typically treat each other in terms of practical necessity manipulation and means ends instrumentality in terms of using and experiencing as bber says that is in terms of either an externalized out there way of addressing each other or an internalized inhere one according to Boer we speak the I it with only part of our being it's only a partially engaged way of addressing another person furthermore Boer notes that the primary temporal modality of the I it is the past in other words it's a way of treating each other governed mostly by things like what we know about the other person from our past experience as well as our own past habitual patterns of interaction one way of recognizing the I it in our lives would be to think about how frequently we try to objectify each other in our everyday interactions isn't the unpleasant truth that a lot of the time our interactions with each other are basically about trying to get the other person to do what we want him or her to do basically about trying to manipulate the other person's behavior in light of what we know about that other person from our past experience in much the same way that we manipulate objects most of the time we aren't really acknowledging each other's deep Humanity the unpleasant truth is that most of the time we're just trying to use each other to get what we want in contrast the I thou has to do with what Boer calls relation or encounter this has to do with first being completely present to another person rather than only partially engaged it also has to do with addressing each other with a sense of mutuality and reciprocity with recognizing and affirming the other person's full Humanity with our full Humanity here the primary temporal modality is the spontaneously unfolding present rather than the past the ey thou happens in the Here and Now rather than in the there and then for bber the ey thou is important in our lives for many reasons first experiencing the ey is one of the most precious parts of our human Birthright furthermore the ey th is the locus of all genuine creative activity all genuine spirituality and all becoming in Transcendence basically for bber there is no such thing as growing as a human being all on our own at least not in any Deep Way all moments of genuine growing and becoming require a thou in other words they unfold between people rather than within or outside of people moments of transcendence basically occur in the unpredictable fluxion of genuine fully engaged relation with each other for Boer one of the main markers of whether we're in an i it or I thou mode is how we use the word I which bober regards as a kind of shth or Touchstone for the way we're addressing the world on one hand the IIT way of using the word I more or less maps onto the egoistic sense of self that we're often operating from by way of contrast bber points to the very un egoistic way Socrates Gerta and Jesus used the word I basically as an expression of an i thou relation of course at this point it's probably tempting for most of us to wonder about what we can do to have more eyou moments in our lives however as Boer point points out IOU moments do not arise out of willful activity alone first the opportunity to experience IOU arises from Grace which is a kind of giveness that occasionally presents itself in our experience but then we also have to choose to enter into the eye thou experience willfully by choice in other words the eye thou requires both Will and Grace it beckons to us but we must also choose to enter into it as Boer puts it the Rel is election and electing passive and active at once so perhaps the best thing we can do is to allow ourselves to become more sensitive to potential eyou moments and to cultivate the courage to enter into them when they happen of course as a theistic existentialist bber is also vitally concerned about our relation to God in I and thou he employs various metaphors for God such as the center and the face however his most common way of referring to God is the Eternal thou where as he says the parallel lines of relation meet for bobber every particular ey thou experience we have also makes at least an indirect reference to the Eternal thou consequently even self-proclaimed atheists who experience the eyou in their lives are living in relation to God in fact much more so than self-proclaimed theists who have little or no eyou experiences consequ L for Boer our spiritual lives aren't so much about what we Proclaim but about whether we live in relation or not of course with respect to God the relation par excellance takes the form of Prayer of addressing God directly in much the same way that we can address each other as an it or as a thou so too can we address God in either one of these two ways however prayer that takes the form of trying to objectify God to get him to produce good things in our lives or withhold bad things things for instance isn't actually prayer at all but just a form of objectifying manipulation a way of addressing God as an it rather than standing in relation to God by addressing him as a thou similarly attitudes toward God that stray out of relation into either an overly externalized form such as God is all or an overly internalized form such as God is within me similarly missed the mark As bber puts it you need God in order to be and God needs you for that which is the meaning of your life relation with God is about mutuality however Boer also comments on various aspects of our social being his main thesis here is that our increasingly industrial and technological way of life is heralding an unprecedented proliferation of the ey it at the expense of the eye thou for instance in our World Knowledge has become mostly about debating and accumulating correct Concepts which have value only in so far as they further our Master IIT project of Conquering the world art and Aesthetics have become mostly about evaluating constituent factors or simply about making money teaching has become mostly about imparting knowledge about how things are or how they ought to be especially with respect to Distributing grades rather than about helping students learn to take a stand in relation similarly Boer finds an unprecedented proliferation of the I it in many other domains of our Collective lives in the economy in politics in the Work World Etc but Although our social and cultural lives are leading us ever more away from the thou and into the domain of it he speculates on the possibility of what he calls the return that is the possibility of returning to the ey is our primary way of addressing each other in the world what is required for such a return to the iow is as bber says to call the incubus of the world of I it by its true name in other words to call it exactly what it is an imbalance on our relation to life that short circuits our chance to experience real relation real Transcendence and real spirituality according to Boer the main impediment to affecting this sort of return is a kind of capriciousness that runs through our time as he puts it the capricious man does not believe and encounter he does not know Association he only knows the feverish world out there and his desire to use it to move more in the opposite direction that is toward the ey thou Boer claims that we need to sacrifice our little will which is unfree and ruled by things and drives to our great will that moves away from being determined to find Destiny in essence our greatest enemy in this life is the small selves that we usually think we are all in all boer's philosophy amounts to an incisive critique of some of the systemic imbalances and pathologies that run through our modern world but he also offers up the Paradigm of a powerful and compelling alternative to them perhaps in the final analysis the central question of boer's philosophy is whether in our modern technological way of life that so much draws us further and further into the world of it we can nonetheless find within ourselves the sensitivity to detect the opportunity to enter into real relation with each other and then the courage to actively do so a question that plays out across our lives both individually and socially too and that's Boer in 10 minutes

Channel: Eric Dodson

Views: 167,183

Keywords: Martin Buber (Author), I and Thou, dialogical, dodson, I-Thou, I-It, existentialism

Id: 16Cr82mLhkw

Length: 10min 38sec (638 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 08 2014