A Jewish Critique of the Philosophy of Martin Buber

Sefaria · Jewish Thought > Modern > Eliezer Berkovits · 133 sections

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In our elucidation of the main features of the Biblical en counter, we had occasion to wonder what kind of an I-Thou relation Buber must have in mind, if in it man is a partner of God, facing Him in freedom and developing in dialogical cooperation with God the meaning of revelation? What kind of an encounter could be accessible to man all the time? What is this “eternal Thou” with whom man is ever able to enter into relation and of whom Buber may say that if man is not encountering him, it is because man is not present? It is our intention to show in this section of our study that these questions are not unrelated to those problems which we raised in the second part of our investigation. There is an underlying trend in Buber’s teaching that may explain his confidence in the validity of the dialogical response as well as the sense in which alone one may speak of both the exclusive-inclusive pure relation and the true community of the We; at the same time, it will also reveal the root of his basic departure from the essence of the Biblical encounter. This underlying trend is his ontology and metaphysics. Even though Buber often emphasizes that he only reports, that he is only a witness, the fact is that his testimony becomes meaningless without his ontology and metaphysics and therefore, the value of the testimony cannot exceed the value of these.
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The Bi-polar Experience
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Most people use the terms, dialogue and I-Thou relation, without appreciating that they are used by Buber in a very specific sense. In his lecture, Ueber das Erzieherische, for instance, Buber says: “A relation between persons that is characterized in more or less degree by the element of inclusion may be termed a dialogical relation.”100Between Man and Man, 97. When two people experience an event in common, if at least one of them, “without forfeiting anything of the felt reality of his activity, at the same time lives through the common event from the standpoint of the other,” we speak of inclusion or encompassing. It is the experiencing of the situation from both its ends at the same time, from my own as well as from that of the person who confronts me. It is living through what he lives through; to be here as well as there; to take his place, to be he as it were, and yet to remain oneself. For example, “a man belabors another, who remains quite still. Then let us assume that the striker suddenly receives in his soul the blow which he strikes: the same blow; that he receives it as the other who remains still. For the space of a moment he experiences the situation from the other side. Reality imposes itself on him.” Or let us take another example. “A man caresses a woman, who lets herself be caressed. Then let us assume that he feels the contact from two sides — with the palm of his hand still, and also with the woman’s skin.” This is encompassing. There is nothing perverse or unnatural about it. On the contrary, it is “the bipolar experience,” the completion of the turning towards the other, which is “the basic movement of the life of the dialogue.”101Ib., 96, 23, 22; cf. also ib., 29 and the essay, Urdistanz und Beziehung, pp. 34-36. The bi-polar experience is the fullness of the I-Thou relation. When Buber was eleven years of age, he was associated in such bi-polar I-Thou relation with his “darling, a broad dapple-grey horse.” And since man’s relations to house cats and trees can and, therefore, should be dialogical, one ought to aim at such bi-polar life with those presences as well.
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One should not lose patience with Buber if one wishes to understand him. Even when he sounds absurd, he has his own depth. He is wrestling hard with the problem of human solitude and loneliness, the problem that — according to him — became the stumbling block on the paths of Heidegger and Sartre. Either one can reach over completely to the other, encompass him, take him up into one’s own being, or no bridge at all is possible from I to Thou. This is the heart of his teaching, the very core of the dialogical life. The I-Thou relation is not mere solicitude for another, care and concern for the one that confronts me. It is an essential relation, and it is described by Buber in the following words: “In an essential relation … the barriers of individual being are in fact breached and a new phenomenon appears which can appear in only this way: one life open to another …; the other becomes present not merely in the imagination or feeling, but in the depth of one’s substance, so that one experiences the mystery of the other being in the mystery of one’s own. The two participate in one another’s life in very fact, not psychically, but ontically.”102Between Man and Man, 170. This, then, is the dialogical life: the breaching of the barriers of individuality, the breaking open of the closed units of individual beings towards each other, thus enabling one actually to enter into the substance of the other and be present there: being the one to participate in fact in the other’s being. When this is accomplished, a man, experiencing his own reality, also experiences that of the other, who is existentially present in one’s own. The question, of course, is how such ontic break-through of the barriers and actual mingling of individual beings is to be accomplished? The assertion that such is the dialogical situation is made again and again, but we shall look in vain for an explanation in that part of Buber’s work where these assertations are made.
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The Dual Rhythm of Cosmic-metacosmic Being
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These affirmations of “the philosophical anthropology” must be read in the light of the metaphysics of the Ich und Du. Having analyzed Buber’s definition of the dialogical situation as between man and man, let us now see how be defines the nature of the same situation as between God and man. Buber himself raises the question, how does one enter into the pure relation? Due to the nature of the subject, the answer is given rather haltingly. All rules and regulations, all religious observances or mystical rites, which purport to prepare one for the relation with the eternal Thou are themselves only objects of human thought. According to Buber, they have nothing whatever to do with the fundamental fact of the meeting between I and Thou. They are Its and belong to the It-world. Regulations and religious practices will not redeem man from his isolation. This can only be achieved by the encounter itself. But how is the encounter to be brought about? At first, man must know how it is not to be accomplished. One cannot meet the eternal Thou by trying to escape from the world of the senses as if it were a mere sham. This is the world. Nor is the goal we are striving for to be reached by passing beyond the realm of the senses into some state of supernatural experience. All experience, natural or supernatural, yields again only an It, an object. It will lead us to thinghood not to the Presence. One might also say, one cannot conjure up the divine Presence by rules and observances. To attempt to do that would mean treating God as an It; but God is the only Thou that never becomes an It. One must know him as the Thou or one does not know him. Having said how God is not to be encountered, Buber tries to indicate what is required in order that the relation may materialize. He puts it in one short sentence. Required is: “the complete acceptance of the Presence.”103Ich und Du, 92. This needs further elaboration. Unfortunately, it too is given mainly in negative terms. One must give up one’s separation from reality. One must rid oneself of the distorting urge of self-affirmation which enables man to escape from all encounter into the possession of things. All this, of course, does not really explain what is meant by the acceptance of the Presence. Obviously, Buber cannot mean by it the actual encountering of the Absolute as Thou. So understood, the phrase would mean that the pre-condition for entering into the pure relation was entering into such a relation. The difficulty here is similar to the one we had to contend with as we discussed Buber’s concept of faith. Indeed, on the basis of other passages in his writings, we assume that the acceptance of the Presence is not the actual encounter itself, but an act of faith to confront reality as such as one would face a person. Whereas man as a world-using subject is bent completely on himself, as a person he must undertake the elementary movement of turning towards reality as one turns to a Thou. Even before the actual encounter, he keeps himself open for the possibility of the revelation by the acceptance of all Being as a Presence. What Buber has in mind is well expressed by what he declares in another place regarding faith. “Real faith, he explains, does not mean professing what we hold true in a ready-made formula. On the contrary: it means holding ourselves open to the unconditional mystery which we encounter in every sphere of our life and which cannot be comprised in any formula. It means that from the very roots of our being, we should always be prepared to live with this mystery as one being lives with another.”104Israel, 49. We assume that it is Buber’s meaning that if one is prepared to adopt such an attitude of faith toward Being, one will encounter it as the eternal Thou. Needless to say, there is an element of risk involved in such an attitude. One must forego the satisfaction one may derive from living in the solid and reliable dimensions of the It-world and one must put one’s trust in the Unknown which will yet reveal itself as knowable in the actualized relation. But why should anyone take such a chance? On what grounds should one adopt such an attitude toward the Unknown?
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It would seem to us that Buber’s attitude of faith toward the Unknown can be justified only on the basis of his ontology. According to it, the I-Thou relation is at the very origin of being. Traces of it one may still discover in the language of the primitive as well as in the early development of the child. The “nuclei” of primitive speech “mostly indicate the wholeness of a relation.” The primitive man does not know himself as a separate entity and his neighbor, or the world around him, as something apart from him. His speech testifies to the fact that he sees himself and the incidents of his life always in situations that are relational. Events are experienced by him as “being confronting him” and of his own situation, he is aware as “life with a being confronting him.” All separation, all assertion of selfhood and identity, comes later. The same may also be observed in the early life of the child. The child does not discover the world by perceiving the various items in it as separate objects. He reaches out towards it by trying to “grasp’ it with his senses and embrace it. He relates himself to what attracts his attention and he discovers it by addressing it. Originally, the child, not being aware of his selfhood, meets the world without being aware of its separateness. “It is simply not the case that the child first perceives an object, then, as it were, puts himself in relation with it. But the effort to establish relation comes first — the hand of the child arched out so that what is over against him may nestle under it; second is the actual relation, a saying of Thou without words, in the state preceding the word-form; the thing, like the I, is produced late, arising after the original experiences have been split asunder and the connected partners separated.”105I and Thou, 27.
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Buber is not prepared to accept a psychological interpretation of these phenomena among the primitive and in the development of the child’s personality. On the contrary, they can only be understood if one bears in mind their “cosmic and metacosmic origin.” “In the beginning is relation”106Ib., 18. is for Buber a “cosmic and metacosmic” truth. It is, however, only the first point of his metaphsyics. The origin of the child is, from the cosmic-meta-cosmic point of view, not really different from that of all reality. “Every child that is coming into being rests, like all life that is coming into being, in the womb of the great mother, the undivided primal world that precedes form.”107Ib., 25. This resting in the womb of the great mother is the original relation that is retained yet for a while, even after the phase of separation has started. It is reflected, as a manifestation of the cosmic principle, in the initial experiences of the primitive and the early encounters of the child with the world. There is a cosmic-metacosmic history of Being, which takes place in two movements. The one is separation from the womb of the great mother, the other is turning back toward it. The act of separation is “the process of becoming” or individuation; the turning back toward the womb is the way of finding redemption in Being. The primary words themselves are articulation of this cosmic rhythm on the human level. I-It is the movement of separation, of the becoming of the I as an individuum, a subject, and the emergence of reality as the It-world. I-It is the result of the distintegration of the original unity of the relation which is the beginning. I-Thou corresponds to the movement of turning. The I, as a person, turns toward Being as one turns to the “great mother,” to the Thou that confronts one as a person. Let us allow Buber to speak for himself on this rather difficult point. Says he: “… this double movement of estrangement from the primal Source, in virtue of which the universe is sustained in the process of becoming, and of turning towards the primal Source, in virtue of which the universe is released (better to be translated: is redeemed) in being, may be perceived as the metacosmical primal form that dwells in the world as a whole in its relation to that which is not the world-form whose twofold nature is represented among men by the twofold nature of their attitudes, their primary words, and their aspects of the world.”108Ib., 101. It is true, Buber introduces this paragraph with the word, perhaps. In other parts of his magnum opum this word is completely forgotten. So, for instance, he declares without any qualifications that “the two primary metacosmical movements of the world-expansion into its own being (better translated: expansion into individuality, i. e., existence as I-It) and turning to connection — find their supreme human form, the real spiritual form of their struggle and adjustment, their mingling and separation in the history of the human relation to God.”109Ib., 116.
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Buber is dead serious about his ontology and metaphsyics. Some of the vital aspects of his teachings are dependent on them. The coming into being of the world is an act of separation and estrangement. All being carries within itself a kind of a memory of the “womb,” of “the primal Source”; it is possessed of a desire to return. Such a desire, however, is the flowering of being as spirit. As spirit, all being is yearning for the cosmic binding of itself to the true Thou. There is an ontic longing in all being for its true Thou. This longing is “a category of being”; it is “the a priori of relation” or, as Buber also calls it, “the inborn Thou.” The inborn Thou is the ontic desire of all being, in its state of estrangement, for reunion with the true Thou. As Kant’s categories are the mold of human experience, so for Buber “the a priori of relation” is the basis for man’s ability to encounter “that which stands over against him” as his Thou. But whereas the Kantian categories are silent on the nature of the Ding an sich, Buber’s ontological category of the inborn Thou also determines the essential quality of that which stands over against man. It is a Thou. Man does not only have an innate desire for relation, but this desire can be satisfied because whatever “stands over against him” has itself the same ontic longing for its Thou as he himself has. All being, having been separated from the “womb,” has the same ontic longing for reunion. This longing is at the root of being a person. All being has thus a personal essence. It is not just a subjective desire within me that induces me to encounter a tree as my Thou. This in itself might be due to a psychological malfunction. It is the nature of Being within me that longs for relation and it is the same nature of Being within the tree that reveals itself in the reciprocity of the encounter. Of course, I must give in to the inborn Thou; I must go out and meet the world as a person, only then will I be able to meet it in its personal reality.110Postscript, I and Thou, 126.
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There is, however, one more point which we have to consider before we may complete the analysis of Buber’s metaphysics. Since the a priori of relation is man’s yearning for his “true Thou,” how come that it finds satisfaction in the encounters with finite beings? Buber maintains that in all such encounters the yearning for the true Thou may only partially be satisfied. But partially, at least, it may find fulfillment. This is due to the fact that, according to him, every form of personal being — and that is of course all being — is essentially of the same nature. It is the one Presence that irradiates all spheres of existence.111Ich und Du, 118. Thus, every individual Thou is a symbol, or an image, of the Eternal; every individual Thou represents the eternal Presence. This does not mean that God is only immanent in the world and not transcendent to it. He encompasses all the spheres but he is not encompassed by them. Yet, since all individual presence is a manifestation of the eternal, in saying Thou to any of the spheres and to whatever they contain is like addressing the eternal Thou. In every sphere, in every I-Thou situation, “we look out toward the fringe of the eternal Thou; in each we are aware of a breath from the eternal Thou; in each Thou we address the eternal Thou.”112I and Thou, 101. Indeed, the purpose of every I-Thou situation is within itself. The contact with any Thou is important, for through it the breath of eternal life touches us.113Ich und Du, 75.
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We may now describe Buber’s way to the pure relation. In a state of cosmic estrangement, man is urged by the inborn Thou to find fulfillment in cosmic connection with the eternal Thou. Thus he enters the world with the desire to meet and expectant of the meeting. But it is not what he is looking for that he encounters immediately. What he beholds are so many “disguises” of the Presence. With the power of his desire to meet, he at first encounters the Presence in its finite manifestations. All these encounters are, as it were, stations on the way to the ultimate encounter. One knows that this is so, because the inborn Thou finds only partial satisfaction in all of them and thus, urges one on — until one comes face to face with the Presence and is at rest again. Of this meeting with the eternal Thou Buber says: “It is a finding without seeking, a discovering of the primal, of origin. His (man’s) sense of Thou, which cannot be satisfied till he finds the endless Thou, had the Thou present to it from the beginning; the presence had only to become wholly real to him in the reality of the hallowed life of the world.”114I and Thou, 80. The hallowed life of the world is, of course, the life of relation. By entering into I-Thou relation with everything that confronts us, we are more and more encountering Being itself as a presence, thus the eternal Thou, whose presence irradiates all spheres of reality, becomes “wholly real” for us. We see now more clearly what Buber means by saying that I-Thou relations with nature, with human beings, and the intelligible sphere, are the “portals” that lead to the encounter with God. The divine Presence is the only presence in all reality. While it is present all the time, it must become real for man. However, it will become real for man, if man himself is real, i. e., if he is a person and as such longs for participation and speaks the primary word of I-Thou again and again. The divine Presence becomes more and more real for the man who himself becomes more and more real as a person. This is the ultimate significance of the statement that the eternal Thou is always present; it is only man who is not present if there is no relation.
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We are now in a position to appreciate what Buber has in mind when he says that the acceptance of the Presence is the prerequisite of the pure relation. It is the acceptance of the thesis that Being is personal, that it should be encountered in the innumerable I-Thou situations with finite beings; for through the contact with each Thou one is touched by the breath of eternal life. This is no longer tautological and it does require entering into “a relation of reciprocity with the Unknown.” One does it, however, by acknowledging one’s inborn Thou and by going out to “meet the Meeter,” as first, in his innumerable finite manifestations. If one is prepared thus “to accept the Pressence,” one will be lead into the presence of the eternal Thou.
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Needless to say, there is a strong pantheistic element in this metaphysics and ontology. Since, according to Buber, God is not only the Being present in all beings, but also transcends them all, we ought to describe his metaphysics as a form of panentheism. Against its background we may now understand what Buber calls “ontic participation,” which is characteristic of the “essential relation” and the dialogical life. It is the actual mingling of individual substance wth individual substance. The separating walls of individuality may indeed be broken down, since individuality is due to the cosmic movement of estrangement from Being. As such it is unreal. Since all being is essentially one, and since the same Presence irradiates all, the turning toward the other can and should become actual participation in the being of the other. Only because of the pantheistic aspect of his philosophy can Buber maintain that in the dialogical situation a man experiences the mystery of the being of the other in the mystery of his own being. One may even agree that in the light of the underlying ultimate oneness of the Presence which flows through all beings, even the “bi-polar experience” may not be as absurd as it would seem at first glance.
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The pantheistic metaphysics is the source of Buber’s optimism and confidence. He trusts the dialogical situation, he trusts man and the meaning as well as the truth which are dialogically revealed because at heart he is a pantheist. As with all pantheistic philosophy, so with his too, Being and Meaning are identical. So his advise to man is: be real,participate in all being “ontically,” and you will be true. Some of the specific aspects of Buber’s teachings, which we presented in the first section of this essay, become only now apparent in their full significance. In revelation, we heard Buber declare, man is revealed unto himself. In the dialogical situation of ontic participation man surrenders his individuality, which emerged in the cosmic movement of estrangement from Being, and becomes real. Only now, does he know his true self. Having become real, his response to the challenge, though given in dialogical freedom, coincides with “the divine law resting deep within man.” This follows logically from the original pantheism. It is the same Presence everywhere; ergo, if man finds his “true” self, he discovers “the divine law.” He discovers that what he really wants is identical with what God wants of him. Man’s own commitment, undertaken in freedom, and the law of God are one and the same thing. This is the typcial way in which pantheism throughout the ages has solved the problem of heteronomy versus autonomy in ethics. As Meaning and Being are one, so are also Law and Being. Law is simply the manifestation of the nature of Being. Therefore, as long as any being is true to its nature, it is also free and yet within the confines of universal lawfulness.
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It is this pantheistic commonplace which is also the essence of Buber’s solution of the antinomy of freedom and causality, which we described earlier. The deed is waiting for me and as such, it is prescribed for me; yet I have to choose it, declared Buber. It all depends on me, even though I am commissioned to perform my deed. In choosing one’s deed, one encounters one’s destiny, which is one’s completion. Again, freedom and law are one. We could not see how a man deciding on a course of action in dialogical freedom could know that he was choosing the deed destined for him. There is no such problem for Buber. He is pantheistically logical. The deed that is waiting for me is what is required of me by the nature of Being itself. But I myself am a manifestation of the same Presence. Ergo, if I only act like the presence I truly am, I am bound to perform “my deed.” Being my true self, I cannot fail to find my deed, which of course will coincide with the divine law. Yet, I shall be free, for I shall be acting with my, and the deed’s, true nature, which — rather conveniently — is identical with the divine law. With reference to the Kantian antinomy of freedom, Buber asserts that the conflict between human responsibility and the principle of universal causation cannot be solved theoretically. One must embrace both sides of the paradox. They have “to be lived together, and in being lived they are one.”115Ib., 96. This is, at least, debatable. However, they are indeed one within the metrics of a pantheistic metaphysics.
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What Is Man?
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Let us place the metaphysics in its proper perspective in the history of philosophy. We cannot help being somewhat surprised by the turn Buber’s thought was compelled to take. Originally setting out with a number of existential affirmations, he found himself confronted by the need of buttressing them with an ontology and metaphysics which are variations on old themes of classical philosophy. Man’s inborn yearning for the true Thou reminds one very much of Plato’s anemnesis. The significance of the distinction between the cosmic-metacosmic movements of estrangement and turning is interpreted, almost literally, in the Platonic tradition of the distinction between Becoming and Being. Most obvious, however, is the closeness to neo-Platonism, especially as it found its elaboration by Proclus. The cosmos comes into being in a movement of separation from the One. Since there exists only the One, all reality is an emanation from it. Nevertheless, individual existence is not eliminated. However, as an emanation of the One, the individual reflects the universal. The particular has the same essence as the Absolute, but it is not identical with it. Coming from the One, being of it and yet apart from it, the individual, as well as the cosmos in its entirety, strive to return to their origin. There is one new feature in Buber’s ontology. The movement of return is not allowed to be completed fully. With Buber, it cannot go beyond the I-Thou relation with “the primal source.” The question that has to be raised now is: What are the consequences for the I-Thou relation of a metaphysics that is essentially pantheistic but is stopped short of the ultimate consummation of the return, the reestablished union with “the womb of the great mother?” More explicitly, the question is: In view of the metaphysics, what is the essence of the I, what is the “substance” — Buber uses the term in describing the essential relation — of particular being?
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Buber does insist on the reality and the independence of the I, and this seems to run counter the pantheistic tendency. But he does not realize that his I in the I-Thou relation is lacking what it most needs, i.e., selfhood. The idea of the “two notes of the same chord” is so deeply rooted in Buber’s philosophy that one must apply it to the human being himself, no less than to the human response to the challenge. Since it is the same Presence which shines through all reality, and every individual is in essence a finite “disguise” of the absolute Person, wherein lies the nature of individuality? It is not enough to say in answer to the question: “God comprises, but is not the universe. So, too, God comprises, but is not, my Self. In view of the inadequacy of my language about this fact, I can say Thou in my language as each man can in his, in view of this I and Thou live …”116Ib., 95. The affirmation, however, emphatic, is no longer sufficient. Too much depends for Buber on his pantheistic ontology. If there is, indeed, a self apart from God, then obviously it cannot be the same presence that irradiates all; then, the “two notes of the one chord,” and everything that depends on it, are gone. Buber may, of course, still say that revelation is man’s response to a challenge, but unrelated as the response will be to a divine law, it will be a rather meaningless affectation to call it revelation. Neither will it then be possible to see in man’s destiny a completion of his freedom. To the extent that his real self will act freely, it may easily be in genuine conflict with the deed that is “awaiting” him. If the I does have selfhood apart from God as the basis of its ability of entering into the I-Thou situation, it is inconceivable how the encounters with finite beings should offer partial satisfaction for the yearning for the eternal Thou, or how these encounters could be considered as “portals” leading to the eternal Presence. The I, in its selfhood apart from God, should be able to meet other selves in their identity apart from God. The acceptance of the Presence may lead to God, if all presence stands for him. But if there is selfhood apart from him, then it is meaningless to say that the attitude of meeting reality as a presence will lead one to God.
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Buber does not see that his metaphysics cuts away the ground from under his I-Thou. For him, selfhood and independent existence are the characteristics of the I in the I-It relation, of the I of estrangement and separation. The I in the I-Thou is not really an independent person, but the cosmic yearning for return to the “primal Source,” imprisoned in a finite vessel. The innate Thou, the so-called a priori of relation, this category of being, does not inhere in a person but is the essence of personal being. There is no selfhood in its own right which yearns for the Thou; there is only a cosmic-metacosmic yearning in finite shape. This finds its expression quite clearly where Buber describes “the fundamental difference’” between the two primary words. According to him, one may see the distinction between them best illustrated in the spiritual history of the primitive, whom we had occasion to mention earlier in our discussion. As we have heard, the original situation of the primitive is relational. It is a state that Buber calls vorgestaltlich, i. e., one in which the primitive has not yet learned to recognize forms about him in their individuality. Everything is experienced as relational, comprehending him as well as that which confronts him. At this stage, neither of the two have as yet separated themselves out of the relation. The I-Thou, says Buber, is not composed of an I and a Thou. The I-Thou precedes the I. The primitive man speaks the primary word of I-Thou in “a natural way,” i. e., even before he is able to recognize himself as I. The I-It, on the other hand, is a composite word. The “natural event” that is the foundation of the I in the I-It realm is the separation of the human body from the surrounding world. The body, in its perceptions and experiences, comes “to know” itself as differentiated from its surroundings. However, the differentiation is not a confrontation, which is possible only on the spiritual level. The original interaction between the human body and the world around it is not relational; it is a situation “of pure juxtaposition.” Hence, the character of an I cannot be implied in it. Only after the I, originally comprehended in the I-Thou situation, has separated itself as an independent entity, may it associate itself with a separated human body and awaken “there the state in which I is properly active.” The I which stepped forth declares itself to be the bearer, and the world around about to be the object of the perceptions.117Ib., 23. This is another version of the basic theme with which too we are already familiar, that in the beginning is relation.
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That the I-Thou precedes the I should be seen in its full significance for the understanding of the person with Buber. If the essence of the person were indeed what the word says, no I-Thou relation could precede man’s awareness of himself as I. If personal existence meant selfhood and individuality, no one could be part of an I-Thou situation without having known oneself a person first. Only because for Buber the person is essentially the inborn Thou, i. e., the finite form of the cosmic yearning for the true Thou, is it possible for man to speak “the primary word I-Thou in a natural way.” There is no need for an I to be the bearer of the longing for return; the longing itself is the I. Actually, this is not only so in the primitive state. Buber’s person is of necessity empty of personal reality. To be conscious of oneself as a person is the end of the I-Thou situation. One is always alone with one’s self. The moment the I knows itself as a self, he is no longer participating; he becomes the I of I-It. Only the I of separation, the I of I-It, has selfhood and personality according to the inherent logic of Buber’s position. However, this I, as the result of the basic pantheism, has to be rejected by Buber. This is the full significance of Buber’s statement that all reality is participation and relation. If, indeed, there existed a form of personal being as bearer of the yearning for the Thou, then such personal being, even when disloyal to its innate yearning, would still be real.
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Nor are these consequences which follow from the metaphysics affected by anything that Buber has said in his writings about philosophical anthropology. In Das Problem des Menschen, and with obvious reference to a statement in Ich und Du, discussed earlier by us in this section, Buber does say: “It is true that the child says Thou before it learns to say I; but on the height of personal existence one must be truly able to say I in order to know the mystery of the Thou in its whole truth.”118Between Man and Man, 175 Even stronger, he declares, in Urdistanz und Beziehung that the principle of human existence is a twofold one. The first is that of separation and the second, that of entering-into-relation. The first is a precondition for the second. For, obviously, I can enter into relation only with someone that exists at a distance from me, that “has become an independent vis-a-vis” for me.119Urdistanz und Beziehung, 11 It would seem to us that, notwithstanding the emphasis on the I and on selfhood as a prerequisite for the relation, they still remain empty of contents and reality. We know well what Buber means by “knowing the mystery of the Thou in its whole truth.” It is a knowledge gained by “ontic participation” in an other; it is experiencing the mystery of the being of the other in the act of experiencing the mystery of one’s own being. But this, as we saw, is only possible because “the same Presence irradiates all being” and because individuality is not real. The entering-into-relation is so defined that it can be carried out only because self-being is not of the essence of man’s nature. Actually, the twofold principle of human existence, distance and relation, is the anthropological counterpart of the cosmic-metacosmic principle of separation and turning. The only reality selfhood possesses in the Urdistanz is its being apart for the sake of entering “into ontic participation.” In itself and by itself the I is not real. It is the conclusion one has to draw not only from the metaphysics but also from the anthropology. Man is real only if and as he enters into “essential relations” with the entire realm of existence. Man can attain to self-being only if every possible relationship to the world around him becomes reality for him, i. e., if every one of his relations to life becomes essential.120Dialogisches Leben, 419. Buber also formulates it in the following manner: “Speaking anthropologically, man does not exist in isolation, but only in the completeness of the relation between one and another.”121Die Schriften, 276. In other words, man exists only in the act of “ontic participation”; he is real only in essential relations. However, essential relations, in Buber’s sense, are only possible because man has no essential identity of his own. It is rather interesting to note that in the context from which we have just quoted, Buber speaks of an inborn urge of self-realization. What, however, seems to be granted at first glance is immediately withheld by the words: “It would be a mistake to speak here of individuation alone. Individuation is only the necessary person-like mold of all realization of the nature of man. Not the self as such is ultimately essential …”122Ib., 277. The truth is that, on the basis of Buber’s philosophy, the self is not only not ultimately essential; it is lacking essence altogether. As he puts it very well, the self, or individuality, is only the particular mold for the realization of being human. And the realization of being human consists in not being an individual but existing in “ontic participation” in other beings. The inborn urge for self-realization, which every man is supposed to carry within himself, is the anthropological parallel to the inborn Thou of the metaphysics. Examine it as one may, the I which — according to Buber — enters into the relation with the Thou has no substance; it is a finite vessel that contains a measure of the cosmic yearning for reality by returning to the “primal Source.”
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Relation and Relatedness
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We may now be in a better position to appreciate the significance of our criticism of Buber’s concept of the exclusive-inclusive pure relation as well as of his definition of the true community. At the same time, the ultimate roots of Buber’s disagreement with the Biblical encounter will become uncovered.
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The result of our investigation of Buber’s notion of the I has been that it is empty of personal substance; it has no genuine selfhood. By means of his idea of ontic participation in all being. Buber overcomes man’s isolation and solitude by eliminating man’s personal reality. But where there is no selfhood, where the I has no personal substance which he may rightly call his very own, there can be no relation either. Only an I existing in all realness as a clearly definable and separate person can confront and meet another I of the same category. In his pantheistic predilection, Buber confuses relatedness with relation. What he calls an I-Thou relation is in truth a situation of relatedness. Being, in its finite mode, relates itself to the rest of being in order to overcome separation. In the condition of relatedness, an original harmony and connectedness is restored. If Buber’s interpretation of the secret of primitive speech is correct, it would still not reveal, as Buber thinks, that primitive man experiences reality in an I-Thou situation of relation. Where there is no genuine separateness, there can be no genuine relation. It would, however, yield a good example of relatedness in an essentially impersonal situation. This is certainly so in the case of the early development of the infant. To call it an I-Thou situation preceding I-awareness is meaningless. What is taking place at this stage of human growth is the attempt on the part of a distinctive being, not yet conscious of its personal existence, to relate itself to the world around it. Forms of connectedness may thus arise, but no relation.
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In this connection Buber’s misinterpretation of Spinoza’s amor dei is rather enlightening. Since the love with which God loves himself is, according to Spinoza’s pantheism, identical with the love with which man loves God, Buber believes that the amor dei means the encountering of the reality of God. Says Buber: “… it is truly an encounter, for it takes place here in the realization of the identity … of His love and our, although we, finite natural and spiritual beings, are in no wise identical with Him, who is infinite.”123Eclipse, 25. Now, it is of course perfectly correct to say that man, the finite natural and spiritual being is not identical with God, who is infinite. Yet, he is a mode of the infinite; and only because of that, because he has no independent personal existence in his own right, is his love for God identical with God’s love for himself. There is no possibility for a genuine encounter with God within the system of Spinoza. The very identity of God’s love with man’s love, the pantheistic “two notes of the one chord,” excludes the encounter. There is no I-Thou relation here. There is, of course, a relatedness between the infinite substance and its finite modes. The amor dei is an expression of this relatedness. It is worth noting that in the Postscript to I and Thou, Buber defines personal existence in terms of Spinoza’s philosophy. He does add to Spinoza’s two attributes of the Infinite a third one, that of “personal being.” However, of it he says: “From this attribute would stem my and all men’s being as person, as from those other attributes would stem my and all men’s being as spirit and being as nature.”124I and Thou, 135. In other words, finite person is a mode of the absolute Person. This is in keeping with his concept of the one Presence which shines through all being. As for Spinoza, so for Buber, personal existence has no reality. The personal for both is the particular, which is the Absolute in its mode of finitude. Buber, however, conceives it more in the dynamic sense of neo-Platonic pantheism. The particular, which he calls the person, has “history.” It starts out as the inborn Thou, a finite form of cosmic yearning for the true Thou, and ends up as yearning satisfied in what Buber calls the true relation, which, however, is a restored form of relatedness between the absolute Person and one of his finite modes.
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Let us now have another look at the specific nature of Buber’s pure relation. He maintained that it was both exclusive as well as inclusive. We could not make much sense of it, because we took his concept of the I-Thou relation literally. As long as we assumed that the I had personal selfhood and validity as such, it could not be conceived how even in the pure relation the I could preserve all its other I-Thou relations intact. But Buber’s I-Thou relations are really forms of relatedness between the finite modes of the one Presence. It is, therefore, understandable that Buber should assert that this life of relatedness may be preserved in the relatedness of a particular final mode of the Presence to its primal Source, which — in its turn — comprises all its modes of finitude. If one is ontically participating in the Being of all beings, one is eo ipso also participating in all particular being. This is also the clue to the mystery of the true community. As we saw, it just yielded no sense to say that the true community was constituted by the people living in mutual relation with a living center and, at the same time, in mutually living relations with each other. It was not possible to see how all members of a people or a society could at the same time establish such a mutual relation to the living center; far less was it possible to understand that human beings, with their very limited capacity for I-Thou relations, could stand to each other in such rich forms of I-Thou relations that they would constitute a community or a holy people. All this was well reasoned on our part, because we took Buber at his word. This, however, we can no longer do. Since his I-Thou relations are in their essence forms of relatedness between various manifestations of the same Presence, it may be possible to make the metaphysical assertation that the same “I” may indeed be related in innumerable ways to Being in all its manifestations, which is essentially the same everywhere; just as one might affirm with the same metaphysical plausibility that the numerous finite modes of the Presence might conceivably be related to the “living Center” or “the womb of the eternal mother” or “the primal Source.” Buber’s true community is as little a genuine community as his relation is genuine relation. The true community is Being have completed the second movement of its cosmic-metacosmic history, i. e., having turned to its source after the movement of separation from it and having related itself to it by an act of ontic identification.
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Since, however, the I is no genuine person, neither can its Thou be truly personal. Buber’s eternal Thou is as little convincingly personal as the One of neo-Platonism or Spinoza’s infinite substance. It remains forever “the womb of the eternal mother.” The “eternal Thou” is the goal of the cosmic yearning of being, estranged from its origin, for the primal Source. It is true, Buber does not seem to be much concerned about that. In the Preface to his book on Moses, he makes, for instance, the remark: “It is a fundamental error to register the faith with which I deal as simple ‘Monotheism’ … It is not so decisive whether the existence of a Unity exalted over all is assumed in one’s consideration, but the way in which this Unity is viewed and experienced, and whether one stands to it in an exclusive relationship which shapes all other relations and thereby the whole order of life.”125Moses, 7-8. It would seem to us that the matter is just not that simple. Buber, of course, is not a mere agnostic concerning the nature of the Unity; nor does he only testify to the nature of an experience of encounter and relation with it. He definitely rejects the idea of “a Unity which is exalted over all” and his entire testimony is meaningless without the acceptance of the existence of a Unity which permeates all and whose being is ontologically the being of all beings. But a Unity so conceived does have its implications for the relationship. What Buber is testifying about is not a genuine confrontation between an I and a Thou, but a “plugging-in” by the particularized modes of being to the mainstream of Unity. Speaking of the pure relation, Buber once explains: “Who wishes to make division and define boundaries between sea and streams? There we find only the one flow from I to Thou, unending, the one boundless flow of the real life.”126I and Thou, 107 Buber ought to realize that what he is talking about all the time is indeed “the one boundless flow.” He ought to appreciate also that in “the one boundless flow of real life” there can be neither a genuine I nor a genuine Thou. There is no encounter, no genuine “meeting with the Meeter.” There is either relating oneself to the flow as part of it or stepping out of it and becoming unreal in the separation of selfhood. No wonder, he knows nothing of the fear and trembling of the Biblical encounter. Only a real person can be afraid. His eternal Thou does not threaten man’s I in the encounter, for what Buber calls encounter is at best the absolute Person’s self-encounter with the finite modes of his self. Can there be in such a situation of relatedness a genuine dialogue? The freedom of which Buber speaks is in reality man’s freedom to persevere in a state of separation; the response to the challenge, on the other hand, is knowing oneself as part of “the one boundless flow of real life.” The response is not an answer, but an act of self-recognition as being one and the same with the “challenger.” Where there is no genuine personal distinctiveness, there can be no dialogue. Buber’s “two notes of the same chord” cannot imply a true dialogical situation. The pure relation which he propagates is a form of ontic connectedness, which — if achievable — would yield the restored unity of Being. Needless to say, such ontic connectedness would indeed “shape all other relations and thereby the whole order of life.” Only, it would do so by making effective and manifest the ontic order of Being. To call it an ethical or spiritual order would be justified only on the grounds that a particular mode of the all-pervasive Unity, in this case a man called Martin Buber, wills to do so.
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Conclusion
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Quite obviously, it has not been our intention to develop a Jewish position as regards the weighty issues which are treated by Buber in the area of his teachings which we have reviewed. Judiasm does have to articulate its own point of view in relationship to the problems of human existence as raised in modern philosophy. It is to be regretted that Buber’s philosophy cannot be accepted as the sorely needed modern articulation of the Judaism of the ages. The distinction between I-Thou and I-It is indeed fundamental and vital. However, by speaking of “the possibility and reality of a dialogical relation between man and God, i. e., of man’s free partnership in his dialogue between heaven and earth,” as Buber does,127Die Schriften, 292 he places himself outside the historically authentic Jewish tradition. When Buber maintains that “the same Thou that goes from man to man also descends from the Divine to us and ascends from us to him,”128Ib., 299-230. he is much closer to Christian teaching than to Judaism. It was the sameness of the Thou that constituted Kierkegaard’s dilemma. It is understandable that against the background of the Christian tradition, the deity could become so intimately humanized and personalized that a Regina might well turn into “the obejct” standing between a man and his true love. Buber, of course, believes that he has been more successful in solving the dilemma. It is “the same Thou” in the deity as well as in the Reginas, but they do not exclude each other. He does not humanize the deity, he deifies Regina by making her a finite mode of the all-pervading Unity. Unfortunately, in this manner poor Regina loses, at least metaphysically, all the charms of personal identity.
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The Jew does turn to God, addressing Him endearingly with the almost impudent “Gottenyu.” He does call Him with the word Thou. He knows that God is present, that He hears and answers. He prays to a living and personal God. But the distinction between creation and Creator, between creature and Creator is irremovable and insurmountable. In the light of this basic distinction, one would have to define, the I, the Thou, the It, and the We, as well as the human I and the divine Thou and the relationship between them all. There is encounter between God and man; it is the very essence of Biblical religion. But it is fundamentally different from the I-Thou encounter, or the dialogue, which are of such importance between man and man. Because of that difference, love for God cannot compete with love for man. And perhaps, just because one cannot hug God as one hugs a fellow man, or participate in him ontically, one should show one’s love for Him by loving His creatures and His creation.
Postscript.1
This study of the philosophy of Martin Buber is based on his writings Dialogisches Leben, 1947, Die Schriften ueber des Dialogische Prinzip, 1954, Urdistanz und Beziehung, 1960, Eclipse of God, 1952, Israel and the World, 1948, and Moses, 1947. References to Ich und Du follow the pagination of the original Insel Verlag edition of 1923.
Postscript.2
The contents of the volumes, Eclipse of God, Israel and the World, Moses, were accessible to us only in the English versions. Most quotations from the otherworks are from the translations by Ronald Gregor Smith, from the volumes I and Thou, second edition, and Between Man and Man. Only occasionally did we depart from his translation or indicated, in parenthesis, a more adequate rendering of the German original.
Postscript.3
In the notes, the Eclipse of God is quoted as Eclipse; Israel and the World, as Israel; Die Schriften ueber das Dialogische Prinzip, as Die Schriften.

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