INTERSUBJECTIVITY & FAITH IN THE PHILOSOPHIES OF
BUBER & MARCEL
Written November 1987 for the class Philosophy of
Religion 3170 @ UNBSJ, Saint John.
Taught by Dr. Stuart-Robertson
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Martin Buber and Gabriel Marcel were both born in the
latter part of the 19th century, Marcel in Paris and Buber in Vienna. Both men
are profoundly religious; Marcel converted to Roman Catholic in middle life and
Buber a Jew, educated in the traditional style. There are of course differences
in their philosophical and religious reflections and writings. For purposes of
this paper though, we will examine (in the Analytic Tradition) and feel and be
(in the Existential Tradition) the common ground of these two important
twentieth-century writers. I may at times refer to only one, both or neither as
we walk through Intersubjectivity and Faith. 1 must confess though for the most
part Marcel will be turned to and quoted earlier in the paper, Buber in the latter.
Both of these men did not attach themselves to any
particular religion type or philosophical school. Despite their plea to be seen
as individual men of no particular school, others have frequently called them
Religious Existentialists. Let's consider why they were given such a label.
Existentialist Philosophy's general point of departure is that Rationalism as a
philosophy is unable to provide a viable account of the meaning of life.
Rationalism, in tackling the world from the outside, falls short of doing
justice to the immediacy of the living experience. This must be grasped
existentially. They hold that reason and science will never reach the Ultimate
Reality. They were not from the Idealists School like Hume, Kant and Hegel. Existentialists’
emphasis is not on speculative thought but existence. The truth they feel is
not revealed in a rational system but in paradox. Instead of searching for the
universal, the individual and the particular should be pursued. Approaching
Ultimate Reality though only objective means has at least two shortcomings.
First, the objective truth, that is the 'interpretation' of an object is
different from the object itself. Put another way, any description or statement
by its very nature is not identical to the situation that is its object.
Secondly, there is the problem of the subject viewing itself (the subject) as
an object; in this case, understanding human existence. Put another way,
writers of philosophical systems cannot remove themselves from existence to
write objectively about it. Only God
transcends existence. We have arrived at the thorny subject/object dilemma. Or
put another way, the Subject / Object dichotomy. (June 2022 - Latter in my life
I would finally solve this riddle – When can we be sure (Truth) that the
subjective is indeed objective and not false / illusion/delusion?
On a fundamental level, Existential thinkers then
question whether an object can really be known. In turn, they have become
concerned with the question of how the most incomprehensible object of all, God
could ever be known or experienced. They were not system builders. They had a
distrust of objective and conceptual thinking. Therefore 'Being' as in the care
of the Christian God cannot be objectified, it cannot be known then; it can
only be affirmed by faith. They maintain that concepts separate Man from Being,
rather than help to bring us closer to Being. As a result, they believe that
experience rather than conceptual thought is the way to know concrete reality.
Consequently, they have depended upon intuition rather than a rational argument
for knowledge of God or Being. This is not about a theory of reason, which
tries to invalidate reason itself, but points out an approach to Kierkegaard's
'Absolute Paradox'. Simply stated the
problem of the appearance of the transcendent, eternal God in the temporal
sphere of the world.
These two Philosophers set
about the task of fusing the contrasts of subject and object together. The task
before them was not unlike the task raised by Saint Augustine,
"Co-participation of subject and object as One". God is the centre of
Man before the split into subject and object. (Back in Eden when Adam and Eve
became self-conscious for the first time and they hid from God. Ate from the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil – those are our original ‘Splits’) God is
nearer to the subject than the subject is to itself.
Marcel offers some thoughts
on this dilemma when he examines what he calls Primary and Secondary
Reflections. Primary reflections are those, which are an analytic process.
Words and issues become objects of study, and the self-becoming observer
reflects on objects other than itself. Secondary reflections are putting these
Primary reflections back into the actual experience, on the feeling level and
trying to grasp now a higher reflection, but this time from within, as a lived
personal relationship. Marcel is trying immediacy and then distorted or broken
up by analytic thought. Mysteries, as described by Marcel below, are those
things, which most need secondary reflections.
"A mystery is something in which I am myself involved and which is
therefore thinkable only as a sphere where the distinction between what is me
and what is before me loses its significance." I.
Second reflections are then those reflections, which
are transcendent on the part of the human person. It is a participation in
Being. Where reflection to the first power is directed outward, this higher
reflection to the second power looks inward on itself. We have put all the slices
of our rationalist dissections back together again.
"...My aim [is] to discover how a subject ... is related to a reality which cannot in this context be regarded as objective ... The undertaking [has] to be pursued within reality itself, to which the philosopher can never stand in the relationship of an onlooker ... The deepening of metaphysical knowledge consists in the steps whereby experience- instead of evolving techniques, turns inwards towards the realization of the self." 2.
It is important to realize that Marcel is not trying
to explore what transcends all human experience. He is concerned throughout
with human experience, a central dictum of his. What he tries to do is to
reveal or draw attention to the metaphysical significance hidden in the familiar,
to the pointers towards eternity, which are present, as he sees it, in the
personal relationships to which he attaches great positive value and to an
all-pervading and unifying presence. His philosophy centers on interpersonal
relationships and the relationship with God.
‘Being’ can only be alluded to indirectly. What gives
life its sacredness transcends us. Marcel feels that in personal relationships,
transcending experiences such as love and hope are possible keys to the nature
of reality, which is not available on the level of objectifying, scientific
thought. Marcel is avowedly seeking the eternal in personal experience and in
concrete relations with others. "I cannot be cut off from others without
being cut off from myself."
Self-love must
be based on loving relationships with others. He called this intersubjectivity, a deep, and
everlasting, personal communion with another. A physical and metaphysical plane
is suggested. Man is always 'in relation'. Intersubjectivity is then the nexus within which
everything is given to the self. It cannot be demonstrated; it is living
communication, one with another, two subjects joined.
Faith for Marcel actualizes the linkage between man
and reality, which transcends the empirical self. For Marcel, God is not an
object. Faith is not a matter of believing 'that' but of believing 'in'. God is
the absolute 'Thou'. He is encountered rather than proved. Marcel abandoned all
attempts to treat either the 'Individual' or 'Being' as objects. Faith consists
in making a way of living out of Hope and Love, most directly experienced in
earthly relations, together with relations with Being or God. Man's relation
with Man is the real simile of Man's relation with God. Man reaches God only
through his relations to the world. He must love the world to love God.
Martin Buber's most
celebrated work, "I - Thou", concerns itself directly with the
nature of this sort of relationship with others and with God. To begin with,
the message at the heart of Buber's teaching is that real-life 'is meeting'.
Buber sees Man as having two types of relations to the world. They are
designated by the primary words:
'I-Thou' and 'I-It'. Any 'I-It' relationship refers to a subject and
object, involving some form of utilization, domination or control, even if it
is only so-called 'objective' knowing. In complete contrast to “I-It”
relationships, the -l-Thou relationship, which Buber usually refers to as
'relation par excellence', is one in which man can enter only with the whole of
his being, as a genuine person. The “I-It” relation, on the other hand, is one
that man enters not with the wholeness of his being but with only a part of it.
This type of relationship is concerned with things, objects, information and
analysis. “I-It” gives access to the world of appearances, the “I-Thou” gives
access to the world of God / Truth Reality.
Speaking with God is something quite different than
speaking with oneself; whereas, remarkably enough speaking to another is really
quite similar to speaking with 'God'. This type of dialogue brings him into the 'between
man and man' and also between man and God'. For God is the Eternal ‘Thou’ in
whom the extended lines of relation meet'. Each particular ‘Thou’ is a glimpse towards
the ‘Eternal Thou’. By means of every particular
‘Thou’, the ‘I’ addresses the ‘Eternal Thou’ and becomes itself more like “I-Thou'.
Buber insists that the fundamental relation concerns three aspects: the self,
God and 'the other'
"Of the
various spheres of relation, our life with man stands out. When I turn toward
another human being in openness, I receive the world in him. When the other
turns and faces me in the fullness of his existence, he brings "the
radiance of eternity" to me. When two men say to one another, "It is
Thou," the indwelling of the Present. Being is between them. In man's
being with man, "God is truly present when one man clasps the hand of
another." Here alone is the full reality of the ‘Thou’; here alone the
word that is spoken receives its response." 3.
God is seen as the centre of the circle of existence. In the dialogic
meeting, man becomes and transcends himself. It is entering into a relationship
that makes a man really a man; yet it is in virtue of his dialogical character
that human life touches upon absoluteness and acquires absolute meaning.
Authentic human existence (the dialogic life) is existence in the ‘I-Thou’.
To survive, we need to know, control and use things
and what is much more important, even other human beings. Too often to survive
we must engage in depersonalizing and dehumanizing our fellow men. This then is
the expression of our broken world; this ‘I-It’ relation is the source of Evil
as Buber sees it. In the book, The Eclipse of God, Buber examines the
ramification of the ‘I-It’ relation and offers some suggestions for turning
aside from this source of Evil relationships. Buber protests against depersonalization
and objectification through the dominance of the ‘I-It’ at the expense of true
relation. "As man is less able to enter into relations, the power of ‘I-It’
grows and the power of ‘I-Thou’ decreases."
Buber sees his entire dialogical philosophy founded in
faith in the Bible. Buber sees the Bible as essentially a dialogue between the
'I' of the speaking God and the 'Thou' of the hearing Israel. The dialogic
relation, which Buber has found to be the found to be the underlying reality in
human existence, is also the very foundation of biblical faith. The Man who
enters the pure relation with the Eternal Thou is certainly a man of faith.
Although it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to define the meaning
of faith in Buber's thought. Faith does not belong to the category of things
that can be defined. Real faith begins only "when the dictionary is put
down". It is not something to be discovered once and for all. Real Faith
is not a conviction or certainty that something is; it is not something that
can be explained, interpreted or displayed; faith is simply not a 'what' at
all. On one of his clearest exposition, on the meaning of faith, Buber writes:
"Real faith 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. Real faith means the ability to endure
life in the face of this mystery." 4.
Faith
then cannot be treated merely as a mode or aspect of the empirical self,
because our knowledge of the latter is at many points objectively determined.
Because of his ideas surrounding faith, Buber saw theology as an adversary of the
genuine conception of faith. He felt Theology is confronted constantly with the
danger of becoming Gnostic; it is constantly in danger of dealing solely with
an ‘It-God’. He pointed out the paradox of teaching 'about' Him who can only be
addressed, not expressed. To objectify faith, like 'God', constitutes a threat
to it.
As we come to the end of this paper the following are
some short quotations, which attempt only humbly, to contain aspects of Buber
and Marcel's thoughts on Intersubjectivity and Faith.
- "Man cannot say ‘Thou’
to God unless they also say ‘Thou’ to one another, and man cannot truly say
“Thou to one another unless in some way they also say Thou to God."
- “As I become I, I say
Thou."
- "Always remember,
I am not a system builder."
- "The same ‘Thou’
that goes from man to man is the ‘Thou’ that descends from the divine to
us and ascends from us to the divine."
- "Next to being
children of God our greatest privilege is being brothers to each
other."
It has been said that these two men are among the
greatest religious thinkers of the West, during this century. It was to the
problem of dualism between subject and object, that is between the subjective
consciousness (functions of the lonely and isolated Ego) and objective Being /
God that they turned their minds and spirits so deeply towards.
List of Works Consulted:
Buber, Martin. Thou
and I.
Copleston,
Frederick. History of Philosophy Vol IX, London England, 1975, 326-339.
Will. Writings
of Martin Buber, New York, 1958, 11-39.
Manheim, Werner. Martin Buber, New
York, 1974, 92-96.
Marcel, Gabriel.
The Background of Human Dignity, Cambridge, Mass., 1963, 38-40.
Marcel,
Gabriel. The Mystery‑ of Being.
Moore, David
J. Martin Buber: Prophet of Religious Secularism, New York, 1974.
O'Conner,
D.J. A Critical History of Western Philosophy. New York, 1964, 520-523.
Robert, David
E. Existentialism and Religious Belief, New York, 1959, 277-335.
Russell,
Bertrand A.W. Wisdom of the West, 1954, 303-307.
Thomas,
George F. Religious Philosophers of the West, New York, 1965, 425-435.
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