Martin Buber

MARTIN BUBER
At 14 Martin Buber went back to live with his father (and his new wife) in Lemberg. By this time he was already reading Kant and was soon into Nietzsche. Martin Buber went onto study in Vienna, Leipzig, Berlin (under Simmel and Dilthey) and Zurich.

Martin Mordechai Buber was born February 8, 1878 in Vienna. Following the breakdown of his parents' marriage when he was aged three, he went to live with his grandparents in Lvov, Salomon Buber, a respected scholar of Jewish tradition and literature, and Adlele Buber an enthusiastic reader of literature.

The Social and the Interhuman

SOCIAL - group of people bound together characterized by indifference and ignorance. Each individual existence is enclosed and contained in a group existence.
Leading elements in groups are inclined to suppress the personal relation in favor of the purely collective element. Main concern is the work of the group

The Social and the Interhuman

INTERHUMAN - an event that happens between two persons. Each one recognizes the other as a person. For each of the two, the other happens as the particular other, that each becomes aware of the other; his partner in a living event.
The sphere of the interhuman is one in which a person is confronted by the other. We call its unfolding the dialogical.

I. Ways of Introducing/ Presenting Seeming proceeds from what one wishes to seem; over satisfaction. presenting a false image of oneself to the other, hiding ones true self and pretending to be someone.

I. Ways of Introducing/ Presenting Being - proceeds from what one really is. showing what one really is, is being true to oneself. In general, the two are found mixed together.

I. Ways of Introducing/ Presenting

Genuine Seeming In this situation, nothing is false. The imitation and the part played is genuine; the mask, too, is a mask. But the lie takes place in relation to existence itself. To yield to seeming is mans essential cowardice, to resist it is his essential courage.

I. Ways of Introducing/ Presenting

Q: Since many people practice seeming, can we say that seeming is natural? A: Many people seem or pretend in order to be accepted by others. But this only shows that man by nature longs to be accepted to belong. Mans nature is good and seeming is not natural. Q: What is the consequence of seeming? A: A man who practices seeming will never really be accepted by others for what he is. It is even possible that he will forget his natural identity.

SOLUTION:
One can struggle to come to oneself one should communicate themselves to one another as what they are, no more, no less. (courage)

II. Personal Making Present

Speechifying = talking past one another. People dont speak to one another Chekov: the only use of family members being together is to talk past one another. Sartre: the walls between the partners in a conversation is simply impassable.

Mans only concern is himself; the inner existence of the other is his own concern, not mine. dedma

II. Personal Making Present

In dialogue: each should make present the other as the very one he is: awareness, acceptance, confirmation Awareness to experience a thing as a whole w/o reduction or abstraction Only possible when he becomes present to me: personal making present

Perception of ones fellowman

In our time, we have the following tendencies that makes dialogue difficult
Analytical, reductive, deriving analytical it treats the whole being that can be taken apart. We break the person into parts. reductive it tries to contract the manifold person to some schematically surveyable and recurrent structure. We reduce the richness of a person to a schema, structure, concept. deriving it supposes it can grasp what a man has become, or even is becoming. We derive the person from a formula. Intuition; imagining the real it is not looking at the other, but a bold swinging into the life of the other. If mutuality stirs, then the interhuman blossoms into genuine dialogue.

III. Ways of Influencing

IMPOSITION - influencing others by means of force and manipulation. e.g. PROPAGANDIST not concerned with the person whom he desires to influence, as a person. imposes himself on others, doesnt believe in his own cause. Individual qualities are looked on as burdens

III. Ways of Influencing

UNFOLDING unfolds what is there and believes in the primed powers. Finding in the other the disposition toward what I myself recognized as true, good and beautiful. e.g. EDUCATOR he sees each individual as in a position to become a unique, single person; he sees them in a process of actualization. he is the helper of the actualizing forces. influencing by letting the others realize truth according to his own phase. Influencing without using force or manipulation.

Genuine Dialogue
IN A DIALOGUE THERES: 1) ACCEPTANCE to make the other present as a whole, a unique being; receives him as his partner. 2) OPEN CONVERSATION must be willing on each occasion to say what is really in his mind without reduction or shifting his ground. 3) OVERCOMING SEMBLANCE dialogue must constitute authenticity of being, or else must damage it.

Genuine Dialogue

To turn to the other in all truth also means imagining the real, accepting the wholeness of the other, including his real potentialities and the truth of what he cannot say. To confirm the other does not mean approval. Even if I disagree with him, I can accept him as my partner in genuine dialogue; I affirm him as a person.

Genuine Dialogue
Further, for genuine dialogue to arise, every participant must bring himself to it. He must be willing to say what is really in his mind about the subject matter.
This is different from unreserved speech, where I just talk and talk.

Genuine Dialogue cannot be arranged beforehand, the course is of the SPIRIT.

Silence can also be dialogue. Words sometimes are the source of misunderstanding. (ZEN Buddhism)