MARTIN BUBER'S EPISTEMOLOGY
(This article was published in: International Philosophical
Quarterly Vol.XLI, No.2 (June 2001), pp.145-160.)
MARTIN BUBER'S EPISTEMOLOGY
Brendan Sweetman
(Rockhurst University)
Abstract: This paper raises several epistemological questions
hitherto undiscussed in Buber scholarship, including i) if all
knowledge is derived from the I-Thou realm of human experience,
what is the status of theoretical knowledge?; ii) Does Buber hold
that human knowledge represents the world as it really is in
itself?; iii) How is one to characterize our knowledge of the
I-Thou relation itself?. The paper illustrates that many standard
criticisms of Buber are based on a failure to adequately consider
these questions, and argues that, although Buber did not address
these questions directly, he can develop satisfactory responses to
them.Martin Buber's philosophy of "I-Thou" and "I-It" relationships
is regarded by many as a genuinely far-reaching breakthrough in
modern thought. Charles Hartshorne has written that we would be
"immensely poorer without" Buber's fundamental insights, and pays
him the significant tribute of recording that "we are forever in
his debt." Emmanuel Levinas pays tribute to Buber's penetrating
analysis of relation, and the act of distancing. In fact, Buber's
identification and development of the I-Thou and the I-It realms of
knowledge is regarded as so significant that Karl Heim has been
moved to describe it as a "Copernican Revolution" in
philosophy.
Yet Levinas and several others have drawn attention to what they
regard as important criticisms of what may be broadly described as
the epistemology of Buber's position. While accepting the
profundity inherent in Buber's analysis of I-Thou relationships,
and his revelation of the superiority of the I-Thou realm of human
knowledge over the I-It realm of human knowledge, many commentators
have doubts about the epistemological status of these insights. In
particular, there is at least the suggestion in Buber's philosophy
that the I-Thou relation is fundamentally an experienced relation,
which, by its very nature, can lay no claim to universal validity.
According to Maurice Friedman, Buber's theory of knowledge is
characterized by its insistence on the insight that truth involves
participation in Being, and not conformity between particular
propositions and that to which the propositions refer. Truth,
conceived in this manner, Friedman believes, cannot claim universal
validity, but it can be exemplified and symbolized in actual life.
This in essence, according to Friedman, is what Buber's
philosophical work attempts to explain and illustrate.
The problem with this approach to truth is that it cannot be
made "objective" in the manner required by philosophers so that it
can be laid down as a body of certain knowledge available to all
for examination. An obvious criticism of Buber's view, according to
Malcolm L. Diamond, is that human beings can attain certain
knowledge only in those matters which do not concern the
fundamental problems of human nature and human destiny, for these
fundamental problems are immersed in the waywardness of ephemeral
encounters. According to Diamond, "loyalty, love, commitment to
God, man and country, are incapable of empirical verification."
Diamond contends that the I-Thou relation identified by Buber is
one about which questions concerning its validity continually arise
because of its ephemeral, non-empirical nature.
Charles Hartshorne has attempted to state another problem with
Buber's epistemology in a more formal way. He asks: "What . . . is
the logical structure of the contrast between I-Thou and I-It?
[I-Thou] is a mutual or reciprocal relation, affecting both terms.
If this is made a formal requirement, then the only possible
relation with anything in the past is I-It." Levinas raises a quite
different problem when he says that Buber's "pure spiritualism of
friendship does not correspond to the facts," and that he fails to
take human individuality seriously enough in his analysis of the
I-Thou relation. Levinas also suggests that Buber's
phenomenological descriptions are not supported by appeal to
abstract principles. These criticisms taken together may seem to
count against Buber's philosophy making any lasting contribution to
the theory of knowledge.
These are fair and reasonable critical points to raise about
Buber's position, yet I think that in the end they mostly fall wide
of the target. I believe these critical points actually have their
origin in deeper epistemological questions we must ask of Buber.
This will become clear after we have identified these deeper
questions. I want to suggest that the main questions one should ask
about Buber's epistemology are questions which get to the heart of
what is distinctive about his epistemology. These questions are: i)
if all knowledge is derived from the I-Thou realm of human
experience, what is the status of theoretical knowledge, such as
philosophical, scientific, theological and mathematical knowledge?;
ii) Does Buber hold that human knowledge represents the world as it
really is in itself?; iii) How is one to characterize our knowledge
of the I-Thou relation itself?; and iv) Does Buber even believe in
"knowledge," if the term is understood to include a correspondence
between beliefs or propositions in one's mind, and their objects in
the external world? As we shall see, Diamond's criticisms involve
(i) and (iv), Hartshorne's point is primarily related to (iii), and
Levinas's objections are related to i), especially the nature of
the I-Thou relation, and also to iii).
I will try to illustrate in what follows that these questions
are legitimate questions, and that Buber can develop a quite
satisfactory response to most of them. In my view, he does not
address these questions very well in his work, or make his answers
to them clear, and this has in part contributed to
misunderstandings. It is the case also that these particular
questions have been much neglected in Buber scholarship, and it is
hard to find any detailed discussion of them. Yet I think it is
fair to say that they are among the most crucial questions one
needs to ask about Buber's thought, and, since his epistemology can
generally handle them, it does represent a genuine contribution to
philosophy.
Before going any further, I wish to say a word about the term
"epistemology." I suspect that Buber would be uneasy with this
term, and would be inclined to reject it. Yet I believe that it is
an appropriate term to use when discussing that aspect of his work
which is our present focus. I mean by "epistemology," a
philosophical examination into the nature of human knowledge and
justification, and despite Buber's restricted use of the term
"philosophical" to refer to a branch of the I-It realm of knowledge
(as we shall see), it will still be appropriate to describe his
position as an epistemology, and to ask of it the epistemological
questions I have identified above. Of course, I also need to
emphasize that the term is not designed to trap him into accepting
categories he rejects. (This will become clear in our
discussion.)
It is crucial at the outset of any consideration of Buber's
general epistemological position to realize that he begins his
mature thought by drawing attention to the basic ontological
structure of human experience: "The world is twofold for man in
accordance with his twofold attitude." The twofold attitude is, of
course, comprised of the dialogical I-Thou relationship, and the
monological I-It relationship. To put the issue more clearly, these
are the two ways of knowing in human experience, and it is part of
the great legacy of Buber's thought that in his analysis of human
knowing he has undertaken a realistic, accurate and philosophically
valuable account of the ways in which we arrive at our knowledge,
ways which are intimately bound up with how we experience the
world.
Buber's move beyond the traditional division of the knowledge of
reality into an exclusively subject-object epistemology is
developed and explained through his phenomenological description
and analysis of the I-Thou relation in human experience. Because of
space limitations, I will not spend a great deal of time providing
an exposition of Buber's account of the I-Thou relation; this part
of his thought is well known, and need not occupy us too much.
Further, there are many excellent studies of this relationship. The
crucial issue for my view is the epistemological implications of
his I-Thou analysis. Buber's basic claim is that the I-Thou
relation is a relation which can only be spoken with one's whole
Being, i.e., it can be known only through the experience of genuine
relation with the Other. Buber characterizes the I-Thou relation as
one in which the basic feature of the ontological structure of
human existence is revealed to the human subject. It is not,
however, revealed in conceptual knowledge, for such knowledge
limits and confines, by its very nature. What this means is that
when we talk about the I-Thou relationship in conceptual terms,
something is inevitably lost in the descriptions. This is because
the actual experience of the I-Thou relation is beyond conceptual
knowledge; it is fundamentally an experienced relation. As he puts
it, "Nothing conceptual intervenes between I and Thou . . . ." (IT
62). In the case of the I-Thou relation, any attempt to fully
express it conceptually would be futile and would serve only to
distort an experience which is inexpressible. Yet it is one of
Buber's central insights that, although inexpressible, the I-Thou
relation, which, according to him, is possible between life with
others, life with nature, and life with God, can be fully revealed
and therefore "known," in the actual experience of the relation by
the human subject.
The I-Thou relation, though the primary aspect of the
ontological structure of our Being, is often eclipsed by the
second, and secondary, aspect of that ontological structure, an
aspect which is characterized by I-It relations. The I-It relation
can be known fully through conceptual knowledge for it deals with
objects which have instrumental use in that they can be possessed,
manipulated, exploited, etc. Complete mastery of the relation is
possible at this level, because all reciprocity, mystery and the
inexpressible otherness of the "object" is abstracted in an act of
conceptual domination. Further, for Buber, the I-It world, or the
world of objective knowledge and therefore of philosophy, theology,
mathematics and science, is derived from the I-Thou world (EG 31).
Since the fundamental aspect of our ontological structure is
revealed in the I-Thou relation, it is no surprise that it is this
relation that we first experience as a child. Indeed, we long for
it: "The innateness of the longing for relation is apparent even in
the earliest and dimmest stage" (IT 77). This meeting of the I and
the Thou in the child's experience even precedes the child's
awareness of himself, according to Buber. It is only later that the
split comes in the relation, firstly, when I affirm my own
existence, and, secondly, when the second aspect of our being, the
conceptual dimension, makes itself manifest. Buber expresses it
thus:
. . . the longing for relation is primary, the cupped
hand into which the being that confronts us nestles;
and the relation to that, which is a wordless
anticipation of saying Thou, comes second. But the
genesis of the thing is a late product that develops
out of the split of the primal encounters, out of the
separation of the associated partners--as does the
genesis of the I. In the beginning is the relation--
as the category of being, as readiness, as a form
that reaches out to be filled, as a model of the
soul; the a priori of relation, the innate Thou (IT 78).
This is the gradual process of the child's movement from an
I-Thou world to an I-It world, and the child gradually establishes
for himself or herself the world of "objective" reality.
Nevertheless, this objective world, according to Buber, while
playing its own central role in the acquisition of knowledge and in
human experience generally, is dependent upon and derived from the
prior meeting with the Thou. The danger is that in the move from
I-Thou to I-It the original structure of Being is likely to be
forgotten and the I-It world established as the realm of truth.
Buber's thought on this point is not that far removed from
Heidegger's quest to retrieve the meaning of Being from our state
of forgetfulness, a state which is motivated by our obsession for
conceptual mastery of experience. Of this, we shall have more to
say later.
It is helpful at this point to distinguish between two senses of
the word "knowledge," and to point out how they are significant for
understanding Buber's thought. Buber does not make this distinction
himself explicitly, yet it will serve to help us answer our
question about whether Buber believes in knowledge. We can
distinguish between knowledge at the I-It level, and knowledge at
the I-Thou level. At the I-It level, the term "knowledge" describes
the relationship between the beliefs in our mind and the objects in
the external world. So, for example, at this level I can say I know
that I have just graded a stack of exams. My belief that I graded
the exams corresponds to what actually happened in the external
world. I have knowledge of this fact. This is the way the term
"knowledge" is usually understood in modern epistemology. Yet, at
the level of the I-Thou experience, I think Buber would allow that
we have "knowledge" of the I-Thou experience too. However, it is
not a propositional knowledge, or a knowledge which involves
agreement between our beliefs and the objects in the world. It is
not an agreement between my belief that the I-Thou experience is
real and profound, and the fact that it is real and profound, for
example. It is a deeper kind of knowledge than this--where I know
that the I-Thou experience is real and profound because I actually
experience it, not because I am matching up a propositional belief
with an experience. In this sense, this second type of knowledge is
non-conceptual, but nevertheless real and an essential part of
human existence. This is perhaps Buber's main argument in the whole
of his thought.
Yet a second observation is also crucial. This is the point that
I-It knowledge is derived from I-Thou knowledge. So Buber concludes
that I-It knowledge is not the only type of knowledge, and it is
not even the main type of knowledge. We might put this differently
by saying that the realm of I-Thou knowledge is ontologically
primary for Buber, in the sense that all other types of knowledge
must be understood in terms of it, and it is not understood in
terms of any other realm of knowledge. However, the actual nature
of the derivation of I-It knowledge from I-Thou knowledge is a key
(and controversial) claim, and must be elaborated further.
How is the I-It world in general derived from the I-Thou world?
Buber's answer to this question is very similar to that of many
other existentialist philosophers, who held that human subjectivity
was not only important, but that it had profound epistemological
significance. While the existentialists differed among themselves
over how to develop this view, Buber holds that we first
participate in reality, and then conceptual knowledge involves a
stepping back from or an abstraction from this more fundamental
level of human existence. According to Buber, the subject lives at
the level of I-Thou, the level of Being, and at this level is not
primarily a thinking subject. This realm is ontologically basic; it
is the realm where the subject's experiences take place at the
level of existential contact, and not at the level of abstraction.
The (conceptual) meanings of our experiences at the basic level of
I-Thou can later, and then only partially, and with great
difficulty, be abstracted by the intellect and presented as
"objects" of knowledge available for all to consider. In short, the
basic level of I-Thou is not fully accessible to conceptual or
theoretical thinking. This is important because there is a strong
tendency in modern thought to reduce everything to the level of
I-It.
At the level of I-It, we operate with conceptual generalizations
and the use of abstract thinking. This is the kind of reflection
which seeks functional connections and which is operative in the
sciences, mathematics, and "theoretical thinking" of any kind. It
involves a "standing back" from, or abstraction from, our
fundamental involvement with things, with nature, with others and
with God (hence Buber's critique of traditional theology), and
engages in an enquiry which proceeds by means of disinterested
concepts, which have shareable, public, and, therefore, universal
content. One of Buber's main epistemological claims is that the
level of I-It cannot give an accurate or full description of the
level of I-Thou; the I-Thou level is therefore superior to
I-It.
The experience of the I-Thou relation for Buber also indicates
that it is in intersubjective relations, i.e., in the meeting
between I and Thou, that the I truly finds self-"knowledge," or
self affirmation. As I become I, I say Thou. This again affirms the
absolute primacy of the I-Thou relation as the basic feature of the
ontological structure of human existence. Without the I-Thou
experience, there is no knowledge, the I does not fully know
itself, and conceptual knowledge is deficient because it is unaware
of its origin from and dependence upon the I-Thou relation. In this
case one who possesses conceptual mastery of the objective world in
isolation from the I-Thou experience, or who sets up the I-It world
as the primary ontological realm, has cut themselves off from
Being, and, therefore, from truth.
Given this brief characterization of the fundamentals of Buber's
"dialogical" philosophy, we are in a position from which to focus
on the specific epistemological issues raised by his analysis. My
aim here is to consider--assuming that his general analysis is
broadly correct--how he would deal with our three remaining
questions. What about our question, as to what is the status of
theoretical knowledge, such as philosophical, or scientific
knowledge, if it is derived from the I-Thou realm? This question
gets its import from two concerns: first, what does it mean to say
that such knowledge is derived, and second, does the fact that such
knowledge is derived compromise in any way its claim to
objectivity? While Buber does not directly address these concerns,
I believe his position on the first point is broadly similar to
Marcel's and Heidegger's.
According to Marcel, the subject is fundamentally an embodied
beinginasituation, and is not solely a thinking or knowing subject.
This is because the subject is always located in a specific context
by virtue of its particular embodied situation in the world.
Therefore, the objects which are the subjects of conceptual
analyses in any kind of abstract thinking are first of all
experienced in the actual world. Then they are abstracted and
presented in a series of concepts as objects for all to consider.
For example, take this desk that I am now writing on. I experience
(i.e., know) this desk primarily at the level of existential
contact, and not at the level of abstraction. In this sense, the
desk has a particular meaning for me which it does not have for
anybody else. This meaning is bound up with my fundamental
situation in existence. In this way, my context as an experiencing
subject defines to an extent how I experience objects in the
world.
Marcel elaborates this view by distinguishing between primary
and secondary reflection, and between problem and mystery. He
argues that the realm of conceptual knowledge (or primary
reflection) typically deals with problems of various kinds.
Problems require conceptual generalizations, abstractions, and an
appeal to what is universal and verifiable in human experience.
However, the realm of the problematic cannot give an adequate
account of what Marcel's calls the being-in-a-situation of the
human person, the person's fundamental involvement in the world at
the level of personal experience. This involvement takes place,
according to Marcel, in the realm of mystery, a realm where the
distinction between subject and object breaks down. Many of our
most valued and profound experiences occur at this level, e.g., of
hope, love, fidelity, and faith. These experiences are all
mysterious because they intimately involve the questioner in such a
way that the meaning of the experience cannot be fully conveyed by
means of an abstract conceptual analysis. From the philosophical
point of view, such experiences can be recovered by means of
secondary reflection, a general term which refers to both the act
of critical reflection on primary reflection, and the realization
or existential assurance of the realm of mystery, beyond primary
reflection.
Heidegger holds that dasein's (human being's) fundamental
ontological state is that of a being-in-the-world. This way of
experiencing the world is ontologically basic, and the "theoretical
attitude" involves a standing back from, or abstraction from, this
basic level, and is derived from it. Heidegger illustrates this
point further by appeal to the distinction between the realms of
ready-to-hand, and present-at-hand. At the level of
being-in-the-world, we deal with the objects of our experience in
practical, everyday ways, as "equipment" or as "tools" for our
projects. They are said to be "ready-to-hand." In my office, for
example, my desk becomes part of a totality; it tends to disappear
as an "object"; I am usually not even "aware" of the
characteristics of the desk as I become "absorbed" in my various
projects (for example, grading exams). It is crucial to note that I
do not simply regard the desk as being in a context; it is in a
context by virtue of its function in the totality of my office
surroundings. Nor am I regarding the desk from the theoretical or
conceptual attitude when I am engaged in a particular project. Yet
the ordinary course of human experience will prompt me from time to
time to regard the desk from the theoretical point of view; for
example, it might become "conspicuous" by breaking, for example. In
this case, I will abstract from my context of grading, and look
upon the desk as "present-at-hand," as isolated from the context in
which it had a more fundamental meaning. Heidegger goes on to argue
that once we understand in detail the nature of these two realms of
ready-to-hand and present-at-hand, and their relationship, our
approach to epistemology, among other things, will be radically
changed. Now Buber, I think, would broadly agree with the thrust of
both these accounts by Marcel and Heidegger.
So, applying this general approach to Buber, what happens at the
level of abstraction is that I set aside all that is personal and
contextual in my experience of the desk, and I look at the desk
solely as an abstract object. I have a concept of the desk which
captures essential features of the desk--its shape, color, texture,
what it is made of, etc. This is the abstract meaning of "this
desk" captured in conceptual knowledge, and, of course, concepts
have universal, public content. This is why everybody has
essentially the same abstract concept of the desk. We could move to
a further level of abstraction to the concept of "desk in general,"
and so forth. (This is the level of I-It for Buber, the level of
primary reflection for Marcel, and the level of present-at-hand for
Heidegger). So my abstract understanding of the desk is then
derived from the more fundamental way I experience it, and
represents a particular way of looking. We might say that for Buber
(as for Heidegger and Marcel) we understand the world from the top
down (i.e., first from the experience of the desk at the top, all
the way down to the conceptual abstraction of the desk), rather
than from the bottom up (from the conceptual abstraction of the
desk as basic up to our experience of the desk).
This brings us to the second concern, which gets to the heart of
the question about the actual status of conceptual knowledge. We
must ask whether Buber believes that theoretical knowledge is
objectively true? Or does it merely represent a perspective on
reality, perhaps one of a variety of different perspectives, all of
which might have a certain legitimacy? This question is absolutely
crucial, especially since most continental philosophers (with the
exception of Marcel) give the latter answer to this question. Does
Buber believe that scientific theories, and by extension,
philosophy, theology, etc., all simply represent different ways of
looking at the world, whose content could vary depending on who is
doing the looking and what they are looking at? In short, does he
believe that, say, scientific theories are relative to the context,
or even conceptual framework, of the individual, and so have no
claim to objective validity (as Lyotard suggests in The Postmodern
Condition)?
I think this is one of those areas in which Buber's thought is
vague, and he does run the risk of coming too close to a kind of
relativism. He certainly appears at times to relativize all truth
claims to the human perceiver who is making the claims. However,
let us not forget that he is perhaps led into this by his attempt
to emphasize that conceptual knowledge is neither the only, nor the
main, category of knowledge. But not only does he run the risk of
relativism (an impossible position to defend), but he also runs the
risk of committing what I call "the sin of
relativism"--contradicting himself by making objectively true
(context-independent) claims, and then claiming that it is
illegitimate to make such claims. Even one of Buber's best known
commentators seems to think Buber comes close to relativism.
While Buber is guilty of not facing up to this problem in his
work, and also of doing much to encourage the interpretation that
he is a relativist, I believe he did not see himself as a
relativist on this issue, and that he can establish a fairly
adequate defense against the charge of relativism. One of the main
reasons he escapes the charge of relativism, and can be given the
benefit of the doubt is because of his commitment to key
distinctions and insights in his work. For there can be no doubt
that he is claiming that the I-Thou relation is objectively real,
that it is distinct from the I-It relation, and also that the I-It
relation is not the main way to knowledge. These are all
objectively true, context-independent, claims; he clearly does not
believe that one can reject them from some other epistemological
standpoint. We might call them essence distinctions, as are all the
substantive (metaphysical) claims he makes in his description of
the I-Thou relation, and of the I-It realm, and so on. He is not
trying to hide the fact that he is making these claims, or
attempting to obfuscate the issues by using an excessively obscure
writing style (like the deconstructionists). Yet we might still
wonder if he ends up in relativism about theoretical knowledge.
I think Buber's position can be defended against the charge that
it leads to relativism about scientific, philosophical, theological
knowledge, etc. For Buber can argue that the level of I-It is the
level of objective knowledge. This is because the concepts employed
at the theoretical level are objective in two crucial senses.
First, they represent essential features of the objects of
experience (at an abstract level) as they really are in the
objects, and second, these essential features are also objective in
the crucial sense that they are understood by everyone in the same
way. So, to continue with our example of the desk, my (and indeed
everybody's) conceptual analysis of the desk will involve concepts
which adequately represent essential features of the object in
question as they really are, e.g., the shape of the desk, its
measurements, texture, what it is made of, its features, etc. Also,
my wife (and indeed anybody) will understand conceptually these
features in the same way as I understand them. Hence, this
knowledge is objective because, first, it adequately represents
essential features of the objects of experience just as they are in
themselves, and, secondly, it represents these features in the same
way for all, regardless of each person's particular experiences at
the I-Thou level. In The Eclipse of God, Buber writes that "a
skeptical verdict about the ability of philosophy to lead to and
contain truth is in no way here implied" (EG 43).
The example I have discussed is a simple example of conceptual
abstraction, but Buber's insights apply also to all types of
conceptual knowledge, including more complex types, such as
theories. Theories consist of organized bodies of concepts, between
which there will usually be complicated logical relationships; but
these concepts are still abstracted from experience. So theories
too will be objectively true (if they adequately represent reality)
in the sense just described. A scientific theory, for example,
would be objectively true if the parts of reality represented by
the concepts utilized in the theory are represented just as they
really are. Of course, theories where the concepts did not match up
with reality would be false, would misrepresent reality. Further,
everyone's conceptual understanding will usually not be at the same
level; clearly a Heisenberg would understand the atom at the
conceptual level in a much deeper way than most. But the main point
is that the concepts in our thinking--at whatever level of
abstraction--do, if our thinking is correct and true, adequately
and objectively represent the objects of which they are the
concepts. This is just a sketch of a way in which Buber can argue
against the charge of relativism, but I believe it is a fruitful
one, and one consistent with his thought.
This discussion naturally moves us on to our question of whether
human knowledge represents the way the world really is, for Buber?
This question is quite tricky for a philosopher coming from Buber's
epistemological standpoint because an important distinction must be
made before he can properly address it. (Otherwise, we will be
guilty of implicitly assuming that the I-It level is in fact the
main level of knowledge.) If Buber's general epistemology is
correct, I suggest that the meaning of the phrase "things as they
are in themselves" now becomes quite blurred. This is because the
answer to the question about "things as they are in themselves"
will become relative to the point of view one takes, either that of
I-It knowledge, or that of the I-Thou knowledge. For, if a question
about things as they are in themselves is asked from the point of
view of conceptual knowledge (the "theoretical attitude"), then a
description of our abstract concept of the thing will be sufficient
for an understanding of the nature of the thing. That is to say, if
one believes, as Descartes did, that the "theoretical attitude" is
the primary way to knowledge, and that this involves selecting
those features of things in the external world which are naturally
presented in conceptual knowledge, then a description of our
abstract concepts is what is required when one asks a question
about things as they are in themselves. If, however, one asks what
are things like in themselves from the point of view of the I-Thou
relation, one is asking for a phenomenological description of the
meaning of the thing in the external world as it is defined in
relation to a particular subject. There is no guarantee that this
meaning will be the same for all, although it will be similar,
though not identical. This is i) because many people have similar
situations and experiences, though never identical situations and
experiences, and ii) because the abstract analysis of the object
will be the same for all, as I pointed out above. Of these two
perspectives, I-Thou and I-It, the first one is nearest the truth
for Buber, because the second is derived from it, and the first is
derived from no other "point of view" of the objects of our
experience.
This brings us to our final question about Buber's epistemology:
how is one to characterize our knowledge of the I-Thou realm itself
(and also of the I-It realm)? In short, what kind of knowledge is
Buber trying to communicate to us in his own philosophical works?
Is it I-Thou knowledge, or I-It (propositional) knowledge? The
answer is obviously the latter, since his key point is that the
I-Thou relation can only be fully known in experience, and that we
can have only an inadequate conceptual grasp of it at the level of
I-It. This means then that philosophy is not unnecessary or
irrelevant to a consideration of the I-Thou realm. This point is of
great importance in any adequate treatment of Buber's epistemology.
Buber is obviously a philosopher, and has communicated his insights
in a philosophical way. So Diamond's odd claim that in human life
the truth about human nature cannot be made "objective" already
appears problematic. In fact, Diamond seems unduly worried that
because Buber's I-Thou relation is not empirically verifiable, it
will be rejected as not being philosophically defendable. But why
should empirical verification be the criterion of truth? Hasn't
Buber shown that there is in fact a deeper and more fundamental
feature of the ontological structure of human knowing which cannot
be objectified in a manner that would make it obviously verifiable
independent of the experience? However, this is not to say that we
cannot reason objectively about the I-Thou relation, nor that every
claim to inexpressible experience (including fanatical claims) must
be tolerated. After all, isn't Buber in his philosophical works
reasoning objectively about the I-Thou relation? There is also a
confusion in Levinas's reading of Buber concerning this issue.
Levinas asserts that Buber's descriptions are all based on the
concrete reality of perception and do not require an appeal to
abstract principles for their justification. But this seems an
incorrect rendering of Buber's view, for what else is Buber's
account of the I-Thou relation but an abstract principle, or
attempt to convey something of this relation, on a philosophical
level? Indeed, in his concern for the structure of the I-Thou
experience, Levinas seems to forget that the I-It experience also
has a structure ("the double structure of human existence" {EG
44}), and that the relationship between I-Thou and I-It has a
structure, and this oversight tends to distract him from an
appreciation of the fundamental philosophical position that Buber
is advancing.
It is true that Buber cannot describe fully what the I-Thou
relation involves because this realm must ultimately be experienced
to be truly known. Nevertheless, he can to some extent describe the
structure of human experience philosophically to reveal that I-Thou
relations are possible, valuable and ontologically superior to the
I-It relations. It is then up to us to recover, or retrieve, this
experience for ourselves. In short, the answer to the question of
how we can know the I-Thou realm since we cannot think it, is that
it must, after the philosopher has identified the I-Thou relation
in his or her experience, be "thought," "inadequately
conceptualized", "approached" in the I-It realm, where, of course,
the intellect, and philosophy, operate. It is possible, that is, to
describe or conceptualize certain experiences (albeit inadequately)
which must ultimately be experienced to be fully known. It is
possible to form at least an inadequate concept of the I-Thou
experience to the extent that it can be discussed at a
philosophical level. This is exactly what Buber is attempting in
his philosophy. This is a point which is missed by Diamond, as
Buber himself points out:
I-It finds its highest concentration and
clarification in philosophical knowledge, but
that in no way means that this knowledge contains
nothing other than I-It, is nothing other than I-It.
. . .That which discloses itself to me from time to
time in the I-Thou relationship can only become
such knowledge through transmission into the I-It
sphere . . .
This is an excellent statement by Buber of the general position
outlined above, and illustrates that Diamond has failed to
appreciate the epistemological depth of Buber's view.
Buber's identification of the features of the ontological
structure of human experience, which is the foundation of his
general epistemological position, makes clear the inappropriateness
of Hartshorne's request for the logical structure of the contrast
between I-Thou and I-It. Hartshorne, in approaching Buber's
ontology in terms of its "logical structure" is in danger of making
the world of I-It, of "objective" knowledge (i.e., of logic, the
natural and social sciences, and philosophy) the primary
ontological realm of knowledge. Whereas, for Buber, the I-It realm
is a necessary, but secondary, area of experience dependent upon
and subservient to the I-Thou dialogical relationship (in the way
described above). For the fact is that I-Thou cannot be judged on
the basis of any system of I-It, because, as Friedman has put
it:
[I-It systems] . . . observe [the] phenomena after
they have already taken their place in the cate-
gories of human knowing . . . It excludes the really
direct and present knowing of I-Thou. This
knowing . . . is itself the ultimate criterion for
the reality of the I-Thou relation.
Conceptual knowledge, which belongs to the I-It realm,
represents a secondary level of knowing precisely because it is the
I-Thou relation which represents the primary mode of our
ontological structure. It is in this mode that we come to know the
world, and it is only then that we can come to describe the
experiences in conceptual knowledge. I-It knowledge is, in fact,
the "objectification" of the real meeting which takes place in
relation to man and his world in the realms of nature, social
relations, art and religion. If this is the case, it is obvious
that something of the experience will inevitably be lost in the
transition to conceptual knowledge. The similarity here to
Bergsonianism is obvious. But more of that later. It is clear,
however, that it is only in the I-It realm of conceptual knowledge
that the I-Thou would become an I-It. This means that we have an
inadequate conceptual grasp of the experience, not that we have
made the experience into an It. The experience is independent of
the concept insofar as it is an experience, and there is no reason,
pace Hartshorne, that the experience could not be continuously
sustained over a period of time. It is important to emphasize that
Buber is not saying that we have an experience and then we abstract
from it, and something is lost in the abstraction. This is a
trivial truth. He is saying that our fundamental involvement is at
level of I-Thou, and all conceptual knowledge is an abstraction
from this level. This has implications for the nature of abstract
knowledge in general, specifically that it is not the most basic
form of knowledge.
The other central question, of course, about Buber's thought is
whether he is right in his claims about the I-Thou realm of
knowledge and its superiority over the I-It realm. His defense of
this position is rendered problematic to some extent since he is
partly appealing to an experience to make his point, and not to a
conceptual argument. How can we prove that Buber's I-Thou
philosophy is, in fact, the correct account of the ontological
structure of human beings? The answer it seems to me is that one
cannot "prove" it, but that the I-Thou relation must be experienced
for oneself, and then one will have all the assurance one needs.
But this is likely to be of little value as a response to the
skeptical philosopher. And we have the related problem of finding a
way to rule out other experiences being claimed as I-Thou
experiences. One area Diamond is particularly worried about is
fanatical nationalism: "Uncurbed by the cold light of detached I-It
knowledge, it runs rampant, wreaking havoc throughout the world."
What is needed here is a more detailed description of what is
involved in the I-Thou relation so that it can be more easily
recognized in its manifestations in our experiences, and also a
description of those experiences which are not I-Thou experiences.
Buber has not been as forthcoming on these matters as one would
wish. This is partly because of the fact that he nowhere gives a
sustained, full description of the I-Thou relation.
It is interesting to note here, by way of contrast, the manner
in which Marcel attempts to circumvent this problem in what is an
essentially similar epistemology. Marcel, in his division of human
knowing into secondary reflection (I-Thou) and primary reflection
(I-It), attempts to describe the former, superior realm in terms of
some concrete examples of recurrent central human experiences,
love, fidelity, hope, and faith. He does this throughout his work,
but most profoundly in his plays, where his artistic ability is
obviously appropriate to the attempt to express the inexpressible.
Indeed, Marcel makes a penetrating remark in a discussion of
Buber's work:
. . . the fundamental intuition of Buber remains
to my mind absolutely correct. But the whole
question is to know how it can be translated
into discourse without being denatured. It is
this transposition which raises the most serious
difficulties, and therein probably lies the
fundamental reason why the discovery of Feuerbach
recalled by Buber remained so long without fruit
. . . In my Journal Metaphysique I attempted to
show by a concrete example how this authentic
meeting manifests itself phenomenologically.
Marcel's attempt at a phenomenological description of the I-Thou
relation and of a phenomenological and philosophical account of the
I-It realm, and its relation to the I-Thou realm, seems to be a
fruitful way to proceed in an elaboration of Buber's insights. In
this manner, the correct I-Thou relations can be specified and the
pseudo-relations recognized and the philosophical account of the
ontological structure of human knowing can be made manifest. Buber
has recognized (as the following remark illustrates), as did
Marcel, that his own (inadequate) account of the relation between
I-It and I-Thou and of the nature of the I-Thou relation will lead
to difficulties of the kind mentioned by Diamond:
No system was suitable for what I had to say
. . . I witnessed for experience and appealed to
experience. The experience for which I witnessed
is, naturally, a limited one. But it is not
to be understood as a "subjective" one. I have
tested it through my appeal and test it ever
anew. I say to him who listens to me: "It is
your experience. Recollect it, and what you
cannot recollect, dare to attain it as
experience." But he who seriously declines to
do it, I take him seriously. His declining is
my problem . . . I have no teaching. I point to
reality.
Perhaps some will find this answer in the end not quite
satisfactory, and it is evident that Buber has not fully clarified
the implications of his epistemology. Yet the genesis of a new
approach is obvious. The fact that his work may be identified with
a broad Bergsonian view is also testimony that he has not specified
adequately the relationship between experience and concepts. His
work, unlike Bergson's, does not imply that experience is a flow to
which concepts are forever inadequate, since, for Bergson, they
continually impose discrete moments on the flow thereby distorting
its true (experienced) nature; rather, Buber's work implies that
some "knowledge," i.e., of the I-Thou relation, can only be
inadequately conceptualized since the relation must be fully
experienced to be "known." But he is perfectly well aware that
other knowledge can be fully conceptualized in the I-It realm.
Diamond's general misreading of Buber is now obvious. Diamond
argues that when the presentness of the I-Thou relation has faded
and the self is again in the I-It realm questions regarding the
validity of the I-Thou encounter emerge again. But Diamond seems to
regard the I-Thou relation as an esoteric experience. He suggests
that the I-Thou experience is a fleeting, almost momentary state
which cannot be present over long intervals, and also that it is
possible to reach a stage when we are no longer experiencing, but
recalling (conceptually) the experience, in such a way that we
actually doubt the validity of the experience. But is this the kind
of experience Buber has in mind? Who would say that Diamond's
account is an accurate characterization of human love, for example?
Do we immediately forget the experience and assurance of love when
the experience is over? When is the experience over? Is love
fleeting and momentary? It seems that love, for example, is just
the type of experience that is sustained over a long period, that
is inexpressible, and that is its own assurance. This is the nature
of experiences apposite to our primary ontological mode. And this
is precisely what Buber is attempting to convey in the I-It realm
(i.e., in the realm of philosophy). As I have said, however, we
could benefit from a more detailed description of the experiences.
In defense of the superiority of I-It knowledge, Diamond contends
that critics of Buber might suggest that the scientist has, say,
humanity at heart in his search for objective knowledge, at least
as much or more than does the subject of I-Thou relations. But what
does it mean to have humanity "at heart"? Does it not mean that the
genuine scientist has a certain relation, through individuals, to
the body of mankind which is best characterized as an I-Thou
relation? The scientist's programme of work as a scientist is
therefore not guided solely by utilitarian concerns that would be
the exclusive domain of the I-It world, but also by his or her
I-Thou experiences. In short, in this case the scientist
incorporates the proper balance of the I-Thou and I-It worlds in
his or her actions, not exalting one (particularly the I-It) at the
expense of the other. And, of course, this relationship between
I-Thou and I-It is an integral aspect of Buber's epistemology.
It is interesting to speculate on why Buber's (and indeed
Marcel's) insights did not have more influence on European
philosophy if they really do contribute to our understanding of the
ontological structure of human beings. Why hasn't Buber's
philosophy, which Heim believes is "one of the decisive discoveries
of our time," not had a wider influence? My view is that Buber's
philosophical position would have become the dominant philosophical
movement in European thought had not Heidegger developed a
remarkably similar view (as we have seen), except for Heidegger's
emphasis on the interpretative nature of human understanding, which
led him toward epistemological relativism, a position which I have
argued Buber avoids. Heidegger's view was to have great influence,
and it is not uncommon to read statements like that made by Joseph
Bleicher:
Heidegger's monumental re-direction of philosophy
rests on counterposing . . . propositional truth with
another kind: aletheia (disclosure). Heidegger
hereby opened up a dimension of experience more
fundamental than that of the methodical
acquisition of beings.
Now at first sight this reads very like a description of Buber's
position, and of course it is, since it was Buber who first opened
up this new area, not Heidegger, I and Thou being published five
years before Being and Time. However, it must be emphasized again
that, although I have tried to show how Buber might defend the
objectivity of knowledge, he himself did not attempt to provide a
detailed discussion of and argument for the objectivity of
knowledge. This is in contrast to Heidegger who, whether or not one
accepts his hermeneutical view, did attempt to argue for it. Buber
conspicuously fails to consider the whole question of the
objectivity of knowledge, including the matter of how one might
defend this position against a hermeneutical view like
Heidegger's.
The relative obscurity of Buber's work when contrasted with the
mainstream of European philosophy has led to much
oversimplification of his thought, as he himself is well aware.
Emil Fackenheim has pointed out that a person who experienced an
I-Thou relation might not even see it as being real knowledge. Yet,
as Fackenheim agrees, this is just plainly false, and stems from a
failure to appreciate fully and recognize the profundity of Buber's
epistemology. It is surely true that individuals not impoverished
by the I-It world value I-Thou experiences above all else, and
clearly recognize that this is the highest form of knowledge. There
are countless testimonies to this fact in literature, poetry and
art. It is, in fact, because of the self-knowledge attained in the
I-Thou experience that Buber rejects Levinas's criticism that the
I-Thou relation is too spiritual and does not do justice to
individuality. The I-Thou relation, according to Buber, is not
especially spiritual; in fact, it seems to be most powerful when
the two individuals involved have no spiritual ground in common at
all. And, rather than Buber's claim that it is in the I-Thou
relation that the I, or self-knowledge, is most fully obtained, not
corresponding to the facts, Buber says it is, in fact, Levinas's
own claim, that it is possible to achieve such knowledge before its
Meeting with the Thou, that does not correspond to the facts. For,
according to Buber, solicitude arises out of the I-Thou, not before
it. It is only after one has known an I-Thou relation, that one can
know true solicitude.
I hope this discussion of Martin Buber's epistemological
position has served to illustrate the key epistemological questions
raised by his view, how he might respond to them, and that the most
frequent criticisms of his work do not do justice to the profundity
of his insights, though this is in part fueled by Buber's failure
to explicate in a more adequate way the most significant
implications of his thought. I have suggested that the work of
Gabriel Marcel is more successful in this latter task. In
conclusion, I would add, however, that even Marcel's work does not
achieve this in a thoroughly satisfactory manner. As I see it, the
task of European philosophy in the coming century must be to
rediscover the profound insights for human knowledge contained in
the work of Buber and Marcel and explicate them in a
phenomenological epistemology and ontology.
-------------------
ENDNOTES
.Charles Hartshorne, "Martin Buber's Metaphysics" in The
Philosophy of Martin Buber, ed. P.A. Schilpp and M. Friedman (La
Salle, IL.: Open Court, 1967) p.68.
.See Emmanuel Levinas, "Martin Buber and the Theory of
Knowledge," in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p.149.
.As quoted in M. Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue
(New York: Harper, 1960) p.164.
.See ibid., p.161.
.See Malcolm L. Diamond, "Dialogue and Theology" in The
Philosophy of Martin Buber, pp.238-239.
.Ibid., p.238.
.Hartshorne, "Martin Buber's Metaphysics," in The Philosophy of
Martin Buber, p.66.
.Levinas, "Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge," in The
Philosophy of Martin Buber, p.148.
.For works which are concerned with issues germane to these
questions, see the essays in Schilpp and Friedman by Levinas,
Hartshore and Fackenheim. See also M. Friedman, "Buber's Theory of
Knowledge," Chapter Nineteen of his Martin Buber: The Life of
Dialogue; also Dan Avron, Martin Buber: The Hidden Dialogue
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) pp.128-147. However,
the specific questions which I am raising here are not addressed in
these works. In The Text as Thou (Bloomington, IN: Indiana U.P.,
1992), Steven Kepnes provides an interesting study of Buber's
thought from the perspective of dialogical hermeneutics and
narrative theology, and comes close to the question of relativism
in Buber (see pp.77-78), but does not raise any of the questions I
have mentioned. As a result, there is a tension in his work between
not addressing these questions, and his attempt to argue that Buber
does hold objective truths about the self, the I-Thou relation, and
so forth (see pp.112ff).
.M. Buber, I and Thou, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Charles Scribners Sons, 1970) p.53. (Hereinafter IT). Although I am
using Kaufmann's translation, I will translate Du as "Thou" in all
quotations from Kaufmann (rather than Kaufmann's preferred "You")
so as to avoid unnecessary confusion in my argument.
.See M. Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue; Robert
Wood, Martin Buber's Ontology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern U.P.,
1969); Donald J. Moore, Martin Buber: Prophet of Religious
Secularism (New York: Fordham U.P., 1996) Part II.
.It is important to note that Buber himself tries to restrict
the word "experience" to the I-It realm; he prefers the word
"participation" when talking about I-Thou relations. See I and
Thou, p.56.
.See also p.113. See also M. Buber, Eclipse of God (New York:
Harper, 1952) p.35. (Hereinafter EG).
.However, the knowledge of the I-Thou relationship which Buber
is attempting to convey in his philosophical works is propositional
knowledge, as we will see later in this article.
.See I and Thou, pp.69ff; also pp.80-81.
.See Donald J. Moore, Martin Buber: Prophet of Religious
Secularism, Part III. Buber believes that traditional theology too
often turns God into an It. But he believes we should be concerned
not with the idea of God but with the experience of God.
.See G. Marcel, The Mystery of Being (Vol.1), trans. G.S. Fraser
(Chicago: Regnery, 1951) pp.154-181.
.See G. Marcel, The Mystery of Being (Vol.1), pp.95-126; see
also G. Marcel, Being and Having, trans. K. Farrer (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1951) pp.117ff; also G. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, trans.
Robert Rosthal (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1964) pp.22ff.
.See M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E.
Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962) pp.80ff; also pp.96ff;
see pp.99ff for a discussion of ready-to-hand vs. present-at-hand;
see also pp.401-415. See also M. Heidegger, The Basic Problems of
Phenomenology, trans. A. Hofstadter (Bloomington, IN: Indiana U.P.,
1982), pp.161-172; pp.291-313.
.I elaborate on this issue in my "Gabriel Marcel and the Problem
of Knowledge," Bulletin de la Socit Amricaine de Philosphie de
Langue Franaise, Vol. VII (1995), pp.148-163.
.See for example his interesting description of what occurs in
our experience of the linden tree in The Knowledge of Man, trans.
by M. Friedman and R. Gregor Smith (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.:
Humanities Press, 1988 edition) pp.147ff. Also in Between Man and
Man, trans. by R. Gregor Smith (New York: Macmillan, 1965), we find
the following remark: [The philosopher] "can know the wholeness of
the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does
not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched
observer" (p.124). Remarks like this in Buber's work are ambiguous
and hard to interpret, but I suggest that the interpretation I
propose here is fair and consistent with his thought.
.See Friedman's remark already quoted above (note 4).
.For interesting discussions which broadly relate to this issue,
see Robert Wood, Martin Buber's Ontology, pp.118ff; see also
Wood's, "Buber's Notion of Philosophy," Thought 53 (1978)
pp.310-319; see Nathan Rotenstreich, Immediacy and Its Limits: A
Study in Martin Buber's Thought (Philadelphia, PA: Harwood, 1991),
p.40; see Laurence J. Silberstein, Martin Buber's Social and
Religious Thought (New York: New York University Press, 1989)
p.166. Levinas also appears to suggest that Buber avoids
relativism; see Levinas, "Martin Buber and the Theory of
Knowledge," in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p.142.
.I have argued in my "Gabriel Marcel and the Problem of
Knowledge" that Marcel would defend the objectivity of knowledge in
the way I suggest here. This view, I argued, is implicit, if not
explicit, in his thought, and is consistent with his thought. I
believe the same is true for Buber's thought. My exposition in the
next two paragraphs relies on my exposition in my earlier article
on Marcel.
.See also Between Man and Man, p.12; see The Knowledge of Man,
p.71.
.See Eclipse of God, p.39.
.One might be tempted to think that for Buber knowledge is
objective in the sense that it is the same for all (i.e.,
universally valid), but that it is not objectively true because it
does not fully capture the realities it describes, for something is
lost in the move to abstraction. One is reminded of the Kantian
view that knowledge is objectively valid for all, but not adequate
to the thing itself. My discussion here suggests that this Kantian
interpretation of Buber is not correct, but a full discussion of
this interesting issue would take us outside the scope of the
present paper.
.See Levinas, "Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge," in The
Philosophy of Martin Buber, p.139. See also Robert Wood, Martin
Buber's Ontology, p.27.
.Martin Buber in "Replies to My Critics" in The Philosophy of
Martin Buber, p.692; see also Eclipse of God, p.45.
.I believe Paul Edwards also makes this mistake in his critique
of Buber; see Edwards, Buber and Buberism: A Critical Evaluation
(Kansas: University of Kansas, 1970), especially pp.18ff.
.M. Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, p.168.
.Ibid., pp.165-167.
.Diamond, "Dialogue and Theology," in The Philosophy of Martin
Buber, p.239.
.See G. Marcel, Three Plays (New York: Hill and Wang, 1958); and
G. Marcel, The Existential Background of Human Dignity (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard U.P., 1963).
.G. Marcel, "I and Thou," in The Philosophy of Martin Buber,
pp.45-6. The reference to Feuerbach reminds us that it was
Feuerbach who was among the first to introduce the notions of I and
Thou as a way to understand the nature of the self.
.M. Buber, "Replies to my Critics," in The Philosophy of Martin
Buber, p.693.
.Diamond, "Dialogue and Theology," in The Philosophy of Martin
Buber, p.238.
.Ibid., pp.239-240.
.See M. Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, p.164.
.J. Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics (London, England:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980) p.117.
.See Emil L. Fackenheim, "Martin Buber's Concept of Revelation,"
in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, p.281.
.See M. Buber, "Replies to my Critics," in The Philosophy of
Martin Buber, p.723.
.I wish to thank Edward Furton, Doug Geivett, Curtis Hancock,
Dallas Willard, Robert Wood, and an anonymous referee for this
journal, for helpful comments on an earlier version of this
paper.