An excerpt from the Shankaracharya was heard recently (from memory):
“Devotion leads to direct relationship”.
This is a theme that has been appearing in a number of synchronous guises on this blog & elsewhere. Recent discussions on the blog re-evoked a memory of the name ‘Martin Buber’. I haven’t ever gone deeply into his work but, on review, I have found the essence of what he is saying about ‘meeting’ or ‘not meeting’ to be rather profound. So I hope this brief excerpt from Wiki is of interest to others.
The generic motif Buber employs to describe the dual modes of being is one of dialogue (Ich-Du) and monologue (Ich-Es)…
Ich-Du ("I-Thou" or "I-You") is a relationship that stresses the mutual, holistic existence of two beings. It is a concrete encounter, because these beings meet one another in their authentic existence, without any qualification or objectification of one another. Even imagination and ideas do not play a role in this relation. In an I-Thou encounter, infinity and universality are made actual (rather than being merely concepts).
Buber stressed that an Ich-Du relationship lacks any composition (e.g. structure) and communicates no content (e.g. information). Despite the fact that Ich-Du cannot be proven to happen as an event (e.g. it cannot be measured), Buber stressed that it is real and perceivable… Common English words used to describe the Ich-Du relationship include encounter, meeting, dialogue, mutuality, and exchange. ... click "Read more"
One key Ich-Du relationship Buber identified was that which can exist between a human being and God. Buber argued that this is the only way in which it is possible to interact with God, and that an Ich-Du relationship with anything or anyone connects in some way with the eternal relation to God.
The Ich-Es ("I-It") relationship is nearly the opposite of Ich-Du. Whereas in Ich-Du the two beings encounter one another, in an Ich-Es relationship the beings do not actually meet. Instead, the "I" confronts and qualifies an idea, or conceptualization, of the being in its presence and treats that being as an object. All such objects are considered merely mental representations, created and sustained by the individual mind… Therefore, the Ich-Es relationship is in fact a relationship with oneself; it is not a dialogue, but a monologue.
In the Ich-Es relationship, an individual treats other things, people, etc., as objects to be used and experienced. Essentially, this form of objectivity relates to the world in terms of the self - how an object can serve the individual’s interest.
Buber argued that human life consists of an oscillation between Ich-Du and Ich-Es, and that in fact Ich-Du experiences are rather few and far between. In diagnosing the various perceived ills of modernity (e.g. isolation, dehumanization, etc.), Buber believed that the expansion of a purely analytic, material view of existence was at heart an advocation of Ich-Es relations - even between human beings. Buber argued that this paradigm devalued not only existents, but the meaning of all existence.
“Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.”
~ Buber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Buber
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Ich-Du
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4 comments:
Hi Kapila
That is very interesting indeed. I want to find out more!
As a side note, in Freudian psychology, the words we translate as "ego" and "id" are in the original "Ich" and "Es", "I" and "it". The "it" or "Es" is the other within, the dark animal unconscious that is supposed to reside in the "lizard brain" in the brain stem. The work of analysis is for the I to conquer the territory of the it: "Where it was, there shall I be". Laudable as this is, I would agree with Buber that the antagonistic presumptions determine and undermine the system from the start.
Your memory of HH is correct ... as it happens I have the quotation in front of me: "devotion establishes direct relationship".
Not that I can claim 100% success in this department, but it does seem that the ‘work’ with regard to this is to endeavour to bring about real meeting in our everyday relationships & cut through the Ich-Es. There have been a couple of times today when, despite what was being said (which is usually meaningless), a glimpse of the ‘real’ person beneath all the complexity and defence-mechanisms was connected with. I think this results in two things:
- the quality of ‘solitude’ is available in relationship. i.e, ‘simple being’ devoid of the artificial
- speech and action, known to be secondary to the above & meaningless in themselves, can be engaged in with the spirit of fun which is what I think (?) Kevin was getting at in Show, Don’t Be
But…the latter, the play, is only known as such, and engaged in without anxiety when experienced in the context of the former?
I would agree with that.
Kapila, related to the subject of solitude I've been reading a book about individualism. The 19th C Germans were very keen to distinguish between "quantitative" individualism (which means being isolated and separate) and "qualitative" individualism (which means being "infinite", "whole-souled", and realizing oneself as an "irreplaceable, given individual").
I'm not advocating this as a gospel truth, but I think it's an interesting and different way of approaching the question.
Thanks for the note about solitude Kevin. I think that is getting closer to the issue. I’m not wishing to ‘define’ this in an abstract way. The question of what solitude is is something deeply felt.
The further thought arose from my earlier comment – that when the words/actions are seen in context as described, then it is not important as to whether something is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. What’s important is – do the words obscure or clarify? Words can be like brambles covering the ground, or machetes used to cut away the brambles? But clearly there are many factors as to how two (or more) parties experience the interchange – whether it is obscuring or clarifying...?
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