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From the Thou to the We: Rediscovering Martin Buber’s Account of Communal Experiences

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Abstract

While Martin Buber is best known for his conception of the so-called I-Thou relation, many of his philosophical writings are concerned with the wider realities of communal being together. The aim of this paper is to examine this largely neglected aspect of Buber’s work by focusing on the concept of the “essential We” (wesenhaftes Wir). As I will argue in this paper, this concept did not develop in a philosophical vacuum, but in critical dialogue with pre-eminent thinkers of the phenomenological tradition. Contra Heidegger, Buber defends the claim that the We must be explored via an investigation of dyadic I-Thou relations. As I further demonstrate, this idea coincides in many respects with Husserl’s approach towards the We, although both conceptualize the I-Thou relation in different ways. While Husserl conceives of the relation between an I and a you as one that foregrounds the similarities between self and other and thereby allows one to adopt a common we-perspective, Buber celebrates the I-Thou relation’s ability to make visible the other person’s particularity and otherness. However, instead of putting these different accounts into competition, I argue that both highlight important features of two distinct forms of group alignment considered in recent social psychology.

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Notes

  1. Throughout this paper I shall be using the capitalized We in order to ensure consistency with Buber’s translated texts.

  2. For a more systematic discussion of Buber’s objections see, e.g., Cohen (2004); Novak (1985).

  3. In the English version of Husserl’s Crisis this passage is translated slightly differently: “To be human at all is essentially to be a human being in a socially and generatively united civilization” (Husserl 1970: 15). Buber is citing from Husserl’s paper “Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie,” which appeared in 1936 in the journal Philosophia. This paper comprises parts I and II of Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, first published in 1954 as Husserliana VI.

  4. Buber is aware that Heidegger would not have agreed with this interpretation of his work as a contribution to the field of philosophical anthropology. Nevertheless, as Buber argues, the fact that Heidegger offers concrete analyses of human life legitimizes such a reading: “Even though Heidegger himself does not regard his philosophy or wish it to be regarded as philosophical anthropology, we must nevertheless test the genuineness and correctness of its anthropological content, since in philosophical fashion it draws upon concrete human life, which is the subject of philosophical anthropology; that is, against its intention we must subject it to criticism as a contribution to answering the anthropological question” (Buber 2002a: 194).

  5. This claim was strongly criticized by Levinas, who defended Heidegger’s conception of solicitude against Buber; see Levinas (1967: 148). For a brief response from Buber, see Buber (1967: 723).

  6. Buber leaves open what exactly it means to intend the other in his or her particularity. Recent research in phenomenology (Taipale 2016) suggests that grasping another’s singularity does not necessarily imply that one abstracts from his or her supra-individual typicalities; rather, the singularity of the other person should be conceptualized in terms of a unique and peculiar combination of cultural, historical, biological, etc. typicalities that the other realizes (see Taipale 2016: 149f.). Although this topic exceeds the scope of the present contribution, I take it that such an account is in principle compatible with Buber’s thinking.

  7. As with many other parts of his philosophical thinking, there is also an important spiritual dimension to Buber’s conception of the We. Committed to a Jewish understanding of God, being with others is always already a being with others under the presence of God. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to me. However, a detailed discussion of this aspect of Buber’s thinking would go far beyond the thematic constraints of this paper.

  8. Buber seems to be aware that this claim stands in tension with an idea for which he is widely known: “I become through my relation to the Thou; as I become I, I say Thou” (Buber 2013: 9). In this claim from I and Thou, Buber seems to be firmly convinced that the relation to a Thou is prior to, rather than consequent upon, the emergence of a full-fledged “I.” But, if the essential or I-Thou relation presupposes that each of its relata has gained independence and self-responsibility, then the latter cannot at the same time be an outcome of the former. Buber hints, though only in passing, at the possibility that there are two qualitatively different relations at stake. While embracing his earlier claim that “the child says Thou before it learns to say I,” he nevertheless argues that “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” (Buber 2002a: 207). This suggests that there is a clear qualitative difference between the way, for example, an infant and an adult relate to the other as a Thou – a difference that Buber captures by distinguishing between the “primordial Thou” and the “essential Thou”. Only in the case of the latter, but not the former, is it crucial that I and Thou encounter each other in their very alterity and separateness.

  9. In this sense, Buber’s concept of the essential We bears striking similarities to Alfred Schutz’s notion of the “pure we-relation,” which he describes in the following manner: “The Other is to me, and I am to the Other, not an abstraction, not a mere instance of typical behaviour, but, by the very reason of our sharing a common vivid present, this unique individual personality in this unique particular situation” (Schutz 1976: 110).

  10. In contrast to Buber, Husserl’s writings on the We have received far more attention in the recent literature (e.g., Caminada 2011; Szanto 2016; Zahavi 2019).

  11. For a more comprehensive comparison between Husserl and Buber, see Lee (2006).

  12. This usage of the concept of “personal identity” is to be distinguished from how the term has been applied in philosophy. Philosophical discussions of “personal identity” are often concerned with the issue of self-continuity, i.e., the question of whether the person I was 20 years ago and the person I am today are numerically identical or whether the earlier and the later being are not one but two (see Olson 2019).

  13. In fact, such a normative reading of Buber’s account brings to mind Seyla Benhabib’s “standpoint of the concrete other”. Her articulation of this standpoint reveals several parallels with Buber’s thought and his concern with the concrete and particular other: “In assuming this standpoint, we abstract from what constitutes our commonality and seek to understand the distinctiveness of the other. We seek to comprehend the needs of the other, their motivations, what they search for, and what they desire. Our relation to the other is governed by the norms of complementary reciprocity: each is entitled to expect and to assume from the other forms of behaviour through which the other feels recognized and confirmed as a concrete, individual being with specific needs, talents and capacities” (Benhabib 1986: 341).

  14. It is also important to emphasize a terminological distinction that is often made by identity fusion theorists. They use the term “group-identification” (as well as “identification”) not as a general term that is neutral with regard to the specific process of aligning oneself with a group, but as a label for the kind of group alignment described by self-categorization theory. Consequently, they often speak of “identified” individuals and “fused” individuals to mark this difference. However, for the purpose of clarity, I will not adopt this terminological convention, and instead continue to use the term “group-identification” in its ordinary meaning.

  15. It should be noted that it has become customary to distinguish between “local” and “extended” forms of identity fusion. Local fusion accounts for the kind of group alignment that occurs in small, face-to-face groups such as small bands of teammates, or a family. Extended fusion concerns alignment with large and anonymous groups and does not typically involve any direct contact, such as aligning oneself with a nation (Swann et al., 2012: 443). In this context I will only be concerned with the phenomenon of local fusion.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dan Zahavi, Felipe León and Thomas Szanto for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, as well as two anonymous reviewers at Human Studies for their helpful suggestions.

Funding

This research was supported by the Independent Research Fund Denmark, as part of the project ‘You and We: Second-person Engagement and Collective Intentionality’ (DFF – 7013–00032).

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  1. Center for Subjectivity Research (CFS), University of Copenhagen, Karen Blixens Plads 8, 2300, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Patricia Meindl

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Meindl, P. From the Thou to the We: Rediscovering Martin Buber’s Account of Communal Experiences. Hum Stud 44, 413–431 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-021-09593-4

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