Buber: Mysticism Without Loss of Identity - philosopher Martin Buber

Like Kaufmann, I think the word "mysticism" for Buber's viewpoint is apt and useful, even if it is malgrelui. This mysticism, if you will, of the I-Thou moves Buber to propose a third a priorior innate knowing structure to Kant's two realms of nature and ethics. Buber believes a realm of spirit, exemplified in the authentic relation of the I-Thou, provides another sort of knowing, intuitive but with definite boundary principles. Buber's realm of spirit is a universal human structure but depends on each person for a particular and concrete content.

Mere abstraction or purely rational deduction is foreign to Buber. He is not the one to engage such questions as "Why is there something rather than nothing at all?" or "Why should a perfect being, God, create imperfect creatures?" Nor does he concern himself with the sort of mystical experience where such questions are negated but at the price of the loss of one's identity in the Godhead. Buber believes each individual has a unique spiritual destiny which attaches him to life's immanent holiness-the continuing work of ma'ase bereshit. In this attachment, in the fall awareness of the I-Thou, God presents Himself as near and accessible just because He is also the Creator and Sustainer, ribono shel olam (Master of the world). There is a holy binding of the immanent and the transcendent which is always present in the I-Thou. The human "I" in its seriousness encounters the divine "I" and there is never an absorption or a negation of the human self in the meeting. In such an encounter there is both love and awe. Surely one may use these words for the dialogical relationship where nearness does not forget the unbridgeable difference between Creator and creature.

The "I"

In modern philosophy the concept of self has had prominence and Buber's understanding of the "I" reacts to important philosophical understandings of self. Descartes in Meditations II, used the "I" as the "Archimedean point." His cogito ergo sum, "I think therefore I am," is the indubitable ground from which he proves the existence of God. In his Meditations of a Solitary Walker, Rousseau reoriented Descartes' rationalism to the "I" of the heart. It is the pure heart rather than the clear mind that finds God and is the essence of our humanity.

Unlike these philosophers, Buber always speaks of the self in terms of relationships. Buber asserts two attitudinal relationships for the "I": the I-Thou and the I-It. He says, "The primary word I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being. The primary word I-It can never be spoken with the whole being." [10] For Buber, just so the I-Thou engages the whole person whereas the I-It is instrumental or mechanical. The I-It, however, does not demean one's humanity; it is a necessary aspect of life: e.g., one does not have an I-Thou relationship with the airplane pilot though one's life is in his hands. Nor for that matter with one's spouse in the usual course of the day.

Philosophy itself is an I-It relationship. Buber says "The I-It finds its highest expression in philosophical knowledge." [11] He identifies philosophy with its rationalist tradition, taking it to be an inactive, abstractive contemplation which disengages a person from life; traditionally, philosophy considers man from an ideal viewpoint, where reason is his highest attribute. Often its theoretical intentions do not take into consideration the circumstances of a particular individual. In a sense, Buber takes the part of Rousseau over Descartes, of feeling and intuition in the individual over, as Nietzsche put it, "the ice-ladder of logic." [12] Moreover, in contrast to the God of such rationalists as Descartes and, his admirer, Spinoza, Buber has a strong religious sense of God-encounter that frames this intuition of self.