Thoughts and Notes on the Principles of Buberian Dialogical Philosophy.

Thoughts and Notes on the Principles of Buberian Dialogical Philosophy.

My thoughts here are not a strict description of Martin Buber's philosophy. Buber would never have approved of taking his words in any way other than in dialogue. Buber wrote in-dialogue with the reader, and I read Buber in dialogue with his words. 

I understand the genius of Martin Buber thus: (and thus the importance of his philosophy).

The nine principles of Dialogical Ecology:

1. God 'is' the 'Between' of an I and a Thou. God emerges in the Between of the dialogical encounter. God is not in heaven nor on earth. God is not above nor below. Not within nor without. Not in the soul or in the flesh. God is not an entity anywhere. God is the between of an I and a Thou. When the Psalmist asked: "where is the abode of God?" we can answer with the Kotzker Rebbe "there where we let him in." We let her in when we say thou to the other.  

2. I dialogue, therefore I am. 

3. Dialogue precedes existence and existence precedes essence. "At the beginning it was the encounter." Therefore, dialogue is not mysticism and it's not a theology. Dialogue is a practice, that is to say, a deed we do. 

4. In the Between we create the God that creates us. In the between ee create the spirit that informs us. "All real life is encounter." Therefore, there is no such spiritual practice as going to the within, nor is there the going to the without: there is only the going toward the between. 

5. Dialogue is first philosophy. that is to say, the deed of dialogue does not derive as a corollary that follows from an understanding of a prior system of thought. The contrary is true: all genuine systems of thought and religions derive as a corollary from the deeds of dialogue. Buber, therefore, cannot strictly be regarded as an existentialist, but rather as an "encounterist." 

6. I say Thou, therefore I am a Thou. I say It, therefore I am an It. There is no "I" per-se outside of a relationship. The I of the I-Thou is our primordial self. The I of the I-It is the accrued ego. The I of the I-Thou is our Buddha nature. The I of the I-It is the nature of samsara. Consciousness therefore is not only an inner process: Consciousness emerges in the between of the social praxis of dialogical relationships. 

7. Saying Thou is simply the deed of not saying It. Thou is no-It. I-Thou is not mysticism, it is not an altered state of consciousness, it is not a ritual or a ritual-sacrament. I-Thou dialogue is the 'sacrament of the neighbor,' and as such, it is nothing other than our steadfast refusal to relate to the other as an "It." 

8. Dialogue is not only an inter-personal relationship between two individuals. Dialogue is an ecological process that encompasses all beings, sentient and insentient. Dialogue is not only inter-human relationships, it is an inter-being community. The Between is a social system. Dialogue entails the transformation of our social, economic and political systems from an I-It-based society to an I-Thou dialogical community. We define the dialogical community as a form of Communal Libertarian Socialism. The Dialogical-Ecology principle states that the transformation of work from an I-It activity to an I-Thou practice is the foundation and the condition sine-qua-non for the attainment of all human freedom and enlightenment. Not only our lives depend on it, but also God's. 

9. In summary, the principal idea in Martin Buber's understanding of human life, is that the presence of God in us is always enacted as the presence of God between us. God emerges and is actualized in the dialogical practices of the "sacrament of the neighbor." God is not in heaven nor on earth. God is not above nor below. Not within and not without. Not in the soul or in the flesh. God is not an entity anywhere: God is the between of an i and a thou. 

Postscript: The relationship of I-Thou is not a mystical encounter between two persons, nor it is a relationship that requires the participants to rise to a spiritual or emotional level akin to a "ubermensch." I-Thou dialogue is not a holy sacrament, it is a deed we do, and in this sense it can be likened to what in Zen is called an “ordinary mind,” that is, a mind that has emptied itself from the accrual of extraneous hindrances. The principal hindrances to a dialogical life are to be found in the social constructs that prevent us from putting into practice the quotidian deeds of I-Thou dialogue. Dialogue should not be understood solely as a relationship between two participants, as that could be construed as a “monologue of two.” Dialogue, in its essence, is a social project. In other words, in order to be able to practice I-Thou relationships we must create a society within which dialogue can be made manifest. I-Thou dialogue requires that we build a social community within which the hindrances preventing its actualization could be minimized. As Buber reminded us, I-Thou is a relationship each person enters into in accordance to his abilities and circumstances, insisting, as he did, that there are no formulas or codes to proscribe the forms and contents of a dialogical relationship for this would amount to an I-It approach to the practices of dialogue. I-Thou is a deed we do. The dialogical deeds can be recognized not by recourse to transcendental entities or exalted emotional contents, but only in the deeds themselves. In this regard, we can say that since we cannot describe what I-Thou is, we can try to describe what it is not. In other words: every time we reduce the scope and reach of I-It, we are creating the space and time of I-Thou. In Zen this emptying of Itness is known as the creation of “The Pure Land of the Buddha in the human realm.” Nothing in dialogical relationships is transcendental or mystical, it is simply a mindful renewal of genuine human community.