Buber Man as Essentially Dlalogic Biswas

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Indian Philosophical Quarterly, Vo l. IX, No . 3, April (1982)

MAN AS ESSENTIALLY DlALOGIC

The Epistemic unity of the Problem and Method in M artin Buber 'sPhilosophy of Man

This paper is di vided into two parts. Jn the fir st part we shallpresent Buber's cr iticism ag1inst three anthrop:>logicat types viz.Ind ividuali sm, Co llect ivism and Scienticism on the basis of theirmethodological inadequacies so fo r as knowledge of man by manis concerned , and connect this crit ic ism as a whole to a basic unityof the problem and method- J. uni ty that is p :!rsistent though notexplic it in his philosophy of man. We shall argue that Bu ber'sconecption of man as essentia lly d ialogic uni fies knowledge ofman and d ialogue as the sole method fo r reaching thi s knowledgento an epistemic whole. In the second part we shall trace backthi s unity of the problem and method to .Buber's conception of theprimitive function of human knowledge or man's basic know ledgesituation as what holds between I and Thou.

PA RT IAnthropology, fo r Buber, is not individualistic, collect ivisticor scientistic but dialogic. F irst three types dcri11e what man is

fro m their respective standpoints. By doing this they presupposewhat they want to establish. As a result their derivative remainsunjustified. The dialogical ph ilosopher confi onts man here andnow- in his presence and wholeness. He does not dissect manthe subject of this study- from th is or that point of view, in termsof his this or that aspect.

Individualistic anthropology arises out of a cosm ic homclessness1. Man by becoming aware of himsel f through his intentionaality of perception makes an object of eve rything. He then d iscovers that in a world of objects he alone is not an object. Cosmichomelessness results from the d issolution of the assimilation ofman' s nature to 'nature' as a given totality. With this dissolutionman discovers himself as a lone individual in isolation from eve rything other than himself. Individualistic anthropology emergesfrom the acceptance and glorification of this isolated position ofman. On this point Buber says :


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286 GAUTAM BISWAS. . he accepts his isolation as a person, for only a monad whichis not bound to others can know and glorify itself as an individual to the utmost. To save himself from the despair withwhich his solitary state threatens him, man resorts to theexpendient of glorifying it.2But man's meaning consists not in his ability to live amongobjects, but in making the objects meaningful. The full picture of

man includes his conscious o ~ ; e c t i f t c a o n of obejcts. I f wekeep him away from his th is meaning-assigning activity, his ownmeaning is lost and the meaning-governed world in relation towhich he is becomes meaningless. Thus 'I' alone cannot be thestarting point of philosophical anthropology. Individualisticanthropology is therefore rooted in a kind of deification of the individual- in his " having" himself. I t is true that, for Buber, thestrict anthropological question, (that is, the question concerningman himself) is faced by man in solitude, and a genuine philosophical anthropology build up and crystalize everything that isdiscovered about human bei ngs "round what the philosopher dis-covers by reflecting about himself."3 All this is very easily susceptible to a confusion with the traditional ideal ists' dogma emphasizing the primacy of 'I ' or se lf. But Buber makes it clear that toget an answer to the quest ion raised in solitude, the solitude has tobe overcome and true se lf-knowledge cannot be had by having oneself. Having must be distinguished from being. Buber says :

So long as you "have" yourself, have yourself as an object,your experience of man is only as of a thing among things, thewholeness which is to be grasped is not yet "there"; only whenyou are, and nothing else but that, is the wholeness there, andable to be grasped. You perceive only as much as the reality ofthe "being there" incidentally yields to you; but you do perceivethat, and the nucleus of the crystalization develops itself.4Jn other words, se lf-knowledge i.e. knowledge of onese lf is not

to be disintegrated from the knowledge of one's being which consistsin 'wholeness'. The wholeness cannot be had or possessed, butconfronted. This confrontation is possible only in a sphere of' betweenness'- the sphere of 1 confronting Thou and Thou confronting ! , where I posits itself as a Thou to the other and does not

m a k ~ itse lf an object of self-observation, self-analysis and exper i-ment as the psychologist5 doc s. ln answer to the claim that by


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MAN AS ESSENTIALLY DIALO GIC 287applying the psychologist's method we experience the " inner"world of the individual's self-hood as contrasted with his "outer"world, Buber would exclaim:Inner things or outer things , what they are but things andthings. 6

Hence a distinction has to be strictly maintained between se lfpossession or self-enclosedness and se lf-knowledge. True sc lfknowledge can be reached only dialogically, by the primaryreference to "Thou". When the self itse lf is a Thou, Buber says :

The "I" emerges as a single clement out of the primal cxpcrieneces, out of the vital primal words / - affecting - Thou andThou- affecting - l , only after they have been split as underand the participle has been given eminence as an object.7The in between sphere is pervaded by au element of certainty.As long as I do not have myse lf, but simply am i.e. am a Thou to the

other, I cannot be translated into an a personal object, and sent tothe dead past. Th.us the existential ce rtainty of my being owes toThou. Every man has this in-borne Thou, or to be more precise,every man is an in-borne Thou,8 and the knowledge of man or oneself can take place only dialogica lly.

Collectivistic anthropology results from social homelessnesswhich consists in the person's a w a c n ~ s s of hi s isclat ion " in themidst of the tumultuous hum:in world.9 From this vi ew point,man di splaces the central ity of his conceretc being into the centreof an abstraction which is so :;icty. Though man seemingly regainshis being through the others, by this displacement of his identityhe loses it but cannot find it again in society. Collectivistic anthropology arises when man instead of overcoming this homelessnessand isolation is overpowered and numbered by it , and then glor i-fies society as a true citadel where he is no more lone and is in hisown being. There is no programmatic criticism against positivists'notion of man and society in Buber' s writings, but the critique isimplicit in them. Social positivism too is based on a deification ofsociety and rcificati on of man into a mere instrument of society.I t accepts society as a "second nature" consisting in absolute lawsfor the social scientist; the laws are unchangeable and man's lifehas to be in conformity with those laws. From the very beginning,positivism intorduced "second nature" to intellectual discourse


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288 GAUTAM DISWAS" not as a historical phenoni.enon, a puzzle lo be explai ned , but as anapriori assumption."10 Buber' s description of collectivisticanthropology perfectly tallies with positivists' view of man andsociety. He says :

Here the human being tri es to escape his destiny of solitudeby becoming completely embedded in one of the massive groupformations. The more massive, unbroken and powerful init's achievements this is, the more the man is able to feel thathe is saved from both forms of homelessness, the social andthe cosmic. There is obviously no further reason for dread oflife, since one needs only to fit oneself into the "general wi ll"and let one's own responsibility for an existence which hasbecome all too compl icated be absorbed in collective responsi-bility, which proves, itself able to meet all complications.Likewise, there is obviously no further reason fo r dread ofthe universe, since technicized nature -w ith which society assuch manges well, or seems to - takes the p lace of the universewhich has become uncanny and with which, so to speak, nofurther agreement can be reached . The collective pledgesitself to provide total security. There is nothing imaginaryhere, a dense rea li ty rules, and the "general" itself appears tohave become real, . . 11

Thus a not ion of society as sacred by itself emerges.12 This anthropology, instead of searching for sociali ty in man himself- in hisinterhuman dispo3itions, subsumes him under a presumed ontologyof society. Buber says :

" . . . collectivism does not see man at a ll , it sees only society.ta "According to him, while individualism distorts the face of manbecause it sees him only in relation to himself (and, for Buber,that is not the ' relation' in true sense), collectivism masks it.HThe method it suggests is the method of deriving man from anabst ract entity called 'society'. With this method we do not meetman but look at him through the spectacles of a faceless crowd. Weknow or seem to know what he seems to be, but not what he is ormore precisely who he is. He remains a he, and does not becomea Thou by our act of addressing. Without envisaging the relation ,we succumb to a division. But, as far as Buber is concerned, thisdi vision is unreal from the point of view of the relation. He says :


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MAN AS ESSENTIALLY DIALOGJC 289. , modern collect iv ism is c ~ c n i a y illusory. The person isjoined to the reliably functioning " whole' ', which embracesthe masses of men; but it is not a joining of man to man. Herethe person is not freed from his isolation by communing withliving beings; which thenceforth lives with him; the "whole"with its claim on the wholeness of every man, aims logicallyand successfully at reducing, neutralizing, devaluating anddescrat ing every bond with li ving beings .15

I t violates the fundamental status of man as "Thou" which can beknown by an "I" only through meeting.

For Buber the main problem of philosophical anthropologyis to know the whole man. I t is a problem which cannot be dealtwith in a naturalistic fashion. The medical and biological sciencesraise questions concerning man " in his relation to nature, to naturalh is tory, the evolution of organisms, and the physical forces regulating his body . . " 16 They ask, as Friedman puts it , " what ism'.lll as a natural object, a physical or biological organism ?.,17And , Friedman writes

. . it was upon this natural basis that all the other sciences ofman- anthropology, sociology, p olitical science, and fina llythe new freudian science of p sychoanalysis - asked t heirquestion , what is man ? What is the natural man, what is theprimitive man, as opposed to the man created by socio-political,cultural, and economic forces ? Wha t is m'.ln in his naturalinheritence, in his prehistory as the human animal or primateor primitive ? Thus none of the sciences were asking the 1rho lequestion, what is man ? Nor were they asking the uniquequestion, who am I, in my uniquely human essence . . ?"1B

I t is a mistake to think that Buber is concerned with an abstractmetaphysical unity in terms of human essence. The essence ofman points to his uniqueness which is not fixed , but diversified.This diversity can be experienced or grasped not in terms of anysys tematic knowledge structure, but in dialoguing with him as aThou, in an un-usual cognitive sphere where he as a Tlrou unfoldshimself to an!. T hispresence or unfolding the presence is incessantin that in-between sphere. Thus buber 's approach to man isfundamentally synchron ic as opposed to diachronic. Essence isexis_ tentially necessitated through dialogue and immediacy- i n beingmore than an essence . It signifies a surplus in man.19 This sur-


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290 GAUTAM BISWASplus can be sensed as man unfolds himself as a Thou, presents himself as a whole being. Thus the basic truth about the whole manlurns to be dialogue itself. This truth is not in any extrinsic butin an intrinsic relation to the wholeness. I t too cannot bedivided or estranged from the wholeness. Man's being dialogicprecedes all other conceptualizations about his nature, since it isnot just another name for his essence-but concretized in "I-affecting-Thou and Thou affecting-I'', in man's revelation of himselfand the knowledge of man by man. I t is in and with dialogue thatman unfolds himself in his wholeness, as the Thou to be addressedby the !, Hence dialogue becomes the method of knowing manas well as the comprehensive essence of man. Each of the threeanthropological types consists of a self-contradiction.

The contradiction in individualistic anthropology is that therethe anthropologist cannot study himself because he is not an object.For him, only objects can be studied; when he attempts to studyhis subjectivity is reified. But, at the same time he knows that beis not an object.

In collect ivistic anthropology, the basic contradiction lies inthe fact that the anthropologist studies himsdf only as a part of awhole whose centre is outside himself.

Jn sc ientistic anthropology the effort is to grasp the centralityof man's being in terms of some specificities of him in an unrelatedfashion.

Buber's rejection of these three anthropological types indicatestheir methodological inappropriateness too in regard to the problemsituation. The methods they propose are not anchored in theperspective of the problem. Individualists, collectivists andscientists presuppose their respective standpoints and envisage themethods accordingly. Hence the methods become grounded moreon standpoint than on the understanding of the problem-situation.The way we envisage a problem determines the method. In thecase of individualistic anthropology, the method becomes an isolationistic introspectivism. In collectivism, it involves a misplacedholism i.e. it studies an entity not in its wholeness but in terms ofanother entity of which it is merely a part. It studies the entity interms of its disintergration into that of which it is a part, and not interms of its dynamic relations of its own being as whole. In scientistic anthropology, the various facets of man's realtiy are taken into


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MAN AS ESSENTIALLY DIALOGIC 291consideration but not the centrality of his being in its completeness.

For .Buber the very understanding of this problem requi res adialogic interaction on the part of the anthropologist. He saysabout this anthropologist:

Jn the moment of li fe he has nothing else in his mind but j ustto live what is to be lived, he is there with his whole being,undi vided, and fo r that very reason there grows in his t houghtand reco llection the knowledge of human wholeness.20

The way Buber envisages man is neither as an object nor as a subjectbu t a subject-object who can comprehend t he subject-object natureof another human being into hi s consciousness.

Prof. Richard L. Lanigan says :. . . . a person can perceive himself as a self or appearing subjectin contradistinction to himself as an object or material a p p ~ a -rance. The most contemporary d ~ v c l o p m e n t of this idea is,of course, M arlin Buber's " l-Thou" bifurcat ion which is apcrsoml way of referring to the subject and object constituti on of a person . . . . ln such a conceptual framework, theobjective mcdc of p;:rception in which a person engageshis own thought is the process of perceiving not myself',but 'oneself '. The person perceives the other in himselfand thisperception const itutes the d imension of thought in the livedperson. That is, perception as thought is the horizontalprocess by which the person monitors hi s subjectivity as amodality of his body and the object ivity of his body as a m0dali ty of his subjectivity. Thus, there is not subject and objectproper, only the person as appearing subjectivity and objectivityin appearence.21

For Buber, the p roper mode of understand ing man's be ing ispossible only by avoiding the negation of consciousness t hat comesthrough self-reflection and avo iding the negation of being throughobjectification. Thus the centrality of his being is retained. Now,this can be d one only through a dialogue in which exi sts an awareness of the relat ionality of the mutual reflectibili ty of each conscious-11ess in the other, which is dynamic, infini te and therefore living.Only a dynamic and not a stat ic awareness of what is dynamic ispossible. And a Being-seen nature can be grasped in its enti rietyonly th rough a Being-seen approach. Thus a d ialogical nature ofman necessitates the d ialogica l approach fo r the study of man.


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292 GAUTAM BISWA!Hence, the essence of philosophical anthropology consists in amcta-dialogical description of the dialogic nature of man.

Dialogue i. e. living what is to be lived is not a mere means toreach the specific knowledge i. e. knowledge of man, it is an endtoo . Jt connotes a unity of means and end , of method in the subjectand subject itself, of essence and existence. Jn this connectionlet us clear out one poss ible objection. Since the wholeness ofman has to be confronted only personally, that is, between man andman, the knowledge acqui red at that level cannot serve as a founda-1 on of our knowledge of man at the universal k ve l. Now, weshould bear in mind that Buber is avowedl:r against the so-calledp '.)rso1ulism which has the man or p ~ r s o n instead of experiencinghis being. Thus, fo r Buber, knowledge is personal so far as it isdialogic-ar isi ng out of the ' betweenness' and not from the knoweror the known taken in isolat ion from each other. Secondly, theobjection itself i.-; condition-::d by a pre-planned abstraction. Theabstraction is that of "man" - a universal concept from man-asubject of d i:llogue, a subject for knowing the other. ln view ofthe Buberian perspective the concept of man as such is not a separateentity to be re fl ected upon. His approach to man is a concreteand integrated one wherein communica tion p ~ e c e d e s contemplationsand interpretations. Contemplations and interpretations are notirrelevant to the study of man. But they are posterior to communication. The mi sconception that the concept of man is to be derivedfrom a 11 abstruse essentialist level, and thus a strict split betweenthe universal m1n and the ex istential man, is the result of puttingmuch emphasis on the 1rhat-ness of what has so far been consideredto be the most fundamental question of philosophical antnropology,namely, 'what is man'? I f the emphasis is shifted from what toof the question, the situat ion is not changed satisfactorily. Sincedialogue is the existential modality which constitutes both the essenceof man as well as our method of cognizing it , the fundamentalquest ion of philosophical anthropology, we may believe, shouldbe who is man ? rather than what is man? Philosophical anthropologycannot be a sheer theoretical enterprise providing knowledge of manand methods for acqu iring such knowledge. It is essentially apraxis unfolding the surplus in man in-and-through dialogic involution. We can claim to know man only when we realize hisfellowship in such involution, because, he is essentially a fellowhuman being - a Thou, not an impersonal He or It .


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MAN AS E S S E N T ~ A LLY DIALOGIC 293Part II

Buber's conception of man as dialogic goes back to his viewthat Thou-orientation is the most primitive factor in the acquisit ionof human knowledge. The method that he advocates in phi losophical anthropology has its germ in his conception of primitiveman standing in an existential relation to the world. Here hisview of the genesis of human knowledge as through dialogue isgrounded on his insight into the lives of the primitive peopleswh.ich were charged with presentness "within a narrow circle ofacts" and with a very limited stock of objects. He says : " InThe Beginning Is Relation " 22 . Jn a rather poetic narration of"natural man'', he says :

The elementary impressions and emotional stirri ngs thatwaken the spirit of "natural man" proceed from incidents - .experience of being confronting him - and from situations -life with a being confronting him that are relational incharacter. He is not disquieted by the moon that he secsevery night, till it comes bodily to him, sleeping or waking,draws near and charms him with a silent movements, or fascinates him with the evil or sweetness of its touch. 23

World as Thou, in its personified form unfolds itse lf before the primitive knower. Here knowledge becomes essentially relationa l. Butit is at the pre-verbal level. Buber describes it as a relation which"sways in gloom, beneath the level of speech." He says about it :

Creatures live and move over aga inst us, but cannot cometo us, and when we address them as Thou our words cling tothe threshold of speech.24

This primitive function of knowled ge d oes not know any ana lysis,reflection or in one word, separation. I t knows the relation, andnot the object as an independent being, having its very own structure.Here relation itself is the "category of being, readiness, graspingform , mould for the souJ."25 Another recent anth ropologica lobservation of thi s primi tive functi on of human knowledge putsit in this fashion :

For modern, scientific man the phenomenal world is primarilyan ' I t '; for ancient and also for primitive man it is a 'Thou' . . . .The world appears t o pr imitive man neither inanimate norempty but redundant with life . . 6


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294 GA UTAM nISWASWe cannot envisage any concept of Being-as-such beyond thisrelat ional sphere. The moment we d o that , the 11'/iole is divided,and the Being is no more a Being. l t becom..:.; a fcienlific or metaphysical abstraction. Thus in case of Duber, fundamental ontologyis mingled up with human ontology, the oatology th:it holdsbetween l and Th ou being and being.

I f I-Thou' fol lows a ' in tural combination', there is a ' naturalseparation too.27 The n1turul separation comes when sdf-consciousness or 'I ' grows and 'Thou' " retires and remains isolated inmemory". 'Thou' is objectified either as He/She or It. Thusman's attitude towards the world becomes two-fold in terms oftwo relations vi z. "I-Thou" and " I-rt" . We can believe that Buberd ocs not use the word " relation' in these two spheres in an identicalsense. In the case of the " / and ft" relation, relation is conceived

more in the sense of division, because, in I-It, division of the se lfand its object i.e. knower and the known or knowable precedesthe s p ~ c i f i c form of relation that holds therein. [n other words,in I - I t, relation becomes technicaldemanding thereby observation,analysis, reflection on the part of the self. Here knowledge isrelational precisely in this sense. This stepping down from thelevel of 'I-Thou' to ' l-Tt' has been styled by Buber as " the exaltedmelancholy of our fate ." 23 I t is exalted because it makes knowledge structure possible. I t is necessary because we have to confrontthe whole, the Thou in newer and newer ways and situations; knowing the other never ends, it is an unfinished task. l t is a melancholybecause it gives rise to the knowledge o ~ selfhood as differentiatedfrom the other. and the knowledge of se lf hocd is always a knowledge of solitude. But th is knowledge of solitude is required torai -;0 the strict anthropological quest ion, to bunch a conc ious antip\ilosophical proj )c t to know the other by individuating hi m at adista11ce in his own un iq11C'11ess and by entering into relation withhim as a Thou. It requires both acceptance and confirmation ofthe other - the Thou . Tt is a much more sophisticated use ofThou, and different from lhe primi t ive sense of Th ou. The non-humanworld which was addressed by the primitive man becomes a Th ouonce more in the realm of art. For Buber, a rt is the realm of 'thebetween' ;2? and ' T he art ist is the man who instead of objectifyingwh 1 t is o v..:r ag.1inst him forms it into a n image."' 30 Along withthe f1.1rmatio1t o t' the wurlu of ' r- lt ', WC know what 'dist.tnce' and' relation' a rc, that our realization of se lf-hood is a by-product


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MAN AS ESSENTIALLY DIALOGIC 295of this natural separation , not the goal, and that our goal is tocomplete the distance by entering into relation.31 Thus there isa constant shifting from 'I- It' to ' I- Thou' and vice-versa. Theworld of 'I-It' i!> ordered , systematized. But it is not the solere:tlity. I f it is considered to be so, it will be a ' use les& fragment '.Hence Buber p :>ints to the "other part of the basic truth" by saying" a world that is ordered is not the worldorder."32 The worldorder, for Buber, as it appears, consists in both ' I- I t ' and ' I- Thou .''I- Thou' is the primordial source of knowledge in the case of theprimitive man as well as that of the child. The child comes to theknowledge of external reality as lt only th rough his persona l relation with other human beings, th rough h is longing. for a Thou.Buber write!> :

The development of the soul in the child is inextricably boundup with that of the longing for the Thou, with the satisfactionand the disappo intment of this longing, with the game of hisexperiments and the tragic seriousness of hi s perplexity." 33A language cannot be taught to a child unless the teacher sets

a relation of communion with the child. The child seeks a dialoguewith his parents. Jn course of his growth he tries to get on thelevel of understanding his parents have . He becomes acquaintedand familiar with the language-structure given in a society (thelangue) through his individual communicativ0 acts (the parole)with his parents. The urge for relation is the only initial urge onthe part of a child. With thi s urge, he responds to a Tlio11, not anIt ; he comes to know the It which, in our example, is the givenlanguage-structure consisting of common usage, definite symbolsfor certain things and actions metaphors etc. etc., and then differentiates this world of Its from the world of Thous. Jn other words,the child's se lf is enab led to make the distinction between the thingsin the world a nd himself, to understand the distance between theother and himself, and then finally to build up a wholesome personality by filli11g up the distance between the other and himse lf throughthe cultivation of relation. This enabling of self is poss ible onlywhen his in-borne thou is unfolded .34 A di rectness to the i11-bomeThou c:mnot be practised in terms of a ny given meaning-structure.i.e. to say that which has been hard '!ncd into an It . Rat her, asFridman writes :

Only lThou give s meaning lo the world of It , for I-Thou is


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296 GAUTAM BISWASan end which is not reached in time but is there from the start,originating and carrying through.35'I- Tt has a projected meaning received from ' f- Thou' . The world

of 'It' docs not have any vital force in itself. Buber writes :. . . . again a nd again that which has the status of object mustblaze up into p resentness and enter the elemental state fromwhich it came, to be looked on and li ved in the present bymcn.36

I f we imagine the world of J-Thou' as a whole to be a singleindividual and the world of ' I- It ' to be his image -wo rk, as an art-form, then we ca n thin k of a cosmic dialogue between these twoworlds.

Thus, according to Buber, dialogue becomes a portentouselement of human li fe only because of the fact that man himselfis a 'Thou ' innately and eternally. I t signifies also the true senseof human freedom. So long as the other does not appear, I maybe free ;11 myself, in a sort of homogeneity. But the moment theother appears, my freedom ranges out to his freed om and he becomesTlrou. As long as the other does not appea r, my freedom remainsin a confinement , and therefore does n ot become a freedom in itstrue and complete sense ; f cannot become myself. 1f fr eedom is anorm a nd value of human existence, it is man's duty to unfold hisThou to another Thou, and there by to posit the other in his presence,surplus and wholeness.

The ontological leap from both the sclf-cnclose


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MAN AS ESSENTIALLY DIALOGIC 297numberless instances with all its inherent possibilities is alwayspresent and available'',38 even then the question " how is the veryinitiation into a conceptual scheme consisting of human expressionspossi ble?" So far as the human studies are concerned, this initiationmeans taking a stand in relation with the humanity of which theexpressions are. Metadialogue as a method in philosophicalanth ropology consists in the act of initiating oneself into the humanreality i.e. taking a stand in relation with the other, as well, asunderstanding the elements within the horizon . This method canbe extended to other human studies too. Cross-cultural understanding, understanding the socio-economic background of asociety, critical reflection on the evils of society etc. etc., are bestaccomplished by sociologists, anthropologists, economists and philosophers when the society under investigation is lived, concepts andvalues prevailing there are internalized and felt in dialogic interaction .

Deptt. of Philosophy,North Bengal University,Dt. Dargeeling

NOTES

GAUTAM BISWAS

1. Martin Buber : Between Ma11 a11d fl;fa11. Translated by RonaldGregor Smith, London, 1947, Kegan Paul, London , pp. 200. Henceforward BMM.

2. Ibid., p. 200.3. [bid., p. 124.4. Lbid., pp. 124-125.5. lbid ., p. 124.6. Martin Buber: I a11d Thou. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, New

York, J958, Charles Scribne's sons, p. 5.7. lbid. ,pp .21-22.8. Ibid., p. 27.9. BMM, p. 200.

10. Zygmut Bauman : Towards a Critical Sociology. Routledge DircctEditions, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London & Boston, 1976, Chap. 1p. 8.

I I. 81\fM, p. 201.12. Starley Diamond : Towards tlle Defi11itio11 of A Se1cred SocietyHumm1il11s . Vol : XV; No. 1; Feb 79.I.P.Q . . . 7


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298 GAUTAM BISWAS13. BMM, p. 200 .14. Ibid, p. 200.15. Ibid., p. 201.16. Martin Buber: The Knowledge o f Ma11. Edited with an Introduction

by Maurice Fridman. Translated by M aurice Friedman and RonaldG1egor Smith, New York, 1965, Harper & Row, Publishers, p. 19. Secthe Introductory Essay by Friedman in the book.

17. lbid ., p. 19. Henceforward KM.18. Ibid , p. 19 .19. Tne concept of S11rp/11s in Man is in Rabindra Nath Tagore's Religion

o f Man .20. BMM, p. 126.21. Richard L. Lanigan, Speecli Act Phe11omenolngy. Mart inus NijhotT,

.The Hague, 1977, p. 93.22. I and Thou, p. 18.23 . I bid, p. 19 .24. lbid , p. 6.25. Ibid , p. 27.26. H. a nd H. A. Frankfort , John, A. Willson and Thorkild Jacobsen: Before

Pliilosophy. Baltimore Maryland, 1968, pp. 13-14.27. I and Tho11. p. 24.28. Ibid, p. 16 .29. KM. p. 165 (Bube1's essay Man and His Image-work in KM).30. Ibid ., p. 160.31: I and Thou: 31.32. Ibid . p: 28 .33. Ibid, p. 28.34. R. C. Gandhi in his book Pres11ppositions of H 11111a11 Comm1111icatio11s.

D elhi, Oxford Univ . Press, 1974, talks about the ability of human beingsto address one ano ther as a necessary presupposition of human communication.

3.5. Maurioo S. Friedman: Martin Buber-The Life of Dialogue. Nt:w York1960, Harper & Row, p. 67.

35. I and Thou, p. 40.37. H. A. H :>dges: Tfie Pliilosopliy o f Willielm Diltliey Routledge & Keganpaul Ltd. London, .1952. P. 19.

Buber Man as Essentially Dlalogic Biswas

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