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This is Chapter 2 in M. Darrol Bryant's Woven on the Loom of Time: Many Faiths and
One Divine Purpose, New Delhi: Decent/Suryodaya Books, 1999, pp. 29
-56. It is reproduced here by
permission of the author. DIALOGICAL
HUMANITY: IN THE
CRUCIBLE OF TRANSCENDENCE
The Great Tao
flows everywhere. It may go left or
right. All things depend on it for
life, and it does not turn away from
them.1 In the first lecture, I sought to outline several of the
assumptions that inform my exploration of the theme of the Principal Miller
Lectures and sketched, in an anticipatory way, the elements of our argument
concerning life's purpose and meaning in relation to the Ultimate. In this lecture, I will turn to a more
contemporary philosophical argument that grounds humanity in the Ultimate. The same point could have been argued on the
basis of the classical religious traditions -- that we, in the language of theism,
come from God and go to God, or, in the language of monism, that we are the
Ultimate -- but I have chosen this more contemporary route. It too seeks to ground our vision of
humanity in the Ultimate and provides us with a vision of the religious traditions
as a dialogue with Transcendence. I. Let me begin by sketching the context within
contemporary Western life that gave rise to the developments outlined
below. Given the eclipse of
Transcendence in Western intellectual life, it is not surprising that humanity
has become a question to itself. Thus I
want here to turn my attention to the perennial philosophical question of the
nature of the human. It will be
possible to adequately make a case for the religions only if we can, I believe,
make the case for humanity as constituted by the Ultimate. Hence, in this lecture I want to argue, in a
more philosophical idiom, for an understanding of the human as constituted by
and unfolding in dialogue with Transcendence.
This will be the first part of the argument for understanding the story
of humankind as the encounter with the Ultimate and the centrality of the
religious traditions in the making of humanity. In making this argument I will turn to the work of two figures,
one Jewish, the other Christian, in the early twentieth century whose insights
were partially forged in response to the challenges of modernity. When modern existentialists spoke of the
"Geworfenheit" or "thrownness" of humanity into the givens
of historical time, they were prescient about the conditions of life in the
twentieth century.1b
As we come to the
end of this tumultuous century, humanity finds itself having endured a century
of unprecedented change, unspeakable horror and unrelieved erosion of
traditional patterns of meaning and life.
The engine of unprecedented change has been the scientific and
technological innovations that have altered humanity's relation to the earth
and to itself. These changes have been
Janus-faced, bringing both life and death in their wake. The unspeakable horror has been the millions
of lives obliterated in the mountains of Armenia, the ovens of Nazi Germany,
the Gulags of the Soviet Union, the killing fields of Laos and Cambodia, and
the snow-capped lands of Tibet.2
Often
we have seen how new technologies of destruction have been deployed in the name
of purity and progress, creating lethal marriages of technology and
ideology. And the erosion of
traditional patterns of meaning and life have engulfed the planet in ways that
leave no corner untouched. Hurled from
their timeless life in the Kalihari Desert, the !Kung or Bushman peoples of
Southern Africa are no more immune from the erosion of traditional patterns
than are the most sophisticated inhabitants of Manhattan, Paris, or Tokyo.3
While I do not believe that these events have altogether
consumed older patterns of meaning, like those found in the great traditions of
religious life, they do point to the challenge to speak the old wisdom in new
idioms that dissent from the hubris of our age. Within the "thrownness" of our contemporary
condition, some have discerned important new possibilities opened up to
humanity. For example, the great Hindu
philosopher S. Radhakrishnan (1888-1975), an Oxford Don, later President of
India, and the one after whom this Institute for Advanced Studies in Philosophy
is named, has remarked that the meeting of "the peoples, races, cultures
and religions" of the world is the phenomenon most "characteristic of
our times."4
It is, he continues,
a meeting that in scope, scale, and potential significance has "never
before . . . taken place in the history of our world."5 This meeting has been made possible,
ironically, by the very technologies that have also contributed to the erosion
of traditional patterns of meaning and forms of life. The point of Radhakrishnan's observation, however, is neither the
uniqueness of this historical moment -- which has antecedents if not exact
parallels -- nor the ironies that have given rise to this situation. The crucial question is whether we will find
in this encounter and meeting of peoples our way to a deepened and transformed
awareness of humanity and its transcendent grounds. In Radhakrishnan's terms, the issue is whether or not the
"close neighbourhood" brought about by the conditions of modern life
could be "transformed into a true brotherhood," whether or not "the world" could
become "our home."6
For this
hope to be well founded, it must have a basis and resonance within the very
nature of our humanity and the reality of the human situation. At the heart of our tumultuous era, then, lie
fundamental philosophical issues that can easily be overlooked. These are the deeper matters that, often
unrecognized, underlie discussions of
economic or political issues, or discussions of modernization or the
transfer of technology or the challenge of democratization. All of these processes point simultaneously
to dimensions of the current crisis and to the struggle for the emergence of a
planetary society, one founded on the awareness of our singular planet earth.
Yet beneath these issues lie deeper philosophical matters that are provoked by
these events. For we must also ask
about the human beings and communities that find themselves caught up in these
events. Thus the issue we will explore
here is more obscure than these front page issues but equally significant. For at the inner heart of our emerging
planetary society stands the question of the human itself. Who are we?
What are we becoming? Can we
rightly grasp the human except in relation to the Ultimate? What are the grounds that can sustain our
quest for wholeness, community, and transcendence? Early in this century, the question that humanity had
become to itself led some European thinkers to a profound exploration of the
dialogical foundations of humanity, a dialogue rooted in Transcendence. Their view of the life of humanity as
dialogue provides a way into our thesis concerning the purpose and meaning of
the human quest. It allows the
religious pathways to come into view as integral to the divine dialogue of the
Ultimate with humankind. It allows us
to see the importance of the meeting of peoples and the contemporary
interreligious encounter and dialogue.
Although that dimension of our dialogical humanity has yet to penetrate
the contours of global perception or the front pages of the daily newspapers,
it has begun to silently transform the hearts and minds of human beings around
the globe. Interreligious dialogue
reveals that an aspect of the life of dialogue is the dialogue between
religions. And at the heart of that
meeting is the question of the meaning of the multiform traditions in relation
to Transcendence/God/the Absolute. The
conviction that human life is constituted by Transcendence is a commonplace of
the great traditions and grounds our contention of unanimity among traditions
concerning the common destiny of humanity in Transcendence. But it also raises the question of the
meaning of those multiform traditions in relation to each other and the
Ultimate. As I have already indicated, the jury is still very much
out on the question of whether or not this encounter of peoples will issue in a
new world for humanity. Far too often,
the results seem disasterous as these meetings of peoples, fueled by political
and economic rivalries and the modern presumption to mastery over nature and
humanity, lead to animosity and hostility.
But this is neither the whole story nor its most telling aspect. What is most needed is some orientation in
the midst of our shared situation towards what Radhakrishnan called this
"characteristic phenomenon" of our time. That orientation can arise from a deepened awareness of the dialogical structures of
humanity itself as constituted by Transcendence. The way to a deepened awareness of the dialogical
structure of humanity has already been opened by two remarkable figures who
earlier in the century pioneered the way in understanding dialogue. Here we wish to outline the philosophical
anthropology that emerged in the work of these two pioneers. This will provide us with a grounding for
our approach to the religious life of humankind and a foundation to further
explore our thesis that the story of humankind is the making of humanity. Their philosophical anthropology also sheds
light on our question of the destiny of humankind. II. The two pioneers in articulating a dialogical
philosophical anthropology of humanity are Martin Buber (1878-1967) and Eugen
Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973). Buber
is well known for his book Ich und Du, translated as I and Thou. First published in 1923, the work has
influenced a generation of western philosopy and jewish and christian theology.7 Rosenstock-Huessy, on the other hand, has remained little known
despite a corpus running to more than seven hundred books and articles.8 Both had received classical German
educations; both were profoundly shaken by the 1st World War, the collapse of
German culture and the profound challenges posed to Western civilization; both
were part of similar circles of thought and reflection in post-war Germany; both
had a Jewish ancestry although Rosenstock-Huessy became a Christian in his
teens, while Buber became one of the most influential and well-known Jewish
voices of our century. The significant
point of intersection in their lives was what was then called their
"speech-thinking" or what I am calling here their shared dialogical
anthropology. Although both Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy had drunk deeply in their own ways at the
fountains of German idealism, they shared the conviction that the philosophical
traditions of German idealism were not adequate to grasp the human conditions
disclosed by the War and the collapse of European culture. Both were more sensitive to humanity's
embeddedness in time and the sequence of generations than were those German and
European idealists who treated humanity as a disembodied ego. As Rosenstock-Huessy wrote in the
"Epilogue: The Survival Value of Humor" in his monumental work Out of
Revolution, Autobiography of Western Man: My generation has survived pre-War decadence, the
killing in the War, post-War anarchy, and revolutions, i.e., civil war. Today, before anybody awakens to conscious
life in this narrowed world, unemployment, or airbomb-strafing, or
class-revolutions, or lack of vitality, or lack of integration may have cast
the die of his fate, and stamped him forever.
We daily emerge out of social death by a miracle. Hence, we no longer care for Cartesian
metaphysics . . . . We are groping for
a social wisdom that leads beyond the brutal "nomical" facts of economics
and the monstrosities of the social volcano. 9 And similarly, in Ich und Du, Buber eschews a separate
"world of ideas" and, instead, insists that he speaks of
"nothing else but the real man, of you and of me, of our life and of our
world--not of an I, or a state of being in itself alone."10 Both were persuaded that an adequate understanding of
humanity must resonate in the lived experience of humanity as well as arise
from attention to the unfolding life of humanity. These twin considerations turned their attention away from
humanity absorbed in self-reflection or the Cartesian formula that affirmed
"I think therefore I am" and towards humanity in its relation life of
being-with the earth, humanity, and the Ultimate. Though Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy had shared the depths
of the inhumanity revealed by the war, for neither did that horrendous
experience utter the last word. Rather,
it disclosed the necessity to turn again to fundamental questions to wrest anew
the wisdom that was to be found at life's depths. Thus in philosophical and theological circles, just as in the
realms of the arts, politics, and sciences, there was a reopening of
fundamental questions in post-War Germany and across Europe. When Heidegger asserts in Being and Time
that "it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning
of Being,"11 he speaks not only for himself but for his moment in the
cultural life of post-War Europe.
Humanity had become a question to itself, and it was thus essential to
arrive at a renewed understanding of the human. Only that philosophical or existential wisdom could begin to
point in another direction beyond the impasse of the moment. Yet it was essential that such wisdom be
rooted in a profound understanding of humanity and the human venture, embodying
the very depths of human nature. That new direction was, curiously as we shall see,
consonant with the oldest and deepest insights of Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy's
respective traditions of faith, insights that had been eclipsed in modernity's
affirmation of humanity's autonomy and mastery over nature. Indeed, it was these neglected sources
of insight that provided the
inspiration that gave rise to their shared vision of humanity as (1)
constituted by the Divine and (2) grounded in and coming to be through
dialogue. For both Buber and
Rosenstock-Huessy, dialogue was not one among many human activities, nor mere
academic exchange. Rather, in their understanding,
life was dialogue. Dialogue was the
name for the deepest and most profound relationship of humanity to reality. While it is not possible here to explore in detail their
respective understandings of dialogical humanity or to convey all the nuances
of the differences in their views, it is possible to highlight three of the
essential insights that emerge from their work. Those insights cluster around the themes of (1) the transcendent
or divine presence which funds dialogue, (2) the centrality of dialogue to
human life, and (3) the relational character of humanity as unfolded in time
and space. Let us look at each of
these in turn. The
Transcendent Presence: Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy shared with
modern existentialists the philosophical presupposition that the analysis of
the human condition must resonate with the actual experience of humanity. Yet there is a fundamental disagreement
between Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy and the so-called secular existentialists
like Martin Heidegger and Jean Paul Sartre.
That disagreement concerns the constitution of that reality within which
humanity finds itself. Are we here
dealing with the classical metaphysical question of God/humanity/world or is it
a question of humanity/world? This
question is much disputed in relation to Heidegger: some read him with a
Transcendent, others without. With
Sartre, the issue is clearer: there is no transcendent or divine
dimension. For Buber and
Rosenstock-Huessy, humanity's life is life in relation to the Transcendent and
the world. These three terms are not
to be understood as pointing to three distinct realms or watertight
compartments, nor should they be separated from the life experience they seek
to evoke. For Buber and
Rosenstock-Huessy, humanity finds itself in the given texture of the life of families,
of societies, of traditions, of nature, and the Transcendent. And that Ultimate is simultaneously both
other and present to our textured life in time. One does not find traditional ontological or
cosmological arguments on behalf of Transcendence in either Buber or
Rosenstock-Huessy; indeed, both eschew such arguments as fruitless. Buber, for example, asserts that "the
Eternal Thou can by its nature not become It. . . ."12 Buber sees the process of reflection as
inevitably transforming "realities" into objects and thus distorting
the reality of the human situation and that with which we have to do. Rather, Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy turn to
the analysis of the human experience of life itself, especially in society and
speech, to disclose its relation to Transcendence as the constituent ground of
the phenomenon of humanity itself. As
Buber was to remark in utter simplicity, "living means being
addressed."13
But the question of
the source of this "address" is what divides Buber and
Rosenstock-Huessy from others within the existentialist movement with whom they
shared a great deal.14 For Buber, it is this Transcendent Presence which is the
basis for his description of human life as "I-Thou" and
"I-It" relationships. Our
humanity comes to be in response to the address of the Ultimate to be and
become. For Rosenstock-Huessy "God is the I that always precedes our
existence and the existence of our fellow creatures."15 And
in his "grammar" of human existence, humanity is "the
second person."16
Buber remarks
that "meeting with God does not come to [man] in order that he may concern
himself with God, but in order that he may confirm that there is meaning in the
world."17
While Rosenstock-Huessy
shares this basic view, he is critical of the formulation
"I-Thou." For Rosenstock-Huessy,
this formulation obscures the precedence of the Divine Thou in the emergence of
the I and the dynamic quality of the divine/human relation. It would be better to speak of Thou-I since
it is the Divine that constitutes the Self, not the other way around. Rosenstock-Huessy was later to remark that
Buber had spoken "too early," before the insights that were emerging
in post-War Germany had fully ripened.18
At the very least, Rosenstock-Huessy thought that the order of the
formulation should be reversed -- Thou-I rather than I-Thou -- to underscore
the awareness that the self comes to be in response to the reality Beyond --
mediated through mothers and fathers, communities and traditions -- which
addresses us from the moment of our beginnings in time. In Rosenstock-Huessy's words: In our natural situation, that of being an addressee, we
are neither active like the over-energetic Ego
nor passive like the suffering under-dog. We are swimmers in a buoyant and everlasting medium. The dawn of creation is upon us, and we
await our question, our specific mandate, in the silence of the beginnings of
time. When we have learned to listen to
the question and serve towards its solution, we have advanced to a new day."19 Thus if we fail to grasp the structure of humanity
rightly, we cannot rightly understand the human situation. In the "grammar" that emerges in
Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy, that means that Transcendence is the first person
of a grammar of the human. The metaphor of "grammar" is important here
since both Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy eschewed idealist metaphysics for
elevating thought over the actual. In
Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy's hands, the quest for wisdom -- philosophia --
involved turning to life itself to uncover the dynamics and structures present
to the human engagement with reality.
Rosenstock-Huessy especially likened the task to that of the student of
speech and language who seeks to become aware of the dynamics and structure of
language -- its grammar. But it is
essential to remember that speaking and listening -- the reality of language --
precedes the grasp of its grammar just as here life itself precedes, and
continually funds, the awareness and articulation of life's dynamics and
structure: what we call here its grammar.
Within this philosophical frame, dialogue as the relationship with
reality always takes precedence over the articulation of that relationship in a
"grammar." And the first
person of that grammar that we find in Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy is the
Transcendent, the Absolute, God. Consequently, ours is not merely being-unto-death, as
Heidegger suggested, but it is being-in-response to the address that comes
through life itself. Nor is that
"address" -- what Heidegger called "Ruf" -- which addresses
humanity simply humanity itself, as Heidegger argued.20 For Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy, we are
addressed by the Beyond. In Buber's
words, "In the signs of life which happens to us we are addressed. Who speaks?" And Buber's answer is this: "If we name the speaker of this
speech God, then it is always the God of the moment, a moment God."21 Buber's formulation is important in that it
emphasizes that God is not an object of thought, but a presence that
"speaks." Moreover, God is
"a moment God" meaning that the Divine discloses itself in the moment
of address, of meeting, of dialogue; God is not static in relation to
humanity. This understanding does not
mean, however, that Buber is anticipating process theology and its notion of a
changing God. Rather, Buber's point is
the dynamic of God for humanity: humanity finds itself in being addressed by
Transcendence, and in response to that address, comes to be in an unfolding
historical destiny. That destiny
unfolds across generations, and it arises from the nexus of address and
response. What is significant here is the way in which Buber and
Rosenstock-Huessy portray the human situation.
Humanity does not come to be in an empty universe but in one constituted
by Transcendence. This relational
ontology is constituative of humanity as such.
Thus at the heart of humanity lies the call to be and become not merely
in relation to what is at hand or in terms of the present moment of technical
society and its claims on our being and becoming, but in relation to the deeper
ground of authentic life in the present in response to the Beyond. The present and the Beyond are not severed
nor separated in Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy.
They are interrelated moments in the dynamic unfolding of life; they
constitute the fundamental terms in the grammar of life itself. Although we have here focused on the divine-human
relationship, the "world" is implicitly present in its two-fold
meaning. "World" is the name we give to both the realm of nature and
to social reality.21b
For both Buber
and Rosenstock-Huessy, the disorientation and turmoil that had overwhelmed
Europe required an analysis that addressed the foundations of that disease
rather than the symptoms. It is this
fundamental analysis that is lacking in contemporary western philosophy and is
being eroded by the impact of the western sciences and technologies of mastery
that presume that the world exists from itself alone, an erosion that ends in
nihilism. Once, however, the
divine-human structure of human being is brought to the fore, then the world
can come into proper view. Dialogical
Humanity: If, as Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy argued,
the human situation is rightly portrayed as one constituted by
humanity-in-relation to Transcendence, then we can understand why dialogue becomes
the name for the life of humanity. For
in this account of things, humanity unfolds in a dialogical relationship with
the divine, the world, and the human.
But of course this way of putting the matter is misleading: the clarity
and sequence of the terms belies the all-at-onceness of the experience of
life. Few knew this problem better than
Rosenstock-Huessy who attempted in his grammar of human life to respect
simultaneously the particular in the universal and vice versa. Both Rosenstock-Huessy and Buber recognized
that humanity does not move in a neat or ordered way from the divine to the
world and to one another. Rather, we,
as particular human beings and communities, find ourselves emerging in the
complex emotional dynamics of family life attempting to discern there the words
that make for life and growth. We are
in the midst of larger social institutions and processes and are there deluged
with claims and counter-claims of what makes for significant living. We find ourselves as members of political
societies with their claims for the appropriate ways to use and deploy
power. We find ourselves caught up in
the vicissitudes of our historical moment and its insights and pretenses. Which claims are to be acknowledged, which
rejected, which ignored? But switching
our focus from the general to the particular does not alter the essential
philosophical point, though it does complicate and texture it. That point is the dialogical character of
the human situation. Few have been able to unfold the dialogical character of
the human situation as ably as Rosenstock-Huessy. Unfortunately, we can only hint at that achievement here. To begin, it is important to note that his
is a more complex grammar of dialogical humanity than Buber's. Buber's two-foldedness -- I-Thou, I-It -- becomes four-foldedness in
Rosenstock-Huessy -- humanity in dialogue with the Future, Past, Inner, and
Outer fronts of life. For
Rosenstock-Huessy, that dialogue of humanity with life and its transcendent
foundation unfolds in a four-fold or cruciform structure, pattern, and dynamic.22
Humanity is, in his view,
faced inward and outward, forward and backward simultaneously. Each of these fronts of life -- in space
from within to without, in time from backward to forward -- confronts the human
with the demands of dialogue. In time,
we are confronted with the question of what from the past we must hold on to
and what we must let go of; in our response to these challenges, we write the
story of our generation and era.
Similarly, in space we turn in to the demands of the self and out to the
realm of nature and society. And here
too we must respond to the claims that come to us from within and without. Thus Rosenstock-Huessy's formula for
humanity's dialogue with itself, others and nature, the past and the future,
the heavens and the earth, is "respondeo etsi mutabor": I respond
although I will be changed.23 The dialogical character of human being and becoming is,
as we have already shown, unfolded in the order of space and time. Indeed, it is basic to life itself. Thus Buber remarked that, The life of dialogue is no
privilege of intellectual activity like dialectic. It does not begin in the upper story of humanity. It begins no higher than where humanity
begins. There are not gifted and
ungifted here, only those who give themselves and those who withhold
themselves."23b
While Buber tended to focus more on the dialogue between
"I" and "Thou," Rosenstock-Huessy gave more attention to
the dialogical character of human life as it unfolds in space and time. That unfolding is neither automatic nor
mechanical but passes through the human person who responds in countless
varieties of ways. The point here is
not those varieties but rather the relationships that are given in the life of
humanity. For dialogical humanity, meaning grows out of the life
of dialogue with Transcendence, the world, and other human beings. Meaning is constituted by relationships
rather than concepts. When humanity
finds itself in vital relationships with the Transcendent, mediated through
communities of faith, or through the world given to us in creation and society,
or through the other as humanity in its gender and cultural diversity, then
life becomes awash with meaning. But
when humanity is experienced as isolated in a silent cosmos, or as alienated
from the worlds of society and creation, or as alone in relation to the other,
then meaning evaporates and our humanity shrinks. It is relation that bestows meaning. Thus our dialogical humanity is constituted by dialogue
and relation. Indeed, these are so
deeply intertwined that it is only for purposes of analysis that they can be
distinguished. Hence the discussion of
the centrality of dialogue to the human venture leads inextricably into an outline
of relational humanity. Relational
Humanity: The centrality of relationship to the
philosophical anthropology of both Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy is immediately
obvious in the classic statement with which Buber opens Ich und Du: To man the world is twofold, in
accordance with his twofold attitude.
The attitude of man is twofold, in accordance with the twofold nature of
the primary words which he speaks. The
primary words are not isolated words, but combined words. The one primary word
is the combination I-Thou. The other primary word is the
combination I-it...24 Thus the formulations "I-Thou" and
"I-It" entered the language of philosophical anthropology. In his early writing, Buber's I-Thou/I-It come to signify two basic
attitudes towards life as well as the twofold relationship to life present
in/to every human being. This
relational understanding of the human was fundamental to both Buber and
Rosenstock-Huessy's work, even though the latter would speak of those
relationships, as we have already indicated, in a more differentiated way. Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy saw the profound limitations
of a philosophical tradition founded on the Cartesian dictum that because we
think we are. They did, however, share
with Hegel an awareness of the horizon of temporality and with Nietzsche a
concern for the living moment. But
Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy brought to their analysis of these themes a
distinctive awareness that was rooted in their sensitivity to speech as the
vital key to living humanity. It was
precisely speech in its particularity -- rather than reflection in its
generality -- that embodied humanity's response to the historical moment in
which life in all its wretchedness and glory was being unfolded. For Buber, it was a two-fold humanity; for
Rosenstock-Huessy it was a four-fold humanity.
For Buber, the human either faced the mystery of the Thou or lived in
the world of It. Despite Buber's efforts to acknowledge something valid in the
"I/It" relation, it always comes through as second best and lacking
in its basic character. For
Rosenstock-Huessy, our relationships extend without and within in space,
forward and backward in time as well as above and below into the eternal. This remarkably enriched account of the
relational character of the human points to the many fronts of dialogue that
arise at the many fronts of life. When
the multiplicity, or in Rosenstock-Huessy's preferred word, the multiformity of
humanity is unfolded, then our awareness deepens. Humanity is not just this one thing, but a constellation of
relationships that spans the relation we have to ourselves, to the relationship
we have to the earth, and the relationship we have with those who came before
us and those who will come after us. It
is when humanity is thus restored to the multiform relations of life that
meaning can emerge. Alienated from
those life forms and patterns of exchange between humanity and life, humanity
becomes a stranger to itself. Lost in
the world of abstractions rather than enmeshed in a life of thought, alienated
in a world of commodities rather than alive in a world of exchange, caught in
the merry-go-rounds of emotional trauma rather than flowing with the movement
of life, humanity becomes estranged from its moorings. But when humanity finds itself in the world of
relations, then community is given to humanity. For both Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy, community is not another
category alongside the human but rather the inevitable form of our relational
humanity.25
In both Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy, then, it was
humanity-in-dialogue that constituted the ground of life and the fundamental
category for a philosophical anthropology.
When they brought forward the centrality of dialogue to the
understanding of the human, they were charting waters that had not been charted
before even though they had been sounded in the religious heritage of
humankind. Although the work of Buber
and Rosenstock-Huessy does not provide us with either a finished agenda or a
completed map of humanity, it does provide us with a fresh articulation of an
ancient wisdom: namely, that humanity is constituted by the Ultimate. Moreover, their insights into dialogical
humanity allow us to begin to discern meanings and hear notes that might alter
our understanding of what is unfolding in the midst of the events that shape
our age. The heart of their
contribution is the orientation they provide.
We may not yet see clearly or face to face, but perhaps we can heed
those notes that call us to take our place in the yet unfinished melody of
humanity in relation to itself and that Beyond that funds it all. III. Seen in the light of the dialogical account of humanity
pioneered by Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy, the religious and spiritual
traditions of humankind emerge as the living response of humanity's life of
dialogue with the Transcendent, the Unmanifest. In that dialogue, the initiative rests as much Beyond as
Within. The Transcendent has been
revealed or disclosed and named in diverse names -- names that are so holy that
we should tremble to even utter them -- in the manifold traditions of religious
life: Yahweh, Brahman, God, Tao, Allah, Emptiness, Kitche Manitou, Ek Oankar .
. . Thus the religious traditions
reveal a shared awareness that humanity unfolds in dialogue with the Absolute
which simultaneously exceeds the quotidian while being nonetheless present to
life in time. Those dialogues with the
Ultimate have been enfolded in the religious traditions of humankind. And the contemporary encounter and dialogue
between religions can be seen as encountering and exploring across tradition
the deepest wisdom given to humanity.
But such dialogue must be, as Buber remarked, authentic: There is genuine dialogue--no matter whether spoken or
silent--where each of the participants really has in mind the other or others
in their present and particular being and turns to them with the intention of
establishing a living mutual relation between himself and them. There is technical dialogue, which is
prompted solely by the need of objective understanding. And there is monologue disguised as
dialogue, in which two or more men, meeting in space, speak each with himself
in strangely tortuous and circuitous ways and yet imagine they have escaped the
torment of being thrown back on their own resources."25b Genuine dialogue is an intrahuman as well as an
interreligious dialogue concerning dialogue with the Ultimate. The diverse traditions have unfolded their
respective grammars of their respective dialogical encounters with the
Beyond. But prior to the present age,
those understandings, practices, and grammars have lived in relative isolation
from one another. And meeting often led
to hostility. However, that isolation
is increasingly broken by the social conditions of the modern and post-modern
age. The irony is that within the
context of a dialogical understanding of the human condition, the religious
traditions need not remain isolated but can enter a fruitful relationship with
one another at the deepest levels. Such
an encounter and dialogue need not -- indeed, must not -- issue in syncretism
or relativism but in a revitalized awareness of humanity in relation to the
Divine. A post-modern necessity is an
awareness of the multiform ways to live profoundly in relation to that reality
which funds us, transcends us and calls us to be. The revelations of the Whole given fully in a particular Way must
respect the Ways given to others. Already in 1929, Buber had written that A time of genuine religious
conversations is beginning -- not those so-called but fictitious conversations
where none regarded and addressed his partner in reality, but genuine
dialogues, speech from certainty to certainty, but also from one open-hearted
person to another open-hearted person.
Only then will genuine common life appear, not that of an identical
content of faith which is alleged to be found in all religions, but that of the
situation of anguish and of expectation.26 Given the vision of dialogical humanity that we have
outlined here, such a conviction is not surprising. Tragically, the emergence of Nazi Germany not only delayed those
"genuine religious conversations" -- which had already begun to
emerge in the relations between Jews like Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig and
Christians like Rosenstock-Huessy and Joseph Wittig -- but showed the terrible
price of the failure to recognize and acknowledge our dialogical humanity. As the lust for mastery over others
disclosed its diabolical face, the necessity of a different understanding of
humanity emerged as an imperative. The
same point has been made by Richard Rubenstein in the conclusion to his
important but disturbing study that chronicles the depths of inhumanity that
lurk behind public policies in our century, The Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in
an Overcrowded World. In this new political and social environment, our worst
pollution may very well be what we do to ourselves. That is why a religious transformation is crucial. But, if it is to come, it must be an
inclusive vision appropriate to a global civilization in which Moses and
Muhammad, Christ, Buddha, and Confucius all play a role. We can no longer rest content with a
humanity divided into the working and the workless, the saved and the damned,
the Occident and the Orient. Our fates
are too deeply intertwined.27 But for such an inclusive vision to emerge, humanity
must rediscover itself in dialogue with life's depths as well as with those
with whom one shares the planet. The
call for religious transformation rests implicitly on a recognition of
dialogical humanity. It is appropriate that such dialogue begins between the
religions as the keepers of the most profound wisdom of the dialogue between
the Divine Unmanifest and humanity. The
religious traditions have recognized, each in their own distinctive ways, that
the experience of humanity is always revelational, that is, a disclosing. And as humanity heeds and responds, a
tradition of life is called into being, a spiritual type is created. The point here is that the specific
grammars, practices, and Way of a given tradition create both a specific type
as well as a shared awareness that the matrix of human being and becoming is in
dialogue, in the crucible of Transcendence.
Such knowing is existential and spiritual rather than informational. Such knowing touches the depths of humanity
and calls it into being. Already in Ich
und Du, Buber points out that "all revelation is summons and
sending."28
And in
Rosenstock-Huessy, it is the hearing of the Imperative that calls us into
being. Hearing and heeding the
Imperative, writes Rosenstock-Huessy, "the things of the world are
mastered, times are decided, people are made by it."29 The classical traditions of wisdom in the East and West
have placed the divine-human relationship at the heart of reality and their
respective quests for wisdom. The quest
for the human is inextricably linked to the quest for the divine and the quest
for the divine goes through the interior of the human. This is the wisdom that is given in that
relationship known as "revelation" -- whether given in the texts of
sacred scriptures or the enlightenment of the human heart. Thus the great nurseries of humankind have
been the religious traditions that have addressed and shaped humanity
throughout time -- and continue to do so today despite the troubling inroads of
secularity. The little and great
traditions form the human along the lines of what is given to them in their
encounter and dialogue with the Ultimate.
For the Jew, it is the revelation of the Torah and a covenanted
community that lies at the heart of spiritual wisdom; for the Buddhist, it is
the aspiration towards Enlightenment on the basis of meditational practice that
is core to what has been given -- not as a mere set of ideas or practices but
as a way to Transcendence. For the
Hindu, it is the awareness that we finally move beyond dualisms to a unity with
the Ultimate that transcends all divisions.
And so on and so forth. These traditions constitute the grammars of the spirit
that have long turned humanity towards its deepest encounters with the real and
with itself. These traditions are
profound encounters with the Absolute where the disclosure reshapes humanity in
the likeness and image of the Absolute given in a particular tradition. In earlier eras, the formation of the human
in the image and likeness of the Absolute unfolded in isolation; now we have
become aware of one another. And that
continuing process of the making of humanity needs to be done in concert so
that our emergent planetary humanity can heed again the call from Beyond that
gives us our deepest wisdom and most abiding direction. That process within the body of humanity
will be deepened as we become more attuned to the crucible of Transcendence
that is at the true centre of the life of humanity. It is in that crucible that we learn anew that it is in the
encounter and dialogue with Transcendence that we realize our destiny. Such an understanding of humanum has already
been anticipated and marked out in the writings of pioneers like Martin Buber
and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy; and it is there implicitly in the great traditions
of religious and spiritual life.30 Notes
to Chapter II: l. The Way of Lao
Tzu, trans. Wing Tsit Chan, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963, #34, p.
160. I have deliberately selected a
Taoist text to place at the head of this chapter in order to underscore the
limitations of the term "transcendence," which I use here
extensively. Transcendence is not meant
as an equivalent to theistic as opposed to monistic, nor is it intended only to
evoke notions of mere "over-againstness" rather than "deep
withinness." I had hoped the term
might allow us to avoid the dualism of theism/non-theism. But my critics in Madras made me aware that
the associations the term carried overran my hopes. So, let me say that my intent is to use the term
"transcendence" to point to that which is Ultimate, the
Unconditioned, the Absolute, the Godhead, that which is beyond all of our
divisions yet funds the whole, beyond the metaphors of "over-against"
and "deep within" yet embracing those metaphors as part of the human
experience of that which ever exceeds all our categories yet discloses itself
and shines in those very experiences of the Ultimate which are at the centre of
all. The use of the Taoist text is
supported by Ellen Chen's comment that in #34 and #35 the "Tao is
portrayed as the principle of plentitude." She goes on to characterize the
Tao as "like the Good of Plato," yet even these characterizations are
not exhaustive. (See Ellen Chen's fine translation The Tao Te Ching, New York: Paragon Press, 1989, p. 138.) My intention here also accords with that
found in The Divine Names of Pseudo-Dionysius where we read that "with
regard to the supra-essential being of God -- transcendent Goodness
transcendently there -- no lover of the truth which is above all truth will
seek to praise it as word or power or mind or life or being. No.
It is at total remove from every condition, movement, life, imagination,
conjecture, name, discourse, thought, conception, being, rest, dwelling, unity,
limit, infinity, the totality of existence.
And yet, since it is the underpinning of goodness, and by merely being
there is the cause of everthing, to praise this divinely beneficent Providence
you must turn to all of creation. It is
there at the center of everything and everything has it for a destiny."
(See Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete
Works, The Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. by Colm Luibheid, New
York: Paulist Press, 1987, p. 54.) 1b. Geworfenheit is Martin Heidegger's term. See Being and Time, translated by J.
Macquarrie and E. Robinson, New York: Harper & Row, 1962, p. 174. Heidegger says that "'thrownness' is
meant to suggest the "facticity of its being delivered over," and
goes on to characterize humanity as "Dasein," as finding "itself
in its thrownness." Here, the term
is used to describe the human situation, but not strictly speaking in
Heidegger's technical sense. 2. See Richard L. Rubenstein, The Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World, Boston:
Beacon Press, 1983, for a disturbing and comprehensive account of this
horror. For a profound grappling with
the agony of the contemporary Jewish community, see Rubenstein's, After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism, Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1966, and, at a more personal level, see Richard Rubenstein, Power Struggle, New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1974. An earlier
version of some of this material is included in a festschrift for Richard
Rubenstein, Reflections on the Thought
of Richard Rubenstein: Triage, The Holocaust
and Faith, B. R. Rubenstein and M. Berenbaum, eds., West Simsbury, Conn:
Hedgehog Press, 1993, pp. 366-383. For
a moving account of the tragedy of Tibet, see John Avedon, In Exile from the Land of Snows, New York: Vintage Books, 1986. 3. See Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition, New York: Harper &
Row, 1973, for a penetrating analysis of modernity and its impact on our
perception of the religious traditions of humankind. For a moving account of the Bushman(!Kung)peoples, see Laurens
van der Post, The Lost World of the
Kalihari, London: Penguin Books edition, 1962 and his Heart of the Hunter, London: Penguin edition, 1961. 4. S. Radhakrishnan, Religion and Culture, Delhi: Vision Books, 1968, rpt.1984, p. 51. 5. S. Radhakrishnan, Religion and Culture, p. 51. 6. S. Radhakrishnan, Religion and Culture, p. 51. 7. Martin Buber, I
and Thou, 2nd ed. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958. The association of Buber and Rosenstock-Huessy
began in the 1920s in relation to the "Frankfurt Union" and the
journal Die Kreatur and continued
into the 1960s. See Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber's Life and Work, 3 Vols.
New York: E.P. Dutton, 1981, 1983. In relation to the Frankfurt Union, see
Vol.I, p. 277ff., and for Die Kreatur see Vol. II, p. 106ff. 8. See Lise vander Molen, A Complete Bibliography of the Writings of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Lewiston, NY: The
Edwin Mellen Press, 1989. For an
introduction to this important but little-known thinker, see M. Darrol Bryant
and Hans Huessy, eds., Eugen
Rosenstock-Huessy: Studies in his Life and Thought, Lewiston, NY: The Edwin
Mellen Press, 1986. For an
interpretation of Martin Buber, mostly, and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy that
attempts to place them in a tradition of dialogical philosophy, see Shmuel Hugo
Bergman, Dialogical Philosophy: From
Kierkegaard to Buber, Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 1991.
However, Bergman's reading of Rosenstock-Huessy on pages 161-170 is
limited and questionable. 9. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Out of Revolution: The Autobiography of Western Man, Norwich, VT:
Argo Books, 1938, rpt. 1969, p. 757.
In this remarkable text, Rosenstock-Huessy interprets the story of
"Western Man" as a single interrelated event of dialogue with
destiny. 10. Martin Buber, I
and Thou, p. 13. My gloss on Buber
and Rosenstock-Huessy highlights elements of their work and gives centrality to
the divine-human dialogue. It does so
because I am not just seeking to present their views but to develop in concert
with them a vision of the human in the Divine. 11. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 19. 12. Martin Buber, I
and Thou, p. 112. His point is that
we cannot make God an "object" of thought, but that does not mean
that God as constituting humanity cannot be acknowledged nor enter into our
grammar of the human condition. 13. Martin Buber, Between
Man and Man, London & Glasgow: Fontana Library, 1961, chapter on
"Dialogue," p. 27. 14. For two important existentialist accounts, see M.
Heidegger, Being and Time, op.cit.,
and Jean Paul Sartre, Being and
Nothingness, trans. by Hazel Barnes, New York: Philosophical Library, 1956. 15. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, I am an Impure Thinker, Norwich, VT: Argo Books, 1970, p. 11. 16. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, I am an Impure Thinker, p. 11.
The same idea is developed in a different way in his The Origin of Speech, Norwich, VT: Argo
Books, 1981, especially under the headings of the imperative and the social
process of speech, see pp. 38 ff. 17. Martin Buber, I
and Thou, p. 115. 18. See, for example, the editor's note in Eugen
Rosenstock-Huessy, Judaism Despite Christianity, New York: Schocken Books,
1971, pp. 69-70. 19. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, I am an Impure Thinker, p. 12. 20. See Heidegger, Being
and Time, especially pp. 269-280 where he affirms that the Ruf is the call
of conscience. 21. Martin Buber, I
and Thou, p. 32 21b. The issue here is what Raimon Panikkar was later to
call a "cosmotheandric vision of reality." Although we have here focused on the "theandric"
dimensions with only some few references to the "cosmo" aspects, that
aspect has not been far from my mind.
For a fuller study of Panikkar see the PhD dissertation of L. Anthony
Savari Raj, The Cosmotheandric Vision of Raimon Panikkar: A Study,
Radhakrishnan Institute for Advanced Studies in Philosophy, University of
Madras, 1994. 22. For a fuller exposition of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy's
views on this point, see my "Toward a Grammar of the Spirit in
Society," in The Many Faces of
Religion and Society, M.D.
Bryant and Rita Mataragnon, eds., New York: Paragon House, 1985, pp. 173-190
and "The Grammar of the Spirit: Time, Speech, and Society," in Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy: Studies in His Life and Thought, eds., M. D.
Bryant & Hans Huessy, op. cit., pp. 233-260. 23. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, I am an Impure Thinker, p. 10ff. 23b. Buber, Between
Man & Man, p. 54. 24. Martin Buber, I and Thou, p. 3. See also Martin Buber, A Believing Humanism: My
Testament 1902-1965, translated by Maurice Friedman, New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1967, p. 201 where he writes, "The crisis of man which has
become apparent in our day announces itself most clearly as a crisis of trust.
. . . And the crisis of speech is bound up with this loss of trust. . . .
Therefore, the fact that it is so difficult for present day man to pray. . .and
the fact that it is so difficult for him to carry on a genuine talk with his
fellow men are elements of a single set of facts. This lack of trust in Being . . . points to an innermost sickness
of the sense of existence." Here
Buber points to the interior connection between the relation to the
Transcendent and one another. It is a point
worth pondering and crucial to the argument here for the relationship of the
Transcendent to humanity. 25. See Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Speech and Reality, Norwich, VT: Argo Books, 1970, especially
"In Defense of the Grammatical Method," pp. 9-44, and Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, especially his
distinctions between community and collective, p. 144ff. 25b. Martin Buber, Between
Man and Man, p. 37, though the language here is not what we now call
"inclusive," Buber's intent was not exclusive or limited to the male
gender. 26. Martin Buber, Between
Man and Man, p. 24. 27. Richard Rubenstein, The Age of Triage, p. 240. 28. Martin Buber, I
and Thou, p. 115. 29. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, The Origin of Speech, p. 54. Here, Rosenstock-Huessy outlines what
he calls the "full cycle of speech" as it moves from the imperative
(or dramatic) to the subjunctive (or lyrical) to the epical (or narrative) and
ends in the logical (or classifying).
As he remarks here: "the imperative, the most ancient sentence,
trans-substantiates the world."
This understanding of the full cycle of speech is another argument for
the primacy of the Transcendent in the grammar of human life. 30. In the next lecture, I attempt to point to some of
those anticipations assuming the general point made here. In other words, my expositions of the
religious traditions simply assumes this crucible of the Unmanifest
Transcendent that I have attempted to unfold here.
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