.. EMENTS OF THE INTERHUMAN by Martin Buber THE SOCIAL AND THE INTERHUMAN : Itis usual to ascribe what takes place between men to the social realm, thereby blurring a basically important line of division between two essentially different areas of human life. I myself, when | began nearly fifty years ago to find my own bearings in the knowledge of society, making use of the then unknown concept of the interhuman,* made the same error. From that time it became increasingly clear to me that we have to do here with a separate category of our existence, even a separate dimension, to use a mathematical term, and one with which we are so familiar that its peculiarity has hitherto almost escaped us. Yet insight into its peculiarity is extremely important not only for our thinking, but also for our living. We may speak of social phenomena wherever the life of a number of men, lived with one another, bound up together, brings in its train shared experiences and reactions. But to be thus bound up together means only that each individual existence is enclosed and contained in a group existence. It does not mean that between one member and another of the group there exists any kind of personal relation. They do feel that they belong together in a way that is, so to speak, fundamentally different from every possible belonging together with someone outside the group. And there do arise, especially in the life of smaller groups, contacts which frequently favour the birth of individual relations, but, on the other hand, frequently make it more difficult. Inno case, however, does membership in a group necessarily involve an existential relation between one member and another, It is true that there have been groups in history which included highly intensive and intimate relations between two of their members-as, for instance, in the homosexual relations among the Japanese Samurai or among Dorie warriors~and these were countenanced for the sake of the stricter cohesion of the group. But in general it must be said that the leading elements in groups, especially in the later course of human history, have rather been inclined to suppress the personal telation in favour of the purely collective element. Where this latter element reigns alone or is pre-dominant, men feel themselves to be carried by the collectivity, which lifts them out of loneliness and fear of world and lostness. When this happens-and for modern man it is an essential happening-the life between person and person seems to retreat more and more before the advance of the collective. The collective aims at holding in check the inclination to personal life. It is as though those who are bound together in groups should in the main be concerned only with the work of the group and should turn to the personal partners, who are tolerated by the group, only in secondary meetings. pep bl 8 eM ar 1 TRS Roa Gig Sin Mar aber Th Klee o Mi Sed oN. (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). pp. 72-88: Z : ee acorn ctuchs Soo clara SSombart, Das Proletariat Vol. 1 in Die Gesellschaft: sh henmenchliche, See my Introduction to Werner Soma ee eee | EEE osesher Mango ty Marin Buber tees Foakn ss 8 Seay i Rag hclPhilosophy of Man - ‘The difference between the two realms became very palpable to me on one occasion when I had joined the procession through a large town of a movement to which I did not belong. I did it out of sympathy for the tragic development which I sensed was at hand in the destiny of a friend who was one of the leaders of the movement While the procession was forming, I conversed with him and with another, a goodhearted “wild man,’ who also had the mark of death upon him. At that moment I still felt that the two men really were there, over against me, each of them a man near to me, near even 1 what was most remote from me; so different from me that my soul continually suffered from this difference yet by virtue of this very difference confronting me with authentic being, Then the formations started off, and after @ short time I was lifted out of all confrontation, drawn into the procession, falling in with its aimless step; and it was obviously the very same for the two with whom I had just exchanged human words. After a while we passed a café where Thad been sitting the previous day with a musician whom I knew only slightly. The very moment we passed it the door opened, the musician stood on the threshold, saw me, apparently saw me alone, and waved to me. Straightway it seemed to me as though I were taken out of the procession and of the presence of my marching friends, and set there, confronting the musician. T forgot that Twas walking along with the same step; I felt that I was standing over there by the man who had called out to me, and without a word, with a smile of understanding, was answering him. When consciousness of the facts returned to me, the procession, with my companions and myself at its head, had left the café behind. ‘The realm of the interhuman goes for beyond that of sympathy. Such simple happenings can be part of it as, for instance, when two strangers exchange glances in acrowded streetcar, at once to sink back again into the convenient state of ‘wishing to know nothing about each other, But also every casual encounter between opponents belongs to the realm, when it affects the opponeni’s attitude-that is, when something, however imperceptible, happens between the two, no matter whether it is marked at the time by any feeling or not. The only thing that matters is that for each of the two men the other happens as the particular other, that each becomes aware of the other and is thus related to him in such a way that he does not regard and use him as his object, but as his partner in a living event, even if it isno more — than a boxing match. It is well known that some existentialists assert that the basic factor — between men is that one is an object for the other. But so far as this is actually the ¢ 7 ‘al reality of the interhuman, the fact of the contact, has been largely eliminat cannot indeed be entircly eliminated, As a crude example, take two men who are 0 ‘one another. The essential thing is not that the one makes the other his object, but that he is not fully able to do so and the reason for his failure, We have in common Wi: ny of Man In accordance with this, it is basically erroneous to try to understand the interhuman snenomena as psychological. When two men converse together, the psychological is certainly ‘an important part of the situation, as each listens and each prepares to speak, Yet this is only the hidden accompaniment to the conversion itself, the phonetic event fraught with meaning, whose meaning isto be found neither in one of the two partners nor in both together, but only in their dialogue itself, in this ‘between’ which they live together. BEING AND SEEMING _ The essential problem of the sphere of the interhuman is the duality of being and seeming. Although it is a familiar fact that men are often troubled about the impression they make on others, this has been much more discussed in moral philosophy than in anthropology. Yet this is one of the most important subjects for anthropological study. We may distinguish between two different types of human existence. The one proceeds from what one really is, the other from what one wishes to seem. In general, the two are found mixed together. There have probably been few men who were entirely independent of the impression they made on others, while there has scarcely existed one who was exclusively determined by the impression made by him. We must be content to distinguish between men in whose essential attitude the one or the other predominates. This distinction is most powerfully at work, as its nature indicates, in the interhuman realm-that is, in men’s personal dealings with one another. Take as the simplest and yet quite clear example the situation in which two persons look at one another-the first belonging to the first type, the second to the second. The one who lives from his being looks at the other just as one looks at someone with whom he has personal dealings. His look is ‘spontaneous,’ ‘without reserve;’ of course he is not uninfluenced by the desire to make himself understood by the other, but he is uninfluenced by any thought of the idea of himself which he can or should awaken in the person whom he is looking at. His opposite is different. Since he is concerned with the image which his appearance, and especially his look of glance, produces in the other, he ‘makes’ this look. With the help of the capacity, in greater on lesser degree peculiar to man, to make a definite element of his being appear in his look, he produces a look which is meant to have, and often enough does have, the effect of spontaneous utterance-not only the utterance of a psychical event supposed to be taking place at that very moment, but also, as it were, the reflection of personal life of such-and-such a kind. This must, however, be carefully distinguished from another area of seeming whose ontological legitimacy cannot be doubted. I mean the realm of ‘genuine seeming,’ where a lad, for instance, imitates his heroic model and while he is doing so is seized by the actuality of heroism, or a man plays the part of a destiny and conjures up authentic destiny. In this Situation there is nothing false; the imitation is genuine imitation and the part played is Senuine, the mask, too, is a mask and no deceit. But where the semblance originates from the lie and is permeated by it, the interhuman is threatened in its very existence. It is not that meee utters a lie, falsifies some account. The lie Imean does not take place in relation to There ot ts, but in relation to existehce itself, and it attacks interhuman existence as such. Se times when a man, to satisfy some stale conceit, forfeits the great chance of a true between I and Thou.Philosophy of May o men, whose life is dominated by appearance, sitting, and Se yeu Cal tn Ne and Paul. Let us list the different SO eee witch are inyolved. First, there is Peter as he wishes to appear to Paul, and Paul as ec W! ase 10 appear to Peter, Then there is Peter as he really appears to Paul, that is, Paul’s image e xe which in general does not in the least coincide with what Peter wishes Paul to see; = Aci there is the reverse situation. Further, there is Peter as he appears to a cs a i ‘aul as he appears to himself. Lastly, there are the bodily Peter and the bodily Paul. Two ving beings and six ghostly appearances, which mingle in many wayS in the conversation een the two, Where is there room for any genuine interhuman life? Whatever the meaning of the word ‘truth’ may be in other realms, in the interhuman realm it means that men communicate themselves to one another as what they are. It does not depend on one saying to the other everything that occurs to him, but only on his letting no seeming creep in between himself and the other. It does not depend on one letting himself go before another, but on his granting to the man to whom he communicates himself a share in his being. This is a question of the authenticity of the interhuman, and where this is not to be found, neither is the human element itself authentic. ‘Therefore, as we begin to recognize the crisis of man as the crisis of what is between man and man, we must free the concept of uprightness from the thin moralistic tones which cling to it, and let it take its tone from the concept of bodily uprightness. If a presupposition of human life in primeval times is given in man’s walking upright, the fulfillment of human life can only come through the soul’s walking upright, through the great uprightness which is not tempted by any seeming because it has conquered all semblance. But, one may ask, what if a man by his nature makes his life subservient to the images which he produces in others? Can he, in such a case, still become a man living from his eing, can he escape from his nature? The widespread tendency to live from the recurrent im ion one makes instead of from the steadiness of one’s being is not a ‘nature.’ It SC atral in fact, on the other side of interuman life itself, in men’s dependence upon one another, It is no light thing to be confirmed in one’s being by others, and seeming deceptively offers itself as help in _ this. To yield to seeming is man’s cowardice, to resist it is his essential courage. But this is not an inexorable state of aflairs which is as itis and must so remain. One cat to. come to co ce in being, One struggles, now more aphilosophy of Man sito eile he a ee MAKING PRESENT erly and precisely described aS (Oday called conversation among men would be more mother, but each, although tured sy Reeetitving. In general, people do not speak to one Hove life COMSits Of nothing ea oe, Othe, really speaks to a fictitious court of appeal wihis stale of affairs in the The es eting to him. Chekhov has given poetic expression totity make of theit being toe ic77 Orchard, where the only use the members of a rinciple of existence wher rn 2 talk past another, But itis Sartre who has raised nip in bimecll, Set 2 Chekhov still appears as the deficiency of a person who Fan ee enna Sartte regards the walls between the partners in a conversation as simply tebe ee it is inevitable human destiny that a man has directly to do Co jade there #6 mo de ee atlaits. The inner existence of the other is his own concern; not mine; there is no direct relation with the other, nor can there be. This is perhaps the clearest expression of the wretched fatalism of modern man, which regards degeneration as the unchangeable nature of Homo sapiens and the misfortune of having run into a blind alley as his primal fate, and which brands every thought of a break-through as reactionary romanticism. He who really knows how far our generation has lost the way of true freedom, of free giving between I and Thou, must himself, by virtue of the demand implicit in every great knowledge of this kind, practice directness-even if he were the only man on earth who did it-and not depart from it until scoffers are struck with fear, and hear in his voice of their own suppressed longing. The chief presupposition for the rise of genuine dialogue is that each should regard his partner as the very one he is. I become aware of him, awafe that he is different, essentially different from myself, in the definite, unique way which is peculiar to him, and I accept whom I thus see, so that in full earnestness I can direct what I say to him as the person he is. Pethaps from time to time T must offer strict opposition to his view about the subject of our conversation, But I accept this person, the personal bearer of a conviction, in his definite being out of which his conviction has grown-even though | must try to show, bit by bit, the \wrongness of this very conviction. I affirm the person I struggle with; | struggle with him as his partner, I confirm him as creature and as creation, I confirm him who is opposed to me as him who is over against me. It is true that it now depends on the other whether genuine dialogue, mutuality in speech arises between us. But if I thus give to the other who confronts he his legitimate standing as a man with whom I am ready to enter into dialogue, then I may ‘tust him and suppose him to be alsoao 4 - Philosophy of Mag The perception of one’s fellow man as a whole, as @ unity, saspewhin son Ge wholeness, unity, and uniqueness are only partly developed, as is ee 7 dhniew oI in.our time by aimost everything that is commonly understood as specially moder, jy ur time there predominates an analytical, reductive, and deriving 00S \ 00 shan ang tan, This look is analytical, or rather pseudo analytical, since it treats the, whofe being Plt together and therefore able to be taken apart-not only the so-called’ Aneoostious whic is accessible to relative objectification, but also the psychic stream i's#1". Nie Saf never, in fact, be grasped as an object. This look is a reductive one ra : - tract the manifold person, who is nourished by the microcosmie richness of the possible. fo some schematically surveyable and recurrent structures. And this look is a deriving a because it supposes it can grasp what a man has become, or even is becoming, in genetic formulae, and it thinks that even the dynamic central principle of the individual in this becoming cag bbe represented by a general concept. An effort is being made today radically to destroy the mystery between man and man. The personal life, the ever near mystery, once the source of the stillest enthusiasms, is leveled down. What | have just said is not an attack on the analytical method of the human sciences, a method which is indispensable wherever it furthers knowledge of a phenomenon without impairing the essentially different knowledge of its uniqueness that transcends the valid circle of the method. The science of man that makes use of the analytical method must accordingly always keep in view the boundary of such a contemplation, which stretches like a horizon arounc ‘t. This duty makes the transposition of the method into life dubious; for it is excessively difficult to see where the boundary is in life, If we want to do today’s work and prepare tomorrow’s with clear sight, then we must develop in ourselves and in the next generation a gift which lives in man’s inwardness as a Cinderella, one day to be a princess. Some call it intuition, but that is not a wholly unambiguous concept, | prefer the name ‘imagining the real,’ for in its essential being this gift is not a looking at the other, but a bold swinging-demanding the most intensive stirring ‘of one’s being-into the life of the other. This is the nature of all genuinepiosonty of Man self as the right, dh as one ee “The 3,2 Fight, it must also be alive in the microcosm of ‘ T need only be opened out in this potentiality of his; ereover this opening out takes place not essentially by teaching but by meeting, bY ET afer Someone that is in actual being and someone that is in ie ; sepia sronaganda, the second in that en, Son most powerfully developed in the realm of ‘The propagandist I have in mind, who imposes himself, is not in the least concerned with the person Whom he desires to influence, as a person; various individual qualities are of importance only in so far as he can exploit them to win the other and must get to know them for this purpose. In his indifference to everything personal the propagandist goes a substantial distance beyond the party for which he works. For the party, persons in their difference are of significance because each can be used according to his special qualities in a particular function. Itis true that the personal is considered only in respect of the specific use to which it can be put, but within these limits it is recognized in practice. To propaganda as such, on the other hand, individual qualities are rather looked on as a burden, for propaganda isconcerned simply with more-more members, more adherents and an increasing extent of support. Political methods, where they rule in extreme form, as here, simply mean winning power over the other by depersonalizing him. This kind of propaganda enters upon different relations with force; it supplements it or replaces it, according to the need or the prospects, but itis in the last analysis nothing but sublimated violence, which has become imperceptible as such. It places men’s souls under a pressure which allows the illusion of autonomy. Political methods at their height mean the effective abolition of the human factor. The educator whom I have in mind lives in a world of individuals, a certain number ofwhom are always at any one time committed to his care. He sees each of these individuals 4s in a position to become a unique, single person, and thus the bearer of a special task of existence which can be fulfilled through him and through him alone. He sees every personal lifes engaged in such a process of actualization, and he knows from his own experience that the forces making for actualization are all the time involved in a microcosmie struggle with counterforces. He has come to see himself as a helper of the actualizing forces. He knows these forces; they have shaped and they still shape him. Now he puts this person shaped by them at their disposal for a new struggle and a new work. He cannot wish to impose himself, for he believes in the that is, he believes that in every man What is right is establis imposed on a man, but anoPhilosophy of Man without wishing to impose himself on others, and it is not enough to be humble in order to help another unfold. Arrogance and humility are dispositions of the 2," Petcpical facts with a moral accent, while imposition and helping to unfold are events bermecn emer, anthropological facts which point to an ontology, the ontology of the interhuman, In the moral realm Kant expressed the essential principle that one’s feljow man must never be thought of and treated merely as a means, but always at the same time as an independent end. The principle is expressed as an ‘ought which sustained by the idea of human dignity. My point of view, which is near to Kant’s in its essential features, has another source and goal. It is concerned with the presuppositions of the interhuman. Man exists anthropologically not in his isolation, but in the completeness of the relation between man and man; what humanity is can be properly grasped only in vital reciprocity. For the proper existence of the interhuman it is necessary, as | have shown, that the semblance not intervene to spoil the relation of personal being to personal being. It is further necessary, as T have also shown, that each one means and makes present the other in his personal being. That neither should wish to impose himself on the other is the third basic presupposition of the interhuman, These presuppositions do not include the demand that one should influence the other in his unfolding; this is, however, an element that is suited to lead to a higher stage of the interhuman. That there resides in every man the possibility of attaining authentic human existence special way peculiar to him can be grasped in the Aristotelian image of entelechy, innate self-realization; but one must note that it is an entelechy of the work of creation. It would be mistaken to speak here of individuation alone. Individuation is only the indispensable Personal stamp of all realization of human existence. The self as such is not ultimately the essential, but the meaning of human existence given in creation again and again fulfils itself as self. The help that men give each other in becoming a self leads the life between men to its height. The dynamic glory of the being of man is first bodily present in the relation between two men each of whom in meaning the other also means the highest to which this person is called, and serves the self-realization of this hi call n uuman life as one true to creation without wishing to impose on the other anything of his own realization, inthe GENUINE DIALOGUE. Ha ‘We must now summarize and clarify the marks of genuine dialogue, In genuine dialogue the turning to the partner takes place in ‘a turning of the being. Every speaker ‘means’ the partner or | as this personal existence. To ‘mean’ someone in exercise that degree of making p Hats partrPhilosophy of Man what it is that he has to say; genuine dialogue cannot be arranged beforehand. It has j its basic order in itself from the beginning, but nothing can be determined, the consent seo the spirit, and some discover what they have to say only when they catch the eal ofthe spirit. But it is also a matter of course that all the participants, without exception, must be Such nature that they are capable of satisfying the Presuppositions of genuine dialogue and are ready to do so, The genuineness of the dialogue is called in question as soon as even a small number of those present are felt by themselves and by the others as not being ‘expected to take any active part. Such a state of affairs can lead to very serious problems. Thad a friend whom I account one of the most considerable men of our age. He wasa master of conversation, and he loved it; his genuineness as a speaker was evident, But once ithappened that he was sitting with two friends and with the three wives, and a conversation arose in which by its nature the women were clearly not joining, although their presence in fact had a great influence. The conversation among the men soon developed into a duel between two of them (I was the third). The other ‘duelist,’ also a friend of mine, was of a noble nature, he too was a man of true conversation, but given more to objective fairness the play of the intellect, and a stranger to any controversy. The friend whom I have called a master of conversation did speak with his usual composure and strength, but he Scintillated, he fought, he ‘triumphed. The dialogue was destroyed.he A PHENOMENOLOGY OF LOVE’ y Manuel B. Dy, Jr. What is love? The questi professional philosophers ha a ae been asked since the time of Plato, not only by vrritten on this subject, anwar oes trom all walks of life. Much has already been posed: Aileen iy ae s the question have been given and many more questions what lov ia stil Bete nvee ve has not been exhausted. The very fact that this question of philosopliy Seams ast ‘ed seems to show that love is part and parcel of man’s life, anda ‘an is incomplete without a philosophy of love, of man as loving. ae ay, ot have the tendency to equate love with romance. The world “love” rings a none a 3 ae ears, brings to the imagination the image of two lovers whispering sweet eens other in the park or on the telephone, unmindful of the rest of the world as if only they matter and exist at all. “Love is a many splendored thing,” so the song goes. On the other hand, love is pictured many times as an act of possessing or being possessed by another person. People fight and struggle in the name of love. “I love you” has come to mean “You are mine” and “I want you to do the things I want, I want you to be what T want you to be.” Or else, it has come to mean, “ am yours, and you can do whatever you want to me.” For many young people, love has become synonymous with sex. To love another means to be passionately attracted to her and to bring her to bed with me. This equation of love with sex has led to the idea that friendship is not love, that when two lovers break up, they may settle down for friendship as if friendship were inferior to love. le say, “love is blind and lovers do not see.” This has come to mean that to love ‘the other. Sometimes this is earned to the extreme the good qualities of to the other even if they are not there. Love has come to be Peop is to be attracted to dg of attributing attractive qualities equated with admiration. ; PS ia i his famous book The Art of Loving! mentions the fact that the popular i ao re ‘ calling in love.” People have the misconception that there is eat Be Jearned about love, that love hits a man like lightning. Bither you are struck by oe Cupid or you are not. He attributes this popular notion of love to three reasons: is ing-loved rather than on loving, i oe ee el oe ao win friends and influence people, Show to have sex appeal,” etc: ‘The is ject loved rather than on the faculty of loving. People talk of 2. The emphasis om the objet os eal husband,” “the ideal wide.” And it seems the “ideal girl,” “the ideal boy ‘das the fad in the market. _ the right object to lave follows the same trem permanent standing- ing in love and the state of Falling tion as love. Two people finding ” “how to be attractive,” 7 > J. Ferriols, SJ. (ed.) Magpakaiao, (Quezon pabli Uveri 1999), pp.56-79. pierterper, 1950 DE 1Philosophy of Man themselves strangers in a country and feeling lonely easily fall for each other. If they simply based their love in this feeling of loneliness their love will not last. te Our phenomenology of love must first set aside all the above preconceptions of love, Now, let us go back to the original experience of love. Loneliness and Love aie The experience of love begins from the experience of loneliness. x 2 of loneliness is basically a human experience. Because man as man Is 8 fe i self. consciousness, there comes a point in the stage of man’s life that he one - i pits of his unique self and the possibilities open to him. He becomes aware that ra th ferent from others, that he is not what others (like his parents) think him to be. Asa child, a gaze was tured towards things; toys and candies made up his world. As a child, people were mere extensions of his ego, mere satisfactions of his desires. But as he grows up to become an adolescent, his gaze is gradually turned inwards; he questions the things that were taught to him by his parents and teacher; he searches for his own identity. “Ww ho am I?” becomes more important than the toys and candies that once were objects of his desires. Too old to be identified with the child and to young to be considered an adult, he feels misunderstood, ‘unwanted, alone. His natural tendency is to seek out his fellow adolescents for understanding and acceptance, Together they invent their own language, their own music. It is in the barkada that he finds equality. But then what has equality come to mean? It has come to mean uniformity, sameness in actuality. The adolescent groups himself with his barkada because they happen to have the same likes and dislikes as he, Very often, he has a different barkada for sports, a different barkada for movies, another barkada for work and study. Very seldom does he find himself in a group who will take him for all that he is, different from the group. Until this equality will mean oneness in difference, the person will remain lonely amidst a crowd. Loneliness is possible even of one is immersed in the crowd. In an attempt to conform to the group and hide one’s individuality, his loneli presses i as an experience of boredom, y Senctenioallieay ee To overcome boredom and loneliness, the person man: drugs or any form of heightened sensation. is to involve one’s total being in some - ritual and. because thePhilosophy of Man the walls whi : S which separate man from his fellowmen, which unites him with others; love i . f 2 ed Aare ne Overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet, ae ee bei imself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs ings become one and yet remain two, (Fromm, p.19) ‘The Loving Encounter? Loneliness ends when one finds or i ; « encounter, finds or is found by another in what will call a loving The loving encounter is a meeting of persons. The meeting of persons is not sim| ly bumping into each other, noris it simply an eflstigs of pleasant cera though these coud be embodiments of a deeper meeting. The deeper meeting here in love happens when two Persons Or more who are free to be themselves choose to share themselves. It presupposes an I-thou communication, a communication of selves. (This is possible even in groups of Seay commitments although the meeting of persons may be harder due to the expectation of roles. First of all, the loving encounter necessitates an appeal, an appeal of the other addressing my subjectivity. The appeal may be embodied in a word, a gesture or a glance ~all these can be signs of an invitation for me to transcend myself, to break away from my Preoccupation with myself. Very often in the daily run of life, I ignore these signs. I am too absorbed or too conscious of the roles I am accustomed to play in daily life as a teacher, a student, an employer, a priest, that I fail to see the appeal of the other. To be able to see the appeal of the other, I need more than eyes; more than mind ~ I need an attitude, a heart that has broken away from self-preoccupation. Whaat is the appeal of the other? The appeal of the other is not his corporeal or spiritual attractive qualities. I can conceptualize the other into a list of beautiful qualities (which I myself may lack) but they can only at best give rise to enamoredness, a desire to be with the other. But once the qualities cease to be attractive, love also ceases. Love is more than mere infatuation, more than mere liking such and such qualities of the other. The other person is more than his qualities, more than what I can tualit of him. And love is the experience of depth and mystery of there SE a Philosophy of Man While it is true that I need an attitude that has ere away ee ee ippeal other, the converse also holds: the appeal C eae aie oe myself from my narrow self. It reveals poe an eatiely new Garetsion of my existence, that perhaps my self-realization mye be 7 en ea : Because of you, I understand the meaninglessness of my egoism. Perhaps, be alone, perhaps I can only be truly myself with you. If the appeal of the other is himself, what then is my reply? the other is not his quality or an explicit request, it follows that my Foti ane rs outpouring of my qualities to the other or the satisfaction of his request. Compatibility is not necessarily love. Neither is submission necessarily love. Sometimes, refusing the request of the other may be the only way of loving the person in a situation, if satisfying it would bring harm to the person. If the appeal of the other is himself, then the appropriate response to that appeal is Myself. AAs a subjectivity, the other person is free to give meaning to his life. His appeal then to me means an invitation to will his subjectivity, to consent, accept, support, and share his freedom. Love means willing the other’s free sell Erealization, his destiny, his happiness. At times it may mean refusing whatever could impede or destroy the other’s possibility for self realization. When I love the other, | am sa’ vying, “I want you to become what you want to be. T want you to realize your happiness freely.” Love, however, is not only saying it, it is doing it. Love is effective, it takes actions. (“Action speaks louder than words. tolove him therefore implies da a inne the other person is nota disembodied subjectivity, to love him therefore implies that I will his bodity being, and cons his is inseparable from care, from labor. To love the other is; a earosid Lee tol : body, his world, his total well-being. labor for that love, to care for his fluence and give direction to my affectio for him and also close others, those tha for him. It will it it i . necessitates a certain personal Sergeants bring him closer to hisPhilosophy of Man Reciprocity of Love From our description above of the loving encounter, it seems that love is wholly concerned with the other. What happens to myself? Am I not at all concerned with myself in Jove? Am I not at all interested in being loved in return? Here we touch upon two important questions on love: First, what is the relationship of love of the other and love of myself? Secondly, what happens with unreciprocated love? In the loving encounter, my response to the appeal of the othe! ct is myself. I will the other's free self-realization. In other words, I offer myself to hi placing a limitless trust in the other. This opening of myself to the other is a defensclessness. It becomes a call upon the love of the beloved, an appeal to him to accept the offer of myself. This appeal of the lover to the beloved is not the will to draw advantage from the affection for the other (upang magkakaroon siya ng utang-na-loob). It is not compelling, dominating, ‘or possessing the other. Love wants the other’s freedom: that the other himself choose this safe way and avoid the dangerous path There is indeed an element of sacrifice in loving the other which is often understood by many asa loss of self. In love, I renounce the motive of promoting myself. I have to break the provisional structure I have given to my own life, and this is painful. Entering into a friendship is acceding to my friend’s wishes which may not be the same as mine. The pain lies in abandoning my egotism, my self-centeredness, But this does not mean the loss of myself. On the contrary, in loving the other I need to love myself, and in loving the other | come to fulfill and love myself. In loving the other, I have to be concemed with myself if my love is to be authentic. Since in the loving encounter | am offering myself to the other, the gift of myself must first of all be valuable to myself. If I despise myseif and give myself to the other, my giving is a throwing away of myself. | have made the other a garbage can of my despicable myself, In the development of man, this love of self takes the form of being-loved. I am first loved by my parents, teachers, and friends before | learn to give back that love to others. The joy 1 first experience in life is the joy of being loved. And yet this value of myself remains unconfirmed, the joy of being myself a hidden joy. I need to go out to others, to accept and value them as they are to discover the value of myself. In giving myselt to the other, I discover my available sel. In willing the happiness of ience the j iving, In giving, | also receive. Just as the teacher is taught appreciation of his audience, so in loving 1 which is his subjectivity im byxe Philosophy of Man Pa « ‘the other but that he is clear that the other is over and above his qualities. The motive of love isthe “you” because that is seen not only by the eyes or the mind but more by the heart. “I love you © YOu are beautiful and lovable, and you are beautiful and loveable because you are you.’ : Since the “you” is another subjectivity, he is free to accept or reject my offer. This is the risk of loving, that the other may reject or betray the self | have offered to him. What happens to unreciprocated love? One cannot of course erase the possibility that he rejection of the beloved could be a test of the authenticity of love. If the other rejects my offer and I persist in loving the other in spite of the pain, then perhaps my love is truly selfless, unmotivated by the desire to be Joved in return. But granted that the rejection is final, what can one say of the experience? No doubt the experience is painful, and it will take time for the lover to recover himself from the experience. Nevertheless, the experience can provide him with an opportunity to examine himself. It can be an opportunity for self-reparation. The experience of being rejected can be an emptying of oneself which would allow room in oneself for development. In this sense, an unreciprocated love can still be an enriching experience. Indeed, the risk and reality of love being unreciprocated proves that there is no shop in the world that sells love. Creativity of Love : When love is reciprocated, love becomes fruitful, love becomes creative. Granted that knowing the other person as he is necessitates loving him, still there . is a distinction between knowing the other as other and loving him as he is, In knowing, I actively let reality be by opening myself to it, but this letting be of reality demands a certain respect and acceptance of reality which somewhat passive. Loving the other, however, is willing the other’s free self-realization, and willing demands a “making” of the other. In fact, in every encounter, there is making of each other: the teacher makes the student a student, the student makes the teacher a teacher. In the loving encounter, we also make each other be. ‘What then is created in love? To understand more clearly the creativity of love, let us try a brief phenomenological sketch of the experience of being-loved; what does the other make of me when he eee When I am loved, I experience a feeling of joy coupled with a sense of security. feeling ot joy is the enuse of being valuable, of being accepted and consented to: Ino ions of feel the fear of being myself and ‘anxiety of trying to be someone else. | expe an exhilarating sense of . At ne time I feel secure, secure because the partici in together with hin,Philosophy of Man Such a feeling’s coming over me There is wonder in everything I see ... Everything I want the world to be Is now coming true especially for me ...- ‘And the reason is clear, it's because you are here T'm on the top of the world looking Down on creation and the only explanation I can find Is the love that I've found ever since you've been around Your love's put me at the top of the world.* “My life is very monotonous,’ he said. ‘I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike and all men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? Ido not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat ...’* Union of Love The “we” that is created in love is the union of persons and their worlds. The union of persons is not an objective union: when two things are united what results is a composition or assimilation: the two elements are no longer distinguishable from each other — they have each lost their identities. The union in love, however, does not involve the loss of identities. The “I” does not assimilate the “you” or vice versa. On the contrary, the “I” becomes more andy a te We ene mow fous yi etch ah This is the Pros nieve ea aie SEES AEE. Osniines,es VS Be Philosophy of Man ed Love is essentially a disinterested giving of myself to the other as other. The giving in love is nota giving up: I am not being deprived of something when I give in love because the self is not a thing that when given no longer belongs to the giver but to the given. Nor is the giving in love the giving of the marketing character because as we have said, in love I do not give in order to get something in return. Furthermore, the giving in love is not of the virtuous Character: I do not give in order to feel good. I do not give with reporter and photographer Surrounding me. Why then do I give myself in love? ‘The answer can be seen in what us essentially given in love and to whom it is given — the Self: To give myself in love is not so much to give of what I have as of what I am and can become. And this self that | am and can become is given to the other as oher, not so much of what you have but of what you are and can become. I can of course express this giving of self in the giving of what I have, in the giving of sex or material things, but when I do so the thing has become unique since it has become a concrete but limited embodiment of myself. When I pick up a rose from a garden of a hundred ro: ‘ Tose among hundred of roses ~ it has become unique, a symbol of myself. But what does it ‘mean to give myself? It means to give my will, my ideas, my feelings, my experiences to the other — in short, all that is alive in me. Love is sharing myself to the other. And why do I share myself to the other? Because I experience a certain bounty, a certain richness in me, and this richness cannot help but overflow to the other. The giving in love comes from a productive character. But why this particular other? Why did I choose you and not some other? Because you are loveable, and you are loveable because you are you. I see a certain value in you, and I ‘want to enhance and be part of that value.” ‘The value of the other is the value of his being a unique self. In a sense then, everyone is valuable and consequently lovable because everyone is unique, original, irreducible and one of its kind. Thus, if I am capable of loving this particular person for what he is, | am capable too of loving the others for what they are. Love is Historical The gift of self is offered to another self. Love us thus essentially interpersonal (between persons). But human persons are not disembodied souls. They are beings-in-the world, living in time and history. If love is a disinterested giving of myself to the other as other, then it follows that love is historical. Love is historical because the other who is the point at issue in love is a concrete particular person. Love is not love if it is simply love ‘of humanity in the abstract. Indeed is easy to love mankind in general but so difficult to love unique individual persons. As one cartoon of Peanuts ironically puts it, “I love mankind, its people I cannot stand!” It is so easy to shout in the streets “for the masses” but the “masses” is an abstraction. The farmer in the _ fields, the beggar in the streets, the laborer in the factory are “parts” of that humanity. If I. ‘Feally love the poor masses, the I must have shared their poverty, have lived with them, have he fields with them to be able to work for the upliftment of their impoverished ses, the rose that I pick ceases to be a Ft cePhilosophy of Man I love humanity, but I can’t help being surprised at myself: the more I love humanity in general, the less I love men in particular, I mean, separately, as separate individuals ... 1 become an enemy of the people the moment they come close to me. But, on the other hand, it invariably happened that the more [ hated men individually, the more ardent became my love for humanity at large.* The concrete other is not an ideal person but a unique being with all his strengths and weaknesses, If we examine the friends we have, they are far from being ideal persons. Christ did not choose perfect people to be His friends — they were fishermen and tax collectors. Such being the case, to love the other does not mean improving him, although in the course of the relationship it does happen that the other becomes more his authentic self. Many Parental loves are based on the motivation of realizing their own frustrated dreams in their children or in making their children carbon copies of themselves, “I love you because I want to improve you” is making an object out of the other person. To love is to love the other historically. To love the other as other, as an individual unique being, I have to use places, times, singular events. It is not strange that we associate songs and places and happenings with people we love or once loved. Friends member exactly the time, place, and circumstances of their first meeting. In the Gospel of St. John, the old St. John recounts his first meeting with Christ and ends that account with the words “It was about four o'clock in the afternoon” (John 1,39), And when friendship is breaking down, and one wants to reconcile, one begs to remember things they have done together. Friendship remembered involved events. “You are beautiful, but you are empty,’ he went on. ‘One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passer-by would think that my rose looked just like you — the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she hat I have watered; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies; because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.’ Love thus involves no abstraction. Everything in love is concrete. In contrast, loneliness, the absence of love, lives among shadows, involves that nothing is real. Equality in Love If love is essentially grow in freedom. In loving, surrender my liberty and become a slave to the beloved. ‘bondage but a liberation. In the case of parental and filial loves, at the beginning orealakavian alates pe ally willed, but later on I have to make this love r other an authority-figure but a friend. In case of the wife submissiveness is done in freedom and recognition of between persons, then it follows that love can only thrive and do not:Philosophy of Man race, sex, status, nature, (Of course, for a man and wife to live together for life, they have to ‘be compatible. But compatibility is not yet necessarily love.) The union of unique persons results in a community. Unlike in a society where the bond comes from the common purpose to be achieved and thus necessitates an organization, the bond in a community springs from the persons themselves and an organization is not necessary. Nevertheless, the friends in a community can have a common project to express and substantiate their unity, And likewise, the members of a society in the course of doing their individual functions can get to know each other as persons and not just as functions, Love is Total, Eternal and Sacred Man as person is not a bundle of qualities and functions. As a person, he is indivisible and persists through time and space. As a person, he is unique and irreplaceable. As such, love as a gift of self to the other as self cannot but be total. In love, I cannot Say to you, “you are my friend only insofar as you are my classmate.” The “you” in love is indivisible and thus love is an undivided commitment to the other. It is offered from the totality of my being to the totality of the other's being. Love is eternal. The gift of myself to other is not given only for a limited period of time, otherwise it becomes a loan and not a gift. When I make friends with you, | do not say to you, “let us be friends only for two years, for as long as we are in the same class.” True, friendships can be broken, yet people do not become friends on the understanding that they will be friends only for a limited time. Love implies immortality. In love, we catch a glimpse of eternity. In the tharriage vows, I say to you, “I shall commit myself to you, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer till death do us part.” And yet love even conquers death. As Gabriel Marcel would say, “I love you” means “you shall not die.” Love is scared. The involved in love are unique, irreplaceable beings and as ee Rh GPa ae ipaly So mney on eaten ‘And since love i