Review article
Encounter – revealing of being
Ante Akrap
; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Split
Abstract
This article is a part of an investigation project of Martin
Buber’s philosophical thought. To draw nearer to his thought it
was necessary to confront it with the views of different authors,
different periods and attitudes. For our reflections on dialogism
the starting point is the idea of “I” as a relation, which allows
us to understand the anthropological reality and to express our
value judgements.
In the history of anthropology we can observe two lines,
the first one that considers “I” as situated and protected, but
isolated and the other one that does not recognize “I” unless it
is in a relation, always to the one facing me. In this and such
constellation of relations, Buber on the one and Levinas on the
other side appear, without any doubt, as two symbolic expressions
of a great reversal in the interpretation of human life.
Martin Buber appears as a significant expression of a great
change in the interpretation of human existence in modern
anthropology. Using the method of phenomenon Buber understands
and reveals the presence of I in threefold relation: I in relation to
the world, to man and to spiritual reality. Phenomenology and
ontology are two paradigms requiring the whole investigation on
the apriority of being, treated as a relation. Buber’s philosophical
talk is a meditation about being, about true acceptation of being
in its endless revealing through experience and relation, in such
a way that experience and relation become an advance sign of the
announcement of presence, existence, behaviour and articulation
of being in a certain reality of human being.
In the talk about relation it is impossible to avoid
Levinas whose reasoning has all the characteristics of relative
philosophy. The central idea of interpersonal anthropology with
Levinas is the priority of the other one, defined as the “epiphany
of person”. With his anthropological thesis Levinas confirms
the priority of responsibility over liberty, the priority of ethics
in relation to ontology. Although he is a Jew, his approach to
man and the theme of inter-subjectivism is totally different
from Buber’s, since he raises a question on the knowledge of
subjectivity. Unlike Levinas, in J.P.Sartre’s philosophy there
is no room for otherness since there is no relation. Philosophy
defined as dialogism has given its great contribution to the recent
anthropological investigation. Grammar adverb Zwischen takes
a central position in it, so that his philosophy can be defined as
the “ontology between” – ontology of mutuality.
Keywords
dialogical philosophy; existentialism; subjectivism; I-you; encounter; relation; otherness; mutuality; dialogue
Hrčak ID:
93047
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2004.
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