{"id":115660,"date":"2018-08-13T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=115660"},"modified":"2018-07-29T14:32:01","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T13:32:01","slug":"philosopher-martin-buber-on-love-and-what-it-means-to-live-in-the-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/08\/philosopher-martin-buber-on-love-and-what-it-means-to-live-in-the-present\/","title":{"rendered":"Philosopher Martin Buber on Love and What It Means to Live in the Present"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe live our lives inscrutably included within the streaming mutual life of the universe.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>\u201cLove is the quality of attention we pay to things,\u201d<\/em> poet J.D. McClatchy wrote<\/a> seven decades after the brilliant and underappreciated philosopher Simone Weil observed that \u201cattention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The type of attention that makes for generous and unselfish love is what the Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher Martin Buber<\/strong> (February 8, 1878\u2013June 13, 1965) examined in I and Thou<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 the 1923 existentialist masterpiece in which Buber laid out his visionary relation modality that makes us real to one another<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Echoing Tolstoy\u2019s insistence that \u201clove is a present activity only [and] the man who does not manifest love in the present has not love,\u201d<\/a> Buber extends his distinction between the objectifying It<\/em> and the subjectifying Thou<\/em> into the most intimate domain of relation, and writes:<\/p>\n

The present, and by that is meant not the point which indicates from time to time in our thought merely the conclusion of \u201cfinished\u201d time, the mere appearance of a termination which is fixed and held, but the real, filled present, exists only in so far as actual presentness, meeting, and relation exist. The present arises only in virtue of the fact that the Thou becomes present.<\/em><\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/em><\/p>\n

True beings are lived in the present, the life of objects is in the past.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Martin Buber<\/p><\/div>\n

Love, Buber argues, is something larger than affect \u2014 not a static feeling, but a dynamic state of being lived in the present. In a counterpoint to the Proustian model of love<\/a>, he writes:<\/p>\n

Feelings accompany the metaphysical and metapsychical fact of love, but they do not constitute it\u2026 Feelings are \u201centertained\u201d: love comes to pass. Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In consonance with psychologist turned pioneering sculptor Anne Truitt\u2019s definition of love as \u201cthe honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery,\u201d<\/a> Buber writes:<\/p>\n

Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its \u201ccontent,\u201d its object; but love is between I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses\u2026 Love is responsibility of an I for a Thou. In this lies the likeness \u2014 impossible in any feeling whatsoever \u2014 of all who love, from the smallest to the greatest and from the blessedly protected man, whose life is rounded in that of a loved being, to him who is all his life nailed to the cross of the world, and who ventures to bring himself to the dreadful point \u2014 to love all men.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Half a century after naturalist John Muir observed that \u201cwhen we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,\u201d<\/a> Buber adds:<\/p>\n

We live our lives inscrutably included within the streaming mutual life of the universe.<\/em><\/p>\n

I and Thou<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, which explores what it means to expand the boundaries of the self and grant others the dignity and sanctity of Thou<\/em>, is a superb read in its entirety. Complement this particular portion with Adrienne Rich on how honorable relationships refine our truths<\/a>, Erich Fromm on what is keeping us from mastering the art of loving<\/a>, and a lovely illustrated meditation on the many meanings and manifestations of love<\/a>.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Brain Pickings<\/em> is the brain child of Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large obsessed with combinatorial creativity who also writes for <\/em>Wired<\/em> UK and <\/em>The Atlantic<\/em>, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. She has gotten occasional help from a handful of guest contributors<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 brainpickings.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its \u201ccontent,\u201d its object; but love is between I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses\u2026 Love is responsibility of an I for a Thou.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspirational"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}