Martin Buber was known for his definition of relationship as falling into one of two categories, I and Thou and I and It. The latter is the way we should look at material objects, inanimate tools: home, car, computer, and so forth. Human relations, he felt, should always fall into the I and Thou category, which mirrors the relationship he felt we should have with God. People are never things, and we should never treat people as things.
However, he was wrong, at least in this way: In his book The Secular City, Harvey Cox argues that we should NOT want all human relationships to be of a deep interpersonal nature. True, that does not mean that we treat another person as a tool for our happiness, but he felt the dichotomy was false. For example, he writes about his relationship with his TV repairman. Yes, he says, I should treat him like a fellow human being. No, I do not want to have much contact with him, because, if I do, it means that my television is broken and seeing him will cost me money! We have a mutually respectful business relationship, and there is no moral obligation to make it personal in any way. He called this type of relationship I and You.
Now, my own categories of general and special relationship do not falls into this scheme, but Cox's analysis does show that there are many ways to look at the nature of social relationships, and that they need not fall into traditional paradigms to be valid.
No comments:
Post a Comment