John Dunn

Martin Buber

Thinking:

…a reality interwoven with light, dipping down warmly into the phenomena of the world. This dipping down occurs with a power that flows forth in the activity of thinking itself— the power of love in spiritual form. (Rudolf Steiner - The Philosophy of Freedom)

If thinking arises unconditionally, from outside the phenomena of the world, as love, then thinking must surely in some way be related to encounter.

Is the encounter not so much between two people, but rather between thinking spirit and me?

If so, thinking is ‘the power of love in spiritual form’.

It is time to reassess Martin Buber in the light of the above.

Buber maintained that in every human encounter that we undergo, we feel that there could be something more, something more lasting and more fulfilling. This ‘more’ is encounter with God, or absolute relation.

At the highest level, in Buber’s thinking, God represents the ‘eternal Thou’, the only entity with which we can maintain a permanent Between. In any other meeting, there is constant vacillation; even our most treasured Thou occasionally regresses to an It, even if for only a few moments.

There are connections here that lead to the possibility that thinking is ‘the power of love in spiritual form’ is another way of saying that thinking is the power of God in spiritual form.

Buber’s the eternal ‘I thou’ is love, and God is love.

© John Dunn.