In class on Thursday we talked about Buber and what he calls the “dialogical existence.” He says that relationships are always in one of two realms: either I-thou or I-it. While I read Buber and while we talked about him in class, I kept thinking about a conversation I’d just had with one of my best friends. This friend is in Professor Shade’s Ethics class, and he was telling me about this book that he was reading for class. He talked about how the woman who wrote the book believes that men and women care in different ways. She says that men care in a more general sense, where they care about everyone equally, and they treat everyone they know in the same way. However, women are more discerning in the way they care about people, and they really love the people that they care about. Women are more protective of and loyal to the people that they care about, whereas men see everyone as equal to each other. The way my friend described it to me, it seems like (to use Kierkegaard terms) men live in a universal realm, where everything belongs to everyone, and women live in a more personal realm in which they treat people differently due to how they feel about them and the situations that exist.
This reminded me a little of Buber’s I-thou, I-it relationships. He distinguishes between these relationships by saying that I-it is essentially detached, while I-thou involves the whole person. I don’t want to assume connections that aren’t there, but I did see parallels between Buber’s ethics and the care ethics discussed above. Because if the idea is that men treat everyone the same, isn’t that essentially treating people as objects, taking away their individuality to be their own person? And if women have fewer relationships but they are stronger and with people that they really care about, isn’t that an I-thou relationship in the sense that it’s a deeper relationship, involving the whole person? When my friend and I were talking about this, I kept thinking that men caring about everyone is really like men caring about no one. Because it’s like stretching man too thin, to the point where their relationships don’t mean anything. But women have fewer, but stronger relationships that actually may end up being more meaningful.
I like the idea that Buber creates an ethics that differs from Sartre’s in the sense that it is a religious ethics. While Sartre flat out denies that God exists, Buber’s ethics definitely has a religious feel to it, even though he never mentions God. Sartre believes in man taking full responsibility. And I think Buber believes in that too, but it seems like his view is a little more forgiving maybe. An overlying sense of faith, maybe not necessarily God, but certainly spirituality. Buber uses words like “grace” and “essence” and it seems clear that his whole I-Thou concept has some religious implications to it. Perhaps the Ultimate Thou is what we are all meant to strive for, what we should all have the goal of reaching and experiencing.
3 comments:
While I'm still a big fan of Sartre, I agree with a lot of what you had to say. The way men care differently than women care is one of those things that seems obvious, but that I've never really thought about.
What do you think the implications of men having these I-it/universal relationships really has? Does it mean that women lead more fulfulling life?
As we all know, the majority of our capitalist society is run by males, leading to at least one consequence of a tendency toward I-it relationships in men. As wediscussed in class, beauracracies lean towards I-it relationships for efficiency and simplicity. Once I-thou relationships enter the business dynamic, the system of rules and regulations that apply to everyone and ultimately run the system fall apart. In accordance with this theory, men would be naturally equip to run such bureaucracies more efficiently. That is, men are allowed to be more competitive and inhumane in I-it relationships and allowing them to more effectively participate in a capitalist society. Women, on the other hand, have tended to lean more towards social science studies which cultivate more I-thou relationships. While I am feminist in some perspectives, the quantitative information does point to a trend the exemplifies this gendered theory.
When we were discussing Buber and the difference between I-thou or I-it, I was incredibly interested by this idea and the apparent truth in it. I would never have classified my relationships with other people as I-thou or I-it, but it is indeed something I do everyday because, obviously, my relationship with my best friend is different than my relationship with the Starbucks guy.
This idea has become even more intriguing with your post. While it seems evident that men and women have deep psychological differences, I would never have said that a man's care is like a "blanket" care - that it covers everyone without much difference. However, like Leslie said, sadly enough this world is mostly run by men. Whatever progress women make, men are, for the most part, the CEOs, CFOs and presidents of companies. Therefore, in this sense, it seems logical that a man's care is like a blanket care because this care extends to business relationships. Im sure that a man cares differently about his family than about his clients, and that a man would have an I-thou relationship with his wife and kids, and an I-it relationship with clients or adversaries.
Also, while some women may cultivate an I-thou relationship with certain people, I think they are just as prone to I-it relationships as men. Perhaps it is because of a the vast social network many women are involved in, but it is exactly the same as the man in his business world. Women have I-it relationships with other people they can't stand, and may only feel comfortable in I-thou relationships with people that they trust.
All this for saying that I agree that men and women care differently. Yet, I do not agree that men and women cultivate I-thou relationships and I-it relationships at different rates - you just cannot generalize like that.
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