We human beings do not see one another as animals see one
another, as fellow members of a species. We relate to one another not as
objects but as subjects, as creatures who address one another “I” to “you” — a
point made central to the human condition by Martin Buber, in his celebrated
mystical meditation “I and Thou.”
By speaking in the first person we can make statements about
ourselves, answer questions, and engage in reasoning and advice in ways that
bypass all the normal methods of discovery. As a result, we can participate in
dialogues founded on the assurance that, when you and I both speak sincerely,
what we say is trustworthy: Hence as persons we inhabit a lifeworld that is
not reducible to the world of nature, any more than the life in a painting is
reducible to the lines and pigments from which it is composed.
If that is true, then there is something left for philosophy to do, by way of making sense of the human condition. Philosophy has the task of describing the world in which we live — not the world as science describes it, but the world as it is represented in our mutual dealings, a world organized by language, in which we meet one another I to I.
If that is true, then there is something left for philosophy to do, by way of making sense of the human condition. Philosophy has the task of describing the world in which we live — not the world as science describes it, but the world as it is represented in our mutual dealings, a world organized by language, in which we meet one another I to I.
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