INTERSUBJECTIVITY

• What is Love?


  Lesson objectives:
• Intersubjectivity


  • Accepting differences and not imposing on others
• Authentic dialogue


  Accepting others even if they are different from themselves
• Though we are part of our society, we are still individuals living in this society. Each of us will have different appearances or points of view.
• Labels could be negative or limiting. You may be called "impatient," "whiny," or "stubborn.
• Nevertheless, we could go beyond the labels, for as emphasized in this book, as humans, we are holistic. As humans, we are to be regarded in our totality.
• If the negative labels can be contagious, so can the positive ones. Let us focus on the positive, for these labels can strengthen not just your relationships among your friends, but most especially to your family.
• Intersubjectivity as ontology


  The social dimensions of the self
• Martin Buber and Karol Wojtyla were influenced by their religious background. They believed in the notion of concrete experience/existence of the human person.
• Both refused to regard the human person as a composite of some kind of dimensions, such as animality and rationality.
• For Wojtyla


  The social dimension is represented by 'We relation'
• For Buber


  The interpersonal is signified by the 'I-You relation'
• For both views, the human person is total, not dual.
• Martin Buber


  Jewish existentialist philosopher who conceives the human person in his/her wholeness, totality, concrete existence and relatedness to the world
• Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II)


  Criticized the traditional definition of human as "rational animal" and maintains that the human person is the one who exists and acts (conscious acting, has a will, has self-determination)
• For Wojtyla, action reveals the nature of the human agent. Participation explains the essence of the human person. Through participation, the person is able to fulfill one's self.
• The human person is oriented toward relation and sharing in the communal life for the common good.
• Buber's I-thou philosophy is about the human person as a subject, who is a being different from things or from objects. The human person experiences his wholeness not in virtue of his relation to one's self, but in virtue of his relation to another self.
• The human persons as subjects have direct and mutual sharing of selves. This signifies a person-to-person, subject-to-subject relation or acceptance, sincerity, concern, respect, dialog, and care.
• In contrast, to the realm of meeting and dialog, Buber cites the I-It relationship. This I-It relationship is a person to thing, subject to an object that is merely experiencing and using: lacking directness and mutuality (feeling, knowing. and acting).
• Authentic dialogue


  Accepting others regardless of individual differences
• Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher, counted among the main exponents of existentialism.
• In his essay, Martin Heidegger says that humankind is a conversation. Conversation is more than an idle talk but a dialog. Language, as one of human possession, creates human world.
• A dialog is a conversation that is attuned to each other and to whatever they are talking about. Mutual tuning is perfected in the attunement.
• Mutual tuning forms the main dynamic of trajectories: they are shaped by others and shape others in turn; they define and are defined by, they align and are aligned vis-a-vis other trajectories.
• Attunement


  Describes how reactive a person is to another's emotional needs and moods. A person who is well attuned will respond with appropriate language and behaviors based on another person's emotional state.
• For Heidegger, all conversations are really one conversation, the subject of which is Being (maybe God, Tao or YHWH).
• A conversation which Heidegger envisages, is creative, poetic, and deep that allows humanity to exist as more than entities.
• In a conversation there could be a "stammer", which is trying to express the unnamable.
• For Heidegger, a conversation attempts to articulate who and what we are, not as particular individuals but as human beings. We are human beings who care about more than information and gratification.
• For Buber


  A life of dialog is a mutual sharing of our inner selves in the realm of the interhuman.
• Between two persons is a mutual awareness of each other as persons; avoiding objectification.
• Being is presenting what one really is, to present to other one's real self.
• Personal making entails the affirmation of the other one's real self.
• An authentic dialog entails a person-to-person, a mutual sharing of selves, acceptance, and sincerity. (This is the I-thou relation.)
• 1. You of Wojtyla refers to the interpersonal which fulfills and actualizes oneself.
• The human person attains fulfillment in the realm of the interpersonal, in meeting the other: thus, there is a genuine dialog.
• For Wojtyla, in participation, we share in the humanness of the other.
• We cannot escape a world that is also inhabited by others.
• All of the philosophers mentioned talks about the same type of relation, that is, a dialog of human beings based on the mutual understanding of selves, acceptance, and sincerity.