Reciprocity as Relation

        In Martin Buber’s (1923) I and Thou there is a lot of deep, enriching material. I decided to focus more on one specific topic in it and that topic is reciprocity. First of all, before I even get into the reading, reciprocity is a very essential value that everyone can relate to. As children, we grew up learning about reciprocity in our family and also in grade school. Reciprocity became something we constantly strived for and it gave us insight on affirmation in all types of scenarios. For example, we would seek reciprocity growing up as children and one way we went about that was by expressing ourselves to our parents and waiting for their response. This may have occurred by saying something inappropriate, asking simple questions, making different gestures, etc. Then, based on their reaction is where we would see their reciprocity and were able to learn what was, and wasn’t okay to do.

            I am a communication major and have recently been studying the tradition of phenomenology. According to Craig (1999), this specific tradition is a “dialogue or experience of otherness” (The Field of Communication, pp138); in other words, it is the study of communication in which we grow and learn from others and experiences. Reciprocity plays a vital role in phenomenology because it allows us to grow and learn from others by our experiences with them. When we are in class and we make points or ask questions to our professors and they respond by either countering our points or answering our questions they are simply reciprocating to us and providing us with the ability to grow and learn in that experience. This is a vital part of life because it is not only something that is with us in certain points of our life but it all points. Hence the first example I gave as we incorporated reciprocity as children and the second example I used as we also incorporated reciprocity as young adults.

            Buber (1923) states that “relation is reciprocity” and I think that when he talks about relation he is making a point that this relation can come from anything: human to human relations, God to human relations, etc. I will try to dive deeper into my thoughts of how each relation exists… first starting with human to human.

            Human to human relations is likely the most obvious relation considering it occurs every day. In our lecture on Tuesday we discussed how treating others in reciprocity means we see them as subjective beings; therefore, they exist as a “You” and not an “It.” This is so because we are not defining or limiting who they are; rather we are engaging ourselves into their life and investing consciousness in our conversation with them. We are “[treating] others the way we would like to be treated” (The Bible- Luke6:31) and that can be shown by how we are not treating them as a third person but first person thus acknowledging their existence of being ‘there.’

            God to human relation is a little different in the sense that it may not be as common as human to human relation depending on the person. In this instance I think of the Phenomenology of Prayer and how Benson (2005) mentions the encounter with Samuel and the Lord. I think because God is not visibly present we, more times than not, tend to view him more as an objective deity than subjective. I think that is why it takes Samuel three times to hear God’s voice until he finally realizes it is actually God calling to him. Buber (1929) mentions that “Man lives in the spirit when he is able to respond to his You” and I think that is the problem so many of us deal with and what Samuel was dealing with. We, and he, are yet to live in the spirit of God because we have not yet responded to our “you.” Once we are able to do so we then see God’s interaction with us as a more direct, first person, kind of presence and not a distanced third person presence in which the relation is utterly “It” and not “You.”

References

Benson, B. E., & Wirzba, N. (2005). The phenomenology of prayer. New York, USA:
     Fordham University Press. 

Craig, R. T. (1999). Communication theory as a field. Communication Theory, 
     9(2), 119-161.