On doom

[Guest guest]

The following is from Martin Buber's book "I and Thou", from the

translation by Walter Kaufmann.

 

"The biogistic and the historiosophical orientations of this age,

which made so much of their differences, have combined to produce a

faith in doom that is more obdurate and anxious than any such faith

has ever been. It is no longer the power of karma nor the power of the

stars that rules man's lot ineluctably; many different forces claim

this dominion, but upon closer examination it appears that most of our

contemporaries believe in a medley of forces, as the late Romans

believed in a medley of gods. The nature of these claims facilitates

such a faith. Whether it is the "law of life" - a universal struggle

in which everybody must either join the fight or renounce life - or

the "psychological law" according to which innate drives constitute

the entire human soul; or the "social law" of an inevitable social

process that is merely accompanied by will and consciousness; or the

"cultural law" of an unalterably uniform genesis and decline of

historical forms; or whatever variations there may be: the point is

always that man is yoked into an inescapable process that he cannot

resist, though he may be deluded enough to try.

 

"From the compulsion of the stars the ancient mysteries offered

liberation; from the compulsion of karma, the Brahmanic sacrifice,

accompanied by insight. Both were preparations for salvation. But the

medley idol does not tolerate any faith in liberation. It is

considered foolish to imagine any freedom; one is supposed to have

nothing but the choice between resolute and hopelessly rebellious

slavery. Although all these laws are frequently associated with long

discussions of teleological development and organic evolution, all of

them are based on the obsession with some running down [ablauf], which

involves unlimited causality.

 

"The dogma of a gradual running down represents man's abdication in

the face of the proliferating It-world [a world which man only

experiences and uses, and addresses therefore essentially as an It,

rather than as a You, as being]. Here the name of fate is misused:

fate is no bell that has been jammed down over man; nobody encounters

it, except those who started out from freedom. But the dogma of some

running down leaves no room for freedom or for its most real

revelation whose tranquil strength changes the counteneance of the

earth: returning. [Returning to the Real]. The dogma does not know the

human being who overcomes the universal struggle by returning; who

tears the web of drives, by returning; who rises above the spell of

his class by returning; who by returning stirs up, rejuvenates, and

changes the secure historical forms.

 

"The dogma of running down offers you only one choice as you face its

game: to observe the rules or drop out. But he that returns knocks

over the men on the board. The dogma will at most permit you to carry

out conditionality with your life and to "remain free" in your soul.

But he that returns considers this freedom the most ignominious

slavery.

 

"Nothing can doom man but the belief in doom, for this prevents the

movement of return.

 

"The belief in doom is a delusion from the start. The scheme of

running down is appropriate only for ordering that which is

nothing-but-having-become, the severed world-event, objecthood as

history. The presence of the You, that which is born of association,

is not accessible to this approach, which does not know the actuality

of the spirit... Whoever is overpowered by the It-world must consider

the dogma of an ineluctable running down as a truth that creates a

clearing in the jungle. In truth, this dogma only leads him deeper

into the slavery of the It-world. but the world of the You is not

locked up. Whoever proceeds toward it, concentrating his whole being,

with his power to relate resurrected, beholds his freedom. And to gain

freedom from the belief in unfreedo