Buber's "Narrow Ridge" -- Echoes of Kierkegaard

        Søren Kierkegaard prefigured Buber’s image of the “narrow ridge” in Fear and Trembling, his 1843 meditation on the Akedah, Abraham’s binding of Isaac in Genesis 22. At the heart of Fear and Trembling, he introduced his key figure, “the knight of faith,” as a hiker who risks all in facing the elements:

The knight of faith renounces the universal in order to be the particular. . . . He knows that higher up [above the security of the universal] there winds a lonely path, narrow and steep . . . The knight of faith is kept awake, for he is under constant threat and can turn back to the universal at any moment. The knight . . . walks alone with his dreadful responsibility.                                                                                       (Fear and Trembling 103, 105, 107)

        This passage characterizes the person of faith as a knight, a hero, in terms that resonate with Buber’s highest values: renunciation, the concrete particularity of human existence, the solitary nature of existential commitment, and the sense of his life of faith as a life of service and a journey through the world on a narrow ridge, “a lonely path” that winds “narrow and steep.” Most importantly, for both Kierkegaard and Buber, the knight of faith embodies the “absolute duty to God [in which] the single individual . . . stands in an absolute relation to the absolute” (Fear and Trembling 108). For both of them the finite individual’s putting all into the venture with the absolute is the sine qua non of spiritual existence.

        Was this passage of Kierkegaard’s the inspiration for Buber’s metaphor of “the narrow ridge”? I believe it was.  

        Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling had a lasting impact on Buber from the time he first read it as a teenager. Late in his life, almost sixty years later, he wrote “On the Suspension of the Ethical,” a critique of its argument. There, he referred to that first reading of Kierkegaard and claimed, “I still think of that hour today because it was then that I received the impulse to reflect on the ethical and the religious in their relation to each other” (“On the Suspension” 115).

         For more on Buber’s relationship with Kierkegaard, see Turning to the Other 96-101.

"The Shaking of the Foundations"

 There is something immovable and unshakeable which becomes manifest in the crumbling of our world. On the boundaries of the finite, the infinite becomes visible.                                                                                                   — Paul Tillich, “The Shaking of the Foundations”

My friend Bruce raised the question, “Do we have to go through the depths of grief that Buber went through in order to get to the level of authentic, transcendent dialogue?” Buber wrote about the trauma he lived through during the war years (1912-1919):

With me it was the case that all the experiences of being that I had during the years 1912-1919 became increasingly present to me as one great experience of faith. By this I mean an experience that transports [hinnimmt] the person in all of his constituent parts, including his capacities of thought so that, bursting open all of the doors, the storm blows through all of the chambers. (Buber, “Replies,” in Schilpp 689-90)

Buber here uses the metaphor of the house to represent “the person in all of her constituent parts”—that is, the whole person.

This he wrote in retrospect near the end of his long life. He sketched a more intense version of this process in 1919 at the climax of his trauma and struggle in the war years:

The Unconditional has its effect on a person when he lets himself in his whole being be seized by it, be utterly shaken, be transformed by it—when he responds to it [ihm antwortet] with his whole being: with his mind, by perceiving the Divine in its symbols; with his soul, by his loving the All; with his will, by his putting the Unconditional to the proof in his life-actions [durch Bewährung des Unbedingten im tätigen Leben]. (Buber, “Herut,” On Judaism 153)

Buber’s thinking, like that of a number of twentieth century existential thinkers such as Camus, Sartre, Heidegger, and Tillich, was significantly shaped and framed by the traumas of war in Europe. His exploration and articulation of the mystery of the inner life in dialogue became one with the mystery of fragile human existence.

Buber presents his traumas as “his own unique case”—notice how he starts his account at the beginning of this blog post. Yet the depth he calls us to requires a crisis of awakening. In 1951 he wrote an introduction to a book on the theory of “healing through meeting” written by his friend Hans Trüb, a psychotherapist. There he sketched a process by which a person practicing psychotherapy as a profession might move from mere professionalism to authentic self-disclosure in relation to his or her clients. As Buber sketches it, the crisis by which one moves to authenticity—in this case, therapeutic authenticity—begins with dismay and honest self-reflection, leading to insight and the ability to hear a call, the call of “the naked abyss of a person’s inner life” (Buber, “Healing Through Meeting” 94). This abyss calls out to the abyss which is the inner life of the therapist,

that selfhood that is itself encompassed by chaos, itself familiar with demons, but is graced with the humble power of wrestling and overcoming, and is ready to wrestle and overcome thus ever anew. Through his hearing of this call [he can turn to his client] as one to whom the necessity of genuine personal meetings in the abyss of human existence between the one in need of help and the helper has been revealed. (95) 

Sidney Jourard's classic book The Transparent Self embodies this dialogical ethos.  

So Buber’s answer to Bruce’s question is "no one does not have to have Buber’s level of trauma and anguish," but "yes, crisis and soul-searching are necessary on the way to authenticity in engagement with the Other." It is this authenticity in which “deep calls to deep,” abyss to abyss. Buber identifies it as a "way":

This way of frightened pause, of unfrightened reflection, of personal involvement, of rejection of security, of unreserved stepping into relationship, of the bursting of psychologism, this is the way of vision and of risk. (97)

Buber's Walking Stick

 

Buber wrote an “Author’s Preface” to Daniel, a book of dialogues that he first published when he was thirty-five. This short preface begins with an anecdote from a hike and ends with an insight. Buber’s trek included a pause, a “viewing station” (see the blog entry for September 26, “Way-Stations Along the Path”), leading to a moment of insight that had germinated in the course of his day in nature.  

After a descent in which I had to make use of the late light of a dying day without a halt, I paused on the edge of a meadow, now sure of the safe way, and let the twilight come down upon me. Not needing any support and yet wishing to mark a fixed point as I lingered, I pressed the tip of my walking stick against the trunk of an oak tree. Then I felt in twofold fashion my contact with being: here, where I held the stick, and there, where it touched the bark. Appearing to be only where my body was, I nonetheless found myself there, too, where my stick found the tree.

In that moment the nature of dialogue became clear to me. For the speech of a person, wherever it is genuine speech, is like that stick; that is, it is truly directed address. Here, where I am, where the ganglia and organs of speech help me to form and to send forth the word, here I “mean” the person to whom I send it, I intend this person, this one irreplaceable person. But also there, where he is, something of me is delegated, something that is not at all substantial in nature like my being-here, rather pure vibration and incomprehensible; that remains there, with him, the person meant by me, and takes part in the receiving of my word. I encompass the one to whom I turn. 

—      Martin Buber, “Author’s Preface,” Daniel: Dialogues on Realization 47 (emphasis added)

Buber begins by situating his insight in a transitional moment near the end of a day of trekking. At that point he had transitioned from wilderness to tamer surroundings and he was giving himself to the liminal reality of descending darkness. He then makes a gratuitous gesture of contact—he presses the tip of his stick against an oak tree. Three things come together: his hand, the stick, and the tree. The resulting Gestalt becomes an image of dialogue: first he is aware of his body-mind in his act of speaking—he acts, he expresses, he intends both the message in the moment and the unique person to whom it is addressed; second, like the oak tree, he is aware of the other person in his or her uniqueness, “the person meant by me and [who] takes part in the receiving of my word.” Third, the walking stick represents “the between,” that in which “something of me is delegated, something not at all substantial.” This “between” is there, with the other person, and actually becomes part of that other person’s receiving of the speaker’s word. This “between” both is—and is not—the speaker and the person being addressed. Buber’s insight on the trail reaches its climax in the self-awareness of the I of I-Thou: “I encompass the one to whom I turn.” This is the twofold awareness of self and other—the sense of being with—in the moment of genuine dialogue. (See Turning to the Other 158)

"The Narrow Ridge" -- Part 3

“As sword sharpens sword, so a person sharpens the countenance of a friend.”

                                                             —  Proverbs 27:17

        As we have seen, Buber introduced “the narrow ridge” in his inaugural lecture to show the nature of his thinking as a continually shifting process of change—as the “ever anew” of emerging dialogical moments with being rather than the “once for all” of static, abstract, timeless systems of thought (see Turning to the Other 170). Yet later in his inaugural lectures he uses the term as a metaphor for the evanescent reality of “the between” which exists for the moment that dialogue is enacted.

What happens in fleeting moments of “encounter”—whether as part of an authentic conversation, a deep pedagogical exchange, a genuine embrace, or a serious duel—this cannot be understood by means of psychological concepts; it is something ontic, partaking in being itself. It is something that has its being between the two participants in the dialogue and it transcends both of them. In the most powerful moments of dialogue, where in truth “deep calls unto deep,” it becomes unmistakably clear that it is not the wand of the individual or of the social, but of a third thing which draws the circle around what is happening. On the far side of the subjective, on the near side of the objective, on the narrow ridge where I and Thou meet—there is the realm of “the between.”                 —  “What is Man?” 203-04

        Here the “narrow ridge” is an event, the event of the encounter of I and Thou. This event constitutes “the between,” that which is really real, according to Buber’s thinking. (See Turning to the Other 157) 

"The Narrow Ridge" -- Part 2

 Buber used "the narrow ridge" as a key term in his inaugural lectures at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1938. There he described the maturing of his thinking using a geological analogy, contrasting two land formations, a “broad upland” and a “narrow ridge”:

Since my own thoughts regarding ultimate things took a decisive turn during the first world war, I have at times described my standpoint to my friends as the “narrow ridge.” By this I wanted to express that I do not dwell on the broad upland of a system that encompasses a series of sure statements about the absolute, but rather on a narrow mountain ridge between abysses where there is absolutely no sureness of expressible knowledge but only the certainty of meeting with the hidden Enduring One.   

          (“What is Man?” 184; see Turning to the Other, 70-71, 98-100, 209-11}

A broad upland is a large plane at a high elevation. Grand Park in Mount Rainier National Park illustrates this.It is a flat tableland two square kilometers in size atop a mountain formation at 1700 meters above sea level. 

Grand Park, MRNP,a broad upland at ground level

Grand Park as seen from nearby Skyscraper Peak

 A narrow ridge at Mildred Point on the other side of Mount Rainier provides the contrast Buber had in mind:

 A ridge near Mildred Point at 1800 meters above sea level, Mount Rainier National Park

This precarious ridge presents the trekker with unforeseeable uncertainties at every footstep and with the abysses on either side the trekker is confronted with the mortal cost of a single misstep.

In his lecture Buber is talking about “ultimate things,” the deepest matters of faith. He uses this contrast of terrain to illustrate the change that came over him through his experience of World War I and the brutal murder of his close friend, Gustav Landauer. His thinking shifted from “a system that encompasses a series of sure statements about the absolute,” to a standing “where there is absolutely no sureness of expressible knowledge but only the certainty of meeting with the hidden Enduring One.” For Buber, the former provided the safety and security that come with an ordered and rational system of thought where the absolute is one entity among others. By contrast, the latter involves total uncertainty and insecurity—with one exception: “the certainty of meeting with the hidden Enduring One.” The “hidden Enduring One” is the “eternal Thou,” with whom every person must come to terms in this mortal life. (Ronald Gregor Smith, Buber’s Scottish translator, missed the point here. He mistranslated the phrase as “the certainty of meeting what remains, undisclosed” BMM 184). My translation reflects the way that Buber had characterized his life vis à vis God in a confessional moment at the end of the war: “I am truly . . . a man endangered before God, a man wrestling ever anew for God’s light, ever anew engulfed in God’s abysses . . . .” (“My Way to Hasidism,” 67). His encounter with tragic violence had put him on a different footing than that of a system which one could hold at arm’s length. He had entered the realm of uncertainty and danger and continual risk in the spiritual quest. This new footing was his radically new and different standpoint for understanding God.