Martin Buber and Anthropology of Peace

One who seeks peace and friendship needs to ignore reservation, stick to a moral code and has deep faith. Humans, from ancient times, have thought about peace and advance some solutions. Tearing the past rules apart, in modern times, resulted in rethinking about the relations between men. As some scholars, such as Durkheim, said, it is important because the relationship of humans have been subjected to change. Nowadays, studying this subject has been from a nonreligious and profane point of view, but there are some philosophers who think of correlation of men based on a religious ground. Such views try to define a new relationship between humans based on man-God relation and from a sacred viewpoint. One of these thinkers in our time is Martin Buber, who thinks about the relationship subject. He holds that to establish a true and real connection, we should give up instrumental approaches. For him, true relation of human beings should see “other” as a goal in itself, as Kant held. Thus, any instrumental attitude interferes with this goal. Buber’s theory emphasizes on the existential relation of individuals and asserts that dialogue is the essential component of it. As to explain this, Buber distiguishes between two kind of relations: me-thou, and, me-it; which our approach in each of them is different. Seeing “other” as “thou” is an existential and independent attitude which carries a kind of openness toward a different “other” and wants to obtain a true knowledge of them.