Abstract
What Martin Buber has called ‘the dialogical principle’1 requires that the other be recognized not only as an object of which we may speak or whom I may address as a Thou but also as a subject, an I who speaks about me within his or her own circle and who in turn addresses me as a Thou. Buber quotes, as a precursor of his own celebration of reciprocity, Feuerbach’s observation that the real I is ‘only the I that stands over against a Thou and that is itself a Thou over against another I’.2 This realization that the other is not merely an object of my discourse and my gaze, but that he or she is also a subject observing me, leads to the startling insight that the other has a point of view that is not my own and which is no more a defective version of mine than mine is a defective version of his or hers.
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