The Humanization of Economic Life: The Legacy of Martin Buber

Abstract

The Humanization of Economic Life: The Legacy of Martin Buber Roshnee Ossewaarde‐Lowtoo Introduction In one of his columns, the entrepreneur David Nordfors () predicts that the “task‐centered economy” will give way to a “people‐centered economy,” which will be a “meaningful economy.” While one cannot tell the difference between a person and a machine in the first, in the future economy, the robot will pass the Turing test, but will fail what Nordfors calls the “Buber test.” “The Buber test,” Nordfors () asserts, “is as important as the Turing test for discussing the economy. The humane economy defines meaning: improving interpersonal connection, relating to other living beings.” A new type of economics (as science) will accompany such transition, namely, a “Thou‐economics” (Hoover , 259)—as opposed to an “It‐economics.” While social economics is now a sub‐discipline of economics, and perceived more as a social science than an “exact” economic science, future mainstream economics will no longer need an extra label “social” or “philosophical” because it will be intrinsically a human science. This means that it will no longer presume, normalize, and legitimize the fictive figure homo economicus, but will instead strive to be true, and do justice, to the whole human being. In other words, the human will no longer be demanded to split him(her)self into a calculating and ruthless utility‐ and profit‐maximizer on the market, an active citizen in the public space, and a devoted friend, lover, and parent in his (her) private life. Mark Lutz (, 273) observes that once economic discourse starts presuming the “whole or authentic person, there is much to be gained in turning to Martin Buber's work.” This is precisely what I am doing in this paper, specifically exploring how our economic life can be reconciled with the norm of dialogical life or communion. Buber is well known for his lifelong advocacy of dialogue between persons and between nations. “If the world of man is to become a human world,” he maintains, “then immediacy must rule between men, and thus also between human house and human house” (Buber , 95). Indeed, according to him, every human being longs to be confirmed in his or her being, and such confirmation can only be a mutual confirmation (Buber , 225). This mutual confirmation is hindered by the objectification of the other fellow being, other living beings, and nature. I‐It relations are created between humans themselves, between humans, on the one hand, and animals, nature and the world, on the other. Such attitude, Buber emphasizes, is a degenerate state, and certainly no primal instinct or lust (Buber , 86). His conviction that the “instinct for communion” is greater than any other instinct appears in his later works as well (88). It is significant that Buber (, 161) distinguishes between the “social principle” and the “political principle,” thereby deploring the lack of such differentiation in, among others, Plato. While politics, for the latter, was “the art whose business it is to care for souls” (Cooper , 5), for Buber, politics is characterized by the will to power. One could therefore say that, for Buber (, 213), the will to dominate becomes stronger in modern times when the political principle becomes the “practical axiom that predominates in the opinion and attitude of a very great part of the modern world,” so that man becomes Caesar's. To the question of what comes first, society or politics, it is clear that Buber would reply “society,” that is, the fellowship of humans. For him, indeed, “the basic structure of society is historically and even prehistorically […] based on personal relations, and where it subdues them it becomes wrong” (Buber and Friedman , 80). This is a normative view of society: society ought to be relational for the sake of human souls. Indeed, according to Buber, “human life approaches its fulfilment, its redemption in the measure that the I‐Thou relation becomes strong in it” (Buber and Friedman , 117). Quite unsurprisingly, he considered his little and yet difficult I and Thou as representative of his thought. In his correspondence with Dag Hammarskjöld, in August 1961, Buber (,b, 641) recommends that book for translation into Swedish because it introduces the reader to the world...