Interlude LXXXVI: Becoming | Martin Buber, Charles Taylor, Identity, Belonging, Meaning, and the Relational Self

What does it actually mean to become yourself?

Is there a pure, authentic self buried somewhere beneath family expectations, culture, memory, relationships, obligation, history, and everything you’ve inherited?

Or do human beings become themselves through participation in relationships, traditions, communities, languages, and realities larger than themselves?

In Interlude LXXXVI of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey brings the current arc on inheritance and human becoming toward its synthesis through the work of Martin Buber and Charles Taylor.

The central proposition is: We become ourselves through participation in realities larger than ourselves.

This episode questions one of the most familiar ideas in modern discussions of identity: that becoming authentic means removing external influence until some untouched inner self finally appears.

What if there is no completely untouched self?

What if identity isn’t something we merely discover beneath the world, but something that takes shape through our encounters with it?

Martin Buber: I-It, I-Thou, and the Self Created in Relationship

The episode begins with philosopher Martin Buber and his famous distinction between I-It and I-Thou relationships.

In an I-It relationship, another person or thing becomes something we can describe, classify, predict, measure, manage, or use.

That mode of relationship is necessary.