Sketchy thoughts which might not make sense without the full context…

Once again I’m thinking about Buber’s distinction between the social and the interhuman.

I think the essential difference between the two is this: In an interhuman relationship two participants are involved, and through dialogue the participants can directly influence the relationship that binds them; where in a social relationship the relationship that binds two exceeds the direct reach of dialogue, and so the relationship that binds them together (that of a larger community) exceeds the limits of their direct influence.

I’m not convinced the interhuman relationship is necessarily confined to two people. I’m more inclined to place the interhuman and the social on a continuum. If three or four people are able to meet in dialogue and take full responsibility for their shared being, I’d say this is an interhuman relationship. If three or four people are bound in a dynamic that can barely be influenced through dialogue, or cannot be influenced at all, that relationship is more social.

Then there’s the question of a community arranged around a single personality who is in dialogue with each member of the community, but the members are not in dialogue with one another. A social order can arise among the members, but it all hangs on the hub-and-spoke structure of interhuman relationships radiating from the central personality.

Of course, all interhuman relationships exist within the context of a larger containing social relationship. It might be the case that a relationship is best understood in interhuman terms when the situation at hand be addressed through dialogue, but when the situation cannot be satisfactorily addressed the relationship takes on a social character.

This way of thinking might also be applied fruitfully to the individual versus the interhuman. One involves the other party in an interhuman relationship if when one cannot come to terms alone with a situation involving both.

I suspect I’m rethinking established sociological thoughts.

Speaking of sociology, I got a copy of the Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change by Randall Collins. I keep looking at it on my shelf, feeling a mixture of kinship, loathing and excitement.