In two significant modern attempts we have seen that an indi-
vidualistic anthropology, an anthropology which is substantially
concerned only with the relation of the human person to him-
self, with the relation within this person between the spirit and
its instincts, and so on, cannot lead to a knowledge of man’s
being. Kant’s question What is man? whose history and effects I
have discussed in the first part of this work, can never be
answered on the basis of a consideration of the human person as
such, but (so far as an answer is possible at all) only on the basis
of a consideration of it in the wholeness of its essential relations
to what is. Only the man who realizes in his whole life with his
whole being the relations possible to him helps us to know man
truly. And since, as we have seen, the depths of the question
about man’s being are revealed only to the man who has become
solitary, the way to the answer lies through the man who over-
comes his solitude without forfeiting its questioning power. This

means that a new task in life is set to human thought here, a task
that is new in its context of life. For it means that the man who
wants to grasp what he himself is, salvages the tension of soli-
tude and its burning problematic for a life with his world, a life
that is renewed in spite of all, and out of this new situation
proceeds with his thinking. Of course this presupposes the
beginning of a new process of overcoming the solitude—despite
all the vast difficulties—by reference to which that special task of
thought can be perceived and expressed. It is obvious that at the
present stage reached by mankind such a process cannot be
effected by the spirit alone; but to a certain extent knowledge
will also be able to further it. It is incumbent on us to clarify this
in outline.

Criticism of the individualistic method starts usually from the
standpoint of the collectivist tendency. But if individualism
understands only a part of man, collectivism understands man
only as a part: neither advances to the wholeness of man, to man
as a whole. Individualism sees man only in relation to himself,
but collectivism does not see man at all, it sees only “society”.
With the former man’s face is distorted, with the latter it is
masked.

Both views of life—modern individualism and modern
collectivism—however different their causes may be, are essen-
tially the conclusion or expression of the same human condi-
tion, only at different stages. This condition is characterized by
the union of cosmic and social homelessness, dread of the uni-
verse and dread of life, resulting in an existential constitution of
solitude such as has probably never existed before to the same
extent. The human person feels himself to be a man exposed by
nature—as an unwanted child is exposed—and at the same time
a person isolated in the midst of the tumultuous human world.
The first reaction of the spirit to the awareness of this new and
uncanny position is modern individualism, the second is
modern collectivism.

In individualism the human being ventures to affirm this
position, to plunge it into an affirmative reflexion, a universal
amor fati; he wants to build the citadel of a life-system in which
the idea asserts that it wills reality as it is. Just because man is
exposed by nature, he is an individual in this specially radical
way in which no other being in the world is an individual; and
he accepts his exposure because it means that he is an individual.
In the same way he accepts his isolation as a person, for only a
monad which is not bound to others can know and glorify itself
as an individual to the utmost. To save himself from the despair
with which his solitary state threatens him, man resorts to the
expedient of glorifying it. Modern individualism has essentially
an imaginary basis. It founders on this character, for imagination
is not capable of actually conquering the given situation.

The second reaction, collectivism, essentially follows upon the
foundering of the first. Here the human being tries to escape his
destiny of solitude by becoming completely embedded in one of
the massive modern group formations. The more massive,
unbroken and powerful in its achievements this is, the more the
man is able to feel that he is saved from both forms of homeless-
ness, the social and the cosmic. There is obviously no further
reason for dread of life, since one needs only to fit oneself into
the “general will” and let one’s own responsibility for an
existence which has become all too complicated be absorbed in
collective responsibility, which proves itself able to meet all
complications. Likewise, there is obviously no further reason for
dread of the universe, since technicized nature—with which
society as such manages well, or seems to—takes the place of the
universe which has become uncanny and with which, so to
speak, no further agreement can be reached. The collective
pledges itself to provide total security. There is nothing imagin-
ary here, a dense reality rules, and the “general” itself appears to
have become real; but modern collectivism is essentially illusory.
The person is joined to the reliably functioning “whole”, which

embraces the masses of men; but it is not a joining of man to
man. Man in a collective is not man with man. Here the person is
not freed from his isolation, by communing with living beings,
which thenceforth lives with him; the “whole”, with its claim
on the wholeness of every man, aims logically and successfully at
reducing, neutralizing, devaluating, and desecrating every bond
with living beings. That tender surface of personal life which
longs for contact with other life is progressively deadened or
desensitized. Man’s isolation is not overcome here, but over-
powered and numbed. Knowledge of it is suppressed, but the
actual condition of solitude has its insuperable effect in the
depths, and rises secretly to a cruelty which will become mani-
fest with the scattering of the illusion. Modern collectivism is the
last barrier raised by man against a meeting with himself.

When imaginings and illusions are over, the possible and
inevitable meeting of man with himself is able to take place only
as the meeting of the individual with his fellow-man—and this
is how it must take place. Only when the individual knows the
other in all his otherness as himself, as man, and from there
breaks through to the other, has he broken through his solitude
in a strict and transforming meeting.

It is obvious that such an event can only take place if the
person is stirred up as a person. In individualism the person, in
consequence of his merely imaginary mastery of his basic situ-
ation, is attacked by the ravages of the fictitious, however much
he thinks, or strives to think, that he is asserting himself as a
person in being. In collectivism the person surrenders himself
when he renounces the directness of personal decision and
responsibility. In both cases the person is incapable of breaking
through to the other: there is genuine relation only between
genuine persons.

In spite of all attempts at revival the time of individualism is
over. Collectivism, on the other hand, is at the height of its
development, although here and there appear single signs of

slackening. Here the only way that is left is the rebellion of the
person for the sake of setting free the relations with others. On
the horizon I see moving up, with the slowness of all events of
true human history, a great dissatisfaction which is unlike all
previous dissatisfactions. Men will no longer rise in rebellion—
as they have done till now—merely against some dominating
tendency in the name of other tendencies, but against the false
realization of a great effort, the effort towards community, in the
name of the genuine realization. Men will fight against the dis-
tortion for the pure form, the vision of the believing and hoping
generations of mankind.

I am speaking of living actions; but it is vital knowledge alone
which incites them. Its first step must be to smash the false
alternative with which the thought of our epoch is shot
through—that of “individualism or collectivism”. Its first ques-
tion must be about a genuine third alternative—by “genuine”
being understood a point of view which cannot be reduced to
one of the first two, and does not represent a mere compromise
between them.

Life and thought are here placed in the same problematic
situation. As life erroneously supposes that it has to choose
between individualism and collectivism, so thought erroneously
supposes that it has to choose between an individualistic
anthropology and a collectivist sociology. The genuine third
alternative, when it is found, will point the way here too.

The fundamental fact of human existence is neither the indi-
vidual as such nor the aggregate as such. Each, considered by
itself, is a mighty abstraction. The individual is a fact of existence
in so far as he steps into a living relation with other individuals.
The aggregate is a fact of existence in so far as it is built up of
living units of relation. The fundamental fact of human existence
is man with man. What is peculiarly characteristic of the human
world is above all that something takes place between one being
and another the like of which can be found nowhere in nature.

Language is only a sign and a means for it, all achievement of the
spirit has been incited by it. Man is made man by it; but on its
way it does not merely unfold, it also decays and withers away. It
is rooted in one being turning to another as another, as this
particular other being, in order to communicate with it in a
sphere which is common to them but which reaches out beyond
the special sphere of each. I call this sphere, which is established
with the existence of man as man but which is conceptually still
uncomprehended, the sphere of “between”. Though being real-
ized in very different degrees, it is a primal category of human
reality. This is where the genuine third alternative must begin.

The view which establishes the concept of “between” is to be
acquired by no longer localizing the relation between human
beings, as is customary, either within individual souls or in a
general world which embraces and determines them, but in
actual fact between them.

“Between” is not an auxiliary construction, but the real place
and bearer of what happens between men; it has received no
specific attention because, in distinction from the individual soul
and its context, it does not exhibit a smooth continuity, but is
ever and again re-constituted in accordance with men’s meet-
ings with one another; hence what is experience has been
annexed naturally to the continuous elements, the soul and its
world.

In a real conversation (that is, not one whose individual parts
have been preconcerted, but one which is completely spon-
taneous, in which each speaks directly to his partner and calls
forth his unpredictable reply), a real lesson (that is, neither a
routine repetition nor a lesson whose findings the teacher knows
before he starts, but one which develops in mutual surprises), a
real embrace and not one of mere habit, a real duel and not a
mere game—in all these what is essential does not take place in
each of the participants or in a neutral world which includes the
two and all other things; but it takes place between them in the

most precise sense, as it were in a dimension which is accessible
only to them both. Something happens to me—that is a fact
which can be exactly distributed between the world and the
soul, between an “outer” event and an “inner” impression. But
if I and another come up against one another, “happen” to one
another (to use a forcible expression which can, however,
scarcely be paraphrased), the sum does not exactly divide, there
is a remainder, somewhere, where the souls end and the world
has not yet begun, and this remainder is what is essential. This
fact can be found even in the tiniest and most transient events
which scarcely enter the consciousness. In the deadly crush of an
air-raid shelter the glances of two strangers suddenly meet for a
second in astonishing and unrelated mutuality; when the All
Clear sounds it is forgotten; and yet it did happen, in a realm
which existed only for that moment. In the darkened opera-
house there can be established between two of the audience,
who do not know one another, and who are listening in the
same purity and with the same intensity to the music of Mozart,
a relation which is scarcely perceptible and yet is one of elem-
ental dialogue, and which has long vanished when the lights
blaze up again. In the understanding of such fleeting and yet
consistent happenings one must guard against introducing
motives of feeling: what happens here cannot be reached by
psychological concepts, it is something ontic. From the least of
events, such as these, which disappear in the moment of their
appearance, to the pathos of pure indissoluble tragedy, where
two men, opposed to one another in their very nature, entangled
in the same living situation, reveal to one another in mute clarity
an irreconcilable opposition of being, the dialogical situation
can be adequately grasped only in an ontological way. But it is
not to be grasped on the basis of the ontic of personal existence,
or of that of two personal existence, but of that which has its
being between them, and transcends both. In the most powerful
moments of dialogic, where in truth “deep calls unto deep”, it

becomes unmistakably clear that it is not the wand of the indi-
vidual or of the social, but of a third which draws the circle
round the happening. On the far side of the subjective, on this
side of the objective, on the narrow ridge, where I and Thou
meet, there is the realm of “between”.

This reality, whose disclosure has begun in our time, shows
the way, leading beyond individualism and collectivism, for
the life decision of future generations. Here the genuine third
alternative is indicated, the knowledge of which will help to
bring about the genuine person again and to establish genuine
community.

This reality provides the starting-point for the philosophical
science of man; and from this point an advance may be made on
the one hand to a transformed understanding of the person and
on the other to a transformed understanding of community. The
central subject of this science is neither the individual nor the
collective but man with man. That essence of man which is
special to him can be directly known only in a living relation.
The gorilla, too, is an individual, a termitary, too, is a collective,
but I and Thou exist only in our world, because man exists, and
the I, moreover, exists only through the relation to the Thou. The
philosophical science of man, which includes anthropology and
sociology, must take as its starting-point the consideration of
this subject, “man with man”. If you consider the individual by
himself, then you see of man just as much as you see of the
moon; only man with man provides a full image. If you consider
the aggregate by itself, then you see of man just as much as we
see of the Milky Way; only man with man is a completely out-
lined form. Consider man with man, and you see human life,
dynamic, twofold, the giver and the receiver, he who does and
he who endures, the attacking force and the defending force, the
nature which investigates and the nature which supplies infor-
mation, the request begged and granted—and always both
together, completing one another in mutual contribution,

together showing forth man. Now you can turn to the individual
and you recognize him as man according to the possibility of
relation which he shows; you can turn to the aggregate and you
recognize it as man according to the fulness of relation which he
shows. We may come nearer the answer to the question what
man is when we come to see him as the eternal meeting of the
One with the Other.