The nature of experiences people face from their encounters with others warrants a thought-provoking analysis for the intrinsic motivation for interpersonal relationship. Are these motivated from a certain commercialized perspective? From seemingly altruistic motives?
Or from motives of objectification, wherein the ‘other’, is perceived as an object to be exploited for one’s advantage? While the last option may appear to be the case in the Nigerian context, we have other theories that stand as remedies. We shall focus on the idea of inter-subjectivity, the relevance of man and generally, how man ought to be treated in the society, in the thoughts of Martin Buber and Gabriel Marcel.
As Karl Max purported, philosophy can be properly done, only when theories capture the real concrete details of people’s life and existence; and have to be fully grounded in practice. In line with this, this work will be geared towards the understanding of our essence and our relationship with people.
Man and His Reality. Without an atom of doubt, man sometimes contributes to the complexity of life around them. As one of the attributes of man is that he continues to seek out something, sometimes for meaning, for material things and even seeks to understand abstract things and this sometimes thwarts and brings about a lack of sensitivity to values and respect meant for the other man.
When this process is in motion, it gets to the level whereby people are then missing out on the meaningfulness and real essence of life and this is where the misplace of priority sets in, by reducing who they are to what they can do or their talent as regards to the function they can best carry out.
Some of the realities surrounding Nigeria today are from the behaviour of man himself, his relationship with his fellow man, and the role of man beginning from the family, the community and the society at large. Man has ascribed the meaning of life to a state of quandary which is caused by the desire to possess rather than to be. He now believes in the ability to possess as many material things in other to derive meaning to life.
This is to say that they find the meaning of life in their achievements and professions, as such; one’s life becomes meaningless when he is not able to meet up to this standard. Inter-subjectivity Inter-subjectivity is a concrete self-other relation in a socially structured life-world which is guided by the transcendental principle of justification.
It is also the coordination of individual contributions to sequences of interdependent contributions. As its pioneer, Husserl defined inter-subjectivity as an exchange of thoughts and feelings that are facilitated by empathy.
The concept of inter-subjectivity so far may be understood in dissimilar ways, on that note, we are going to be exposing the concept based on the thought and understanding of Gabriel Marcel and Martin Buber who have written broadly and distinctly on this topic.
Gabriel Marcel is seen as a Christian existentialist and has authored a lot of books in this line, famous of all, the Mystery of Being, where he also speaks about the concept of intersubjectivity.
He however defined it as the real of human existence when the prepositions ‘with’ properly applies to someone other than itself; a total commitment to the other due to an innate relationship in the mysterious nature of life.
Martin Buber is said to be prolific writer, basically known for his philosophical writings, famous for all, his book titled, “I and Thou “, (1923), where he posits a world of relationship that demands a participatory intimacy from each person; each acknowledges the ‘whole’ in the other, and upholds this relational partnership
