How to be human - Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt on community and social justice

I’m currently completing a PhD thesis on the topic of Jewish social justice education. I was fascinated by the proliferation of social justice campaigning and educational work all over the Jewish world, and by the surprising absence of any theoretical or academic writing on the subject. The outcome is that while lots of people are trying to do Jewish social justice work, no-one has a clearly defined sense of exactly what this means.

For example, what do we mean by social justice – what is our vision for a just society and how does this inform our critique of existing political and economic arrangements? Are we concerned about human rights, the environment, poverty, the breakdown of community, international development issues, all or none of the above?

What is specifically Jewish about this vision? Does it derive from halacha, Biblical values, Jewish history, modern Jewish political movements – or is it enough to have a universal vision which happens to be pursued by Jews? Either way, is there anything specifically Jewish about the way in which we pursue justice? Can social action itself be recognisably Jewish and what might this mean? If we can’t answer these latter questions, perhaps it would be better to recognise social justice as a universal, political pursuit and throw our lot in with broad-based, secular campaigns and organisations.

My research has focused on interviews with 15 UK-based Jewish social justice educators, including the head of informal education at JCoSS, a freelance educator doing feminist education around gender within Orthodox schools, the directors of Yachad and the New Israel Fund, Citizens UK’s Jewish community organiser, a modern-Orthodox rabbi who specialises in interfaith work, the Reform founder of Tzelem – a rabbinic voice for social justice, our own senior rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, educators from human rights NGO René Cassin and the Jewish LGBT organisation Keshet, and Maurice Glasman, a Labour peer, community organiser and inventor of ‘Blue Labour’.

Despite the diversity of this group, they are united in their understanding that discrimination, exclusion and inequality oppress people by denying them their humanity. The remedy is the opposite of this: enabling all human beings to realise their human potential. But what does it actually mean to be fully human? Different people answer this question in different ways, but it boils down to three key ingredients. First, being human means being involved in critical thinking and action in the world – what philosophers call praxis. This is what distinguishes human beings from all other animals. Second, it means being involved with spiritual concerns – not necessarily God, but non-materialist questions of meaning and values. Finally, it means being in community and relationship.

Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt

But even this final idea raises more questions, as there exist radically different concepts of community and relationship, each of which has a different kind of humanising impact on its members. I’ve been exploring alternative versions of this idea as put forward by two seminal 20th century thinkers – the philosopher and theologian Martin Buber, and the political theorist Hannah Arendt.

In his classic book I and Thou, Buber teaches that human beings relate to each other in two different ways. Most of the time we deal with other people as parties to a transaction or as means to some end we’re trying to achieve. This is most obvious in the case of bus drivers, shop keepers or our tax accountants, but can also be true in the case of intimate relationships: we often use friends and partners to meet our own emotional needs. While human society could not exist without this way of interacting, it also leads us to objectivise other people and can be alienating and ultimately dehumanising. But Buber also holds up the possibility of an alternative way of relating to other people not as ‘It’ but as ‘You’. When we see someone as ‘You’, we refuse to instrumentalise them but instead encounter them genuinely in all their unique individuality. This is the true meaning of relationship.

Buber writes that the evolution of modern, industrial, mass society has made relational encounters more and more difficult to achieve. As a result, we have become progressively less authentically human. His solution is to rebuild society as a network of independent, organic communities, within which genuine relationships can take place and people can reclaim their humanity. It’s no surprise that Buber was among the early supporters of the kibbutz movement and always argued that kibbutzim should remain as small, intimate, community groups.

If Buber believes that being human is the ability to engage in genuine, intimate, one-on-one relationships, Hannah Arendt proposes a very different model of relational, community life. She harks back to classical Greece, where she claims there was a clear division between the private and public spheres. The private sphere or the family was not only the location for intimate relationships but was also the basic unit of economic production and social stability, ruled over in an autocratic style by the head of the household. The public sphere, in contrast, emerged at the point where material wellbeing had been assured and took the form of democratic politics: a process of deliberation among active citizens about the important matters that affected the community.

Arendt’s view of community is summed up by the cut and thrust of deliberation, debate and the exchange of views, through which participants realise their freedom and bring their innate uniqueness as human beings into the world. In this light, Buber is guilty of transplanting the private sphere (family-style, intimate relationships) into the public arena, thereby endangering the autonomy and agency of the participants. Against this, Buber would argue that Arendt’s model of political community risks seeing other people as tools for one’s own self-advancement, thereby destroying any chance of genuine relationships.

For Arendt, humanisation means nurturing the potential within each individual human being. Community is a means to this end. Buber believes that being human means encountering the Other: for him, community and relationships are therefore ends in themselves.

Want to find out more about my research? Please get in touch!

“A misbegotten shambles perpetrated by an out of touch elite” – why is Michael Gove so sensitive to criticisms of first world war leaders? Some thoughts on history, ideology and politics.

The catfight – I prefer not to dignify it by calling it a debate – between Michael Gove, Tristram Hunt, Boris Johnson, Nick Clegg et al about the history of the first world war is truly fascinating: who’d have thought that (mis)interpreting a complex, controversial historical event could be enough of a reason to demand the resignation of a shadow cabinet minister? 

But that’s what Boris Johnson said this week in response to Tristram Hunt: “I can hardly believe that the author of this fatuous Observer article is proposing to oversee the teaching of history in our schools.  If Tristram Hunt seriously denies that German militarism was at the root of the First World War, then he is not fit to do his job, either in opposition or in government, and should resign.” 

The article by Hunt which provoked this reaction was in some ways no less partisan.  He said: ‘The reality is clear: the government is using what should be a moment for national reflection and respectful debate to rewrite the historical record and sow political division.  In the very paper that so grotesquely called into question Ralph Miliband's wartime service in the Royal Navy, the education secretary has sought to blame "leftwing academics" for misrepresenting the First World War.’

And Gove’s initial foray was also explicitly political: “Our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations which reflect an, at best, ambiguous attitude to this country  and, at worst, an unhappy compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage. 

“The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths.”

It should be clear that there are actually two separate arguments.  One is an argument about history: what actually happened?  Who was to blame for the war, why did it break out, was Britain’s decision to enter the conflict correct, and how should we evaluate the conduct of the war? 

The second argument is one about politics and ideology, over ideas of patriotism, nationalism, militarism, imperialism, pacifism and democracy.  When political leaders argue about history, they’re really arguing about something else: contemporary debates over Europe, immigration, the welfare state, education policy.  But the same leaders are also convinced that it’s possible to separate between the ideological and the academic – hence the outrage each side experiences at the other’s ‘abuses’ of history.

This conviction reflects a distinction made by historian Bernard Lewis in his book, History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented.  Lewis defines three kinds of history.  Remembered history is essentially collective memory: past events which a particular community or nation chooses to remember, whether as reality or symbol.  Recovered history is the history which has been forgotten, in other words rejected by collective memory, and which is subsequently reconstructed by academic scholarship (for a brilliant discussion on the relationship between memory, history and identity see Zakhor by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi – Yerushalmi argues that critical, modern Jewish historiography arose in the 19^th century as an ultimately failed attempt to replace the traditional identity that had collapsed along pre-modern Jewish collective memory). Invented memory is designed for a new ideological purpose, whether this is conservative, radical, nationalist or multicultural. 

Lewis draws a clear line between recovered and invented history, claiming that whereas recovered history is characterised by an honest attempt to identify and neutralise the prejudices of the historian in pursuit of the truth, invented history reflects nothing but its authors’ ideological positions.  But aside from the fact that the current debate shows that it’s all too easy for one person’s recovered history to be dismissed as invention, the distinction itself is nowhere near this neat. 

In his classic book What is History?, E.H. Carr convincingly showed that ideology and scholarship can never be separated.  Our naïve faith that historical interpretations emerge in a straightforward way from the facts is disrupted by the insight – obvious once you consider it - that historians inevitably choose which facts to present – based on which are most relevant or important.  The problem is that relevance and importance assume a frame of reference, one that by definition cannot be derived from facts.  In other words, facts are a product of interpretation no less than interpretations are products of the facts.  While Carr refused to submit to relativism – the idea that any subjective historical narrative is as good as any other – he was clear that history is not objective in a simplistic sense, but consists of an interaction or dialogue between the historian and his or her facts.

But if the lines between history and ideology are inherently blurred, in another sense, the approaches of Gove, Hunt and the rest are all resolutely ideological.  Gove and Johnson are not only using the war to argue for their own political opinions.  Their underlying view is that there is one, objectively true version of history which has to be defended in the face of ideologically motivated mendacity. 

Hunt and Clegg understand, against this, that history is inherently pluralistic, with diverse interpretations vying for our attention.  Yet this nuanced approach is also a principled position which needs to be vigorously defended.

Thus the real debate is a philosophical one, between an objectivist, monistic epistemology (Gove and Johnson) and one which takes a more complex, sophisticated view of historical interpretation and knowledge in general.  And it’s no surprise that epistemological pluralism should go along with more accepting attitudes towards social and cultural diversity.

So when MPs argue about history, it’s not just a cover for a political debate.  Real historical and even philosophical positions are on the line – and debates over distant events, freed from the demands of political correctness when talking about more contemporary issues, are often where these views come into the open. 

A cynic might not be surprised, in this light, by a Tory politician’s sensitivity criticisms of the war as ‘a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite.’  It all sounds a bit too contemporary.  But this kind of unintentional honesty provides a rare opportunity for voters to judge politicians not by what they say, but by what they actually think.

Why Gove's got it wrong on (almost) everything

Education secretary Michael Gove has announced that he wants to shorten holidays and lengthen school days so that the UK education can compete more effectively against the Chinese and other east Asian economies.  He also wants pupil feedback to influence performance-related teachers' pay, believes students should study more British history and learn lists of important facts by heart, is set to mandate compulsory language learning (from a list of seven languages including Chinese but not Japanese, Italian but not Portugese, Spanish but not Arabic, and Latin and Greek but not Hebrew or Sanskrit) in primary schools and, while imposing these and a host of other new government directives, simultaneously wants to give schools more independence by encouraging them to convert to academies, opting out of local authority control and becoming directly accountable to central government.

I've already said what I think about Gove's proposals for language teaching and the negative impact this will have on Hebrew and Jewish education - ironically, seeing that Gove himself studies Hebrew and never misses an opportunity to profess his love and respect for the Jewish community.  See my piece here.  I also need to declare and interest (and perhaps a total lack of consistency): I'm a founding governor of a new school being set up under the goverment's Free Schools policy.

Gove's policies seem increasingly confused.  But running through them, I believe, are two entirely coherent and consistently applied principles.  One is a lack of respect for experts - and in the case of education, this means teachers.  The education secretary believes that government, not teachers, should dictate education policy and is endeavoring to drive through politically determined reforms at a breakneck pace.  Plans to lengthen the school day imply that teachers don't work hard enough.  He has been criticised for failing to consult over the new national curriculum.  And where he seeks to decentralise, his partners of choice are not teachers but parents, universities and business.  The Guardian recently reported as follows:

'Gove made an offer to unions who complain about his reforms: "Many of [the teaching unions] have very passionate criticisms of the model of education that I've outlined and there's an open invitation to the unions which is: prove me wrong, set up a free school.
"If the NUT were to set up a free school, we would find them a building, we would fund it. And I would love to see an NUT or another union free school." Turning down Gove's offer, a union spokesperson said: "The NUT is in a lot of places already. They're called schools."'


The second principle is a tacit but extremely powerful belief that the only important goal of education is economic success.  This idea, widespread to the point of ubiquity in education policy across the industrialised world, is apparent in Gove's policies but even more so in his language.  The education system needs reforming so students can acquire skills to better compete in a global marketplace.

But if so, why the emphasis on English culture, English history, the rote learning of poetry, Latin and Greek on the list of mandated languages for primary school children, and the gift of a King James Bible to every school in the country?  On the surface it appears that alongside the desire for economic efficiency Gove wants to resurrect a more old-fashioned, classical education, grounded in the arts and humanities.   But this impression is misleading.  This kind of liberal arts education is about reading, thinking and understanding.  It values above all the richness of the tradition and its role in shaping good citizens, where citizenship means participating in public life for the sake of the common good.  But in Gove's vision, the ultimate authority is not pupils or teachers but government, and the aim of education is not cultural or political but economic.  Not only that, but the government's supposedly cultural educational rhetoric is actually tinged with racism.  An official commented on the latest plans to lengthen the school day: "We can either start working as hard as the Chinese, or we'll all soon be working for the Chinese."

This is what the government's educational vision seems to boil down to.  Children need to spend as much time possible studying at school so they learn the skills needed to spend as many hours possible working once they leave school.  They need to be immersed in a narrative of Britishness so they don't notice that they live in a global economy where the national identity of their employers matters less than the fact that profits keep rising even as average wages stagnate.  And they need to learn by rote and devote themselves to facts and skills rather than critical thinking, creativity and understanding in order to prepare themselves for lives as pliant employees and uncritical consumers.  Charles Dickens' Mr Gradgrind couldn't have wished for more.