Buford, Thomas O.: Know Thyself: An Essay in Social Personalism.

Weigel, Peter

BUFORD, Thomas O. Know Thyself: An Essay in Social Personalism. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2011. xix + 121 pp. Cloth, $85.00--Know Thyself examines finding self-knowledge amid modern suspicion of ideas and institutions, while arguing why previous accounts fail. The author first critiques historical accounts, before grounding personal and social identity in relational triads of I-Thou-It and then assessing the limits of social personalism.

The ambitious thesis is "social personalism can best provide for self-knowledge" among all previous philosophical accounts and other personalist ones. Personalism sees "the key to understanding reality, both social and natural, is Person" as viewed in practical life. The Delphic imperative to know thyself (gnothi seuton) means discerning what you are, what you are to be, and what you are to do. This discernment includes knowing one's past, present, and future interrelations with others, nature, and society. But "suspicion penetrates into the sinews of our culture," weakening confidence in its ideas and institutions. Modern social systems lack solidarity or authority. They fluctuate between disintegrative individualism and dehumanizing collectivism. The center no longer holds.

The first and second chapters assign to various Western philosophical and theological tendencies much of the blame. Ancient and medieval hierarchical systems defined gnothi seuton by one's place within tiered social and ontological orders, such as in an aristocracy or the great chain of being. Creation, purpose, and authority rest in an otherworldly God or Platonic forms, not persons and practical life. (The reviewer notes that the Western concept of person significantly originated as a theological one.) The author thinks that Greek and scholastic philosophy became entranced with rationalist categories as abstractions (being, cause, identity) divorced from lived existence. The Renaissance tendency to "[put] primacy on the [individual] will" was paired with skeptical Cartesian philosophy to yield the isolated, "monadic," classical-modern self caught between dyadic oppositions--mind/body, consciousness/other, self/world, and individual/collective. Kantian subjectivism and scientific materialism similarly fail to bring self-knowledge. The author sees these same unworkable historical paradigms undergirding much present-day philosophy and its failures.

The third through the sixth chapters pose an alternate "master narrative" of interpersonal trust suffusing triadic structures that recall Buber's "I, Thou, It." "It" invokes the whole environment from physical habitat to events, personal aims, and shared norms. Members bring their myriad potentialities to the triad. One recognizes that all knowledge, belief, and concepts originate and transmit through social trust. Persons and societies develop in webs of freely chosen obligations and loyalties. This narrative, which the author claims "completes all other [previous] narratives," is inherently moral. Western thought obscured but never lost sight of these triadic trusting relations. Even philosophical argumentation rests on trust and free assent, not by seeking the grail of pseudo-mathematical certitude. The author believes social solidarity and due care for others is restored by recognizing that interpersonal trust founds all individual development and all societies. Thus, self-knowledge emerges in concerted awareness of dynamic potentialities in the myriad I-Thou-It triads of practical living. The concluding seventh and eighth chapters address the third part of gnothi seuton, asking what we are to do. The author invokes the metaphor of dancing as representing self-knowledge as a "creative finding" of trusting I-Thou-It interpersonal relations. That is, individuals flourish by identifying their proper environments and relations, while "creatively finding [i.e., dancing] a good performance within the social structures," including finding one's place and work. Attention to the personal restores solidarity and trusting authority in primary religious, economic, political, familial, and educational institutions.

But is such trust in trust sufficient? The author holds the personal world as the "Creator" and choreographer of the dance, but he recognizes that coherence and trust break down. Life's disasters bring doubts of meaninglessness. In the face of Lisbon and Auschwitz, the mystery of evil and suffering "cannot be dispelled, but it can be cornered." In the end, the author notes that suspicion penetrates even to the core of what the author affirms as this "most complete" narrative.

Even sympathetic readers may wonder if such narrative thoroughness has been achieved. Specialists of the historical periods and figures surveyed might hope for different and possibly more subtle assessments than the ones offered. Some readers will note how personalist themes have been joined with and possibly enhanced by more traditional philosophical and theological positions. Mounier and Wojtyla, for instance, think persons realize their true potential in ontological and spiritual orderings. Still, the author develops his positions with assiduous care. He periodically recapitulates for clarity. Both specialists and simply curious persons will find the work a thought-provoking read. Readers will likely find the approach to persons richer than often seen in contemporary anglophonic philosophy. The author also treats personalist themes in Trust, Our Second Nature and has coedited a noted anthology, Personalism Revisited: Its Proponents and Critics.--Peter Weigel, Washington College