The Between
The Between (das Zwischenmenschliche) is Martin Buber’s term for the relational space where genuine encounter occurs. It is neither purely subjective (inside one person) nor purely objective (outside both) but genuinely inter — between the participants, emerging from the relationship itself. The Between is the ontological ground of the I-Thou relation.
Not Inside, Not Outside, But Between
Buber insists that the I-Thou encounter does not happen in either person but between them. It is not a matter of two subjectivities projecting onto each other or merging into fusion. The Between is a third reality — genuinely ontological, not reducible to the psychological states of the participants.
This is a radical claim: Buber is saying that relationship is not a secondary connection between two self-contained subjects but a primary reality. The Between is where we actually live when we are genuinely present to each other.
The Between and Dialogue
For Buber, genuine dialogue is not an exchange of information or even an exchange of feelings but an event in the Between. When two people meet in the I-Thou mode, something happens between them that neither controls or possesses. The dialogue is not theirs to manage; they are participants in it, shaped by it, responsive to it.
This has profound implications for practices of encounter (like Circling or dialogical work): the goal is not to improve communication skills or express oneself better but to enter the Between — to allow the relational space to emerge and to be responsive to what happens there.
The Between and Confirmation
Confirmation happens in the Between. To confirm another person is not to approve of them or agree with them but to affirm their becoming, their reality, their otherness — and this affirmation is a relational event, not a unilateral act. Confirmation is what the Between makes possible.
Connections to The Third
Buber’s concept of the Between anticipates and resonates with relational psychoanalysis’s concept of the Third (Ogden, Benjamin). Both are pointing to the same ontological reality: genuine relationship creates a space that is autonomous, structuring, and irreducible to either participant.
In Music
Two musical examples make the Between unusually concrete. Bill Evans’s trio recordings — particularly the recordings with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian — are widely recognized as among the purest demonstrations of musical dialogue: the music exists only in the between created by three musicians genuinely listening and responding to each other. Neither Evans alone, nor LaFaro alone, nor Motian alone contains what the trio creates. The Between is where the music lives.
Jan Garbarek with the Hilliard Ensemble materializes the Between across a different kind of difference: medieval sacred polyphony and contemporary saxophone improvisation creating something that belongs to neither tradition alone. The collaboration exists in the between of centuries.
Connections
- Martin Buber — Developed the concept in I and Thou.
- I and Thou — The foundational text.
- I-Thou — The Between is where I-Thou happens.
- Confirmation — Happens in the Between.
- Relational Ground — The Between is a manifestation of relational ground.
- The Third — Parallel concept in relational psychoanalysis.
- Existentialism — Buber’s dialogical existentialism.
- Bill Evans — The trio recordings as sonic demonstration of the Between
- Hilliard Ensemble — Temporal dialogue that materializes the Between across centuries