Distance and Presence: Das Dann, Transcendence, and the Encounter with the Thou

Reading Heidegger and Buber Together

Towards the end of Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz (GA 26), Heidegger writes that das Dann “erhebt sich aus und in einem Gewärtigen” — “then” or “thereafter” arises from and within an anticipatory awaiting of what is not yet present. Damals is correspondingly understood on the basis of a retaining relation to what has been, and jetzt through a making-present. Dann, damals, and jetzt are therefore not the most primordial constituents of time, but linguistic expressions of more fundamental ecstatic forms of temporality: Gewärtigen, Behalten, and Gegenwärtigen.

Das Dann is a property of neither object nor subject. What is coming does not lie ready-made “up ahead” on a timeline, nor is “then” merely a subjective ordering of experience. Dann arises within the transcending relation in which Dasein already stands towards the world. It points towards something that is not yet present but nevertheless concerns us as that which is to come.

The lecture ends with an image that, on the surface, appears poetic rather than argumentative: the human being as “ein Wesen der Ferne” — a being of distance. Yet the image gathers the threads together. Distance here is neither physical nor psychological separation, nor is it the opposite of nearness. It is the primordial distance that makes genuine nearness possible. Dasein can come near to beings only because it can simultaneously relate to what is distant. Before dann can function as an element within a logical if–then structure, Dasein must already be capable of standing in a temporal relation to what is not yet present. Before propositions can be logically ordered, the world must already have been opened in such a way that something can show itself as possible, future, or past. The ground of logic therefore lies in this transcendence, not the other way around.

Buber’s Urdistanz

Precisely the same double movement — distance as a condition of nearness rather than its opposite — lies at the heart of Martin Buber’s later essay Urdistanz und Beziehung (1950). Buber distinguishes between two fundamental movements of human existence: Urdistanzierung, the primordial distancing through which something other can first emerge as an independent “other” at all, and Beziehung, the relation that may subsequently arise towards this very other.

Without Urdistanz — without the other first being set free as something I am not, something that is not merely an extension of my own world — there is no Thou with whom I can enter into relation, only an expanded It. Distance, in other words, is not something the relationship must overcome; it is the condition of the relationship’s birth.

Where Heidegger speaks of Dasein as “a being of distance” because it can relate to the non-present as such — the future, the absent, the not-yet-actualised — Buber speaks of the human being as the being who first places the other at a distance in order to be able to encounter that other as a Thou. Both understand distance not as a deficiency but as a productive opening: a space within which something — a temporal dimension in Heidegger, another person in Buber — can emerge as something or someone in their own right.

Gewärtigen and Waiting for the Thou

Here das Dann may illuminate something central in Buber that he himself never fully temporalises: the time of waiting before the encounter. According to Buber, the I–Thou relation cannot be forced or planned. The Thou must come forth to meet me; I can only remain prepared.

This readiness — remaining open to the other’s appearance without being able to turn it into the object of a project — structurally resembles Gewärtigen. It is not a passive waiting for something that will arrive of its own accord regardless, but an active, forward-directed openness that is itself the condition under which the encounter can occur as an encounter.

Just as das Dann is not an object for which Dasein waits, but something that first arises within Gewärtigen, neither is the Thou an object for which I wait. The Thou is someone who can first emerge because I already stand in a receptive, expectant relation to what is not yet present.

When the Other Disappears

This opens a path towards what concerns me in “When the Other Disappears”: existential guilt. Buber distinguishes between neurotic feelings of guilt and existential guilt — a guilt that arises when I fail to respond to a genuine call from the other, when I allow a possible Thou to remain an It, or when I withdraw from an encounter for which I was prepared but from which I nevertheless turned away.

In Heidegger’s terms, one might say that existential guilt does not arise when something remains physically absent, but when I fail in Gewärtigen itself — when my forward-directed openness towards the other closes, and distance therefore ceases to be a productive condition of nearness and becomes instead mere absence, a coldness without the possibility of encounter.

Heidegger’s Dasein ultimately transcends alone: the relation to das Dann and die Ferne belongs to the structure of Dasein’s own constitution of Being. Buber’s transcendence, by contrast, is fundamentally dialogical. Distance does not exist so that I may understand time or Being more correctly, but so that a Thou may genuinely come forth to meet me.

This distinction may be precisely where Buber both develops Heidegger’s thought and breaks with it. Both find that logic — and, for Buber, ethics as well — rests upon an openness more primordial than formalised thought can grasp. But in Buber this openness is, from the outset, directed towards another free person, not merely towards the temporal structures of Being itself.

Distance thereby becomes not only that which allows something to show itself as it is, but that which allows someone to emerge as who he or she is. It is precisely this displacement — from the distance of Being to the distance of the other — that makes the guilt of allowing the other to disappear something more than a logical or ontological figure.