Eye to Eye . . . and more

In the previous post, we noted Karl Barth's argument that we must look one another in the eye. That is the first of four conditions which, according to Barth, must be fulfilled for our engagements with one another to be fully human.Again, the first condition is that I must look you in the eye. When I do that, I also allow you to see me in the eye. Eye to eye, we are not afraid to be known; nor do we refuse to know one another.

Second, there must be mutual speech and hearing. We cross the "frontier of mere visibility" when we express ourselves to one another. "As we can look past people, we can also talk past them and hear past them. When this happens, it always means that we are not in encounter and therefore inhuman."
Third, we must "render mutual assistance in the act of being." We recognize that no human is self-sufficient and we place ourselves at one another's disposal. "My action is human when the outstretched hand of the other does not grope in the void but finds in mine the support which is asked."
Fourth, and finally, we must engage in this encounter with gladness. "We gladly see and are seen; we gladly speak and listen; we gladly receive and offer assistance." "This," wrote Barth, "is the secret of the whole."

(All quotations from Church Dogmatics, III.2)