Solitude and Communion (1948)

Luis Villoro, with Max Scheler’s phenomenology of sympathy as a point of departure, proposes that communion, not solitude, is the natural state of being. Solitary consciousness, he argues, is unsatisfied in its solitude and seeks, constantly and perpetually, Absolute Transcendence, which Villoro finds in the form of the human other, which he calls the “you.” Having established an early distinction between the “you” and the non-human “other,” between “tú” and “él” (the latter of which refers to the mute things that constitute our circumstance or circum-stare), Villoro suggests that it is the “tú” which calls on one’s solitary Ego and demands recognition; but it is also this “tú,” or “you,” which, once approached, speaks to one, engaging in a dialogue that is the ultimate basis of community. Readers will find in Villoro’s treatment echoes of both Scheler and Martin Buber, especially with the latter’s distinction between the “I” and the “thou.”