  If relationship constitutes the fundamental datum of human wholeness, it remains also true that relation was not understood by Buber independent of its conceptual antipode, namely “distance.” As developed in the essay “Distance and Relation” (1951), relation cannot take shape apart from or without the prior setting of things, persons, and spiritual beings at a distance. For Buber, this setting of things, persons, and beings at a distance is the only way to secure the form of otherness without which there can be no relation. For without the form of otherness there can be no confirmation of self insofar as the confirmation of the I is always mediated by the other who confirms me, both at a distance and in relation, or rather in the distance that is relation and the relation that is difference.