I and Thou

by Martin Buber

Martin Buber's I & Thou has long been acclaimed as a classic. Many prominent writers have acknowledged its influence on their work; students of intellectual history consider it a landmark; and the generation born after World War II considers Buber one of its prophets. Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two (1) that of the "I" toward an "It," toward an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience; (2) that of the "I" toward "Thou," in which we move into existence in a relationship without bounds. One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships. All of our relationships, Buber contends, bring us ultimately into relationship with God, who is the Eternal Thou.The need for a new English translation had been felt for many years. The old version was marred by many inaccuracies and misunderstandings, and its recurrent use of the archaic "thou" was seriously misleading. Professor Walter Kaufmann, a distinguished writer and philosopher in his own right who was close to Buber, retranslated the work at the request of Buber's family. He added a wealth of informative footnotes to clarify obscurities and bring the reader closer to the original and wrote an extensive prologue that opened up new perspectives on the book and on Buber's thought. This volume provided a new basis for all subsequent discussions of Buber.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Nonfiction, Theology, Spirituality, Judaism, Psychology

Paperback

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship.

Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. In 1902, Buber became the editor of the weekly Die Welt, the central organ of the Zionist movement, although he later withdrew from organizational work in Zionism. In 1923 Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du (later translated into English as I and Thou), and in 1925 he began translating the Hebrew Bible into the German language.

In 1930 Buber became an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main, and resigned in protest from his professorship immediately after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. He then founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education, which became an increasingly important body as the German government forbade Jews to attend public education. In 1938, Buber left Germany and settled in Jerusalem, in the British Mandate of Palestine, receiving a professorship at Hebrew University and lecturing in anthropology and introductory sociology.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

The world is not a collection of objects for our manipulation. It is a collection of subjects involved in a give-and-take dialogue with each other. A constructive, and not destructive, challenge and response.

We all know the story of that classic author Dostoevsky's absurd trauma at his mock execution - a trauma that set his whole world on its head. To the world's eyes he had overnight become the mad Prince of his esteemed novel - a pure Prize Idiot.

To him now, though, all his fellow sufferers here on Earth had become, as for Martin Buber, naked Thous. Their past was Now etched on their faces.

What a problematic miracle! What Amazingly Fractured Grace!

But now, we are all exactly opposite to Dostoevsky and Martin Buber. These days we have forgotten our Humanity. Our caring for each other. Our oldest friends. The family we would like to love. The wonder of simple joys. The awareness that we can make mistakes, too. And can live by losing.

Why?

Buber can tell us. He would say that all things have become “Other” to us. Objects in a utilitarian world. Plastic toys. We’re a race of ungrounded cyborgs.

The real Treasure, Buber and Dostoevsky say, is Within...

Living Within, we can share our Real selves with those we love. And we can refer to that Inwardness through our thoughts and emotions when we communicate with the world.

It isn’t easy. We don’t like human error. But we do it all the time. We’re all dumb, in spite of what YouTube tells us.

So try just being your dumb, ordinary self...

Enter the Absurd.

It’s like Paul Goodman says - modern society has alienated most people from their Selves. And the Absurd is what happens when, like Kafka, we try to live our lives of alienation like we were ‘mainstream’ with-it people. We’re perfect!

When I was young, in the fifties, and later the sixties, there stood two old wooden houses at the intersection of a quiet side street. They were immaculately kept - wooden siding gleaming with whitewash and property kept all neat as a pin. My mother told us two old retired couples lived there, though I never saw them.

They were like ghosts.

In my childhood imagination I saw them as four discrete and disinterested consciousnesses, flitting over the well-trimmed grass in the predawn hours like morning dew. Keeping to their indoors routine and their books by day.

A kid thinks such funny thoughts!

Now that I’m old like them, I see myself as a kindred spirit - an elderly ghost flitting with his fingers through an absorbing book, or doing household chores like the nightly dishes. A disinterested but warm-hearted consciousness.

I see outside, the Others, whom I now only know as fast-moving physical forms going about their “urgent voluntary errands” or - and these are the ones close to me - Real Thou’s.

Kindred disinterested human souls who feel genuine love for one another.

Thou’s are the Real ones.

Now, Buber is generally classified as humanist-existentialist. But he was much more than that.

At home, he was a warm, disinterested consciousness - for he had given up on the rapid-moving game-playing world of bodies - staying with his beloved Thou’s, rather than risk losing his self in a world of It’s.

A Loving humanist.

So do the rest of us follow suit?

No, like Kafka, we keep comically butting our noggins against absurd walls. Yes - because, ironically, in our machines, we’re all trying to ESCAPE from that Dumbed-Down world of Instant gratification. And NOT succeeding. Ever.

So FIRST - we have to go Within. Our inner self isn’t Dumbed-Down. It sees EVERYTHING. There are Riches within it. Our books are trying to tell us that.

It’s our Witness.

That’s uncomfortable. Cause its not cybernetic. It’s just human.

As E.M. Forster wrote, our Machine must Stop.

Let’s simply get to know our human, erring dysfunctionality! If we Slough off our Humanity we’re Doomed.

If we don’t ‘get’ the idea of close family love, it’s because we REFUSE to go Within. The Kingdom is hiding in our hearts...

At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless; neither from nor towards
At the still point.

There YOUR Real Life is too. NOT in being an object for objects.

Look. Do you have any idea how CLOSELY the man Martin Buber guarded his Inner Privacy?

I’ll tell you... One day a well-dressed lady asked him to autograph I and Thou for her. He refused. He said - get this - “I ONLY sign autographs for my family and close friends!”

You see, shy, old, wise Buber couldn’t relate to ANYONE as a THOU except his family and close friends.

And that’s exactly what I and Thou is about, in an oblique slant on the Absurd. It’s the Absurdly Human.

Like it or not. Losing in the world, and Winning in your Heart, and at Home.

And THAT’s why the message of this book is now so Urgent. Stop ‘getting with the program!’

If you’re not at-home in a loving real ‘home’ with those you love - and are instead playing subtle, social head Games with fellow game-players in a dehumanized cold and phoney world -

Why don’t you GET REAL in your Human Heart for a change?

And start LIVING a REAL LIFE!?

Within and without.

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hesitate to write about this book, for, although it has influenced how I think about—and relate to--people, animals, the environment, works of art, prayer, God, you name it, there is much in it that I do not comprehend, and a few things that baffle me completely.

What I am sure about is that—before anything—this book is about the two essential ways in which we relate to the "other"--that is, whatever we perceive to exist that is apart from our self. We may either treat the other as a thing (describe it, classify it, analyze it, and manipulate it) or we may relate to it as a person (experiencing its presence, its uniqueness, its mystery, its irreducibility). These two ways are what Buber calls the two “primary words": “I-It” and “I-Thou.”

When I first read Buber as an undergraduate, I must have skimmed over most of the hard parts, for I felt strongly he was championing the “I-Thou” over the “I-It.” And this made sense, for it was part of the way we young people thought about life in the late '60's: reverence the earth, listen to the environment, treat animals as you would people, and experience the divine without presuming to conceptualize it. “I-It” was the world of businessmen, technocrats, and bishops; “I-Thou” was the world of artists, poets, and mystics. And I knew which side I was on.

Now I see Buber message as more nuanced, more profound. He is not presenting a dichotomy, or proposing a hierarchy of relations; he is describing the working out of a process, the nature of a dialogue. It is impossible for anyone to speak only one of the two primary words all the time. The mystic, for example, when he speaks the word “I-Thou” encounters God, but when later he describes the nature of this encounter to others, he must speak the word “I-It” if he is to be at all understood. “I-It” theological conceptions are barren without the “I-Thou” experience, but without the “I-It” analysis the mystical “I-Thou” is mere mute sensation, and degenerates quickly into solipsism. To be fully human is to be in habitual dialogue, part of a continuing dialectic with the world and the divine.

As I said before, there is much about this book I do not yet understand. Sometimes it seems like anthropological analysis, sometimes philosophy, sometimes theology, and at other times like a prayer or perhaps a poem. But I have learned that, whenever I feel baffled, I should I sit at Buber's feet and say “Thou”. Every time I do, I return to the world of things a little wiser.

Here is one of many passages of Buber which both mystify and enlighten me every time.

Man can do justice to the relation of God in which he has come to share only if he realizes God anew in the world according to his strength and to the measure of each day. In this lies the only assurance of continuity. The authentic assurance of duration consists in the fact that pure relation can be fulfilled in the growth and rise of beings into Thou, that the holy primary word makes itself heard in them all. Thus the time of human life is shaped into a fullness of reality, and even though human life neither can nor ought to overcome the connection with It, it is so penetrated with relation that relation wins in it a shining stream of constancy: the moments of supreme meeting are then not flashes in darkness but like the rising moon in a clear starlit night.

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[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Walter Kaufmann says in his introduction, Buber's "I and Thou" stands somewhere between the literary and philosophical traditions. This makes the book very hard to summarize and its impact difficult to convey. Suffice it to say, this is 100 pages of honest, resonant writing from a man who believed the most important thing in the world was the relationship between two individuals. It turned an agnostic undergraduate into a believer. A book to return to again and again.

[booklady]

So, I can say I read it. And what I understood, I really really liked. It opened my eyes to the wonder of each human encounter I have every day, from the most mundane to the ones I consider and label ‘significant’. They are all way beyond ‘important’. Can I, do I remember this? No. Do I want to? For sure. I need to read books like this which remind me – again and again – that every person, every conversation, every moment is crucial, not just those special occasions designated such.

Martin Buber’s I and Thou came highly recommended by Fr. Michael Gaitley in his book, The One Thing Is Three: How the Most Holy Trinity Explains Everything, which is how I arrived here. Personally I would have loved to have read I and Thou in a group or classroom setting. It’s a very mystical piece and I know reading and hearing other people’s reactions would have helped me. I certainly plan to return to it in the not-too-distant future and see if I do better.

There are some good reviews here on Goodreads for those who are interested. They helped me some.

I am not rating it yet as there is still so much I did not understand.

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Dec 02, 2016: This is going to be an incredibly hard book to review so I am putting down a few thoughts now. I read a few sentences and think to myself, "Exactly what did you just read?" And often I have to admit that I have no idea! So I go back over it and maybe something comes into focus ... and maybe it doesn't. Then I hit a stretch as clear as crystal. I look down and can see, really see-all the way to the bottom-like when you're in a glass-bottomed boat on still water.

So I am carrying this book around with me and pulling it out at odd times and reading a bit. I know what it's supposed to be about: the objectification v. the subjectification of people and things in relationship(s) and fluid dynamics therein, but whoa baby, this is one slippery subject!

Back in the boat, looking for more clear water...

[Shal J · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my absolute favourite book of all time and no matter how many times I read it - I get something else out of it :)

According to Buber, human beings may adopt two attitudes toward the world: I-Thou or I-It. I-Thou is a relation of subject-to-subject, while I-It is a relation of subject-to-object. In the I-Thou relationship, human beings are aware of each oher as having a unity of being. In the I-Thou relationship, human beings do not perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, but engage in a dialogue involving each other's whole being. In the I-It relationship, on the other hand, human beings perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, and view themselves as part of a world which consists of things. I-Thou is a relationship of mutuality and reciprocity, while I-It is a relationship of separateness and detachment.
Buber explains that human beings may try to convert the subject-to-subject relation to a subject-to-object relation, or vice versa. However, the being of a subject is a unity which cannot be analyzed as an object. When a subject is analyzed as an object, the subject is no longer a subject, but becomes an object. When a subject is analyzed as an object, the subject is no longer a Thou, but becomes an It. The being which is analyzed as an object is the It in an I-It relation.
The subject-to-subject relation affirms each subject as having a unity of being. When a subject chooses, or is chosen by, the I-Thou relation, this act involves the subject’s whole being. Thus, the I-Thou relation is an act of choosing, or being chosen, to become the subject of a subject-to-subject relation. The subject becomes a subject through the I-Thou relation, and the act of choosing this relation affirms the subject’s whole being.
Buber says that the I-Thou relation is a direct interpersonal relation which is not mediated by any intervening system of ideas. No objects of thought intervene between I and Thou.1 I-Thou is a direct relation of subject-to-subject, which is not mediated by any other relation. Thus, I-Thou is not a means to some object or goal, but is an ultimate relation involving the whole being of each subject.
Martin Buber describes the subject to subject relation of love. But only love as he comprehends it, not as most people do. Most people misinterpret love. They believe that love is a feeling, when really it is more like a cosmic force. We do not have love, but live inside of it. Therefore, we are transformed by it. It is only love understood in this way that captures relation between two people. Love is a subject-to-subject relationship. Like the I-Thou relation, love is not a relation of subject to object, but rather a relation in which both members in the relationship are subjects and share the unity of being. This Love transcends the human to between the I and Thou. We stand in Love, it's not in a person, a person who stands in love is open to encounter a person in their uniqueness with their entire being, only when you do this it brings you to a place that you being effective to them. Only in love can we really be open and really care, it brings us to a level where we can be helpful to the universe and to others. Every you becomes an it in our world.
When we love someone we see that person as wholly unique. The person is purely present, and not separated from us by anything. This momentary encounter between human beings is very important because it leads us to yearn for God, the eternal you. So long as we have been in encounter with someone and know that we have the potential to do so again at any moment, we can say that we love that person. If, on the other hand, we have never encountered someone then we do not really love that person.
My interpretation of Buber is that to love someone, it is to feel a responsibility for that person, to want to do everything one can to help that person. Unlike feelings, which can be greater or lesser, all love is equal. This brings up the question, Is hatred not also a relation that can obtain between people? Buber says it is not. Relation, by its very definition, can only be directed toward a whole being. But hatred, by its very nature, cannot be directed toward a whole being. We cannot hate a whole person, only a part of a person.
Though the notion of encounter is vague and difficult to grasp fully, thinking about encounter as the more familiar experience of being in love can be extremely enlightening. When we are in love our entire perception of the world becomes colored by the beloved, and we view everything in relation to the beloved.
Thinking about encounter as love also helps us understand why Buber believes that encounter is so terrifying. When you truly allow yourself to love someone you become incredibly vulnerable. First of all, you suffer the risk of rejection and loss. In addition, if you love in the way that Buber requires, so that the pain and happiness of the beloved are even more important to you than your own, then you are taking on an even graver risk. Suddenly, you are multiplying your potential for grief. The recognition of love as relation between people also brings along some new uncertainties.
For instance, it raises the problem of unreciprocated love. Relation must be mutual, because it is reciprocal and involves shared alteration. It seems strange to claim that you cannot love someone if they do not return your love, but Buber makes the point that you cannot dwell in the cosmic force unless the beloved dwells in the force with you. He seems to clearly believe that entirely unrequited love cannot be love at all.
According to Buber, God is the eternal Thou. God is the Thou who sustains the I-Thou relation eternally. In the I-Thou relation between the individual and God, there is a unity of being in which the individual can always find God. In the I-Thou relation, there is no barrier of other relations which separate the individual from God, and thus the individual can speak directly to God.
The eternal Thou is not an object of experience, and is not an object of thought. The eternal Thou is not something which can be investigated or examined. The eternal Thou is not a knowable object. However, the eternal Thou can be known as the absolute Person who gives unity to all being.
Buber also explains that the I-Thou relation may have either potential being or actual being. When the I-It relation becomes an I-Thou relation, the potential being of the I-Thou relation becomes the actual being of the I-Thou relation. However, the I-Thou relation between the individual and God does not become, or evolve from, an I-It relation, because God, as the eternal Thou, is eternally present as actual Being.
Buber contends that the I-Thou relation between the individual and God is a universal relation which is the foundation for all other relations. If the individual has a real I-Thou relation with God, then the individual must have a real I-Thou relation with the world. If the individual has a real I-Thou relation with God, then the individual’s actions in the world must be guided by that I-Thou relation. Thus, the philosophy of personal dialogue may be an instructive method of ethical inquiry and of defining the nature of personal responsibility.
In exploring Martin Buber's "I and Thou" relationship, I found it to be a theory to incorporate an experience of which he prepares the reader to take that first leap of faith, or courage, to believe that it might be worth a try. In his I and Thou, Buber reveals the valued moments of a reunion with the other, he plows through our materialistic perception of “It” the world. It is only in Buber's self-realization that the idea of the absolute transforms into an idea of the divine, which eventually assumes the face of God.
This first leap of faith in Buber's philosophy, is not very big. It is essentially the one step one needs to take to enter dialogue with an "other" un-conditioned, immediate. The mystery, the un-explain-ability of that moment works for Buber and plays into his following explanation that in these immediate moments we meet the absolute, which - for Buber - becomes God. Buber's exposure and exposé of the moment of dialogue is genuine. His explanation of the situation of dialogue is his reading of the Jewish tradition and understanding of God, his interpretation of the Jewish narrative as one big story of dialogue, and man choosing to relate to God. In so far as leading a life religiously is leading it in dialogue where ethics and the encounter with God fall together, and "where the moral Ought is located" , those who choose not to give back the treasure of relating to others in an immediate, un-conditioned manner, lead a religious, or for the Jewish matter, Jewish life. The Jew, in Buber's reading, is the quintessential man. His narrative is the quintessential reference frame for dialogue. While the moment of I and Thou reaches out to all people, "black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Catholics and Protestants" , it's ultimate explanation is reveals it as an advertisement of Buber’s "genuine Jewish religiosity". And if accepting the explanation makes sense, then, all of a sudden - says Buber - God says hello.
I would definitely say that this theory is humanistic. This theory is associated with the understanding of people. This theory is looking at human interaction between individuals and the rituals our culture creates (I-It). This theory also tries to clarify values by evaluating the importance of dialogue vs. monologue, and why we think one form is more effective than the other. This theory definitely has a community of agreement of many scholars. On the other hand, other scholars question, but very few out-right disagree. I also think that there is an aesthetic appeal, but only for some people. I and Thou in itself is an art, but only perhaps if you're coming from a philosophical background. This theory also applies to the reform of society. Buber does not approve of the monologue language, and instead wants people to have more dialogue in order to create I-Thou relationships. This theory is not very scientific because it does not predict future events, there is no real explanation of data, and I think it is not relatively simple because we don't know how, or don't want, to make it simple. However, I do feel that this theory (both dialogue and I-Thou) contains practical utility, but only if we allow it. I suppose the main reason why I would argue that this theory is humanistic is because I do not feel it is easy to put intimacy in a scientific standard. Who can test intimacy? People can predict and explain issues until they are blue in the face, but that does not mean any one can truly define what is important for all individuals. What may never be intimate for some may always be intimate for another.
To end, I want to say that although I have mentioned the I-Thou relationship and expanded on this, in reality, without the Theory of Dialogue, the I-Thou would not exist. I believe that we are all capable of having the I-Thou relationship in every relationship of our lives, but it can be a huge challenge because of socialization. Yet, when this challenge is overcome, that is when we have intimacy with anybody, according to Buber. Since most people want the I-Thou relationship in their lives, one would think that we would make more of an effort to have dialogue instead of monologue. One would also think that once we knew that the personal relationship we were in was not fulfilling a "thou" concept, we would get out A.S.A.P.. I think we are easily swayed, and easily confused by ourselves and society's standards and trends. I also think that it does not have to be this way: that is what choice is for. All in all, I respect Buber's theories and hope to live up to them the best way that I can.
The concept of dialogue encourages a new understanding of people that is largely subjective. Meaning is created by the participants engaged in interaction, which may leave an outsider with a blurred view but it allows for focus on "real" experience and interaction. Dialogue helps us to understand how a community is developed, repaired, and maintained, which is closely related to Carey’s ritual model of communication. Dialogue helps us to understand that people relate to each other in one of two ways: I-thou, the means to dialogue, or I-it, the means to monologue or self-centered communication.
This theory is clear in its value for a strong community. A sense of support, acceptance, and appreciation of differences allows for a stronger sense of togetherness. Obviously, in order to reach that sense of community, people must place high value on other people’s viewpoints. Walking the narrow ridge, so to speak, removes the blinders from an individuals eyes so that he/she may be able to look, if only for a moment, at the world through a different set of lenses. Buber’s theory also has aesthetic appeal. His description of dialogue reads more like a journey, or a path that one follows to reach a certain destination.
This theory clearly attempts a reform of society. Its main function serves as awareness. Dialogue encourages an avoidance of polarized communication, something that tears a community apart rather than builds it up. Polarized communication is a key factor in retarding the development of community, much more so than factors like power inequity. Since dialogue is not a technique and cannot be created merely by displaying the necessary qualities, it serves as more of a tool for awareness. Many times awareness is half the battle. This theory is important in that it promotes togetherness among human societies through respect and open-mindedness. One of the goals of this theory is to cease maximizing one’s own opinion while minimizing another’s opinion. Dialogue is communication that expands individual viewpoints and develops a sense of "working" together in order to reach a new and wider understanding.
On the other hand, Buber’s Dialogue theory may not sit so well with those who hold a scientific perspective (Griffin, 1997). Overall, the explanation of data is clear. The theory does explain the purpose of maintaining dialogue (creating community), but it is not objective in that only the participants "really" know if they have achieved dialogue. An observer has no clear idea of whether or not participants actually established a "connection." Buber’s theory is not able to predict future outcomes or events. Knowing how, when, and where dialogue is created is very uncertain. Outcomes are only known and experienced by participants, which makes the theory very unclear as to how we can really know when dialogue will or has occurred, unless some phenomenal social change takes place as evidence of dialogue.
This theory also lacks simplicity, which is a minus according to the scientific perspective. If one is searching for a simple answer for how people create community, s/he will not find it here. Dialogue is complex and involves many factors. Even if all of the qualities that promote dialogue are present, it is still not guaranteed to happen. Dialogue is difficult to achieve because "once one has learnt, like modern man, to become greatly preoccupied with one’s own feelings, even despair over their unreality will not easily open one’s eyes; after all, such despair is also a feeling" (Kaufmann, p. 94, 1970).
On Buber’s behalf, creating a simple theory for a complex problem that involves complex subjects (people) is not always possible. Obviously, dialogue cannot be tested. There are way too many overlapping possibilities for when dialogue may or may not occur. Again, we cannot always be sure that what appears to be dialogue is necessarily truthful. Although the theory is interesting and strives to make a change in society, it is not particularly useful. It is useful in a sense that people will be more aware of what it takes to create community or an atmosphere of support, but no one can just use it to do these things. Remember, dialogue cannot be planned or willed; it will just happen.
Personally, I like this theory because it promotes unity amongst people. Dialogue shows us that there can be disagreements about certain issues and still have a true community. I don’t think that we have much of that today. Disagreements tend to separate rather than integrate. Dialogue may not be useful in that we are not able to create it, but the theory is useful in providing awareness of what it takes to build the groundwork for possible dialogue. Overall, dialogue will happen with or without the theory and only those that believe in valuing others will appreciate it.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I distinctly remember how all of us dutiful grad students collectively scratched our heads when we realized this would be our primary text for a seminar on documentary films taught by Bill Nichols—we were in grad school to read Deleuze and Foucault and Silverman and "sophisticated" contemporary theory of all stripes (as well as his own writing on the topic), but... a Jewish theologian and mystic? Really?

Of course the emphasis on this text turned out to be nothing less than inspired, and perfectly suited to the material: for what else is documentary filmmaking than entering into "a world of relation" and initiating a kind of Ich-Du/I-You encounter? Our puzzling over Buber added a deeply ethical awareness to our discussions over the various films we watched that I've never forgotten; "relation is mutual" became the fundamental underlying principle guiding our analysis, forcing us to think about through the moral complications inherent of representing another person.

If the particularities of Buber's formulations have faded from my memory over time, the questions invoked through that initial encounter with I and Thou continues to actively shape my thinking to this day.

[Buber also turned out to dovetail ideally with the particular material we were considering in the course, some of which became Cinema's Alchemist: The Films of Péter Forgács, the first major English-language study of the great Hungarian media artist, crucial rememberer of personal traumas of history often lost and forgotten.]

[Rebekah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was assigned this book in college and kept it, because it struck me as so true at the time. The premise is that there can be no self without an other. You can only come into being through your relationships with others. At the time, I was kind of sick and pretty delusional and thought I was very invisible, so it seemed like a good way to look at the world: you can only exist in so far as you build a relationship with others. I think it still holds true to some extent, but not to the degree I once did.

"The basic word I-You can only be spoken with one's whole being.
The basic word I-It can never be spoken with one's whole being."

"Whoever says You does not have something; he has nothing. But he stands in relation."

"I require a You to become; becoming I, I say You. All actual life is encounter."

[Pavelas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kas yra gyvenimas? Pasak Buberio, tai - dialogas su Kitu (Dievu). Gana radikalus posūkis nuo Heideggerio, kuris susidūrimą su kitu interpetuoja kaip pražūtingą ir susiduriančiojo autentiškumą žlugdantį. Buberiui šis susidūrimas yra tiesiog egzistencijos esmė, nepaisant to, ar gyvenimas pasuka dorybingu, ar ydingu keliu.

Man, kaip neekspertui, “kitas” yra viena mįslingiausių filosofinių sąvokų. Kartais ji reiškia kitą žmogų, kartais - visuomenę, kartais - Dievą, kartais - bet kokį objektą apskritai, o kartais (Hegelio filosofijoje) - “kitas” yra ne kas kita kaip “mano” sąmonės produktas, t.y. “kitas” yra iš esmės “aš pats”. Manau, kad filosofija, kaip disciplina, būtų kur kas suprantamesnė, jeigu kiekvienas filosofas veikalo pradžioje apibrėžtų vartojamas sąvokas.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unexpected and delightful little book. It combines Jewish mysticism, Hegel's Spirit and dialectic, Marx's alienation induced by economic processes and commodities, Christian existentialism, some pantheism and immanence, and so on. Beside Hegel and Marx, it reminded me of Meister Eckhart, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky. The basic theme is that God can only be encountered in a relationship with some other person (“I and you”) and in the actuality of the encounter. If we approach the other as an experience or for some other purpose (“I and it”), God is no longer there. God's redemption is not mediated by anything (faith, acts, spirituality, good deeds, and so on) or anyone (Christ, priests, and so on); but is a return to God through “I and you” in the “now” of our material world. Sin is just the avoidance of this encounter or approaching the encounter as “I and it”. It is all about the actuality of the encounter with "you" in the “now" - since nothing of the encounter can be named, explained, or passed to others or to ourselves later. However, it may be pointed to - and this is what Buber is doing in this book. In Nietzsche's words: “One hears―one does not seek; one takes―one does not ask who gives” – one just gives thanks.
In some unexpected ways, this book reminded me of Wittgenstein's “Tractatus” - both were Austrian-Jewish authors, both books were written at almost exactly the same time and in German, both books are extremely small, both books are self-standing and self-sufficient, both offer a complete and unified theory of everything essential, both are more or less mystical, both are partially incomprehensible and open to interpretations, and so on. In other words - both books offer a delightful, unexpected, and an amazing “storm in a bottle”.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I and Thou is an extremely frustrating reading experience. I have read it many times, in German and in English, and let me tell you that there are pages that are simply not understandable. That are incomprehensible!"
-Rabbi Joshua Haberman, "Studying Martin Buber: Part II", Foundation for Jewish Studies podcast

Review done. You can all go home now.

...okay, that's a lie. It wouldn't be one of my reviews if it was that short and to the point.

I and Thou is one of the books that makes you realize why German philosophers have memetic status. Buber makes up words all over the place, he deliberately circumlocates and obfuscates his meaning, and he has references to dozens of other philosophical and religious texts that you may or may not have read or even heard of. As the translator says in the 50-page-long introduction:

The style is not the best part of this book.

It's no wonder he became a translater with such a gift for capturing the totality of the situation in a few short words.

It sounds like I think the book is terrible, but that's not true at all. I just want you to know what kind of book you're dealing with here if you decide to read it, because it's not light reading. It probably goes beyond heavy reading, really, into some kind of super-heavy reading. The Ununpentium of reading, if you will.

Anyway, the text. To radically simplify and summarize, I and Thou is about relationships and the subject/object problem. Buber focuses on two main views of relationship between an individual--an I--and the world, one focused on a certain part of the other or the uses to which the other can be put, called the I-It, and one focused on the whole being of the other taken in actuality and with input from the other, called the I-You. It sounds like the latter is categorically better than the former, but it's not, really. When I ask my wife to get me a glass of water, that's an I-It relationship because I'm interacting with her only in her ability to walk and grasp simple objects, but asking her to get me water does not then become a callous act. Listening to a musical performance is an I-It relationship because it's just me enjoying the music and there's no mutual interaction with the performer. I-You relationships are a dialogue, not an experience. As Buber say:

Relation is reciprocity.

But reciprocity is not always possible. Human interactions are filled with I-It moments and that's not automatically bad. There are those wordless moments where I speak You with my whole being to my wife, to use Buber's phrasing, but at the same time, the laundry has to get done, and dinner has to get made, and the apartment has to get cleaned, and so on. The I-You can only ever be temporary, human interaction is filled with I-It moments, and this is not automatically a bad thing.

To break out a of the narrative for a moment, I suspect this is why Buber deliberately wrote I and Thou to be clunky and confusing. It's an attempt to force the reader to enter into an I-You relationship with the text instead of an I-It analytical one.

Finally, Buber relates the whole concept to humanity's relationship with G-d, or the Eternal You. Through I-You interactions, through removing the desire to quantify the experience and break it down (thus collapsing it into an I-It), we also interact with the Eternal You. G-d is thus present through the interactions humans have with each other. And while Buber quotes extensively from Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist scriptures, he never actually defines the Eternal You in any way, and later has a very gnostic idea that any interaction with the Eternal You is essentially inexpressable. Maybe that’s another reason for the book’s impenetrability.

Sorry, the qualitative suchness of its impenetrabilitude.

There were a few things I found really interesting, and I will now subdivide the text and deal with parts because book reviews are the Eternal I-It. One was that Buber mentions that I-It occurs in the past and I-You occurs in the present--I-It is usually dealing with what we already believe about something, or drawing on what we know of from past experience from it, in order to inform our actions, and I-You can only occur in the now, taking what is as it is. "Actuality," in the translation. This reminded me a lot of all the words written about how the internet is destroying or damaging human relationships, and I immediately jumped to the subject of comment sections. The very nature of the Internet makes an I-You interaction with those on the other side of the screen nearly impossible. It's an easy way to categorize the difference between the two types of interaction.

Another is a throwaway passage about magic and prayer. Magic, Buber says, is the I-It because the magician seeks out power only for what it can grant, but prayer and sacrifice is the I-You because it is freely offered up. In his own (translated) words:

What distinguishes sacrifice and prayer from all magic? Magic wants to be effective without entering into any kind of relationship and performs its arts in the void, while sacrifice and prayer "step before the countenance," into the perfection of the sacred basic word that signifies reciprocity. They say You and listen.

In daily life, a lot of prayer is basically magic. "Dear G-d please let me pass this test" is magic. Even "Dear G-d please heal my wife from her cancer" is essentially magic under Buber's view here, or it can be. And honestly, I'd agree that most prayer is magic. It's implicitly transactional, invoking G-d as the divine vending machine to dispense favors.

Though even there, that's a very monotheistic, or a specifically Jewish, view of the distinction. Prayer and sacrifice in the Ancient World was a contractual interaction between the deity and the people. And even in Judaism, the Mi Shebeirach is said every Shabbat.

And I don't actually have much to say about it, but Buber's contention that society is sick and causes alienation because it only engages with its members on an I-It level drew me back to all those articles everywhere I've read about social disconnection and how technology is ruining society. An older strain of thought than I had originally believed.

I and Thou is the kind of book that probably needs to be read multiple times to be fully understood. Experienced? Interacted with? Dialogued with? It's an immensely frustrating book, because it is filled with great ideas and simple distillations of complex truths, but the language is so incredibly cloudy that it's hard to get that much out of it. If a book is a conversation between a reader and an author, this one is talking to your grandfather who has enormous wisdom to tell and tons of fascinating stories, but who mumbles all the time, occasionally stops halfway through a story to look out the window and comment on the landscape, and speaks only German so your parents have to translate for you.

Okay, not the best metaphor, but you get what I mean. I and Thou is definitely worth your time to read, but don't be surprised if you get annoyed at it, or need to put it down, or don't finish it at all. I managed to finish it in a couple days, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to go back and re-read it again multiple times. That's the endorsement I can give it.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ich-Du2 (See also "Ich-Du")
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From Wikiboobia, the free encyclopedia:

Ich-Du2 is the lesser known sequel to Ich-Du.

In it, Boober was forced to qualify many of the concepts he had explored in the abstract in Ich-Du.

Relationship
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Ich-Du2 ("I-Thou-Two" or "I-You-Two") is a relationship that stresses the mutual, holistic existence of one being and two sub-beings or aspects of one being (most typically, boobs).

It is a concrete encounter, because these beings and sub-beings meet one another in their authentic existence, without any qualification or objectification of one another. (Boober later realised there was more objectification occurring than he originally thought, though it occurred only in one direction.)

Imagination and Ideas
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Imagination and ideas play a role in this relation. (Professor Murray Jay Siskind later explored the role of the male imagination with respect to the two sub-beings in his seminal work, "A Bra Full of Expectations".)

Infinity and Universality
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In an I-Thou-Two encounter, infinity and universality are made actual (rather than being merely concepts).

Infinity is the expectation of the male being, and universality describes the universal appeal (at least, to males) of the two sub-beings.

Composition and Content
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Boober stressed that an Ich-Du relationship lacks any composition (e.g. structure) and communicates no content (e.g. information).

In contrast, an Ich-Du-Two relationship is all composition (e.g. complementarity and structure, sometimes supported by an uplifting bra) and communicates content (e.g. information in the form of the implication of maternity, sustenance, reassurance and comfort).

Experience as Event
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Unlike an Ich-Du event, an Ich-Du-Two experience can be proven to happen as an event, e.g. it can be measured, in particular in bra size, scoping with hands or symbolically by emoticon, e.g.:

((((0))))((((0))))

Boober concluded that it is even more intrinsically real and perceivable than an Ich-Du event.

Examples
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A variety of examples are used to illustrate Ich-Du-Two relationships in daily life – a man and the two breasts of a woman, a man and the two legs of a woman, a man and the two eyes of a woman, a man and the two buttocks of a woman, a man and his own two balls (Professor Siskind questions whether the latter example is actually an example of "Ich-mich").

Description
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Common English words used to describe the Ich-Du-Two relationship include fondle, grope and scratch.

Influences
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It is believed that Boober's work inspired the name of the Hollywood firm of entertainment attorneys established by Russ Meyer's son, Manny Meyer, "C. A. Tit, Fondle, Grope and Run".

In 1983, the singer Bono from the Irish band, U2, holed up with David Bowie's copy of "Ich-Du2" in a hotel in Montreux while on tour and refused to come out of his suite until he had finished it.

U2 subsequently released a string of four albums, all with the letter "u" in the title.

The Unforgettable Fire (1984)
The Joshua Tree (1987)
Rattle and Hum (1988)
Achtung Baby (1991)

The song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" (off "The Joshua Tree") was originally based on a lyric "I'm searching for an 'I' to match my 'Thou'".

Further Reading
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Professor Murray Jay Siskind, "A Bra Full of Expectations", 1989

Professor Murray Jay Siskind, Review of "Gods of the Jungle Planet", 2012

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

References
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1. Professor Murray Jay Siskind, "Martin Boober's Ich-Du2: A Storm in a D-Cup", 2012

External Links
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* Simona Halep. Breast size 34DD (21 pics)

http://acidcow.com/pics/2386-best-bre...

[Alina · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems that only a few points are made in this work, but each are very important. There are two fundamental modes by which we encounter things or people in the world: the I-It relationship and the I-You relationship. The former consists in encountering the thing or person as an object that is distinct from oneself and that is something that one "possesses" in one's perceptual experience. We have a conceptual understanding of the thing or person, and believe that that thing or person neatly conforms to this understanding; so we experience ourselves as having (implicitly) exhaustively grasped the the thing or person. Implicitly, we take ourselves as "egos" that are the center or origin of the universe; we don't explicitly think about how other people also experience themselves as centers of the world, or as existing in terms of their own phenomenal worlds. We implicitly forget that and instead take (i.e., behave and feel as if) our phenomenal world as the only one and ultimate reality.

In contrast, in the I-You relationship, we encounter a thing or person as another subject that recognizes us in their own phenomenal world. We are aware that we are mere finite objects in the world, rather than stand as providing the possibilities of the world. Not only are we finite objects, but we are at the mercy of other people who recognizes us. In this sense, in this mode, we are not possessing or beholding any particular object, not the thing or person who recognizes us. While we are aware of their recognition of us, it is a category error to describe this kind of awareness as one of (conceptual) grasp or possession. Rather, this awareness demonstrates a "pure relation."

Buber doesn't clearly spell out what this means, so my reconstruction is that when we experience ourselves as recognized by others, and recognize them in themselves and as recognizing us, these various objects of awareness are not finite or static. Whatever is the content of our awareness is implicitly infinite in this sense: I know that I cannot know exactly what you see in me, or who you are. I can only be aware of the fact that you exist in terms of your own phenomenal world, that is in ontological on par with and distinct from mine; but I cannot know the contents of your world. Thus, I experience this as consisting in limitless possibilities, due to this epistemic restriction.

Thus, the "I" that we experience ourselves as in either mode is not the same between the modes. In the I-It relationship, we experience ourselves as centers of the universe, distanced from and possessing all things. In the I-You relationship, we experience ourselves as necessarily finite and infinitely changeable -- we are perceived by others, and the forms that we might take on in their phenomenal worlds are unknowable and limitless. Buber claims that existential freedom is found in the latter. A part of the human condition is that we are not restricted to finite, determinate selves, but we may always change and go beyond whatever we take our current state to be. The "I" that we occupy once we take up the I-You relationship demonstrates this condition, whereas the "I" of the I-It relationship obscures it.

I think this claim is quite odd. Intuitively, when we are perceived by others, their perceptions of us remove a kind of freedom that is perhaps found only in solitude. Sartre talks about this: we can't help but be aware of the stereotypes and beliefs another person holds about us, and this content of awareness will influence how we can possibly act in the moment. I wonder how to reconcile this intuitive idea with Buber's claim. Maybe there is something to be said about different kinds of relationship that we have with people -- and only some of them allow for the freedom that Buber names, whereas others are implicitly expressions of the I-It relationship, and in those our freedom is limited?

Two more interesting details Buber adds to his claims about these two fundamental modes. First, we can take up either mode to either inanimate objects or people. We can perceive a tree as a You, for example, or a person as an It. That seems right; but I don't think we can ever fully see inanimate objects as Yous, in the same sense by which we see persons as such. It'd be interesting to further examine the commonalities and differences between inanimate objects and persons as Yous (something Buber doesn't do).

Second, it is necessarily that we slide back and forth between the two modes with respect to any person, no matter how intimate we are with them. Buber doesn't argue exactly why this is the case; I guess a potential reason is that it takes a certain kind of concentrated attention on another person to sustain the I-You relationship, and just given our biological and material finitude, we can't sustain that attention forever. Buber seems to implicitly demonize the I-It mode at times, and I think that's wrong. We can be fully ethical to people when we perceive them as objects that we conceptually grasp from our egocentric perspectives. Only the behaviors that are necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of personal relationships require the I-You mode. So if we fail to occupy the I-You mode, we are at risk of behaving unethically only in that narrow domain; but ethics goes way beyond engagement in personal relationships, and for these other ethical domains, the I-It mode should be just fine.

To revisit an earlier theme I mentioned, I'm still very skeptical about where the kind of existential freedom Buber names comes about. It seems that we can conceive of ourselves as finite objects in the world and as readily changeable independently of whether we are in an I-You relationship. I can conceive of myself in these terms when alone. Buber might argue back that this capability necessarily depends on having engaged in I-You interactions in the past. But I don't know whether this is really the case? It is conceivable that a person who has only engaged in I-It relationships could recognize that her personality changes over time and that she is changeable, for example.

Maybe Buber is after another sense of our intrinsic changeability and freedom that that which could be conceptually grasped by a person in solitude. I'd like to think more about that -- a tentative starting point is that only when we're perceived by others we can acquire the understanding that an extant trait or state of our being could have very different significances or implications for different people. So there is a certain fluidity of the meaning of parts of ourselves that already exist. This is different than the fluidity found in our capacity to change those parts of ourselves, to remake ourselves by literally acquiring new habits or skills. Intuitively, these two senses of fluidity would correspond with two distinct senses of freedom.

But it's also possible that we could arrive at the understanding of the former kind of fluidity also on our own; it's hard to say when an I-You relationships is genuinely necessary for some capacity. I wonder, methodologically, whether it is possible to draw convincing arguments for conclusions about this, and if so, what those arguments would look like.

Overall, I got only a few points out of this book; and the writing felt very rambling and unclear. I am not sure whether Buber makes any more points than these few, or whether he provides any real arguments for them. It is possible that he does and I cannot pick up on them; if this were the case, it'd likely be due to the fact that there are long sections (the majority of the book really) where Buber goes on and on about some theological idea (e.g., how God is knowable; how God is eternal). My eyes glazed over these sections. I first tried reading them, but then got the sense that they seemed largely disconnected from Buber's main points about intersubjectivity, and also I had difficulty reading them, because I lack background in theology. So Buber might be doing a lot more in this work than I could tell. But also Buber does stick to writing "like a mystic," so it is possible he also is fine with the epistemological and methodological standards of mysticism (e.g., not having arguments to support one's premises; relying on intuition; being ok with logical contradictions), and this would vindicate my intuitions about the lack of substance and rigor of this book. Nonetheless, these few points are very thought-provoking, to the extent that as a whole I do not regret reading this text.

[Ethan Hulbert · Rating 1 out of 5]

A few years ago, my friend Beck recommended I read I And Thou by Martin Buber, specifically the Walter Kaufmann translation here. Originally a German book published in 1923, it was first translated to English in 1937. Kaufmann’s translation was published in 1971 by Touchstone. Beck is big into philosophy and said this book was excellent.

So I tried.

The introduction to this book was very long, but really hyped it up. This book will change my life! It was philosophy meets self-help.

When the book started, I was into it. Buber seemed to be saying that life is all about human interaction, real meaningful interactions.

After a few pages, though, the writing devolved into a sort of stream-of-conscious rambling that presented words as if he had put a philosophy textbook in a clothes dryer and let the phrases fall out in random order onto the page. It was one of those books where you realize, while you’ve understood all the words in their own right, the page as a whole was nonsense. Had I read the pages in a backwards order, or scattered them arbitrarily, it would have made just as much sense.

Buber himself said, as mentioned in the introduction, that he often did not understand his own writing. When asked for clarification on various parts, he stated that while he didn’t know what it meant, it would be wrong to change it, because it was written in the excitement of the moment and probably meant something then.

So, in other words... it's jumbled up nonsense.

It’s said that Buber purposely convoluted his writing so the reader would be forced to slow down and really try to understand it, thus making sure they really focused on it. This is something said proudly by his fans, as if obscuring your point to make it less accessible to the readers you’re trying to reach is somehow a positive thing. Perhaps it’s a sort of camaraderie one gets after surviving a hardship with others.

The fact that Buber couldn’t simply write a clear thesis suggests not that he was some great writer devoted to making others understand, but rather that he was an amateur scribe with some decent but half-formed ideas that struggled to take shape as he crafted them. So to disguise the book’s incompleteness, he doubled its weight with meaningless sentences and called it deep.

It’s not that I’m just some philosophical dunce. I’ve especially studied art philosophy and logic, and while most texts are never easy, they do give up their meanings without too much effort.

Buber’s I And Thou refuses to crack, perhaps because there is no real meaning behind most of what was written.

Many reviewers of this book say it changed their lives, and I can only imagine that since there is no content in this book, they projected whatever they were already thinking about into it, and took it as a revelation. I’m glad it helped them, but this book is a waste of shelf space for me.

Sorry Beck – I tried three times over the years to get into this book, and had the same experience each occasion. I And Thou? More like, Why (did I read this?) And How (was I ever supposed to?).

[Morgan Blackledge · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkably obtuse text with an equally remarkable observation at its core. I/IT refers to relationships of objectification and necessity. I/THOU refers to relationships in which our shared selves encounter the essential inner self of the other. Buber does not privileged one over the other. But simply observes.

[Tony Le · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short but powerful philosophical book that changes the perception of relations between a person and his environment. Having said that I must admit I had difficulties comprehending certain passages or ideas the author wanted to convey.

[Christopher]

Buber’s postscript calls this a coherent vision that had coalesced over the course of years, but he’s just struggling with the ineffable (but let me make the allowance that the German may be clearer than this particular Englishing).

I don��t really know what he means by the “primary word I-Thou” and “primary word I-It.” I imagine its like the opening of Genesis. Also could be understood as originary myth of human self-consciousness: the undifferentiated experience of primordial, prelingual being. What emerges when I️ and Thou are distinct is the experience of pure relation, the intimacy of the gaze of the other without threat, where parental care allows the other to vacillate between other and self-extension. (The I️-Thou relation, presumably, is not unique to child-parent relating, but this is where it would first occur, I️ think.) Finally, yet early, the I-Thou gives way to I-It, where a lingual self carves the world up into objects. Everything lapses into I-It, even the understanding of God. The gaze of the other may be threatening, seductive, or neutral, but always taken to be object, even when nominally recognized as subject. Buber’s imperative is to articulate a return to the I-Thou, which for him would be direct experience of the divine. Presumably, both the I-It and the I-Thou relationships entail distinct ethics, though this is not Buber’s concern. The I-Thou and the I-It are orientations, where the latter is a natural default and the I-Thou an elevated spiritual relating.

Buber’s work makes a quilt work-Hinduism and Buddhism stitch with the Abrahamic triptych. It seems to me to owe a debt to Hegel (origin myth), Heidegger (phenomenology of being), Bergson (duration), etc. yet none of these are referenced.

I was baffled at times, felt things were quite clear and uniquely articulated at others. In the end, I didn’t quite feel that hard fought, if evanescent, clarity that I want from reading philosophy. Putting this in the re-read with a high fever pile.

[Elliot Sneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books you are reading and you are not really sure if you understand it until you have a moment of 'AHA', and then as soon as you try to put into words your 'AHA' you lose it again, and you realize that the author is saying it as clearly as possible, and it takes a whole book. So, I have no idea what this book is about, but I had some clear moments of beauty while reading it, moments that I will remember for a long a time and somehow seem to make me stronger to think back on, even though I have no idea what they were. Self-affirming. Thank you Martin Buber.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for Howard Burkle's course, PHIL 215, "Existentialism" at Grinnell College during the first semester of 1972/73. It must have been one of our first readings as I read it while the weather was still warm under a tree in central campus. Unfortunately, I read it very quickly, having much else to get through, and it didn't make much of an impression on me beyond the surprisingly tender introduction by its translator, Walter Kaufmann. Indeed, I thought the point rather simple and its exposition unnecessarily long.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martin Buber had an extraordinaire career. He was a personal friend of Thomas Herzl and was very active in the Zionist movement prior to World War I. His greatest work was as a theologian in which he not only made a compelling defense of Hasidism but also contributed greatly to the revival of personal Thomism which was so vigorously promoted by Vatican II.

It this short and clear book he proposes a theological model of human existence based on the word pairs Ich-du (I and thou) and Ich-es (I and it). The first-pair represents a life style of encounter with God. The second pair represents a life style of consumerism. The way to redemption is through encounter with God in one's daily life through the Ich-du mode of existence.

Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II) was a self-declared admirer of Buber. One can clearly detect Buber's hand guiding Wojtyla's pen as he composed his great masterpiece "The Theology of the Human Body." Buber is without doubt one of the great theologians of the twentieth century. "I and thou" is a great introduction to Buber's great argument that life should be experienced as an encounter with God.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book twice in my life, the first time in 1976 with Carl Byker, who became an LA documentary filmmaker. That experience of reading and talking IN relationship about a book about the importance of relationships in spirituality, that it was the essence of spirituality, that was new and unforgettable to me.

I was profoundly influenced by existentialism at the time, and I had been "brought up" (as they used to say) "in the church" (and a Dutch Calvinist church) as well, but existentialist theology was something new to me, not a teleological or "heaven focused" or even Jesus-focused religion, with which I had been largely raised. The point was to live in the here and now, which was something I was learning from Zen Buddhism. THAT was being God-like, to BE your conception of God and not live for the future, but now. It seems simple--and Buber shows it is not, really, it is very difficult to do and be--but that change in a view of spirituality from what God is doing to what I am doing was profoundly important to me and shaped a lot of my life, even after I left the church.

[Raoul G · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this book almost a year ago, read maybe 30 pages or so, and then left it untouched for a few months. I could hardly motivate myself to take it up again a month ago, but now I'm so glad that I did - that I did not miss out on the wonderful perspective Martin Buber opened up for me through this book.

Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher, and in this book he lays out his philosophy of dialogue. I'm generally very interested in this topic and everything that has to do with relationships, community and so on. From the first pages I felt that this book is special and that there is something profound that it can teach me. Imagine reading something like this on the second page:
"Whoever says You does not have something for his object. For wherever there is something there is also another something; every It borders on other Its; It is only by virtue of bordering on others. But where You is, said there is no something. You has no borders. Whoever says You does not have something; he has nothing. But he stands in relation."
There is a richness to Buber’s writing that deeply moved me. And yet, soon there came passages in the book of which I could barely understand anything. Another reviewer quoted Rabbi Joshua Haberman as saying "I and Thou is an extremely frustrating reading experience. I have read it many times, in German and in English, and let me tell you that there are pages that are simply not understandable - that are incomprehensible!", which I think is funny and a bit of a relief.
The great parts and the main ideas of the book make up for the more diffuse parts of the book though, and maybe even their clarity would increase upon further re-readings.

Buber's main insight is that there are two fundamentally distinct modes of being in relationship. He calls them I-Thou, and I-It relationships. The word pair I-It describes relationships in which the other (being or thing) is, in a sense, objectified: "The I of the basic word I-It appears as an ego and becomes conscious of itself as a subject (of experience and use)". This is a way of relating to the world and of experiencing it that is quite basic to our existence and it would be impossible for us to lay this way of relating down. Still, Buber contrasts it with another, higher and better way of relating, described by the word pair I-Thou.
The I-Thou relationship arises when we address the other as You and relate to them in a personal and dialogical way. This relationship is defined by mutuality: "It acts on me as I act on it". The other is seen as an end in themselves and we pursue the relation with them without any other goal beyond them in mind: "The purpose of relation is the relation itself—touching the You. For as soon as we touch a You, we are touched by a breath of eternal life."

In the last part of the book, Buber builds upon his philosophy of dialogue from the first part to derive a theology of dialogue. He conceives of God as the Eternal Thou, a God who cannot be had or grasped - who one can only be in relationship with by addressing him as You: "Whether one speaks of God as He or It, this is never more than allegory. But when we say You to him, the unbroken truth of the world has been made word by mortal sense." In a sense, all other I-Thou relationships are included in - and open us up to - the relationship with the eternal Thou.
This is what I like about Buber's theological approach: Just as in good Jewish theology, God remains impossible to define, he "may properly only be addressed, not expressed". Instead of turning our gaze to a spiritual realm beyond or after this world, this theology shows us that God can only be found, without seeking, while hallowing this life with our whole being and loving our neighbours by entering into personal and dialogical relationships with them.

[Anh]

Tác phẩm này có lẽ không dễ dịch. Martin Buber có vẻ cũng không được biết và nhắc đến nhiều ở Việt Nam, nhưng dù sao hi vọng một ngày tác phẩm có bản dịch tiếng Việt.

Trái ngược với đa phần các nhà triết học hiện sinh nhấn mạnh vào sự đơn độc của từng cá nhân, Martin Buber quan tâm và đề cao mối quan hệ giữa các cá nhân trong một xã hội, giữa cá nhân con người và thế giới tự nhiên. Và với tư cách là một nhà triết học hiện sinh tôn giáo, điều quan trọng nhất với Buber, là mối quan hệ giữa con người và Chúa, nơi phản ánh và hội tụ của mọi mối quan hệ trong cuộc sống thường nhật.

“In the Beginning is the Relation”

Theo Martin Buber, mối quan hệ giữa cá nhân và thế giới xung quanh được thể hiện qua cách cá nhân đó nhìn nhận, giao tiếp, và tương tác với thế giới, phản ánh rõ ràng nhất qua cặp đại từ xưng hô “I-You (I-Thou)” hoặc “I-It”. Đối với Buber, cái tôi trong cặp “I-You” sẽ khác hoàn toàn cái tôi trong cặp “I-It”.

Trong quan hệ “I-It”, chúng ta nhìn nhận và đối xử với những con người xung quanh, xã hội xung quanh, thế giới tự nhiên xung quanh như những vật thể để chúng ta sử dụng và điều khiển. Nhìn lại các mối quan hệ trong cuộc sống hàng ngày, xã hội hiện đại dường như đang bị thống trị bởi thế giới quan “I-It” Chúng ta sử dụng và điều khiển một cây bút, một cái bàn, một con dao cho mục đích sẵn có của mình. Chúng ta khai thác và sử dụng thế giới tự nhiên cho mục tiêu sinh tồn, phát triển, và giải trí. Biển cả, núi rừng, muông thú, tất cả đều được cân đo đong đếm và quy đổi về giá trị sử dụng. Trong mối quan hệ giữa con người với con người, chúng ta cũng sử dụng những người xung quanh như những vật dụng và tài sản cá nhân. Chúng ta yêu cầu những người thân trong gia đình và bạn bè phải làm theo, phải đáp ứng mong muốn, và phải thỏa mãn nguyện vọng của riêng chúng ta. Con cái mong muốn bố mẹ trợ giúp cho cuộc sống của mình nhưng vừa phải để mình được tự do. Bố mẹ mong muốn con cái làm theo ý bố mẹ, đi theo con đường mà bố mẹ lựa chọn, mong muốn con cái phải suy nghĩ giống bố mẹ, mong muốn con cái thực hiện thay bố mẹ những điều bố mẹ không làm được, mong muốn con cái làm bố mẹ tự hào với hàng xóm xã hội. Chúng ta phán xét và đánh giá người khác dựa trên lợi ích mà họ đem lại cho chúng ta. Chúng ta yêu cầu xã hội, cuộc sống xung quanh phải diễn ra theo cách mà chúng ta mong muốn, phải vận hành theo một lý tưởng mà chúng ta đề ra. Mọi sai lệch đều cần phải được uốn nắn và thay đổi. Chúng ta điều khiển và uốn nắn con người xung quanh chúng ta, xã hội và cuộc sống xung quanh chúng ta giống như khi chúng ta chế biến và chỉnh sửa một công cụ, một vật dụng. Chúng ta gán cho cuộc sống một ý nghĩa, một logic và tuyệt vọng khi nhận ra rằng cuộc sống có thể không hề tuân theo thứ logic mà chúng ta mong muốn. Ngay cả trong mối quan hệ với Chúa hay với bất kì một Đấng Toàn Năng nào dù là Bụt, Phật Tổ, hay thần thánh, thế giới quan “I-It” cũng chiếm thế thượng phong. Chúng ta đi nhà thờ, đi chùa, cầu Trời, Phật, ông bà tổ tiên; thắp hương, làm lễ tế, bày mâm ngũ quả…. Tất cả những hành động đó phần lớn đều nhằm mục đính để các Đấng Toàn Năng làm theo ý chúng ta, đáp ứng lợi ích của chúng ta, phục vụ mong muốn của bản thân chúng ta. Mối quan hệ tưởng chừng linh thiêng nhất trong tôn giáo, về mặt bản chất, cũng là mối quan hệ “I-It”. Mối quan hệ “I-It” còn là mối quan hệ dựa trên quá khứ. Chúng ta luôn dựa trên các kinh nghiệm quá khứ, dựa trên các kiến thức thu thập sẵn có để nhằm đạt được lợi ích lớn nhất cho bản thân, hạn chế tối đa thiệt hại trong những lần giao tiếp hay tương tác kế tiếp với “It”, bất kể “It” đó là một vật dụng, một con người, hay một giá trị tâm linh thiêng liêng.

Về bản chất, Buber không cho rằng thế giới quan “I-It” là một thế giới quan xấu xa cần bị loại bỏ. Trái lại, thế giới quan “I-It” cần thiết cho cuộc sống hằng ngày, cho sự phát triển của khoa học kỹ thuật và công nghệ. Điều Buber chỉ ra và nhấn mạnh trong tác phẩm “I and Thou” là “I-It” không nên là thế giới quan duy nhất, chiếm thế thượng phong, và càng không nên là mục tiêu tối cao duy nhất cần đạt đến của con ngư��i. Khi chúng ta chỉ đánh giá và nhìn nhận con người và thế giới xung quanh qua giá trị lợi ích sử dụng, thì ngược lại bản thân chúng ta cũng sẽ trở thành một “It” để bị sử dụng, phán xét và điều khiển bởi những người khác. Quan hệ xã hội lúc đó sẽ trở thành cuộc chiến đấu để sử dụng người khác và tránh không để người khác sử dụng, một xã hội, mà như theo câu nói nổi tiếng của Sartre: “Hell is other people”.

Đối nghịch với thế giới quan “I-It” là thế giới quan “I-You”. Theo Buber, thế giới quan “I-You” là một thế giới quan vượt lên trên mục đích sử dụng và điều khiển, một thế giới quan dựa trên mối quan hệ bình đẳng, hòa hợp, và thấu cảm. Chúng ta bước vào mối quan hệ “I-You” khi chúng ta gat qua một bên lợi ích ích kỷ của bản thân để sẵn sàng đón nhận toàn bộ chiều sâu tâm hồn của “You”, đón nhận trọn vẹn “You” với mọi khía cạnh, mọi sắc thái, không chỉ còn là môt “It” để nhằm lợi dụng, phán xét và thay đổi. Chúng ta bước vào mối quan hệ “I-You” khi bản thân chúng ta mở rộng tâm hồn mình, gạt qua một bên những lo sợ của việc bị lợi dụng và điều khiển. Mối quan hệ “I-You” vì vậy gạt bỏ đi mọi toan tính và xét đoán, một mối quan hệ dựa trên không phải kinh nghiệm quá khứ mà là từng khoảnh khắc sống động đang xảy ra ở hiện tại. Buber chỉ ra rằng thế giới quan “I-You” là khởi nguồn của mọi sáng tạo tôn giáo nghệ thuật, là nguồn gốc của mọi sự phát triển tâm linh và văn hóa của con người. Các tác phẩm nghệ thuật, các giá trị tâm linh luôn được tạo ra từ sự tương tác, thấu cảm và đông điệu giữa con người và con người, giữa con người và thế giới tự nhiên, và giữa con người với Đấng Toàn Năng. Cái đẹp cao cả của nghệ thuật không thể đạt được trong thế giới quan chật hẹp thực dụng “I-It”. Trong thế giới quan “I-You”, I và You hoàn toàn bình đẳng, không kì vọng, không áp đặt, cho dù “You” đó là thế giới tự nhiên, là những người cùng sống trong hay xã hội, hay là Chúa Trời. Trong mối quan hệ “I-You”, chúng ta đón nhận, tận hưởng, và trải nghiệm mọi khía cạnh đa dạng của cuộc sống, không phán xét, không gò nén cuộc sống theo một khuôn mẫu có sẵn. Và trong mối quan hệ tâm linh thiêng liêng, chúng ta hoàn toàn bình đẳng và rộng mở để có thể đơn độc đứng trước và xưng “You” với Đấng Toàn Năng. Theo Buber, mối quan hệ với Chúa Trời (The Eternal You) là sự phản ánh và hội tụ của mọi mối quan hệ trong cuộc sống của một cá nhân. Vì vậy, Buber cho rằng, một người vô thần không tin vào Chúa nhưng có trải nghiệm “I-You” đích thực còn gần với Đấng Toàn Năng hơn là một tín đồ Thiên Chúa nhiệt thành, nhưng hoàn toàn chỉ có thế giới quan “I-It”. Quan trọng nhất, với Buber, sự phát triển toàn diện, mục tiêu tinh thần cao nhất của một con người, của một “I”, là điều không thể đạt được chỉ dựa dựa vào một cá nhân “I”, là điều không thể đạt được chỉ nhờ vào thế giới quan thực dụng “I-It”. Bởi vì, I require a You to become; becoming I, I say You.

[Marco · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because it is said Buber influenced the humanistic psychology of the mid 20th century. His name appears a couple of times in A Way of Being, where Rogers' students tell him they think he'll love the guy, which he did.

Unfortunately the book is very confusing. We are warned right on the preface that Buber wrote this book confusingly on purpose. He was going for a poetic-philosophical text where the reader isn't supposed to understand everything, but instead is invited to partake in the dreamy cadence of the sentences and just feel them.

I can see by the ratings here that there's a market for that, but I'm most definitely not a part of it. I actually get frustrated when I'm reading a promising sentence and see it dissolve in oceanic subjectivity. I don’t see merit in it. I think if you've got an idea you should expose it as clearly as you can, and if you can be poetic while doing so, more power to you. Hiding it in nonsense, to me, is a cop out, regardless of how erudite you may sound.

The premise of the book is that relationships are really important and treating people as object is bad, and Buber hammers this premise home throughout, often beautifully.

Contrasting with Buber's confusing style is the introduction by translator Walter Kaufmann. He is my man, it seems. His deep, lucid reflections on emotional and spiritual themes were incredibly spot on. I definitely wouldn't have minded if he just kept going from the preface to the last page of the oeuvre.

[Tyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most difficult book to read. And by difficult I mean that I really had to think. No mindless reading. The words are put together in a way that we (modern day Americans) aren't used to. This made it more difficult for me to anticipate the sentence which in turn made me have to re-read and focus more as I read.

Also, it is describing something that had never been fully described before. There are two different ways of having a relationship with everything in this world. I-You and I-It are the words for those two relationships. I-You is a subject-to-subject relationship and I-It is a subject-to-object relationship. For those of you familiar with C. Terry Warner, it could be described as being responsive and being resistant. Being in the box and out of the box. Great read and one that definitely has to be read more than once for full meaning to be grasped.

[Aurimas Gudas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Labai sunkiai suprantama knyga, kuria daug kas remiasi. Kažkoks psichologijos ir kabalos miksas.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

One can at least entertain the thought that against all that is real one can insist through a perhaps on a God worthy of one’s time, consideration and worship while never being persistently certain. Or, as this author clearly prefers one can persist with certainty and force the issue and find ones freedom by realizing one has no freedom thus being absolutely free; a clever word game yes, but the author’s method for acquiring a persistent certainty in God.

Buber will say the place between the subject of the self and the object of the thing considered resides spirit and love, the love without knowledge. Buber persists in creating an ontological difference while making absolute being the infinite and all else determinations, a negation of the infinite, little realizing that love without knowledge leads to the whole village praying together in the largest church in the village so that the bubonic plague leaves them alone while all the time allowing the pesky flea to flicker from host to rat back to infecting humans and gorging on their ignorance while they all pray sincerely with love for each other only because they lacked the requisite knowledge to know otherwise.

I always enjoy reading Soren Kierkegaard while never really agreeing with what he is getting at with the exception of his primal scream against the atomization of the world since irritatingly his anti-humanism drives me to distraction. Buber reads like Kierkegaard. This book definitely fits into Jewish intellectual thought, that’s how I found it, my Great Course lecture on that topic pointed me to this book, but also this book would definitely appeal to Martin Luther Protestants. There is an anti-humanist bent within this book similar to what Luther has (humanism can be said to have started with Erasmus, and Luther wrote ‘Bondage of the Will’ as a Protestant anti-humanist manifesto against Erasmus).

Buber (and Luther) would definitely disagree with Thomas Aquinas when he demonstrates that nature reveals God analogically, but Kierkegaard (probably the first existentialist) would have very little disagreement with anything in this book, I’d even say that it’s possible to get most of what is in this book from Kierkegaard’s books. [A side note: in the Great Course Lecture on ‘The Late Middle Ages’ by Daileader he shows how William of Occam (somewhat antithetical to Aquinas) connects to Luther also, I would recommend that Great Course as a must listen].

Heidegger is definitely an anti-humanist in as much as he was a fascist, the ultimate anti-humanists, and he became a Nazi and then morphed into a mystic of sorts (read his latter stuff and determine that yourself). There is no doubt that Heidegger’s books (including ‘Being and Time’) and his books after his Nietzsche infatuation after the war read as variation of much of what is more simply written in this book. One can save themselves a lot of convoluted prose by reading this book instead.

I preferred the first two or three chapters, the ones before Buber inexplicably puts a God into his story. A God with more than two attributes (not only mind and body, but mind, body and personhood or at least having absolute person-ness), a God that is more than what Spinoza would explain for us. Buber’s God is the ontological difference and speaks thru prophets and reveals Himself through others who we must take as a third handed truth. Thomas Paine made that point in ‘Common Sense’ that to the one who God reveals Himself the certainty of God can be realized, but to the one they tell it becomes second hand testimony and by the time it gets to Thomas Paine or to me it is double hearsay and at best unreliable testimony.

Buber believes that through somewhat clever word games that God can be understood by not understanding similarly to how one only becomes free when ones freedom is completely negated. Though, I did like how he calls out the agnostic multiple times and equates them more with a demon who makes no statement thus they are less worthy of those who do affirmatively deny a belief rather than hiding behind a veil of not certainty.

I like reading Kierkegaard. There’s plenty of him in this book. I love Hegel, he wrote one of my top five favorite books, and there is plenty of him in the first part of this book, and Heidegger (even though he is definitely a fascist and his writing makes it clear) wrote another one of my top five favorite books, and he clearly was inspired by this book. And even though this author wrote this book to explain the persistence of God with certainty for those who find by not looking within or without, I prefer Caputo’s seldom read book ‘The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps’ since certainty from the negation of an infinite leaves me wanting something about a known even if I must have the insistence of a perhaps.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

The school year 1982-1983 brought me the delightful discovery of philosophy, and the reading of I And Though was a total revelation to me; it may even have been the unconscious threshold that brought me to conversion. I remember having copied back then dozens and dozens of pages of that book, and I probably quoted it more than once in the 4 hour long essay I had to write the day of the final exam – lucky me, the national theme for the philosophy exam that year was LANGUAGE !

I still enjoy so much this book, some thirty years later; on a dual basis of philosophy and theology, or spirituality should I say, it’s a deep reflection on the nature of being, of ‘being in communion’, to use the title of another book I’m currently reading.

I don’t think I have ever read anything as profound on the nature of relationship; on how relations make us human indeed, most especially when our relating to others is inspired and modeled on our relating to the Other, or rather on His relating to us; and on how materialism, that is, treating everything and everyone as simple matter, relegates us to a subhuman status. How relevant this book is today!

EXCERPTS:

“in every You we address the eternal You.”

“The basic word I-You can be spoken only with one’s whole being… I require a You to become; becoming I, I say You. All actual life is encounter.”

“Freedom and fate embrace each other to form meaning; and given meaning, fate -with its eyes, hitherto severe, suddenly full of light- looks like grace itself.” p. 102

“Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons.” p. 112

“When a man steps before the Countenance, the world becomes wholly presence to him for the first time in the fullness of the presence, illuminated by eternity, and he can say You in one word to the being of all beings.”

“What is it that is eternal: the primal phenomenon, present in the here and now, of what we call revelation? It is man’s emerging from the moment of the supreme encounter, being no longer the same as he was when entering into it.” p. 157

“The cult gradually becomes a substitute, as the personal prayer is no longer supported but rather pushed aside by communal prayer; and as the essential deed simply does not permit any rules, it is supplanted by devotions that follow rules.” p. 162.

Original review posted here:
http://wordsandpeace.wordpress.com/20...
Emma @ Words And Peace

[Davis Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a deeply challenging book, and the kind with which one has an initial encounter, not a first read. Despite copious highlighting and margin notes, I don't think I comprehended about half of it. Buber writes with the penetrating, poetic fire of Kierkegaard, and that analogy extends further: when his meaning is clear, he can be blindingly profound, but when he's unclear, he's close to being completely impenetrable. Clearly it's one of the major texts of the post-Great-War period when newly-minted modern man was caught in the throes of self-understanding, and for those familiar with other key 20th century thinkers, Buber's influence can be detected in liberal theology, existentialism, psychology, anthropology, and the work of general-theist intellectual conservatives like Roger Scruton, George Steiner, and even Jordan Peterson. I wish that Buber would have included more specific examples of how his ideas actually work in human relationships besides that of marriage—is it possible to have a true Ich-Du encounter with a good friend, leader, parent, kin, or coworker? And though his theistic arguments are thoroughly indebted to Judaism (if you know any biblical Hebrew, you'll immediately recognize some of the semantic moves he makes), he also brings in notes of Christianity, Hinduism, and mysticism (despite his avowed dislike of it) in a way that left me a bit frustrated that he didn't just flat-out explain his view of God. This is surely one to live with. It seems to contain a great deal of formulations that more or less codify and restate various critical threads of Western meditation on sacred and profane love, even as there is also much laudable yet dense innovation.

Also: I haven't seen anyone mention the importance of animals to Buber's arguments. He must be one of the first thinkers to make significant use of them for philosophical purposes.

[Mehmed Gokcel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, where to start...? This book was not merely a read, but something to be experienced. Admittedly, it was a very difficult text, actually, almost incomprehensible at times. But within this remarkably complex, philosophical and difficult text, lies hidden treasures and formulas to understand the equally complex and difficult human nature and our relations with our surroundings, especially with God. When ideas are so large, words don't suffice to express them and you have to create new words, new concepts. I and Thou does exactly that. It redefines the word 'You' and situates human beings in their true form, presence and relational position... at the face of the earth, society and God...

"The I of the basic I-You appears as a person and becomes conscious of itself as subjectivity (without any dependent genetive). Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons. One is the spiritual form of natural differentiation, the other that of natural association. The purpose of setting oneself apart is to experience and use, and the purpose of that is "living" - which means dying one human life long. The purpose of relation is the relation itself - touching the You. For as soon as we touch a You, we are touched by a breath of eternal life. Whoever stands in relation, participates in an actuality: that is, in a being that is neither merely a part of him nor merely outside him."

[Fred Kohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give this book six stars, I would.

After giving up on an impenetrable Buber book a couple years ago, I expected that I would never make the attempt to understand him again. However when I saw this book in the church library, I was encouraged by its thinness and the lengthy introduction by Walter Kaufmann. The writing is incredibly dense: Buber's sometimes sudden introducing of unexplained metaphors reminded my a lot of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, another book which I am having trouble reading (I am less than half way through after some years of trying!)

Many sections, especially in parts one and two, require careful rereading to get the full sense. It is well worth the effort- especially to understand Buber's theology presented in part three. But an interest in theology is not necessary to enjoy the book. The first two parts are not particularly theological at all, and even the third part is not overly theological.