Kier Ivan B.

Panlican Philosophy of Religion

Outline:

A. Biography
B. “I -Thou”, “I – It”
C. Eternal Thou

A. Biography
Martin Buber was a prominent twentieth century philosopher, religious thinker, political
activist and educator. Born in Austria, he spent most of his life in Germany and Israel, writing in
German and Hebrew. He is best known for his 1923 book, Ich und Du (I and Thou), which
distinguishes between “I-Thou” and “I-It” modes of existence. Often characterized as an
existentialist philosopher, Buber rejected the label, contrasting his emphasis on the whole person
and “dialogic” intersubjectivity with existentialist emphasis on “monologic” self-consciousness.
In his later essays, he defines man as the being who faces an “other” and constructs a world from
the dual acts of distancing and relating. His writing challenges Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Dilthey, Simmel and Heidegger, and he influenced Emmanuel Lévinas.

B. “I – Thou”, “I – It”
Martin Buber’s most influential philosophic work, I and Thou, is based on a distinction
between two word-pairs that designate two basic modes of existence: I-Thou” (Ich-Du) and “I-
It” (Ich-Es). The “I-Thou” relation is the pure encounter of one whole unique entity with another
in such a way that the other is known without being subsumed under a universal. Not yet subject
to classification or limitation, the “Thou” is not reducible to spatial or temporal characteristics. In
contrast to this the “I-It” relation is driven by categories of “same” and “different” and focuses
on universal definition. An “I-It” relation experiences a detached thing, fixed in space and time,
while an “I-Thou” relation participates in the dynamic, living process of an “other”.

Buber characterizes “I-Thou” relations as “dialogical” and “I-It” relations as “monological.”

The “I” of man differs in both modes of existence. The “I” may be taken as the sum of its
inherent attributes and acts, or it may be taken as a unitary, whole, irreducible being. The “I” of
the “I-It” relation is a self-enclosed, solitary individual that takes itself as the subject of
experience. The “I” of the “I-Thou” relation is a whole, focused, single person that knows itself
as subject. In later writings Buber clarified that inner life is not exhausted by these two modes of
being. However, when man presents himself to the world he takes up one of them.

While each of us is born an individual, Buber draws on the Aristotelian notion of entelechy,
or innate self-realization, to argue that the development of this individuality, or sheer difference,
into a whole personality, or fulfilled difference, is an ongoing achievement that must be
constantly maintained. In I and Thou, Buber explains that the self becomes either more
fragmentary or more unified through its relationships to others. This emphasis on
intersubjectivity is the main difference between I and Thou and Buber’s earlier Daniel:
Dialogues on Realization. Like I and Thou, Daniel distinguishes between two modes of
existence: orienting, which is a scientific grasp of the world that links experiences, and
realization, which is immersion in experience that leads to a state of wholeness. While these
foreshadow the “I-It” and “I-Thou” modes, neither expresses a relationship to a real “other”. In I
and Thou man becomes whole not in relation to himself but only through a relation to another
self. The formation of the “I” of the “I-Thou” relation takes place in a dialogical relationship in
which each partner is both active and passive and each is affirmed as a whole being. Only in this
relationship is the other truly an “other”, and only in this encounter can the “I” develop as a
whole being.

Buber identifies three spheres of dialogue, or “I Thou” relations, which correspond to three
types of otherness. We exchange in language, broadly conceived, with man, transmit below
language with nature, and receive above language with spirit. Socrates is offered as the
paradigmatic figure of dialogue with man, Goethe, of dialogue with nature, and Jesus, of
dialogue with spirit. That we enter into dialogue with man is easily seen; that we also enter into
dialogue with nature and spirit is less obvious and the most controversial and misunderstood
aspect of I and Thou. However, if we focus on the “I-Thou” relationship as a meeting of
singularities, we can see that if we truly enter into relation with a tree or cat, for instance, we
apprehend it not as a thing with certain attributes, presenting itself as a concept to be dissected,
but as a singular being, one whole confronting another.

Dialogue with spirit is the most difficult to explicate because Buber uses several different
images for it. At times he describes dialogue with spirit as dialogue with the “eternal Thou,”
which he sometimes calls God, which is eternally “other”. Because of this, I and Thou was
widely embraced by Protestant theologians, who also held the notion that no intermediary was
necessary for religious knowledge. Buber also argues that the precondition for a dialogic
community is that each member be in a perpetual relation to a common center, or “eternal Thou”.
Here the “eternal Thou” represents the presence of relationally as an eternal value. At other
times, Buber describes dialogue with spirit as the encounter with form that occurs in moments of
artistic inspiration or the encounter with personality that occurs in intensive engagement with
another thinker’s works. Spiritual address is that which calls us to transcend our present state of
being through creative action. The eternal form can either be an image of the self one feels called
to become or some object or deed that one feels called to bring into the world.

Besides worries over Buber’s description of man’s dialogue with nature and spirit, three
other main complaints have been raised against I and Thou. The first, mentioned by Walter
Kaufmann in the introduction to his translation of I and Thou, is that the language is overly
obscure and romantic, so that there is a risk that the reader will be aesthetically swept along into
thinking the text is more profound than it actually is. Buber acknowledges that the text was
written in a state of inspiration. For this reason it is especially important to also read his later
essays, which are more clearly written and rigorously argued. E. la B. Cherbonnier notes in
“Interrogation of Martin Buber” that every objective criticism of Buber’s philosophy would
belong, by definition, to the realm of “I-It”. Given the incommensurability of the two modes, this
means no objective criticism of the “I-Thou” mode is possible. In his response Buber explains
that he is concerned to avoid internal contradiction and welcomes criticism. However, he
acknowledges that his intention was not to create an objective philosophic system but to
communicate an experience.

Finally, I and Thou is often criticized for denigrating philosophic and scientific knowledge
by elevating “I-Thou” encounters above “I-It” encounters. It is important to note that Buber by
no means renounces the usefulness and necessity of “I-It” modes. His point is rather to
investigate what it is to be a person and what modes of activity further the development of the
person. Though one is only truly human to the extent one is capable of “I-Thou” relationships,
the “It” world allows us to classify, function and navigate. It gives us all scientific knowledge
and is indispensable for life. There is a graduated structure of “I-It” relations as they approximate
an “I-Thou” relationship, but the “I-Thou” remains contrasted to even the highest stage of an “I-
It” relation, which still contains some objectification. However, each “Thou” must sometimes
turn into an “It”, for in responding to an “other” we bind it to representation. Even the “eternal
Thou” is turned into an It for us when religion, ethics and art become fixed and mechanical.
However, an “I-It” relation can be constituted in such a way as to leave open the possibility of
further “I-Thou” encounters, or so as to close off that possibility.

C. Eternal Thou
 The inborn Thou is expressed and realized in each relation, writes Buber, but it is
consummated only in the direct relation with the Eternal Thou, ‘the Thou that by its nature
cannot become It.’ This Thou is met by every man who addresses God by whatever name and
even by that man who does not believe in God yet addresses ‘the Thou of his life, as a Thou that
cannot be limited by another.’ ‘All God’s names are hallowed, for in them He is not merely
spoken about, but also spoken to.’ Our speaking to God, our meeting Him is not mere waiting
and openness for the advent of grace. Man must go forth to the meeting with God, for here too
the relation means being chosen and choosing, suffering and action in one. Hence we must be
concerned not about God’s side -- grace -- but about our side -- will. ‘Grace concerns us in so far
as we go out to it and persist in its presence; but it is not our object.’ (I and Thou, op. cit., p. 75
f.)

To go out to the meeting with the Eternal Thou, a man must have become a whole being, one
who does not intervene in the world and one in whom no separate and partial action stirs. To go
out to this meeting he need not lay aside the world of sense as though it were illusory or go
beyond sense-experience. Nor need he have recourse to a world of ideas and values. Ideas and
values cannot become presentness for us, and every experience, even the most spiritual, can yield
us only an It. Only the barrier of separation must be destroyed, and this cannot be done through
any formula, precept, or spiritual exercise. ‘The one thing that matters’ is ‘full acceptance of the
present.’ Of course, the destruction of separateness and the acceptance of the present presuppose
that the more separated a man has become, the more difficult will be the venture and the more
elemental the turning. But this does not mean giving up the I, as mystical writings usually
suppose, for the I is essential to this as to every relation. What must be given up is the self-
asserting instinct ‘that makes a man flee to the possessing of things before the unreliable,
perilous world of relation.’ (Ibid., p. 76 ff.)

‘He who enters the absolute relation is concerned with nothing isolated any more.’ He sees
all things in the Thou and thus establishes the world on its true basis. God cannot be sought, He
can only be met. Of course He is Barth’s ‘wholly Other’ and Otto’s Mysterium Tremendum, but
He is also the wholly Same, ‘nearer to me than my I.’ He cannot be spatially located in the
transcendence beyond things or the immanence within things and then sought and found.

If you explore the life of things and of conditioned being you come to the unfathomable, if
you deny the life of things and of conditioned being you stand before nothingness, if you hallow
this life you meet the living God. (Ibid., p. 78 f.)

It is foolish to seek God, ‘for there is nothing in which He could not be found.’ It is hopeless
to turn aside from the course of one’s life, for with ‘all the wisdom of solitude and all the power
of concentrated being,’ a man would still miss God. Rather one must go one’s way and simply
wish that it might be the way. The meeting with God is ‘a finding without seeking, a discovering
of the primal, of origin.’ The man who thus waits and finds is like the perfected man of the Tao:
‘He is composed before all things and makes contact with them which helps them,’ and when he
has found he does not turn from things but meets them in the one event. Thus the finding ‘is not
the end, but only the eternal middle, of the way.’ Like the Tao, God cannot be inferred in
anything, but unlike the Tao, God can be met and addressed. ‘God is the Being that is directly,
most nearly, and lastingly over against us, that may properly only be addressed, not expressed.’
(Ibid., p. 80.)

To make the relation to God into a feeling is to relativize and psychologize it. True relation is
a coincidentia oppositorum, an absolute which gathers up the poles of feeling into itself. Though
one has at times felt oneself simply dependent on God, one has also in this dependence felt
oneself really free. And in one’s freedom one acts not only as a creature but as co-creator with
God, able through one’s actions and through one’s life to alter the fate of the world and even,
according to the Kabbalah, to reunite God with His exiled Shekinah. If God did not need man, if
man were simply dependent and nothing else, there would be no meaning to man’s life or to the
world. ‘The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny.’
 You know always in your heart that you need God more than everything, but do you not
know too that God needs you -- in the fullness of His eternity needs you? . . . You need God, in
order to be-- and God needs you, for the very meaning of your life. (Ibid. p. 82.)

This primal reality of relation is not contradicted by the experience of the mystics if that
experience is rightly understood. There are two kinds of happening in which duality is no longer
experienced. The first is the soul’s becoming a unity. This takes place within man and it is
decisive in fitting him for the work of the spirit. He may then either go out to the meeting with
mystery or fall back on the enjoyment and dissipation of his concentrated being. The second
takes place not within man but between man and God. It is a moment of ecstasy in which what is
felt to be ‘union’ is actually the dynamic of relation. Here on the brink the meeting is felt so
forcibly in its vital unity that the I and the Thou between which it is established are forgotten.

This primal twofold movement underlies three of the most important aspects of Buber’s I-
Thou philosophy. The first is the alternation between I-Thou and I-It. The second is the
alternation between summons, the approach to the meeting with the eternal Thou, and sending,
the going forth from that meeting to the world of men. The third is the alternation between
revelation, in which the relational act takes place anew and flows into cultural and religious
forms, and the turning, in which man turns from the rigidified forms of religion to the direct
meeting with the Eternal Thou. Evil for Buber is the predominance of I-It through a too great
estrangement from the primal Source and good the permeation of the world of It by I-Thou
through a constant return to the primal Source. As in Buber’s Hasidic philosophy the ‘evil
impulse’ can be used to serve God, so I-It, the movement away from the primal Source, can
serve as the basis for an ever greater realization of I-Thou in the world of It.

The fundamental beliefs of Buber’s I-Thou philosophy are the reality of the I-Thou relation
into which no deception can penetrate, the reality of the meeting between God and man which
transforms man’s being, and the reality of the turning which puts a limit to man’s movement
away from God. On the basis of these beliefs Buber has defined evil as the predominance of the
world of It to the exclusion of relation, and he has conceived of the redemption of evil as taking
place in the primal movement of the turning which brings man back to God and back to
solidarity of relation with man and the world. Relation is ‘good’ and alienation ‘evil.’ Yet the
times of alienation may prepare the forces that will be directed, when the turning comes, not only
to the earthly forms of relation but to the Eternal Thou.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/buber/#SH2e
https://www.religion-online.org/book-chapter/chapter-12-the-eternal-thou/