Division I of ‘Postscript on “I and Thou”: Prolegomenon to a Philosophic Anthropology of Dialogue’
Note: this is intended to be one of the “divisions” of a project I am currently undertaking that will finally accumulate to a commentarial book called Postscript on “I and Thou”: Prolegomenon to a Philosophic Anthropology of Dialogue. The book will serve as an exhaustive and in-depth aphorism-by-aphorism analysis of Buber’s I and Thou. Each section here corresponds to an appropriate aphorism in the primary source. And I will be continually referring to Kaufmann’s translation of the text for most of the time.
The world is twofold for man in accordance with his twofold attitude. The attitude of man is twofold in accordance with the two basic words he can speak. The basic words are not single words but word pairs. One basic word is the word pair I-You. The other basic word is the word pair I-It; but this basic word is not changed when He or She takes the place of It. Thus the I of man is also twofold. For the I of the basic word I-You is different from that in the basic word I-It.
§1. Martin Buber begins with a mystical, almost biblical, proclamation: “The world is twofold for man in accordance with his twofold attitude.” What he means to say is that man can assume, generally, one of two kinds of attitudes. Though this “myopic” division is later criticized, it seems that Buber stated that these two attitudes or modes of existence are always taken up by man, notwithstanding that there are other possible modes as well, perhaps undiscovered ones. These two attitudes are different ways of observing and judging and living in the world. Furthermore, for Buber, the polymorphous attitude is differentiated into two types by virtue of the existence of two kinds of “basic words he [man] speaks.” Here, the basic words (Urworte) are compounds, or rather stitched words: I-Thou (Ich-Du) and I-It (Ich-Es). Each of these two words (which are not just words, as we live them) constitutes a different attitude, thereby encapsulating a different world (“the world of Thou,” in the case of the I-Thou, and “the world of It,” in the case of the I-It), although it is more aptly interpretable as a worldview, or Weltanschauung in German. Foreshadowing the latter parts of the “philosophical-religious poem,” as Gregor-Smith, another translator of the same text, describes it, that talk of the objectification of the living other, Buber notes that the It in the I-It can point to an actual It (an object, Gegenstand), or an objectified subject (a He or She). Then, he goes on to discern the I in the I-Thou from the I in the I-It, asserting that the I is also polymorphous.
Basic words do not state something that might exist outside them; by being spoken they establish a mode of existence. Basic words are spoken with one’s being. When one says You, the I of the word pair I-You is said, too. When one says It, the I of the word pair I-It is said, too. 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.
§2. In the first footnote to I and Thou, we read the following sentence: “Basic words do not signify things but relations.” — this would imply that the I-It and the I-Thou denote relations between one man and another, which can be something or someone, as is suggested by the ‘I,’ ‘It,’ and ‘Thou’ personal pronouns used in dialogues. In passing, I shall like to stress on the irreplaceability of the archaic ‘Thou.’ For Buber’s text is essentially a religious one, thereby necessitating a parlance and tone associated with prayers or sermons. This seems to establish a discrepancy with that of Kaufmann’s translation. Nevertheless, we preserve the ‘Thou.’ In another line, Buber writes, “… by being spoken they establish a mode of existence.” — the relations, the “modes of existence,” are dependent on the basic words, for the former are the manifestations of the latter. They are “carried out” by the basic words, unlike other words that come into existence after the things they signify. These modes of existence, then, are relative and dependent. We always already exist, but only assume a mode of existence following our saying the I-Thou or the I-It. There is a one-sided dependency from words (other than the basic words) to the things towards which they direct. Perhaps there is a sort of underlying anti-structuralism at play here. “Basic words are spoken with one’s being.” One cannot “speak” (communicate) basic words without first involving one’s totality. And when one says Thou, one cannot do so without also saying I (that is, the I of the I-Thou), for the two are inseparable, which hints towards the inextricable personal-ness in the first-person perspective. This is the case for the I-It as well. The I-Thou, unlike the I-It, cannot be spoken without one’s total “standing in” the existence brought up by its relation (of I-Thou, in this case.)
There is no I as such but only the I of the basic word I-You and the I of the basic word I-It. When a man says I, he means one or the other. The I he means is present when he says I. And when he says You or It, the I of one or the other basic word is also present. Being I and saying I are the same. Saying I and saying one of the two basic words are the same. Whoever speaks one of the basic words enters into the word and stands in it.
§3. Buber writes that the I is not an isolated entity, that it is only intelligible and conceivable in the relational existence of the I-Thou or I-It. Thus, the I is relative. When a man says I, he is either addressing a Thou or an It, and his I depends on that address. And when he says Thou or It, he is also implying an I of either the I-Thou or the I-It, respectively. “Being I and saying I are the same.” — Buber asserts that “saying I” precedes and brings into actualization the mode of existence of the I; he who says I (or speaks the basic words) sprouts an existential modality with the world. Again, the word I, or one of the two basic words, is not merely a sound or a symbol; it is a manifestation of the relation between the I and the Other. Consequently, the basic words, I-It and I-Thou, are stand-ins for modes of existence.
The life of a human being does not exist merely in the sphere of goal-directed verbs. It does not consist merely of activities that have something for their object. I perceive something. I feel something. I imagine something. I want something. I sense something. I think something. The life of a human being does not consist merely of all this and its like. All this and its like is the basis of the realm of It. But the realm of You has another basis.
§4. “The life of a human being does not exist merely in the sphere of goal-directed verbs,” Buber writes. “It does not consist merely of activities that have something for their object.” In this, he argues that human life, is not fully realized in the I-It mode alone but requires the I-Thou mode as a complement, meaning that the mode of human existence is twofold. “Goal-directed verbs” constitute the language of objectification, and the It or Thou subjected to it becomes an object, a means to an end. Relational functions exclusive to the I-It mode of existence are somewhat along the lines of “I perceive something,” “I feel something,” “I think something,” etc. Buber says that these relational functions are inadequate in encompassing the genuine, dialogical relation with another man. True, we do not necessarily analyze the parts or properties of an interlocutor; we talk with them in their whole being, their totality. Buber is moving towards a synthetism, as opposed to reductionism or analyticism. In the worldview, or “realm,” corresponding to the I-It, the world itself is objectified, and this objectified world and the relational functions towards It serves as the ground for speaking I-It. But it is not the case for the I-Thou.
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.
§5. “Whoever says [Thou] does not have something for his object.” As said, when a man addresses another man as Thou, he is not treating him as an object, but as a subject. Unlike the It, the Thou has no essence or borders. It is infinite, boundless. Thus, it cannot simply be differentiated with other Thous on the basis of characteristics or taxonomization. For Buber, instead, the I-Thou relation is brought about by presence (Gegenwart) instead of essence (Wesen). “Whoever says [Thou] does not have something; he has nothing. But he stands in relation.” One who says Thou has nothing to possess or appropriate but something to give and receive. He has everything in terms of meaning by virtue of actively participating in, “standing in,” the I-Thou relation.
We are told that man experiences his world. What does this mean? Man goes over the surfaces of things and experiences them. He brings back from them some knowledge of their condition — an experience. He experiences that there is to things. But it is not experiences alone that bring the world to man. For what they bring to him is only a world that consists of It and It and It, of He and He and She and She and It. I experience something. All this is not changed by adding “inner” experiences to the “external” ones, in line with the non-eternal distinction that is born of mankind’s craving to take the edge off the mystery of death. Inner things like external things, things among things!I experience something. And all this is not changed by adding “mysterious” experiences to “manifest” ones, self-confident in the wisdom that recognizes a secret compartment in things, reserved for the initiated, and holds the key. O mysteriousness without mystery, O piling up of information! It, it, it!
§6. Buber refuses to give the power of monopoly to the Kantian notion of experience (Erfahrung) in bringing “the world to man.” Bringing — this “bring” has a sort of phenomenological connotation in that it reveals to us that which it brings. Bringing the world in its twofold nature is not solely done by experience. For experience is superficial (“Thus the fisherman gets his catch. But the find is for the diver”), for experience is the result of the mediation through the subject’s pure a priori transcendental categories of space, time, and causality, to which objects conform (hence, the Ding an Sich is not accessible through experience), for experience is only a relational function found in the I-It, not the I-Thou. The world, or “realm,” of the I-It is the Kantian phenomenal world (die Erscheinungswelt), which is being constantly divided into temporal and spatial objects by the principium individuationis of experience. Thus, he writes, “I experience something.” Then, he goes off on a repetition, “It, it, it!”, to express his discontent with the monotonous attitude of the I-It, wherein one is merely engaged in a “piling up of information.”
Those who experience do not participate in the world. For the experience is “in them” and not between them and the world. The world does not participate in experience. It allows itself to be experienced, but it is not concerned, for it contributes nothing, and nothing happens to it.
§7. A Buberian dialogue is not brought about by experience. For experience is one-sided. Experience is inside the subject and is not a relation. The world is experienced, but it does not enter a dialogue with the subject. When one speaks the I-It, one is in a monologue, not a dialogue. Thus, the I-It relation is monological, and the I-Thou relation is dialogical.
The world as experience belongs to the basic word I-It. The basic word I-You establishes the world of relation.
§8. Emphatically repeated is the idea that the world as seen by experience, the experiential worldview is derived from the I-It, whereas the world of relation is derived from the I-Thou.
Three are the spheres in which the world of relation arises. The first: life with nature. Here the relation vibrates in the dark and remains below language. The creatures stir across from us, but they are unable to come to us, and the You we say to them sticks to the threshold of language. The second: life with men. Here the relation is manifest and enters language. We can give and receive the You. The third: life with spiritual beings. Here the relation is wrapped in a cloud but reveals itself, it lacks but creates language. We hear no You and yet feel addressed; we answer — creating, thinking, acting: with our being we speak the basic word, unable to say You with our mouth. But how can we incorporate into the world of the basic word what lies outside language? In every sphere, through everything that becomes present to us, we gaze toward the train of the eternal You; in each we perceive a breath of it; in every You we address the eternal You, in every sphere according to its manner.
§9. Buber identifies the threefold nature of the I-Thou relation: life with nature, life with men, and life with spiritual beings. All these, he will structure in accordance to Language. In the first mode of existence conducted by the I-Thou relation, language does not exist — the relation is primal; the Thou we say to nature is below the plane of language, and we do not hear from the Thou when we say Thou, but we feel addressed. To illustrate, Hugo Bergmann, in Dialogical Philosophy from Kierkegaard to Buber, writes, ‘When Joshua turned to the sun and said, “Sun, stand thou still upon Gideon,” he was actually talking to the sun.’ In the second, the relation is presided by language and reciprocity. In the third, the relation manifests itself to us; we cannot hear or see the Thou of the divine, but we can sense its presence; we can “feel addressed.” In the spiritual plane, Language does not exist, but it is the ground of possibility of Language itself. With our activities of creating, thinking, acting, we non-verbally, ineffably, say Thou to spiritual beings. Buber concludes by affirming that in each of these modes, we perceive the presence of the eternal Thou, that in every Thou “we address the eternal [Thou].” The eternal Thou, as we shall see later, will be Buber’s notion of God. The eternal Thou cannot be become an It; it is eternally static in its Thouness.
I contemplate a tree. I can accept it as a picture: a rigid pillar in a flood of light, or splashes of green traversed by the gentleness of the blue silver ground. I can feel it as movement: the flowing veins around the sturdy, striving core, the sucking of the roots, the breathing of the leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air — and the growing itself in its darkness. I can assign it to a species and observe it as an instance, with an eye to its construction and its way of life. I can overcome its uniqueness and form so rigorously that I recognize it only as an expression of the law — those laws according to which a constant opposition of forces is continually adjusted, or those laws according to which the elements mix and separate. I can dissolve it into a number, into a pure relation between numbers, and eternalize it. Throughout all of this the tree remains my object and has its place and its time span, its kind and condition. But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It. The power of exclusiveness has seized me. This does not require me to forego any of the modes of contemplation. There is nothing that I must not see in order to see, and there is no knowledge that I must forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and instance, law and number included and inseparably fused. Whatever belongs to the tree is included: its form and its mechanics, its colors and its chemistry, its conversation with the elements and its conversation with the stars — all this in its entirety. The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no aspect of a mood; it confronts me bodily and has to deal with me as I must deal with it — only differently. One should not try to dilute the meaning of the relation: relation is reciprocity. Does the tree then have consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself.
§10. In considering a tree as an object of his contemplation, in that worldliness, Buber enumerates the various ways of the I-It relational experience: the way wherein the tree is a visual representation, “or picture,” of reality; the way wherein the tree is a living organism; the way wherein the tree is one of a scientific species or genus, a physical expression of the natural laws; the way wherein the tree is stripped of all contingent determinations, wherein it becomes an abstract, mathematical object posited by logical principles (“the law”); the way wherein the tree is a mere numerical quantity. In all these ways of contemplation, the tree is an It in the I-It, a thing that the I “analyzes” and “uses,” a thing that occupies space and time, that which is demarcated by its essence. This, however, is not a necessity; the tree can also, by happenstance, become a Thou in the I-Thou, in which both the subject and the tree enter a dialogue that transcends the categories of space, time, and causality. In sum, “the tree ceases to be an It.” As is stated before, the world is brought to us not through just the I-Thou or the I-It relation; for both are complementary in this bringing. The I-Thou relation does not negate the I-It relation, but rather “sublates” (aufheben) and creates a holistic milieu, with “everything, picture and movement, species and instance, law and number included and inseparably fused.” In the I-Thou relation, the Thou is not a part of the I; it “bodies” (leibt) itself apart from the I — the tree is present, and stands against the I, all through its own self: “The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no aspects of a mood; it confronts me bodily and has to deal with me as I must deal with it — only differently.” Buber deters the skepticism of the I-Thou dialogue between the tree and the subject, wherein the question of consciousness of the tree is concerned, the presupposition that consciousness is a necessary property for both interlocuters. What he, instead, encounters in the I-Thou relation is the tree itself, in its synthetic wholeness; not “the soul of a tree nor a dryad.” A tree is a tree — this does not heed dualism. Encounter, or “erlebnis,” as opposed to the Kantian experience, is the revelation of presence when an I meets a Thou and is affected by the Other’s otherness. Therefore, I-Thou is constituted of encounter, and the I-It of experience. In somewhat an unexpected turn, Buber distinguishes starkly his notion of experience from the phenomenological-existentialist’s account. Whereas experience is in the I in the I-It, encounter is “in-between” the I and Thou.
When I confront a human being as my You and speak the basic word I-You to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, limited by other Hes and Shes, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition that can be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is You and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light. Even as a melody is not composed of tones, nor a verse of words, nor a statue of lines — one must pull and tear to turn a unity into a multiplicity — so it is with the human being to whom I say You. I can abstract from him the color of his hair or the color of his speech or the color of his graciousness; I have to do this again and again; but immediately he is no longer You. And even as prayer is not in time but time in prayer, the sacrifice not in space but space in the sacrifice — and whoever reverses the relation annuls the reality — I do not find the human being to whom I say You in any Sometime and Somewhere. I can place him there and have to do this again and again, but immediately he becomes a He or a She, an It, and no longer remains my You. As long as the firmament of the You is spread over me, the tempests of causality cower at my heels, and the whirl of doom congeals. The human being to whom I say You I do not experience. But I stand in relation to him, in the sacred basic word. Only when I step out of this do I experience him again. Experience is remoteness from You. The relation can obtain even if the human being to whom I say You does not hear it in his experience. For You is more than It knows. You does more, and more happens to it, than It knows. No deception reaches this far: here is the cradle of actual life.
§11. “He is no longer He or She, … a condition that can be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities.” — when we encounter a man as our Thou and say Thou to him, he ceases to be an object, a “loose bundle” of properties. “Neighborless and seamless, he is [Thou] and fills the firmament,” Buber writes. “Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.” This romantically (in the context of Romanticism) describes the infinite totality of a single He, when He becomes a Thou: he is boundless, as repeated, and not just himself, but the whole (context) and himself; he coexists with everything that is delimited by the “firmament,” the sky. A man when we talk with them, or a melody when we listen to it, is not individuated into its parts; its wholeness remains intact. However, as soon as individuation unfolds, the man, as the melody ceases to be a melody but a collation of tones, ceases as well to be Thou. “Experience is remoteness from [Thou]” — this restates the notion that experience is derived from the I-It relation. Encounter, on the other hand, is nearness to Thou.
Bibliography:
- Buber, Martin, and Walter Kaufmann. I and Thou. 1923.
- Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith. 1953.
- Samuel Hugo Bergman. Dialogical Philosophy from Kierkegaard to Buber. State University of New York Press, 2012.
