I And Thou | Book Review

Reviewed by Thomas Scarborough.

“I and Thou” by Martin Buber is of course a religious classic. It is still widely available today. For those who might wish to make more serious study of the book, I include page references below.

Martin Buber considered that he received this book as “a vision” — at first without words, but “some time after I received the right word as well” (:123). More than forty years later, given the opportunity to revise it, he preferred to keep it entirely in its original form. It is a remarkably compact book, filling little more than a hundred pages. It is not an easy read, however, due to what some have referred to as its “poetry”. Translator Ronald George Smith referred to it as “concrete imagery and situation with a sense of overtones” (:vii).

At the heart of Buber’s vision lies “the a priori of relation” (:27, 69). That is, relation (this usually refers to persons) is a given — or perhaps one could call it a normal state. This relation, considers Buber, is not in any way compromised by reason. It is entered into “with the whole being” (:3). It is spoken with “the primary word I-Thou” (:3). Everything is “indivisibly united in this event” (:7). “No system of ideas, no foreknowledge, and no fancy intervene between I and Thou” (:11).

However, as soon as one begins to fragment the other on the basis of rational analysis, the Thou is lost. This Buber refers to as “the primary word I-It [which] can never be spoken with the whole being” (:3). This happens when “with the magnifying glass of peering observation [one] bends over particulars and objectifies them” (:29), or “knits them into a scheme of observation” (:30). It follows from this that, when the I-Thou relation is fragmented, this opens the door to enmity, since “only a part of a being can be hated” (:16).

However, are not objectification and systematisation everyday necessities? Indeed they are, writes Buber. One will “take out from [the other] the colour of his hair, or of his speech, or of his goodness. [One] must continually do this” (:9). “Every Thou,” he writes, must continually “re-enter into the condition of things” (:17). That is, repeated forays into the realm of reason are essential. Yet “all living is meeting” (:11), so that we need continually to seek to return to the I-Thou relation.

Ultimately, Buber considers that the I-Thou relation helps one to “glimpse eternity” (:33), and to “meet the living God” (:79). How this should be so would seem shrouded in mystery — however, he suggests that there needs to be a “fundamental turning” in one’s life (:120).

Part of the popularity of Buber surely was that his book offered an alternative to significant theological streams at that time (and still, in fact, does). He dismissed as “turgid and presumptuous” any talk of a “God who becomes” (:82), favouring the “Mysterium Tremendum” (:79). He regarded a spirituality which withdraws from the world as being “a colossal illusion” (:93), and considered: “I know nothing of . . . a ‘life in the world’ that might separate a man from God” (:95). In public life, he decried the “progressive augmentation of the world of It” (:37), which tends only towards “tyranny” (:48).

I wondered, however, whether Buber had shared quite the whole vision. When asked towards the end of his life what made the difference between “the I-Thou relationship” with people on the one hand, and with “nature” on the other (:125), he did not seem to view nature (call it the biosphere) as an integral whole. Rather, he believed that “we should consider its different fields separately” (:125), and so discussed our relation with animals on the one hand, and trees on the other.

Supposing that Buber had applied “the a priori of relation” to the entire biosphere? Supposing he had considered that, when objectification and systematisation disturb this a priori relation, then it is reduced to I-It and its attendant tyranny? Supposing he had considered that, as we “re-enter into the condition of things”, we create a play of re-entries — a play of rational emergences from that which is “indivisibly united”, and need continually to return to the I-Thou relation?

Might we have seen a philosophy of a play of emergences, rather than — as we have received today through Jacques Derrida — a play of differences?

CITATION OF REFERENCE

Buber, Martin. I And Thou (Second Edition). Edinburgh: T & T Clark Ltd., 1958.

Thomas Scarborough is a Congregational minister in Cape Town. His is currently studying for an M.A. through Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.