I and Thou - Premise

Premise

Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:

• that of the "I" towards an "It", towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience;
• and that of the "I" towards "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.

Buber explains that humans are defined by two word pairs: "I-It" and "I-Thou".

For "I-It," the "It" refers to the world of experience and sensation. I-It describes entities as discrete objects drawn from a defined set (e.g., he, she or any other objective entity defined by what makes it measurably different from other living entities). It can be said that "I" have as many distinct and different relationships with each "It" as there are "It"s in my life. Fundamentally, "It" refers to the world as we experience it.

By contrast, the word pair "I-Thou" describes the world of relations. This is the "I" that does not objectify any "It" but rather acknowledges a living relationship. "I-Thou" relationships are sustained in the spirit and mind of an "I" for however long the feeling or idea of relationship is the dominant mode of perception. A person sitting next to a complete stranger on a park bench may enter into an "I-Thou" relationship with the stranger merely by beginning to think positively about people in general. The stranger is a person as well, and gets instantaneously drawn into a mental or spiritual relationship with the person whose positive thoughts necessarily include the stranger as a member of the set of persons about whom positive thoughts are directed. It is not necessary for the stranger to have any idea that he is being drawn into an "I-Thou" relationship for such a relationship to arise. But what is crucial to understand is the word pair "I-Thou" can refer to a relationship with a tree, the sky, or the park bench itself as much as it can refer to the relationship between two individuals. The essential character of "I-Thou" is the abandonment of the world of sensation, the melting of the between, so that an individual stands in direct relationship with another "I".

Despite the separation of "I" from the "It" and "Thou" in this very sentence describing the relationship, Buber's two notions of "I" require attachment to a word partner. Despite our splitting of these individual terms for the purposes of analysis, there is to Buber's mind either an "I-Thou" or an "I-It" relationship. Every sentence man uses with I, refers to the two pairs: I-Thou and I-It. This instance is also interchangeable with Thou and It which would refer to I. It is bounded by others and It can only exist through this attachment because for every object there is another object. Thou on the other hand, has no limitations. When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing or has nothing which means that Thou is abstract. The speaker yet “takes his stand in relation”.

What does it mean when a person experiences the world? Man goes around the world hauling out knowledge from the world. These experiences present man with only words of He, She and It with contrast to I-Thou. What this means is that the experiences are all physical and do involve a great deal of spirituality. The twofold nature of the world means that our being in the world has two aspects: the aspect of experience, which is perceived by I-Its, and the aspect of relation, which is perceived by I-Thou.