My recent reading of Bonds That Make Us Free, along with a
chance encounter in a bookstore (a gift of grace that rewarded my browsing of disorganized Indian bookstores), finally led me to read Martin Buber’s I and Thou. I’ve known of it for a long time, but it has a
well-deserved reputation as a challenging work. The reputation is well deserved,
but the effort proved worthwhile.
The premise of Buber’s work
isn’t difficult. We encounter Nature, other humans, and even God in either
an I-It manner or in an I-Thou relation. (Some suggest “You” a better choice of
words than the archaic “Thou”.) Indeed, an I-It relation isn’t a relation at
all. The “I” experiences as subject and the “It” is just an object. I-Thou, on the
other hand, is the essence of relationship. The relationship is the thing, so
to speak.
Buber’s book takes this
basic framework and explores the details and repercussions that flow from it.
Buber, a great Jewish-German thinker, published this in 1923 in German. Much of
his language proves challenging to us, even in translation. Sometimes I felt as
if I was reading lightning bolts: impressive, enlightening, and fleeting. I
marked a great deal of the book to come back to.
When in high school and early
college I saw many copies of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet or posters celebrating his work. I read The Prophet, and I can recall that it
said some nice things about love and life in an aphoristic style. Buber’s work,
which contains an aphoristic aspect, reminds me of Gibran’s work, only I think of
The Prophet as greasy kids’ stuff
compared to Buber’s masterpiece. This is The
Prophet for adults (if any comparison is legitimate).
Think about the consequences
of Buber’s idea. What if we considered everyone we encounter as a “You” with
whom we are in a relationship? Each Other is a person with whom we relate and
not a thing that we use. Consider how we would treat the natural world if we
considered flora and fauna as a “Thou” with whom we experience a relationship
not subject to simple manipulation and calculations as things. And what if we
considered God—however we might understand God—as a relationship of the
greatest importance and magnitude and not as a thing for us to manipulate
through various forms of spiritual materialism? If you follow Buber very far,
you realize how deeply you can go in this direction.
I’ll have to return to this
book. I feel I’ve only skimmed the surface, and as to living this book (the
greatest compliment one can give to a book), I’m not sure how to monitor my
progress in doing so. If you’re ready for the deep end of the pool, this is a
good place to dive in.
P.S. In my next attempt, I’ll
try the Walter Kaufmann translation, which some prefer. Given the obvious
challenges in translating such a work, the benefits of reviewing both
translations seem obvious.
