I and Thou
Martin Buber's timeless classic on deep relationship, and the piercing power of Existentialism, have much to offer to a shallow, fractured world
“The primary word I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being. The primary word I-It can never be spoken with the whole being.” — Martin Buber, I and Thou (trans. Ronald Gregor Smith, 2nd edition)
We all know this deep in our hearts and souls. There is a realm, a dimension of connection in which our entire being is thrown open to the world, and the world’s being is thrown open to us. In this connection even heaven and hell are joined in a symphony of sound. And therein lies the rub for us. For is there anything more overwhelming than to be utterly exposed AND completely connected… no secrets, or vanities, or privacies? What would this require of us— pure being meeting pure being?
This is the core of existentialist philosophy, including Martin Buber’s work I and Thou. In existentialism, there is an irreducible “is-ness” to the “other” and in accepting that “other” deeply, essentially, in-itself and for-itself, our primary relationship to the other is transformed from one of I-It to one of I-Thou. No longer can we hold back and “observe” and judge, for now we participate in a living organism of which we are a part— a relationship in its vibrant, growing, and coming-to-know sense not its static, assuming, gauging, labeling, using sense.
In I-It contract, as opposed to I-Thou contact, we certainly are afforded certain luxuries. We can exploit others for our own advantage and call it “skillful negotiation.” We can gossip about them and glory in our moral superiority giving us the nice dopamine shot that petty righteousness always seems to give. We can talk about a world of meritocracy, and pretend we “earned” our station in the world, even when it is evident in the most cursory examination that the game is rigged— that the sensitive, honest, and talented pay the heavy price and the corrupt seem to walk free.
But in I-Thou NONE of this usury can be justified or occupied. From the humblest pebble to the loftiest god, to see the essential and irreducible, un-manipulated integrity of being of each and every entity we confront, we are thrown into a cosmos of radical and diverse equality in which all conceit is consumed in a flame of searing recognition. And our own being expands and deepens because of it.
Existentialism remains one of the most profoundly transformative philosophies for me for this reason. Many deem it dour, depressing, and dark, most definitely atheist, a good candidate for some Goth looking for a reason to kill himself. I see the opposite— a radical truth of the independent, inherently good, and equal essence of the other, drawing me outward from my hidey-hole, and inward into my own essence, and between into the living and learning spaces that constitute real relationship, where one is neither user nor used but rather be-er and become-er in the dance of creation.
I had a profound opening experience after taking a class in Existentialism and reading this passage from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea (Le Nausee):
All at once the veil is torn away, I have understood, I have seen.... The roots of the chestnut tree sank into the ground just beneath my bench. I couldn't remember it was a root anymore. Words had vanished and with them the meaning of things, the ways things are to be used, the feeble points of reference which men have traced on their surface. I was sitting, stooping over, head bowed, alone in front of this black, knotty lump, entirely raw, frightening me. Then I had this vision.
If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form added to things from the outside, without changing any thing in their nature. And then all at once, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself… [I]t was the dough out of which things were made, this root was kneaded into existence… the diversity of things, their individuality, were only an appearance, a veneer.
The chestnut tree pressed itself against my eyes. Green blight covered it halfway up; the bark, black and swollen, looked like boiled leather. The sound of the water in the Masqueret Fountain trickled in my ears, made a nest there, filled them with sighs; my nostrils overflowed with a green, putrid odor. All things, gently, tenderly, were letting themselves exist like weary women giving way to laughter, saying, "It's good to laugh," in a damp voice; they were sprawling in front of each other, abjectly confessing their existence. I realized there was no mean between non-existence and this swooning abundance. If you existed, you had to exist to excess, to the point of moldiness, bloatedness, obscenity. In another world, circles, musical themes keep their pure and rigid lines. But existence is a yielding.
In reading this I had my own awakening around faith. I saw in this a kind of active living faith calling me to my own roots and BEYOND my beliefs and concepts of faith. I had always had such staunch notions of right faith and wrong faith in which all the particulars were rigorously categorized, where false faith was separated from true faith by categories and properties.
As I explained this awakening to a friend: “I thought my “faith” was complete and total, that in encompassed the entire universe. And yet here was this notion of faith that lay outside that totality. My notion of faith as a noun, was exploded by the movement of faith as a verb. My whole self-certainty erupted and opened itself to a wondrous world of possibility, and I felt not terrified but strangely elated and relieved!” Movement equals life. Dead nouns, on the other hand, connote a strange kind of destitution and desperation. Sartre’s passage, especially with its appeal to the essence of Nature herself, broke open my heart to apprehend faith in a way that fell BEYOND the circle of belief and concept (the head). It invited me into a living faith of the heart, past the grasp of categories and distinctions and toward a world of essences meeting each other as moving, living, growing, breathing works of art.
My favorite philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, also considered a seminal existentialist, took this nascent understanding and brought it home with his “Genius of the Heart” passage. Anyone who misunderstands Nietzsche’s famous phrase, “God is dead” as a proclamation of atheist nihilism, ought to read deeply this passage. Nietzsche’s admonitions to throw out our idols (a bourgeois “god” that serves our vanities), far from being glum and godless, is actually a liberating and inspiring invitation to the opposite— to take a hammer to our own house-of-mirrors images of God that have deadened our hearts, so that we may find our genius and spirit again:
[T]he genius of the heart who silences all that is loud and self-satisfied, teaching it to listen; who smooths rough souls and lets them taste a new desire—to lie still as a mirror, that the deep sky may mirror itself in them—the genius of the heart who teaches the doltish and rash hand to hesitate and reach out more delicately; who guesses the concealed and forgotten treasure, the drop of graciousness and sweet spirituality under dim and thick ice, and is a divining rod for every grain of gold that has long lain buried in the dungeon of much mud and sand; the genius of the heart from whose touch everyone walks away richer... newer to [themselves] than before, broken open, blown at and sounded out by a thawing wind, perhaps more unsure, tenderer, more fragile, more broken, but full of hopes that as yet have no name… (Genius of the Heart” passage 295 in Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann)
Isn’t it time we got back to the heart, the very thing we have been running from in our social media circuses of ego, our overblown fears of pandemics and one another, our addictions, our endless ambition and achievement that only serve to disrespect Earth and Nature and exact another pound of flesh from the poorest and most vulnerable? We are RIGHT NOW collectively disconnected and enthralled as never before, most precisely because we have become beguiled by unprecedented ILLUSIONS of connection to others and freedom for ourselves.
So what can we learn from Buber’s I and Thou, to guide us back into compassionate connection and sanity? Let us examine some of the more poetic and perhaps enigmatic aspects of his seminal text:
“There is no I TAKEN IN ITSELF, but only the I of the primary word I-Thou and the I of the primary word I-It… When a primary word is spoken the speaker enters the word and takes [their] stand in it… When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing; [they have] indeed nothing. But [they] take [their] stand in relation.”
What might this mean for us today? There is no enlightenment mantra, formula, philosophy or “thing” which will redeem or ascend us or connect us with God. All the mindfulness training in the world isn’t worth one Zen koan or bamboo stick slap on our backs in the midst of our meditating. Enlightenment is awakening beyond the world of things in which we are earners, doers, observers, rulers, users, strivers “doing unto” others and even doing unto ourselves as symbols or objects, but rather participants in a deed in which we are both a vital and incomplete aspect. Who we are is contingent on relationship. I cannot even define myself as an individual unless I have you to distinguish myself from. My relation with you is not only the source of my individuality but the very possibility of me being able to even conceive and experience myself as an individual! With no “you”, there is no “me” only a floating consciousness somewhere in the universe. Therefore, I am intimately connected with you, and all gratitude and “worship” is devoted from and toward this miracle called relationship.
Is the I-Thou a deeper inner experience, as many spiritualists would seem to assert? No! According to Buber, even a profound inner experience does NOT constitute I-Thou.
“But the world is not presented to [us] by experiences alone. These present [us] only with a world composed of It and He and She and It again… If we add “inner” to “outer” experiences, nothing in the situation is changed… Inner things or outer things, what are they but things and things… If we add “secret” to “open” experiences, nothing in the situation has changed…
“Experience” as a possession of a person, and even deep feeling about another person, cannot ever be an honest proxy for relationship itself. That other person or entity has his or her own living world, which must be contacted in its own right for relationship to happen. No amount of or projection of “empathy” can be a substitute for reaching out, opening, and letting yourself be affected by their experience as they are affected by yours. I-Thou is necessarily mutual, between you and the other, and not simply within the self thinking it is between you and other.
Experience, therefore, whether it is inner or outer, does not constitute a relationship, no matter how deeply one feels he or she “gets” another. This experience must always be informed (and transformed) by the independent, authentic, and self-generated meaning and feeling of the other, which has its own “language” irreducible to the estimations I have about who the other is and what the other needs. One can’t help but notice in glaring relief this fallacy of “I know you better than you know yourself” (also known as “for your own good”) in attempts to “civilize” or “domesticate” ostensible savages, whether they be indigenous tribes, children, or romantic partners. We are not “loving” them as we claim we are if we take this approach; we are enlisting them into our own fantasies or programs, which is quite the opposite of love.
What might loving, open I-Thou look like in the everyday world? Playing in mud pit with a kid and and getting your clothes dirty! Taking time to hear and be moved by the story of a homeless musician busking for spare change. Not trying to remove the sadness of another person, or solve their “problem” (probably because it makes you uncomfortable), but being with them in their uncertainty and difficulty, not simply as a friend saying “it will be okay” but as an “I-Thou” who says, “This thing you’re feeling makes sense, and I can see why you feel it. What do you need from me?”
“The Thou MEETS ME THROUGH GRACE— it is not found by seeking… The Thou meets me. But I step into direct relation with it. Hence the relation means being chosen and choosing, suffering and action in one… All real living is meeting.”
Searching for the meaning of life? Search no more. It is found in relationships which produce their own meaning, both ordinary and extraordinary. When we are on a mountain at daybreak and have a transcendent, cathartic experience, we may focus on the “aha” moment, and even covet it. We may be transformed by the “experience”, but was it the experience really? Wasn’t that experience simply the aftereffect, the imprint, the echo of the real generator of change— the meeting between you and the sun, the air, the forest, your own body, long-neglected in an office chair, now free to leap out of its skin and into the arms of profound beauty, majesty, and awe? Instead of searching, maybe we need to simply make contact with the different, and receive it neither as a threat nor an opportunity for consumption or domination, but as an invitation to a new rhythm and relationship. We are always being taught a new dance, and some we may simply not like, but let us be glad for the chance to learn and decide for ourselves without condemning or judging our teacher, especially before the dance even begins.
Beautifully said. It’s as if one is basking in the peace that passes all understanding. It can only be found with an inner knowingness. You’ve conveyed it beautifully here. Few may actually feel or understand it until they become it.