I And Thou Martin Buber,
Publisher: Hesperides Press
ISBN: 1443724106
DDC: 181.06
Edition: Hardcover; 2008-11-04
Summary:
I AND THOU by MARTIN BUBER TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION HIS work in its
original, German form has already, since its publication fourteen
years ago, exercised on the Continent an influence, quite out of
proportion to its slender size. In view of this influence alone it
may be affirmed that I and Thou will rank as one of the epochmaking
books of our generation. It has hitherto been comparatively unknown
among Englishspeaking students of philosophy and theology. I and Thou
is to be understood in the context of Bubers previous intensive
study, chiefly of Jewish mystical writings. It is not an isolated
phenomenon among his works, but represents the culmination of the
intensely religious interest that characterises them all. It is,
indeed, philosophical but it is not an academic work of discursive
philosophy. It is mystical, but it belongs to what PringlePattison
has termed the higher Mysticism of real communion with God, as
distinguished from the debased1 mysticism that sub stitutes for the
real present world a world of illusory delights, where absorption in
the Diym is experi enced. The decrying of mysticism as a whole,
fashion able today among Protestant writers, has a weighty retort in
the present work. For an indubitably real mystical experience is here
set forth, not with contempt for the means of human expression but
with finished and delicate power. For this reason, though we might
call and Thou a philosophicalreligious poem, it belongs essentially
to no single specialised class of learned work. It has a direct
appeal to all those who are interested in living religious experience
rather than in theological debates and the rise and fall of
philosophical schools. It has first and foremost to be judged on its
intrinsic meritsby the impact, that is to say, which it makes on our
actual, responsible life, as persons and as groups, in the modern
world. This immediate value of Bubers work becomes clear if we
consider its main thesis. There is, Buber shows, a radical difference
between a mans attitude to other men and his attitude to things. The
attitude to other men is a relation between persons, to things it is
a connexion with objects. In the personal relation one subject I
confronts another subjectThou, in the connexion with things the
subject contemplates and experiences an object. These two attitudes
represent the basic twofold situation of human life, the former
constituting the. world of Thou, and the latter the world of It The
content and relation of these two worlds is the theme of and Thou.
The other person, the Thou,, is shown to be a realitythat is, it is
given to me, but it is not bounded by me: Thou has no bounds the 1
Though the second person singular pronoun has almost dis appeared
from modern English usage, it remains in one important spherein
prayer. By its retention in the English text, therefore, far from
suggesting an obscure situation, it keeps the whole thought iii the
personal and responsible sphere in which alone it is truly to be
understood. TJiou cannot be appropriated, but I am brought up short
against it.
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