I think it's best to think of this fascinating (but difficult) book as a long poem: something to be read, reread, pondered--even savored. If read this way, it may cure you of many of the ills of modernity. It might even cure you of your narcissism and self-absorption. I sure hope it helps me with mine.
I've lingered over this book more than anything else I've read this year, and it's made me think--hard--about how I treat the people around me. Actually more than that: it's caused me to rethink how I treat everything in my reality. I'm not sure I can articulate this idea well, but perhaps from reading my notes below (if you have the patience to wade through them!) you'll see what I'm trying to get at.
A brief comment about the author Martin Buber's style: reading this work is challenging, but in a good way, somewhat like the experience of reading St. John of the Cross. It's a puzzle to figure out what Buber means sometimes, and you get the feeling that the author himself is puzzling out how to express certain ineffable truths and insights, using the act of writing a book as a vehicle to do so. And at the same time you are grateful that the author tried--and often succeeded. The least I can do as a reader is meet him on the way and grasp what little of "the great gift" I can.
Pair with:
Soren Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling
Victor Frankel: Man's Search for Meaning
Notes:
1) Contrasting the I-Thou relationship with the I-It relationship, the prior is spoken and felt with the whole being, the latter cannot be spoken of in this way.
2) There are amazing similarities here--to the point that I can hardly believe the coincidence--with the Zen idea I just read about in Katsuki Sekida's Zen Habits: the idea of not treating things or people as "equipment" (which would be an I-It relationship) and instead giving them your whole attention and being (I-Thou). Hence the koan about the "way" to Nansen:
A monk traveled a long way to see Nansen and found him cutting grass by the roadside. He asked, “What is the way to Nansen?” Nansen answered, “I bought this sickle for thirty cents.” The monk said, “I do not ask about the sickle, I ask the way to Nansen.” Nansen answered, “I use it in full enjoyment.”
Here Nansen treats not just the people around him, but also even his sickle, a mere tool, as something to treasure. It is not "equipment."
3) This book attempts to grapple with evil of the modern era (it was written in 1937), and, if anything, today in 2022 we live in an even more dissolute, decadent, cruel and dark era. But at the same time it's worth remembering an insight from Sri Sarada Devi's book: recall the Hindu epochal framework that describes the current era as Kali, the most degenerate of the eras; however, owing to the general lowering of ethical and moral standards in this era, even a little spiritual practice can lead to great results; therefore, acts of kindness, steps toward spiritual progress, acts of moral bravery, are all the more valuable and significant in this era.
4) As fallible humans, we enter and exit this I-Thou state again and again, it's something we can practice, something we can aspire to, but it's also unfortunately something we often slip out of. Again this is strikingly like the samadhi concept in Zen.
5) "The primary word I-Thou establishes the world of relation. The spheres in which the world of relation arises are three."
* Our life with nature
* Our life with men
* Our life with spiritual beings
6) A tree as either an object ("equipment") or something more: "if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is now no longer It."
7) See also the same analogy with seeing another human being as an "It": a person can be seen as "a loose bundle of named qualities" (e.g., short, fat, temperamental, hot, rich, sincere, useful to me, whatever) and therefor as an It, or it can be a Thou: "I do not experience the man to whom I say Thou. But I take my stand in relation to him, in the sanctity of the primary word. Only when I step out of it do I experience him once more. In the act of experience Thou is far away."
8) On creation, on primitive man, and how, because of our growing cognition, we developed "separateness" (read: meta-awareness or metacognition, but also a false self in the form of the reflecting self), and further, because of this increased cognition (as well as the development of language and other innovations across history) we became more "separate" as a sort of trade-off for our increasing sophistication as beings. Hence the story of The Fall, which is in many ways a metaphor for the development of self-consciousness in man, but also a kind of metaphor for the "sophistication" of modernity, or even the "sophistication" of fundamental ideas of the Enlightenment where we no longer need God, we can depend on TEH SCIENCE!! to explain everything, etc. The trap of "sophistication."
9) I-Thou versus I-It as types of relations of combination versus separation.
10) "And in all the seriousness of truth, hear this: without It man cannot live. But he who lives with It alone is not a man." As I read it, the idea here is that you have to live "in the world" and since humans are a tool-making species we are in many ways destined (doomed?) to see the world as "equipment" (I-It). At the same time, we must manipulate our environment in order to survive, and we also get a lot of satisfaction from things like art or music or creation (another example of manipulating our environment). Thus this is the paradox: we must "use" things the world, but we are not required to see it as "equipment": we are capable of having a mindful, awake I-Thou relationship with these things (or people). Perhaps it's like we've been given this tremendous gift of meta-cognition, of self-awareness, but along with it comes a duty to apply it mindfully.
11) More on this paradox: "The primary connection of man with the world of It is comprised in experiencing, which continually reconstitutes the world, and using, which leads the world to its manifold aim, the sustaining, relieving, and equipping of human life.... It is the obstacle; for the development of the ability to experience and use comes about mostly through the decrease of man's power to enter into relation--the power in virtue of which alone man can live the life of the spirit."
12) See also re: language, which is another example of Zen idea of "the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon": "Language may well first take the form of words in the brain of the man, and then sound in his throat, and yet both are merely refractions of the true event." Thus it become, paradoxically, an obstacle to the I-Thou relation. You can probably say much the same thing about knowledge (and definitely with regard to "declarative knowledge"): it is a refraction of the actual thing and thus likewise in obstacle to relation.
13) "The development of the function of experiencing and using comes about mostly through decrease of Man's power to enter into relation."
14) On the state and political systems: are they an I-Thou or I-It type of relation? A genuine money quote here on the on the rot and corruption of the 20th century: "...you saw as I did, that the state is no longer led; stokers still pile in the coal, but the leaders have now only the semblance of control over the madly racing machines. And in this moment, as you speak, you can hear as I do that the levers of economics are beginning to sound in an unusual way; the masters smile at you with superior assurance, but death is in their hearts. They tell you they suited the apparatus to the circumstances, but you noticed that from now on they can only suit themselves to the apparatus--so so long, that is to say, as it permits them. Their speakers teach you that economics is entering on the State's inheritance, but you know that there is nothing to inherit except the tyranny of the exuberantly growing It, under which the I, less and less able to master, dreams on that it is the ruler." This was 1937 when he wrote this.
15) "Causality does not weigh on the man to whom freedom is assured. He knows that his mortal life swings by nature between Thou and It, and he is aware of the significance of this. It suffices him to be able to cross again and again the threshold of the holy place wherein he was not able to remain; the very fact that he must leave it again and again is inwardly bound up for him with the meaning and character of this life. There, on the threshold, the response, the spirit, is kindled ever new within him; here, in an unholy and needy country, the spark is to be proved." On how a genuinely spiritual person understands that the Thou state is impermanent in this world, but if you work at it you can iterate between an I-Thou and I-It state. You can't permanently stay in it (just like absolute samadhi) but you know it is there, that it exists, and with work and effort you can cross the threshold to it before returning.
16) A man can only be free and fulfill his being if he performs in an I-Thou state. "But he is free and consequently creative only so long as he possesses, in action and suffering in his own life, that act of the being--so long as he himself enters into [I-Thou] relation. If a culture ceases to be centered in the living and continually renewed relational event, then it hardens into the world of It, which the glowing deeds of solitary spirits only spasmodically break through."
17) On the dangers of a belief in fate, how it "is mistaken from the beginning." Belief in fate is an example of treating the world as an It relation rather than a Thou. "[T]his dogma enslaves him only the more deeply to the world of It. ...And to be freed from belief that there is no freedom is indeed to be free."
18) The idea of an incubus: if we go around treating the world as equipment, we're sort of like an incubus sucking the life out of things/people, using them just for what they can do for us or to us.
19) On the difference between asserting our ego/our own snowflakeness vs entering into relation selflessly, only for relation's sake: "The aim of self-differentiation is to experience and to use, and the aim of these is 'life,' that is, dying that lasts the span of a man's life. The aim of relation is relation's own being, that is, contact with the Thou. For through contact with every Thou we are stirred with a breath of the Thou, that is, of eternal life."
20) Likewise: note the contrast between the "I" of the self-based person who looks at the world as "equipment" vs the "I-Thou" relation-based of the "I" of Socrates, Goethe, or Jesus. "So listen to this word!"
21) Interesting perspective on Napoleon too: that he saw everyone as an "It," as equipment, even though he was a "Thou" to his people on some level.
22) Buber makes an interesting criticism/comparison of various no-mind states (like those in Buddhist meditation for example): he considers them "the loftiest peaks of the language of It." Meaning that they lack a relational component, they lacking some aspect of oneness with the Divine or with one another. Buber calls this "absorption." Buddhism thus lacks a unity, or at least the Buddha does not give us an answer to this question, this issue. Per Buber, "fulfillment is beyond the categories of thought and expression" and "disclosure of the existence of fulfillment [in the Buddhist sense] does not establish a true life of salvation." "His [the Buddha's] innermost decision seems to rest on the extinction of the ability to say Thou." Meaning I guess here that there's definitionally no relational event (and thus no possibility of I-Thou) in the no-mind state of Nirvana or absolute samadhi, since these states extinguish the mind and consciousness, they are thus likewise the extinction of relation.
23) To Buber, Buddhism is essentially a religion of non-involvement, there's no relation. "So long as a man is set free only in his Self he can do the world neither weal nor woe; he does not concern the world. Only he who believes in the world is given power to enter into dealings with it, and if he gives himself to this he cannot remain godless." And: "He who truly goes out to meet the world goes out also to God." Interesting, this is a really good point: you can defeat your internal emotions, you can more or less climb into yourself in a state of samadhi, but there's no Thou there because there's no relation with others, nor with the external world. Thus it's a type of self-absorption in a way.
24) One way I like to think about the idea of I-Thou is to think of it like a form of unconditionally positive regard, coupled with deep listening, a sincere attempt to understand, a state of sincere presence with that person or thing; imagine an intense Rogerian therapy session, something like this.
25) On staying "ready" to offer yourself to others: "From your own glance, day by day, into the eyes which look out in estrangement of your 'neighbour' who nevertheless does need you, to the melancholy of holy men who time and again vainly offered the great gift--everything tells you that full mutuality is not inherent in men's life together. It is a grace, for which one must always be ready and which one never gains as an assured possession."
26) Finally, note there can be certain examples of I-Thou relationships that are not mutual (or not necessarily mutual): the educator to his pupil; the therapist to his patient; the pastor to his congregants.
To Read:
The Martin Buber Carl Rogers dialogues
The Martin Buber Carl Rogers dialogues