I and Thou Essay Questions

How is the It related to the past?

Buber associates the It with being in the past and experiencing. It may be unexpected to associate experience with the past rather than the present. After all, when I am eating this meal or drinking this water or going for this walk, I seem to experience the sensations in real time. What resolves this irony, however, is the status of the It. The point is that when we experience something, we are distinct from the thing we are experiencing. Thus, to say I am eating this meal means I am distinct from the meal I am eating. It is as if I am observing myself eating rather than being completely immersed in the eating itself. This is what experience means, in Buber's terms: a kind of distance and observation. And that means the object of the experience itself is in the past, even if just an instant in the past, because I am not completely immersed in the present of the action itself.

Why must every You become an It?

For Buber, any object can be approached as either a You or It. This means we either enter into a relation with it or consider it an external object to be used. He adds that it is impossible not, at some point, for a You to become an It. This means every relation we have will at some point descend into objecthood. That’s because it’s impossible to sustain a completely relational approach, in which time is suspended in our complete absorption in a thing. This is the fate of man’s relation with the world.

What is the necessity of the It world?

Only when we perceive the world as made up of objects can we change the world to meet our needs as biological organisms. In order to design more habitable living conditions, we have to use the world and shape it to our purposes. This is the necessary reason we must, at some point, approach the world as It. But, Buber hopes, we can still develop our capacities for relation without allowing ourselves to be monopolized by the necessities of the It all the time.

What are the three realms of the world in Buber’s account?

Throughout I and Thou, Buber divides the world into three spheres. The first is the sphere of nature, which includes plants, animals, and everything from “the stones to the stars.” The second is the sphere of men, which is where human relations are formed. The third is the spiritual sphere, which includes our relations with things that are invisible to us.

How is the eternal You both inclusive and exclusive?

The eternal You is Buber’s name for God. With God, “unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one.” God is exclusive because, like any You, when we encounter it we are completely and only immersed in this one relation. But in this case, the You is everything, the whole world and all of time. So we are consumed by the You but there is nothing excluded from it. We are immersed in a relation that includes all.

Why does the human realm provide the most immediate path to the eternal You?

Of the three realms, Buber thinks it is in our relations with men that we most immediately get to a relation with the eternal You. This is because relations with men are characterized by language. I talk in words and you reply in words. What we have in common—the medium of our relation—is language, and in our relation, “language becomes perfected.” This brings about a complete and evident reciprocity. Through our communication, we witness mutuality more easily than we could in relation with a tree, for instance, which cannot return our speech.

How does the It world differ from the world of appearances?

At the heart of Buber’s ontology is a binary pair: the It and the You. But this is different from the fundamental opposition in many other ontological and metaphysical philosophies. In these philosophies, the “twoness” of the world usually refers to the difference between the “real” world and then a world of “appearances.” Think about how there is the tree "itself" in the world and then the image of tree as it appears to our senses or is represented in language. For Buber, instead, there is no split between reality and appearance, but only between attending to reality as an It or as a You. We either perceive something as an objective It or enter into immediate relation with You.

What is the difference between institutions and feelings?

In Chapter 2, Buber talks about how the world of men is divided between the You and the It. He further divides the It world of man into two. Within the human realm, humans divide life between what Buber calls institutions and feelings. Institutions are about organizing relations between men. They correspond to the It because they are about organizing things externally. Feelings are felt within someone and are therefore the opposite. More internal, they are associated with the I.

How does Buber’s call for increasing the I-You mode of existence differ from asceticism?

In order to align human life with the divine, some religious and spiritual traditions teach renouncing the world. This is called asceticism, and the idea is that if we leave behind the world, we can transcend it and come into contact with God. For Buber, there is no way of dividing the world’s substance into good and bad, holy and profane. Rather, everything in the world can be approached as either It and You. When we approach the world as You, anything in the world can be an occasion for bringing us closer to the eternal You that God is. Thus, rather than renouncing parts of the world, Buber asks us to relate to the whole world in a different way.

How does Buber’s call for increasing the I-You mode of existence differ from prayer or sacrifice?

Prayer and sacrifice are relations of dependency. Their motto is “thy will be done,” which means God has all the power and humans are merely observing what God does. In contrast, the I-You relation is not about dependency or submission, but mutual agency. Both humans and God together participate in a relation and realize something in the world with each other.