The Blindness of Experience (Metaphor)
In describing how It differs from You, Buber inverts an old metaphor—“love is blind”—to describe the blindness of the It:
As long as love is “blind”—that is, as long as it does not see a whole being—it does not yet truly stand under the basic word of relation. Hatred remains blind by its very nature; one can hate only part of a being. (67-8)
For Buber, blindness is a metaphor for not seeing something in its wholeness. Instead, we break down an object into parts or qualities. Instead of loving a whole person, we might talk about loving their hair or their intelligence, for instance. Focusing on this part of a person blinds us from being in complete relation with them as a whole person.
Spirit as Atmosphere (Simile)
The concept of relation is connected to the concept of spirit. When we are in relation with a You, we are immersed in the spirit of the relation itself. This means spirit is not a thing, but a larger process in which all things can be embedded. Buber explains using this metaphor:
Spirit is not in the I but between I and You. It is not like the blood that circulates in you but like the air in which you breathe. (89)
If spirit were like blood, it would be inside us. This would be in contradiction to the spirit being all around us, and belonging to one object. That is why the spirit is more like air. It is the very space in which relation occurs, rather than being part of any one thing involved in relation.
Institutions and Feelings (Metaphors)
In Chapter 2, Buber talks about how the "It" world of men is divided. Within the human realm, humans divide life between what Buber calls institutions and feelings:
Institutions comprise a complicated forum; feelings, a boudoir that at least provides a good deal of diversity. (93)
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. Buber uses the metaphors of the forum and boudoir to bring out this point. A forum is a meeting-place; it is public and impersonal. A boudoir or bedroom is domestic and, according to Buber, freer and full of unpredictable things. But both institutions and feelings are in the I-It world rather than the I-You.
