The world as experience belongs to the basic word I-It. The basic word I-You establishes the world of relation.
In this quote, Buber sets out his fundamental distinction between the world of “It” and the world of “You.” By “world,” Buber means a way of orienting to nature, men, or spiritual matters. When someone (the I) treats the world as an “It,” they make the world into things and objects to be used. This is the world of “experience,” in which these things and objects are outside of the person. In contrast, in the world of relation, a person engages with the world as a “You.” That means the world is not separate from the person, but the person is completely participating in a relation with the world.
Even as a melody is not composed of tones, nor a verse of words, nor a statue of lines—one must pull and tear to turn a unity into a multiplicity—so it is with the human being to whom I say You. I can abstract from him the color of his hair or the color of his speech or the color of his graciousness; I have to do this again and again; but immediately he is no longer You.
In this quote, Buber gives an example of treating someone as a “You” and then someone as an “It.” It is important, for Buber, that You and It do not refer to different things, but different ways of relating to a thing. Here, when a person is considered as a You, there is a relation that involved the whole person. In contrast, approaching a person as “It” turns him or her into an object with different qualities that can be dissected, like the vital signs and numbers a doctor might put in a chart.
Every You in the world is doomed by its nature to become a thing or at least to enter into thinghood again and again. In the language of objects: every thing in the world can—either before or after it becomes a thing—appear to some I as its You. But the language of objects catches only one corner of actual life.
Now that Buber has explained that everything in the world can be approached as either You or It—as either an external or a relational object—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.
The former word splits into I and You, but it did not originate as their aggregate, it antedates any I. The latter originated as an aggregate of I and It, it postdates the I.
In Buber’s definition, a “basic word” is actually a word-pair. That means “You” is actually “I-You,” because implicit in any You is an I that is saying or related to the You. In fact, the “I” comes into being precisely in saying You. There is no subjectivity or personhood until someone or some person comes into relation with the world. Subjectivity is created by relating with a You; you can't have an "I" without a "you," and vice versa. By contrast, the "I" can create the "It" all by itself. I simply approach an object as an "It"; I don't need it to respond. This is what it means for the You to come before I but for the I to come before It.
One cannot live in the pure present: it would consume us if care were not taken that it is overcome quickly and thoroughly. But in the pure past one can live; in fact, only there can a life be arranged.
Although Buber was to resurrect more attention to You instead of It, he acknowledges the It cannot ever be completely abandoned. In fact, the It is necessary. That’s because it is only when we have an external relation to the world that we can contemplate it and design it in order to meet our needs. You can’t plan the planting or crops or draw up the blueprints for a house without thinking of the world as an object to be used and molded.
The obstacle: for the improvement of the capacity for experience and use generally involves a decrease in man’s power to relate—that power which alone can enable man to live in the spirit.
In this quote, Buber clearly states the inverse correlation he sees between relating to the world as You and as It. As the previous quotes have demonstrated, Buber associates the It with the necessary task of “using” the world. In contrast, You is about relating with the world, being immersed in it. These, then, are not just different approaches to the world, but completely contradictory. The more we do of one, the less we can do of the other. The problem, Buber says, is that we need both. This is the tragedy of man.
What has to be given up is not the I but that false drive for self-affirmation which impels man to flee from the unreliable, unsolid, unlasting, unpredictable, dangerous world of relation in the having of things.
In this quote, Buber suggests one path from It to You, or from treating the world as a stockpile of objects to relating with the world directly. He suggests some of the difficulty of this change, because it is easier to want to possess the world in objects rather than relate to the world in its indivisible wholeness. This more reciprocal and active relation requires living directly within the spirit of the world, which can be unpredictable in its immersiveness.
Wishing to understand the pure relationship as dependence means wishing to deactualize one partner of the relationship and thus the relationship itself.
This quote emerges in Buber’s discussion of God. He notices that in religious practices like prayer and sacrifice, people develop a completely dependent relation on God. This means people say something like “thy will be done,” giving God complete power to act and man a role of merely witnessing what unfolds. In contrast, Buber thinks a truly relational approach to God would involve both God and man in a common action. Agency does not belong to one partner in a relation, but to the relation itself.
I know nothing of a “world” and of a “worldly” life that separate us from God. What is designated that way is life with an alienated It-world, the life of experience and use. Whoever goes forth in truth to the world, goes forth to God. Concentration and going forth, both in truth, the one-and-the-other which is the One, are what is needful.
This quote emerges in Buber’s discussion of asceticism, which is the religious or spiritual practice of renouncing worldly pleasures in order to achieve transcendence. In contrast to renouncing the world like the ascetics, Buber suggests we develop a different approach to it.
Asceticism assumes that the world is merely an "It" and therefore should be rejected in favor of a purely spiritual life. But Buber says that this depends on how we treat it. Instead of rejecting the world, we should enter into a relation with it: treat it as a "You" rather than an "It." With this relation, which requires “concentration” rather than passive observation, we can resurrect an I-You relation.
The relation to a human being is the proper metaphor for the relation to God—as genuine address is here accorded a genuine answer.
Throughout I and Thou, Buber talks about three realms in which we can develop relations: nature, humanity, and spirituality. Although it is possible to develop an I-You relation in each of these realms, he claims that relations with humans more directly lead to relations with the eternal You, or the all-encompassing You that is also the name for God. This is because when we are relating to someone in conversation, there is a dynamic and immediate reciprocity. I speak and you respond, and I respond to you. This models all relations, which are defined by mutuality. But because of the nature of language, this form of relation is more obvious than the others.
