Friday, August 25, 2006

The different "I"

The I of I-It, or the ‘experiencing I’, is necessary, because man must experience the world in order to address Thou. Therefore, this 'experiencing I' cannot be regarded as evil, because without it man cannot be sustained in life. The danger of It-world experience is the immersion of the individual into It-world causality, i.e., approaching the world and others for instrumental use and experience. But, it should be pointed out that Buber does not advocate a purely spiritual existence. Because, as Friedman correctly points out, the I-Thou is not an unqualified good, since its lack of measure, continuity, and order threatens actual human life.[1] In other words, I-Thou does not and cannot remove man permanently from the world of experience, but simply helps actualize his life in it. Buber does not believe that mystical detachment from the known world can confirm human existence.[2] Hence, an absolute valuation of either the I-It or the I-Thou to the preclusion of the other may lead towards isolation and a noetic state of incompleteness. Although the I of I-It and the I of I-Thou are different, they are both necessary to an actual life between persons.

The differentiation Buber makes between these two ‘I’s can be elaborated upon. The ‘severed I’ is the individual immersed in experience or purely spiritual contemplation and the ‘engaged I’ is the person open to relationship with others and the world. The ‘severed I’ is burdened with conceit; specifically the belief the individual can confirm itself in monologue. In contrast, the ‘engaged I’ has no such conceit, because while open the I-Thou relationships, this I embraces an invariable return to the It-world of experience, changed by mutual encounter. The ‘severed I’ precludes either the realm of experience or the realm of spirit in favour of the other and, hence, keep human beings as individuals by neglecting or obscuring the potential for relationship.

The particular uniqueness of interlocutors engaged in dialogue is not absorbed into a single unity through I-Thou relationship. Rather, as Buber notes, uniqueness is affirmed through relationship.[3] In stepping into dialogical relationship, one is not immersed into a unity, once and for all. The relationship is a passing encounter that changes the way participants experience the world, i.e., destabilizing a stagnant impulse to simply use and apply experience for instrumental ends. Hence, the ‘severed I’ is different from the ‘experiencing I’. They are not one in the same. The ‘experiencing I’ is necessary, because man must experience the world in order to provide for his life. However, the ‘experiencing I’ can stagnate into a ‘severed I’ without the possibility of I-Thou relationship. Hence, the I of I-It and the I of I-Thou have the potential to become engaged with experience and spirit or severed from relationship when immersed solely in its respective realm. Therefore, the ‘severed I’ is the individual lost in causality. The ‘engaged I’ acknowledges the necessity of experience and relationship, and strives to actualize the life between persons, rather than merely within individuals.



[1] Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue. (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), p. 60

[2] This is why Buber, in “What is Common to All”, objects to the prioritization of an individualized “dream world” in Hindu and Taoist traditions above the common “waking” world and refutes Aldous Huxley’s claim that a mesculin trance allows an individual to transcend selfhood and the ephemeral world. Buber, “What is Common to All”, The Knowledge of Man, pp. 81-85, 89-92.

[3] “What the genuine saying of ‘Thou’ to the other in the reality of the common existence basically means – namely, the affirmation of the primally deep otherness of the other, the affirmation of his otherness which is accepted and loved by me…” Buber, “What is Common to All”, The Knowledge of Man, p. 86. Maurice Friedman provides some elucidation to Buber’s argument. “I-Thou is the world of relation and togetherness, each of the members of the relation really remains himself, and that means really different from the other.” Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue. (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), p. 61