I was a philosophy major in college and I've read a lot of works out there. I can tell you that this is by far my favorite book. Buber's ideas are so simple yet so profound - he offers a way to be in the world that is real, useful, and ultimately fulfilling. This book has helped me in my business relations (I work in sales) as well as my personal relations. It is also beautifully written (translated from the German). If you want to be inspired, read this book!

Ich und Du (badly) translated as I And Thou, by Martin Buber, takes me beyond any book I've ever read before. I had to read it with another selection, because after a few pages, my soul became saturated, and I had to read something else.

I am at a loss for how to describe this book. The Third Testament hints at the idea.

We construct the world in one of two ways: either through a relationship, which engages our entire being in the encounter (an I-You relationship), or through experiencing objects as the means to an end, engaging only a part of ourselves in an I-It relationship.

From this simple seed, Buber grows three chapters and an afterward. Walter Kaufman, who translated the work, wrote a 50 page introduction, which is in itself a wonder to experience.

The experience of reading the book was amazing, although I'm not sure that I learned as much as I might have. What Buber did was to give me words to explain how I believe, what I experience, and what I long for. I must read it again. And again. And again.

This book is difficult to read or to understand. Perhaps something has been greatly lost in the translation or else it is a complete hoax. I found it to be full of disjointed ideas and apparent nonsense.

Ich und Du ("I and Thou") is one of those philosophical texts which, like Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, consist of the elaboration of a single thought. The thought is stated up front: human beings have a double relation to the world: Ich-Du and Ich-Es. The Ich-Es relation reifies and separates things out (whether they be "internal" or "external" things), while the Ich-Du relation is nothing but relation itself. The Eswelt is a world of nebeneinander and the laws that govern nebeneinander, while the Duwelt is a seamless experience of "presence." The Ich that reaches out and the Du that reaches back (neither of which reflects on "what" they individually are) constitute an exclusive circular reality (Ausschließlickheit) untroubled by causal and spatiotemporal regress. To be sure, the Duwelt collapses into the Eswelt, which means that the Ich and the Du degenerate into so many instances of Es, but there is always the possibility of resurrecting the Ich & Du hidden within the Es.

There are different kinds of Ich-Du relation: 1) with nature (presumably before we know to call it "nature"), in which case we stand at the "threshold of speech"; 2) with human beings, in which case speech coincides with the Ich-Du relation; and 3) with "spiritual beings," in which case the relation itself is speechless, but it can generate speech. (This third relation is very much in the spirit of romantic poesis.) A special subset of the third relation is the relation to God, who is the Du beyond every particular Du. God is the only Du with whom our relation cannot degrade into an Ich-Es relation, because there is no Es beyond every individual Es for which God could be mistaken. (There are, too be sure, many things which people falsely call "God," things which are really part of nature or of ourselves, such as Schleiermacher's Abhangigkeitsgefühl or Rudolf Otto's Kreaturgefühl, as Buber specifically points out).

What is essential in every case is the duality of the relation. Buber warns against interpreting the Ich-Du as a self-relation of the Ich (i.e. Hegel) or as a kind of "symmetry breaking" (to use a term from physics), which can be restored to oneness at the proper mystical "heat."

One of the explicit objects of this text is to move beyond liberal Protestant theology, i.e. beyond a theology that grounds the religious in some quality of subjective experience. For Buber, religion occurs before there is a subject, and once we arrive at the subject, we find it impossible to even think of religion apart from the subject's relation to another. Buber exploits the pronoun Du ("you") to draw our attention to an experience of encounter (rather than reflection or feeling) inadequately addressed by rational philosophy, and he employs this experience in the service of religion.

Buber may not go far enough, however. He moves beyond the subject, but he does not move beyond religion-as-experience, which is the real drawback of liberal theology. In a sense, Buber is freeing God from the subject only to bind him down to "relation" (Beziehung), which hovers somewhere between subject and object, and is not obviously "religious" at all. There is nothing in Buber's argument protecting it, for example, from a biological-evolutionary explanation of the Ich-Du relation, or a psychoanalytic one. Buber overcomes one obstacle only to land himself before another one.

Sorry if that was a little technical.

This book is for intellectual heavy-hitters, and unfortunately I am not one of them, thus am forced to rely on others' interpretations for the answer to the question: What was Buber talking about? I have absolutely no idea - the text rambles on as if it were about something...but is very abstract. I could not find anything in it with which to identify or relate to my experience, except for a few comments about creative acts. This book is for readers accustomed to philosophical texts. It is not for the untrained or casual reader - it is for the academic reader.

This is a difficult book that (purposefully) subverts all the standard modes of philosophical discourse in favor of metaphorical imagery. It does this because its subject matter, the spiritual happening that gives life its meaning, cannot be contained in static, philosophical concepts. The occurrence of the I/Thou, the event of meaningful relation, defies all notions of matter and logic. Matter and logic belong to the I/It world- the necessary but spiritually void public world. As the It world grows in strength, this book serves as a beautiful reminder of who we are and what we can be. And as philosophy again loses its soul and degenerates into mere technique, this little book can remind us what philosophy's true domain is- wisdom.

How can you describe such a book? Through his prose, Buber takes the reader to a place that is almost holy. I'd been waiting my entire life for this text.

I find the notes of Walter Kaufmann very valuable and gives another way of understanding the Old Testament. If you get an edition of I AND THOU, I highly recommend getting one translated with notes by Walter Kaufmann. The main theme of Buber in this book is that there are two basic relationships with life I-Thou and I-It. When we meet life in I-Thou we enter the sacred and are truly authentic to each other. From this basic relationship comes a kind of Monotheism as well as the ethics of personal conscience and integrity and meeting another person in their fullness, rather than reducing them or life to a thing which can be manipulated or analyzed or even objectively known. I feel that Buber opened the heart and core of the Old Testament to me, beyond what my previously more Christian studies implied was there (making any message there inferior to what the New Testament gives). Before then all I could get was outmoded laws, grisly wars, strange folklore, and proverbial common sense with an occasionally wise statement which was a nugget of gold in the strange medley of books. But once I got what this kind of authentic relating was about, something seemed to unify for me about the Old Testament and the rest made sense. I still find a lot of what I used to find there, but with the key Buber gave, I could see something growing at the very heart of Judaism behind all those books about what it meant to meet each other authentically and to feel I divinity that says I AM.

When I read "I and Thou" the first time......I cried for nearly a week.

When I re-read it a second time, a deeper shudder seized me...and I've not stopped crying for a lifetime.

I enjoyed this book. This book transforms the relational world we live in; into a workable experience. People live in an I-You or an I-It world. This book offers incredible insight into how we live; and how we are human.

I enjoyed this book. This book transforms the relational world we live in; into a workable experience. People live in an I-You or an I-It world. This book offers incredible insight into how we live; and how we are human.

In response to "An alternative reading, April 22, 2004
Reviewer: A reader".
I have read "I-Thou" many times over the years. Whereas Buber was well-acquainted with the works of many before him, it is clear from reading his own works (and 'I-Thou in particular) that he himself was concerned with, among other aspects of the 'human', the very problem(s) of the systematising of human experience.
In this regard, the 'I-Thou' relation is in 'opposition' to any 'system' of thought, (philosophical/theological/ otherwise); although 'systematising' of the 'I-Thou' encounter can be done afterwards. In this regard, Buber's explication of the 'I-Thou' encounter is not meant to be approached from a 'systems point-of view' - it is to challenge and draw the reader's attention to the 'I-Thou' encounter.

Buber's basic distinction is between the I- It, and the I- Thou relationship. In the I-It relationship we treat others as objects and make use of them for our own selfish purposes. In the I - Thou relationship we treat others with full respect, and seek to understand their inwardness as we understand our own. In the I- Thou relationship as Buber conceives it true dialogue and true relationship is possible. And in this kind of meaningful relationship between two understanding and empathetic human beings we come into a kind of holy relationship. And this kind of holy human relationship parallels the proper relationship we are to have with God.
While this single idea might seem too all encompassing to really analyze the complexity of our human relationships, I believe it is a basically right guiding concept.
Buber in this short work sets out his theoretical understanding of the concept. Buber is ordinarily a clear writer, and a remarkable storyteller as in his 'Tales of the Hasidism' work. But here the theoretical structure means that there is much abstraction often difficult to understand. Philosophy meets poetry here but not always in a readily comprehensible way.
But again this is the key concept of a major thinker, and a concept which illuminate the path for each of us to a better and more humanly fulfilling life.

This outstanding book gives a vision of a human philosophy far from the dehumanising reductionism of most twentieth century Cartesian philosophy. While Buber uses poetic language, those interested in seeing an alternate, more philosophical rigorous working out of these ideas should look at the neglected work of the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray (1891-1976).

Macmurray firstly proposes action, and not thought, as the fundamental basis for understanding what it is to be human. When Descartes says "I think", he is then already divorced from the world. One can ONLY exist in interaction with others and other things, it is absurd to imagine a person as existing in a universe where there is nothing else whatsoever. Action is the full state of the human being, and thinking is a lesser, abstracted state. Action is a full concrete activity of the Self employing all our capacities whereas thought is constituted by the exclusion of some of our powers and a WITHDRAWAL into an activity which is less concrete and less complex... a theory of knowledge is derived from and included in a theory of action.

Secondly, Macmurray proposes another enormous paradigm shift for Western philosophy by saying that we cannot fully understand individuals in isolation, but only in relation to others. Relationship is constitutive of human living for Macmurray: 'We need one another to be ourselves. This complete and unlimited dependence of each of us upon the others is the central and crucial fact of personal existence.' The idea of an isolated agent is self-contradictory; any agent is necessarily in relationship with Others. Macmurray corresponded with Martin Buber, and his thought essentially extends Buber's vision.

These two central tenets are explicated respectively in Macmurray's two major works, "The Self as Agent" and "Persons in Relation" (also published together as "The Form of the Personal"). Macmurray's writing is crystal clear, and filled with other fascinating points, such as his distinction between intellectual and emotional representations, in chapter 9 of "The Self as Agent".

A great short introduction to Macmurray and his work can be found in David Creamer's book "Guides to the Journey".

Unlike the usual philosophical endeavor, this book does not build an argument or make a case about a particular interpretation of the world or some aspect of it. Rather, Buber's seminal work begins with a key insight into our way of being in the world and goes on to weave an intricate web of variations on this theme, creating, if you let it, a sense of his core insight in the reader's own mind. Reading this book is not about reading a philosophical argument or thesis but rather about giving oneself up to the man and his insight: that there are two fundamental ways for us to be in the world, as subjects relating to objects (in order to use them for ourselves) or as subjects relating to subjects (which recognize ourselves in that which meets us at the other end of the "relation"). For Buber this is what it is all about. And, he tells us, we cannot choose one or the other but must (and do) have both though it is easy for us to lose sight of the subjectness of others when we embrace their objectness. And so he bangs away at the need to see the subjectness, not only in other persons but in other aspects of the world as well, and, indeed, in the world itself, holding that to "see" the subjectness that is there, in the world as a whole (through relating in this manner to its parts), is to see God. And this is where it gets somewhat abstruse for he offers no proof of God in the ordinary sense but rather the assertion alone that we must have access to the subjective aspect of being in order to fully live our lives and that this assumes God. He has no proofs to offer but only an ongoing spiraling prose poem that builds the sense of the world as he has seen it, a realm of subject to subject that overarches and informs the more mundane reality of subject to object in which we are generally mired. If you are looking for a philosophical work that builds an argument with proofs and rational discourse, this is not the book for you. But if you are willing to immerse yourself in his sometimes ecstatic prose, then this offers an experience worth having. Not all philosophy is about building logical edifices or exposing one's thinking to rigorous analytical critiques. Sometimes it's just about insight and seeing the world in a new way. And that is what Buber gave us with this book. -- SWM

I Thou is truly one of the books that changed the way people think. I Thou is a book that has changed the world, and that is not an exaggeration. Buber's influence on counseling and psycho therapy is undenieable. Carl Rogers revised his thinking after his encounter with Buber and I Thou. I Thou teaches fundamental truths about interaction, interpersonal relationships, and true dialog. Martin Buber will long stand as the seminal work for dialog and interpersonal interactions. But, don't take my word for it, read the book.