Martin Buber’s Encounter
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Ich Es & Ich Du of Martin Buber
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“When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.”
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Buber is famous for his thesis of dialogical existence, as he described in the book I and Thou.
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his work dealt with a range of issues including religious consciousness, modernity, the concept of evil, ethics, education, and Biblical hermeneutics.
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Buber rejected the label of "philosopher" or "theologian", claiming he was not interested in ideas, only personal experience, and could not discuss God, but only relationships to God.
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In I and Thou, Buber introduced his thesis on human existence.
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Inspired by Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity and Kierkegaard's Single One, Buber worked upon the premise of existence as encounter.
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He explained this philosophy using the word pairs of Ich-Du and Ich-Es to categorize the modes of consciousness, interaction, and being through which an individual engages with other individuals, inanimate objects, and all reality in general.
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Theologically, he associated Ich-Du with the Jewish Jesus and Ich-Es with the apostle Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus, a Jew).
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Philosophically, these word pairs express complex ideas about modes of being—particularly how a person exists and actualizes that existence.
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As Buber argues in I and Thou, a person is at all times engaged with the world in one of these modes.
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The generic motif Buber employs to describe the dual modes of being is one of dialogue (Ich-Du) and monologue (Ich-Es).
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The concept of communication, particularly language-oriented communication, is used both in describing dialogue/monologue through metaphors and expressing the interpersonal nature of human existence.
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Ich‑Du ("I‑Thou" or "I‑You") is a relationship that stresses the mutual, holistic existence of two beings. It is a concrete encounter, because these beings meet one another in their authentic existence, without any qualification or objectification of one another.
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Even imagination and ideas do not play a role in this relation. In an I–Thou encounter, infinity and universality are made actual (rather than being merely concepts).
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Buber stressed that an Ich‑Du relationship lacks any composition (e. g., structure) and communicates no content (e. g., information).
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Despite the fact that Ich‑Du cannot be proven to happen as an event (e. g., it cannot be measured), Buber stressed that it is real and perceivable.
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Common English words used to describe the Ich‑Du relationship include encounter, meeting, dialogue, mutuality, and exchange.
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One key Ich‑Du relationship Buber identified was that which can exist between a human being and God.
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Buber argued that this is the only way in which it is possible to interact with God, and that an Ich‑Du relationship with anything or anyone connects in some way with the eternal relation to God.
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To create this I–Thou relationship with God, a person has to be open to the idea of such a relationship, but not actively pursue it.
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The pursuit of such a relation creates qualities associated with It‑ness, and so would prevent an I‑You relation, limiting it to I‑It.
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Buber claims that if we are open to the I–Thou, God eventually comes to us in response to our welcome.
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the God Buber describes is completely devoid of qualities, this I–Thou relationship lasts as long as the individual wills it. When the individual finally returns to the I‑It way of relating, this acts as a barrier to deeper relationship and community.
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The Ich-Es ("I‑It") relationship is nearly the opposite of Ich‑Du.Whereas in Ich‑Du the two beings encounter one another, in an Ich‑Es relationship the beings do not actually meet.
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Instead, the "I" confronts and qualifies an idea, or conceptualization, of the being in its presence and treats that being as an object.
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All such objects are considered merely mental representations, created and sustained by the individual mind.
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This is based partly on Kant's theory of phenomenon, in that these objects reside in the cognitive agent's mind, existing only as thoughts.
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Therefore, the Ich‑Es relationship is in fact a relationship with oneself; it is not a dialogue, but a monologue.
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