Importantly, Kaufmann chooses to translate the German Du as You, instead of Thou throughout this work. One could contest that Thou/You is the most vital word in Buber’s short work. Buber begins, “The attitude of man is twofold in accordance with the two basic words he can speak…. The basic words are not single words but word pairs…. One basic word is the word pair I-You…. The other basic word is the word pair I-It…. Basic words do not state something that might exist outside them; by being spoken they establish a mode of existence…. Basic words do not signify things but relations…. Whoever says You does not have something for his object. For wherever there is something there is also another something; every It borders on other Its…. But where You is said there is no something. You has no borders. Whoever says You does not have something; he has nothing. But he stands in relation.”
Buber stresses that the I-You is an actuality in the lived world of individuals, not a concept of the forms, appearances, or ideas expressed by the likes of Plato or Kant. “I speak only of the actual human being, of you and me, of our life and our world, not of any I-in-itself and not of any Being-in-itself.” He stresses that the I-It is a necessary, but not a sufficient, relationship, “This, however, is the sublime melancholy of our lot that every You must become an It in our world…. The human being who but now was unique and devoid of qualities, not at hand but only present, not experienceable, only touchable, has again become a He or She, an aggregate of qualities, a quantum with a shape…. Every You in the world is doomed by its nature to become a thing or at least to enter into thinghood again and again.”
The second part of Buber’s treatise, amongst other things, details his position on the juxtaposition between necessity and free will, “The unlimited sway of causality in the It-world, which is of fundamental importance for the scientific ordering of nature, is not felt to be oppressive by the man who is not confined to the It-world but free to step out of it again and again into the world of relation. Here I and You confront each other freely in a reciprocity that is not involved in or tainted by any causality; here man finds guaranteed the freedom of his being and of Being. Only those who know of relation and who know of the presence of the You have the capacity for decision…. The man to whom freedom is guaranteed does not feel oppressed by causality. He knows that his mortal life is by its very nature an oscillation between You and It, and he senses the meaning of this…. Fate and freedom are promised to each other. Fate is encountered only by him that actualizes freedom…. Freedom and fate embrace each other to form meaning; and given meaning, fate—with its eyes, hitherto severe, suddenly full of light—looks like grace itself. No, the man who returns into the It-world, carrying the spark, does not feel oppressed by causal necessity.”
Finally, in the third part of the book, Buber concerns himself with the individual’s relationship with God, the eternal You, “For whoever pronounces the word God and really means You, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true You of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others. But whoever abhors the name and fancies that he is godless—when he addresses with his whole devoted being the You of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses God…. The You confronts me. But I enter into a direct relationship to it. Thus the relationship is at once being chosen and choosing, passive and active…. This is the activity of the human being who has become whole…. One does not have to strip away the world of the senses as a world of appearance. There is no world of appearance, there is only the world—which, to be sure, appears twofold to us in accordance with our twofold attitude. Only the spell of separation needs to be broken. Nor is there any need to “go beyond sense experience”; any experience, no matter how spiritual, could only yield us an It. Nor need we turn to a world of ideas and values—that cannot become present for us. All this is not needed. Can one say what is needed? Not by way of a prescription…. Going forth is unteachable in the sense of prescriptions. It can only be indicated—by drawing a circle that excludes everything else. Then the one thing needful becomes visible: the total acceptance of the present…. What has to be given up is not the I, as most mystics suppose: the I is indispensable for any relationship, including the highest, which always presupposes an I and You. 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 into the having of things…. One does not find God if one remains in the world; one does not find God if one leaves the world. Whoever goes forth to his You with his whole being and carries to it all the being of the world, finds him whom one cannot seek…. For the sake of this there are I and You, there is dialogue, there is language, and spirit whose primal deed language is, and there is, in eternity, the word.”
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