Buber Martin
Martin Buber
* PART ONE *
The world is dual for a person due to the duality of his correlation with him.
Man's relation is dual because of the duality of the basic words he can say.
Basic words are not single words, but pairs of words.
One basic word is a combination of I-Thou.
Another basic word is the combination I-It; moreover, without changing the main word, one of the words He and She can take the place of It.
Thus, the I of man is also dual.
For the I of the main word I-Thou is different from the I of the main word I-It.
Basic words do not express something that could be outside of them, but, when spoken, they posit existence.
Basic words come from the human being.
When it says You, it also says I of the I-Thou combination.
When It is said, the I of the I-It combination is also said.
The basic word I-Thou can only be spoken by the whole being.
The basic word I-It can never be spoken by the whole being.
There is no I in itself, there is only I of the main word I-Thou and I of the main word I-It.
When a person says I, he means one of them. The I that he means is present when he says I. And when he says You or It, the I of one of the basic words is present.
Being I and saying I are one. Saying I and saying one of the basic words are one thing.
The one who speaks the main word enters into it and is in it.
The life of a human being is not limited to the area of transitive verbs. It is not limited to such activity, which has Something as its object. I perceive something. I feel something. I represent something. I desire something. I feel something. I am thinking something. The life of a human being does not consist of only this and the like.
All this and the like constitutes the realm of It.
The kingdom of Thou has a different foundation.
He who says You does not have any Something as an object. For where there is Something, there is another Something; each It borders on other It; It exists only because it borders on others. But when it says You, there is no Something. You are limitless.
He who says You does not possess any Something, he possesses nothing. But he is in relation.
They say that a person, gaining experience, learns the world. What does this mean? Man moves on the surface of things and experiences them. He extracts from them knowledge about their current state, a certain experience. He will know what they are.
But not only experience allows a person to know the world.
For, gaining experience, a person comes to know only the world, consisting of It, and It, and again It, from He, and He, and She, and She, and again It.
Gaining experience, I learn Something.
Nothing will change if "internal" experience is added to the "external" experience, following the non-eternal division, which is rooted in the desire of the human race to deprive the mystery of death of its acuteness. Internal as well as external, things among things!
As I gain experience, I learn something.
And nothing will change if we add "secret" experience to the "obvious" experience in that presumptuous wisdom that knows their hidden things in things, preserved for the initiates, and skillfully wields the key. O mystery without mystery, O accumulation of information! It, it, it!
The one who gains experience does not participate in the world. After all, experience is “in him,” and not between him and the world.
The world does not participate in experience. He allows himself to be recognized, but this does not affect him in any way, for the world does not contribute in any way to the acquisition of experience and nothing happens to him.
The world as experience belongs to the basic word I-It. The basic word I-Thou creates a world of relationship.
There are three spheres in which the world of relationship is built.
First: living with nature. Here the attitude oscillates in obscurity, not reaching the level of speech. Creations move before us, but cannot approach, and our You, turned to them, freezes on the threshold of speech.
Second: life with people. Here the relation is open and it is framed in speech. We can give and receive You.
Third: living with spiritual beings. Here the relation is clouded, but reveals itself, it does not have speech, but it generates it. We do not hear You and yet we feel that we have been called, we respond by creating, thinking, acting; with all our being we speak the main word, not knowing how to say You with our lips.
How dared we include in the world of the basic word that which lies beyond the limits of speech?
In every sphere, through everything that is becoming that now and here appears before us, our gaze catches the edge of the Eternal Thou, in each our ear catches its breath, in each Thou we turn to the Eternal Thou, in each sphere accordingly.
Buber Martin
Buber Martin
You and I
Martin Buber
* PART ONE *
The world is dual for a person due to the duality of his correlation with him.
Man's relation is dual because of the duality of the basic words he can say.
Basic words are not single words, but pairs of words.
One basic word is a combination of I-Thou.
Another basic word is the combination I-It; moreover, without changing the main word, one of the words He and She can take the place of It.
Thus, the I of man is also dual.
For the I of the main word I-Thou is different from the I of the main word I-It.
Basic words do not express something that could be outside of them, but, when spoken, they posit existence.
Basic words come from the human being.
When it says You, it also says I of the I-Thou combination.
When It is said, the I of the I-It combination is also said.
The basic word I-Thou can only be spoken by the whole being.
The basic word I-It can never be spoken by the whole being.
There is no I in itself, there is only I of the main word I-Thou and I of the main word I-It.
When a person says I, he means one of them. The I that he means is present when he says I. And when he says You or It, the I of one of the basic words is present.
Being I and saying I are one. Saying I and saying one of the basic words are one thing.
The one who speaks the main word enters into it and is in it.
The life of a human being is not limited to the area of transitive verbs. It is not limited to such activity, which has Something as its object. I perceive something. I feel something. I represent something. I desire something. I feel something. I am thinking something. The life of a human being does not consist of only this and the like.
All this and the like constitutes the realm of It.
The kingdom of Thou has a different foundation.
He who says You does not have any Something as an object. For where there is Something, there is another Something; each It borders on other It; It exists only because it borders on others. But when it says You, there is no Something. You are limitless.
He who says You does not possess any Something, he possesses nothing. But he is in relation.
They say that a person, gaining experience, learns the world. What does this mean? Man moves on the surface of things and experiences them. He extracts from them knowledge about their current state, a certain experience. He will know what they are.
But not only experience allows a person to know the world.
For, gaining experience, a person comes to know only the world, consisting of It, and It, and again It, from He, and He, and She, and She, and again It.
Gaining experience, I learn Something.
Nothing will change if "internal" experience is added to the "external" experience, following the non-eternal division, which is rooted in the desire of the human race to deprive the mystery of death of its acuteness. Internal as well as external, things among things!
As I gain experience, I learn something.
And nothing will change if we add "secret" experience to the "obvious" experience in that presumptuous wisdom that knows their hidden things in things, preserved for the initiates, and skillfully wields the key. O mystery without mystery, O accumulation of information! It, it, it!
The one who gains experience does not participate in the world. After all, experience is “in him,” and not between him and the world.
The world does not participate in experience. He allows himself to be recognized, but this does not affect him in any way, for the world does not contribute in any way to the acquisition of experience and nothing happens to him.
The world as experience belongs to the basic word I-It. The basic word I-Thou creates a world of relationship.
There are three spheres in which the world of relationship is built.
First: living with nature. Here the attitude oscillates in obscurity, not reaching the level of speech. Creations move before us, but cannot approach, and our You, turned to them, freezes on the threshold of speech.
Second: life with people. Here the relation is open and it is framed in speech. We can give and receive You.
Third: living with spiritual beings. Here the relation is clouded, but reveals itself, it does not have speech, but it generates it. We do not hear You and yet we feel that we have been called, we respond by creating, thinking, acting; with all our being we speak the main word, not knowing how to say You with our lips.
How dared we include in the world of the basic word that which lies beyond the limits of speech?
In every sphere, through everything that is becoming that now and here appears before us, our gaze catches the edge of the Eternal Thou, in each our ear catches its breath, in each Thou we turn to the Eternal Thou, in each sphere accordingly.
I look at the tree.
I can perceive it as a visual image: an unshakable column reflecting the onslaught of light, or abundant splashes of green against a soft silvery blue.
I can feel it as a movement: the flow of juices through the vessels that surround the core, gently holding and seeing off the impatient run of vital currents, the roots absorbing moisture; leaf respiration; endless communication with earth and air - and its secret growth.
I can attribute it to a certain type of tree and consider it as an instance of this species, based on its structure and lifestyle.
I can so overdo it in my mental abstraction from its uniqueness and from the flawlessness of its form that I see in it only the expression of regularities - laws by virtue of which the constant opposition of forces is invariably balanced, or laws by virtue of which the connection of the elements that make up its composition, it arises, then it falls apart again.
I can make him immortal by taking his life, if I represent him as a number and consider him as a pure numerical ratio.
At the same time, the tree remains an object for me, a place in space is determined for it and a life span is released, it belongs to this type of tree and has characteristic features.
However, by will and grace, it may happen that when I look at a tree, I am captured by a relationship with it, and henceforth this tree is no longer It. The power of exclusivity took possession of me.
Wherein. whatever my vision of the tree, I do not need to renounce it. From nothing must I avert my gaze in order to see, and nothing that I know about him, I must not forget. Rather, everything: the visual image and movement, form and copy, law and number are present here in an inseparable unity.
The totality of what belongs to the tree as such - its form and function, its color and chemical composition, its communion with the elements and its communion with the planets are all present here in the unity of the whole.
A tree is not an impression, not a game of my ideas, not something that determines my state, but it stands before me bodily and relates to me, just as I relate to it - only in a different way. Do not try to emasculate the meaning of the relationship: the relationship is reciprocity.
So, does a tree have a consciousness similar to ours? Experience tells me nothing about this. But did you not set out again - thinking that success is guaranteed - to decompose the indecomposable? It is not the soul of the tree or the dryad that I encounter, but the tree itself.
If I stand before a person as my You and say to him the main word I-You. he is not a thing among things and does not consist of things.
This person is not He or She. he is not limited by other He and She: he is not some point in the space-time network of the world. it is not something present, experiential and describable, a loose bundle of named properties. But he is You, having no neighborhood and connecting links, and he fills all the heavenly space. This does not mean that, apart from him, nothing else exists: but everything else lives in his light.
A melody is not composed of sounds, a poem of words, but a statue of shapes and lines, they will have to be decomposed and dissected, so that from unity a multitude is obtained; so it is with man. to whom I say You. I can separate from him the tone of his hair, or the tone of his voice, or the tone of his kindness, I have to do it again and again; but he is no longer you.
Not prayer in time, but time in prayer, not sacrifice in space, but space in sacrifice, and he who perverts the attitude eliminates this reality; so the person to whom I say You does not meet me in any Where and When. I can put it there, I have to do it again and again, but it will already be some kind of He or some kind of She, It, but no longer my You.
As long as Thou's sky stretches over me, the winds of causality humble themselves at my feet, and the whirlwind of fate subsides.
I am not gaining any objective experience of the person to whom You are speaking. But I stand in relation to him, in the sacred basic word. Only when I get out of it do I gain experience again. Experience is distance. You.
The relationship can exist even if the person to whom I say You is involved in their experience and does not hear me. For You are greater than the experience of It. You reveal more, more is given to it than It can taste. Nothing inauthentic will penetrate here: here is the cradle of Real Life.
This is the eternal source of art: the image presented to man wants to become a work through him. This image is not the offspring of his soul, but what appeared before him, approached him and seeks his creative power. Here everything depends on the essential deed of a person: if he realizes it, if he utters with his whole being the main word to the image that has appeared, then a stream of creative power will pour out, a work will arise.
This act includes...
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Buber Martin
You and I
Martin Buber
* PART ONE *
The world is dual for a person due to the duality of his correlation with him.
Man's relation is dual because of the duality of the basic words he can say.
Basic words are not single words, but pairs of words.
One basic word is a combination of I-Thou.
Another basic word is the combination I-It; moreover, without changing the main word, one of the words He and She can take the place of It.
Thus, the I of man is also dual.
For the I of the main word I-Thou is different from the I of the main word I-It.
Basic words do not express something that could be outside of them, but, when spoken, they posit existence.
Basic words come from the human being.
When it says You, it also says I of the I-Thou combination.
When It is said, the I of the I-It combination is also said.
The basic word I-Thou can only be spoken by the whole being.
The basic word I-It can never be spoken by the whole being.
There is no I in itself, there is only I of the main word I-Thou and I of the main word I-It.
When a person says I, he means one of them. The I that he means is present when he says I. And when he says You or It, the I of one of the basic words is present.
Being I and saying I are one. Saying I and saying one of the basic words are one thing.
The one who speaks the main word enters into it and is in it.
The life of a human being is not limited to the area of transitive verbs. It is not limited to such activity, which has Something as its object. I perceive something. I feel something. I represent something. I desire something. I feel something. I am thinking something. The life of a human being does not consist of only this and the like.
All this and the like constitutes the realm of It.
The kingdom of Thou has a different foundation.
He who says You does not have any Something as an object. For where there is Something, there is another Something; each It borders on other It; It exists only because it borders on others. But when it says You, there is no Something. You are limitless.
He who says You does not possess any Something, he possesses nothing. But he is in relation.
They say that a person, gaining experience, learns the world. What does this mean? Man moves on the surface of things and experiences them. He extracts from them knowledge about their current state, a certain experience. He will know what they are.
But not only experience allows a person to know the world.
For, gaining experience, a person comes to know only the world, consisting of It, and It, and again It, from He, and He, and She, and She, and again It.
Gaining experience, I learn Something.
Nothing will change if "internal" experience is added to the "external" experience, following the non-eternal division, which is rooted in the desire of the human race to deprive the mystery of death of its acuteness. Internal as well as external, things among things!
As I gain experience, I learn something.
And nothing will change if we add "secret" experience to the "obvious" experience in that presumptuous wisdom that knows their hidden things in things, preserved for the initiates, and skillfully wields the key. O mystery without mystery, O accumulation of information! It, it, it!
The one who gains experience does not participate in the world. After all, experience is “in him,” and not between him and the world.
The world does not participate in experience. He allows himself to be recognized, but this does not affect him in any way, for the world does not contribute in any way to the acquisition of experience and nothing happens to him.
The world as experience belongs to the basic word I-It. The basic word I-Thou creates a world of relationship.
There are three spheres in which the world of relationship is built.
First: living with nature. Here the attitude oscillates in obscurity, not reaching the level of speech. Creations move before us, but cannot approach, and our You, turned to them, freezes on the threshold of speech.
Second: life with people. Here the relation is open and it is framed in speech. We can give and receive You.
Third: living with spiritual beings. Here the relation is clouded, but reveals itself, it does not have speech, but it generates it. We do not hear You and yet we feel that we have been called, we respond by creating, thinking, acting; with all our being we speak the main word, not knowing how to say You with our lips.
How dared we include in the world of the basic word that which lies beyond the limits of speech?
In every sphere, through everything that is becoming that now and here appears before us, our gaze catches the edge of the Eternal Thou, in each our ear catches its breath, in each Thou we turn to the Eternal Thou, in each sphere accordingly.
I look at the tree.
I can perceive it as a visual image: an unshakable column reflecting the onslaught of light, or abundant splashes of green against a soft silvery blue.
I can feel it as a movement: the flow of juices through the vessels that surround the core, gently holding and seeing off the impatient run of vital currents, the roots absorbing moisture; leaf respiration; endless communication with earth and air - and its secret growth.
I can attribute it to a certain type of tree and consider it as an instance of this species, based on its structure and lifestyle.
I can be so overzealous in my mental abstraction from its uniqueness and from the flawlessness of its form that I see in it only the expression of regularities - laws by virtue of which the constant opposition of forces is invariably balanced, or laws by virtue of which the connection of the elements that make up its composition, it arises, then it falls apart again.
I can make him immortal by taking his life, if I represent him as a number and consider him as a pure numerical ratio.
At the same time, the tree remains an object for me, a place in space is determined for it and a life span is released, it belongs to this type of tree and has characteristic features.
However, by will and grace, it may happen that when I look at a tree, I am captured by a relationship with it, and henceforth this tree is no longer It. The power of exclusivity took possession of me.
Wherein. whatever my vision of the tree, I do not need to renounce it. From nothing must I avert my gaze in order to see, and nothing that I know about him, I must not forget. Rather, everything: the visual image and movement, form and copy, law and number are present here in an inseparable unity.
The totality of what belongs to the tree as such, its form and function, its color and chemical composition, its communion with the elements and its communion with the planets, are all present here in the unity of the whole.
A tree is not an impression, not a game of my ideas, not something that determines my state, but it stands before me bodily and relates to me, just as I relate to it - only in a different way. Do not try to emasculate the meaning of the relationship: the relationship is reciprocity.
So, does a tree have a consciousness similar to ours? Experience tells me nothing about this. But didn't you set out to decompose the indecomposable again - thinking that success is guaranteed? It is not the soul of the tree or the dryad that I encounter, but the tree itself.
If I stand before a person as my You and say to him the main word I-You. he is not a thing among things and does not consist of things.
This person is not He or She. he is not limited by other He and She: he is not some point in the space-time network of the world. it is not something present, experiential and describable, a loose bundle of named properties. But he is You, having no neighborhood and connecting links, and he fills all the heavenly space. This does not mean that, apart from him, nothing else exists: but everything else lives in his light.
A melody is not composed of sounds, a poem of words, but a statue of shapes and lines, they will have to be decomposed and dissected, so that from unity a multitude is obtained; so it is with man. to whom I say You. I can separate from him the tone of his hair, or the tone of his voice, or the tone of his kindness, I have to do it again and again; but he is no longer you.
Not prayer in time, but time in prayer, not sacrifice in space, but space in sacrifice, and he who perverts the attitude eliminates this reality; so the person to whom I say You does not meet me in any Where and When. I can put it there, I have to do it again and again, but it will already be some kind of He or some kind of She, It, but no longer my You.
As long as Thou's sky stretches over me, the winds of causality humble themselves at my feet, and the whirlwind of fate subsides.
I am not gaining any objective experience of the person to whom You are speaking. But I stand in relation to him, in the sacred basic word. Only when I get out of it do I gain experience again. Experience is distance. You.
The relationship can exist even if the person to whom I say You is involved in their experience and does not hear me. For You are greater than the experience of It. You reveal more, more is given to it than It can taste. Nothing inauthentic will penetrate here: here is the cradle of Real Life.
This is the eternal source of art: the image presented to man wants to become a work through him. This image is not the offspring of his soul, but what appeared before him, approached him and seeks his creative power. Here everything depends on the essential deed of a person: if he realizes it, if he utters with his whole being the main word to the image that has appeared, then a stream of creative power will pour out, a work will arise.
This act involves sacrifice and risk. Sacrifice: infinite possibility offered on the altar of the image. Everything that a moment ago, playing, crossed the perspective, must be eradicated, so that none of this penetrates into the work; so commands the exclusivity of the future. Risk: the main word can only be spoken by the whole being; whoever devotes himself entirely to this, he does not dare to hide anything from himself: the work - unlike a tree and a person - will not allow me to seek rest in the world It, the work dominates: if I do not serve it as it should, it will be destroyed or destroy me.
The image before me will not be revealed to me in objective experience, and I cannot describe it, I can only bring it into reality. And yet I see him in the radiance of the rays of the future, clearer than all the evidence of the known world. Not as a thing among "internal" things, not as a kind of reflection created by my "imagination", but as a Real. The image, being tested by it for its presence as an object, is "absent", but what can be compared with it in terms of the strength of its presence in the present? The relationship in which I stand with him. there is a real relationship: he affects me, just as I affect her.
Creation is pro-production. invention is acquisition. The creation of a form is its disclosure: bringing it into reality. I open. I transfer the image to the world of It. The completed work is a thing among things, as a sum of properties, it is accessible to objective experience and amenable to description. But to that. who contemplates, perceives and conceives, it can again and again stand bodily.
– What kind of experience does a person get from You? - None. For You are not revealed in experience. What then does a person know about You? - Just everything. For he no longer learns anything about him individually.
You meet me by grace - it is not found in the search. But the fact that I say the basic word to him is the deed of my being, my essential deed.
You meet me. But it is I who enter into a direct relationship with him. Thus, attitude is both choosing and being chosen, suffering and action. How then should the action of a being in its totality, being the cessation of all partial actions and, consequently, of all sensations of actions based only on their limitation, be likened to suffering?
The basic word I-Thou can only be spoken by the whole being. Concentration and fusion into a whole being cannot be realized either through me or without me: I become I, relating myself to You; becoming I, I say You.
Every real life is a meeting.
Attitude towards You is not mediated by anything. Between I and Thou there is nothing abstract, no prior knowledge and no fantasy; memory itself is transformed, striving from separateness into wholeness. Between I and You there is no purpose, no lust, no anticipation; passion itself is transformed, rushing from dream to reality. Every means is an obstacle. Only where all means have been abolished does the meeting take place.
Before the immediacy of the relationship, everything mediating loses its significance. Perhaps my You has already become It for others I (“an object of universal experience”) or can only become it - due to the fact that my essential act has exhausted itself and lost its power - all this also does not matter. For the true boundary, of course shaky and indefinite, does not pass either between experience and non-experience, or between given and non-given, or between the world of being and the world of values, but it crosses all areas between You and It: between the present as presence and occurred object.
The present is not something that is like a point, and denotes only a mentally fixed moment of completion of the "elapsed" time, the appearance of a stopped flow, but the real and filled present is only insofar as there is a reality of the flow of the present, a meeting and a relationship. The present arises only through the continued presence of You.
I of the main word I-It, i.e. The ego, which does not bodily face thee, but, surrounded by many "contents," has only a past and no present. In other words: to the extent that a person is satisfied with the things he experiences and uses, he lives in the past and his moment is not filled with presence. It has nothing but objects; they are in the past.
The present is not fleeting or transient, it is before us, waiting and preserving itself in duration. The object is not a duration, but a stop, a cessation, a detachment, a self-numbness, a separateness, a non-relationship, a non-presence.
The anticipation of spiritual beings is lived in the present, the status of objects belongs to the past.
This duality, which is rooted in the very foundation of being, is not overcome by turning to the "world of ideas" as a kind of third, standing above the opposition. For I am speaking of nothing else than the real man, you and me, our life and our world, not the Self in itself and not being in itself. But for the real person, the real boundary also crosses the world of ideas.
Of course, one who lives in the world of things and is content with using them and acquiring experience, builds for himself with the help of ideas an extension or superstructure, where he finds refuge and calm before the impending emptiness of unreality. He leaves his everyday dress - a form of ordinary everyday life - on the threshold, puts on linen clothes and delights himself with the contemplation of the primordially existing or supposed to be, to which his life is in no way involved. It is no less pleasant to preach those truths that were revealed to him in contemplation.
But It-humanity, imagined, postulated and propagated, has nothing in common with humanity embodied in the reality of life, to which a person speaks the true Thou.
The noblest idea is a fetish, the most sublime way of thinking is vicious if it is based on the exaltation of the imaginary. Ideas do not hover over us or dwell in our heads; they are among us, they are approaching us. Worthy of pity is the one who leaves the main word unutterable, but contemptible is the one who, turning to ideas, instead of the main word, names some concept or password, as if it were their name!
That the immediate relation involves action on the future is evident in one of three examples: the essential act of art determines the process in which the image becomes the work. In-relationship-to-be is realized through the encounter through which it enters the world of things to act endlessly, to become It endlessly, but also endlessly to become You again, inspiring and igniting. The future is "embodied": its flesh comes from the stream of the present, not limited by space and time, which has become on the shore.
The significance of the impact in relation to the You-man is not so obvious. The essential act that establishes immediacy here is usually understood sensuously, and thus misunderstood. Feelings accompany the metaphysical and metapsychic fact of love, but they do not constitute it. And these feelings can be very different. Jesus' feeling for the possessed is different from his feeling for his beloved disciple, but love is one. Feelings "have", love comes. Feelings dwell in man, but man dwells in his love. This is not a metaphor, but a reality: love is not inherent in the I in such a way that You are only its "content", its object; it is between me and you. One who does not know this with all his being does not know love, although he can associate with it those feelings that he enjoys, that he experiences, experiences, expresses. Love is a world-encompassing influence. For one who abides in love and contemplates in it, people are freed from involvement in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Good and evil, wise and stupid, beautiful and ugly, they all become for him Thou - released from the bonds. emanating, unique and existing in relation to him. In a miraculous way, exclusivity is reborn again and again - and he can influence, help, heal, educate, elevate, deliver. Love is the responsibility of I for You: it contains something that cannot be in any feeling - the equality of all lovers. from the smallest to the greatest, and from the one who has been saved and is in blissful peace, and whose life is entirely contained in the life of a loved one, to the one who has been nailed to the cross of the world all his life. who dared the incredible: the love of these people.
Let the significance of the action in the third example, which shows the creature and its contemplation, remain a secret. Believe in the simple magic of life, in service in the universe, and you will understand for yourself what this persistent expectation means, this searching look, the "stretched neck" of the creature. Any word about it would be false, but look: there are living beings around you - no matter which one of them you approach, you are approaching existence.
Relationship is reciprocity. My You affects me as I affect him. Our students teach us, our creations create us. "Evil" is transformed into a bearer of revelation. when it is touched by the sacred main word. How children raise us, how animals raise us! We live in a stream of all-encompassing reciprocity, inextricably involved in it.
“You talk about love as if it were the only relationship between people; but, in fairness, do you have the right to take her at least as an example, there is also hatred?
- As long as love is "blind" and does not see the being in its entirety, it is not yet truly subordinated to the basic word of the relationship. Hatred is by nature blind; only part of the being can be hated. That. whoever sees a being in its entirety and is forced to reject it, no longer where hatred reigns, but where the ability to say Thou depends on human limitations. It happens that a person cannot say to the forthcoming human being the main word, which always includes confirmation of the essence of the one to whom it is addressed, and he must reject either himself or another; it is a barrier in which the entry-into-relationship recognizes its relativity, which can only be removed together with this barrier.
And yet he who hates directly is closer to relation than he who is without love and without hate.
But this is the sublime sadness of our fate, that every You in our world must become It. So exceptional was the presence of You in the immediate relationship: however, as soon as the relationship has exhausted itself or has become permeated with a means, You become an object among objects, even the most noble, but one of them, defined in border and measure. Creativity is in one sense the transformation into reality, in another sense the deprivation of reality. True contemplation is short-lived: the essence of nature, which has just been revealed in the mystery of interaction. now again amenable to description, dismemberment, classification. Now - this is the point of intersection of diverse laws. And love itself cannot be held in direct relation; it continues to exist, but in an alternation of actuality and latency. A person who had just been unique and irreducible to individual properties, who was not a given, but only present, not open to objective experience, but was accessible to touch - this person is now again He or She, the sum of properties, quantity, enclosed in a form . And again I can separate from him the tone of his hair, his speech, his kindness; but as long as I can do this, he is no longer my You and has not yet become one.
In the world, each You, in accordance with its essence, is doomed to become a thing or again and again depart into a thingness. In the language of objects, it would sound like this: every thing in the world can, either before or after its reification, appear to some I as its You. But this language captures only the edge of real life.
It is a chrysalis, You are a butterfly. But these are not always sequential states, on the contrary, it is often a complex and intricate process, deeply immersed in duality.
In the Beginning there is an attitude.
Let us consider the language of "savages", that is, those peoples whose world has remained poor in objects and whose life is built up in a close circle of actions saturated with the presence of the present. The core of this language are sentence words, the original pre-grammatical formations, from the splitting of which the whole variety of various kinds words, - most often denote the integrity of the relationship. We say: "very far"; the Zulu will instead say a word-sentence, which means the following: "Where someone shouts:" Mom. I'm lost." And the inhabitant of Tierra del Fuego will shut us in the belt with all our analytical wisdom, using a seven-syllable word, the exact meaning of which is: "They look at each other, and each expects the other to volunteer to do what both want, but cannot In the indivisibility of this whole, the faces are still only outlined in relief and do not possess the independence that is characteristic of the forms of nouns and pronouns that have emerged from it. It is not these products of decomposition and reflection that matter here, but the true primordial unity, the lived relationship.
When we meet, we greet the person, wishing him well, or assuring him of our devotion, or turning him over to God. But how devoid of immediacy are these worn-out formulas (who now feels in the exclamation "Heil!" its original meaning - empowerment!) in comparison with the eternally youthful and so bodily greeting-attitude of infidels: "I see you!" or with its American version, funny and at the same time refined in its own way: "You can smell me!"
It can be assumed that relations and concepts, as well as ideas about persons and objects, emerged from ideas about relations as processes and states. The spontaneous impressions and irritants of the “natural man” that disturb the mind originate in the processes-relationships, in the experience of the future and in the state-relationships, in life with this future. The moon, which he sees every night in the sky, does not occupy his thoughts at all, until one day, in a dream or in reality, she appears bodily before him, until she approaches him, bewitching him with her unfaithful shimmering face and bringing evil to him either good touches of their rays. It is not the visual impression of a luminous disk wandering across the sky and not the idea of a demonic essence that is somehow connected with this celestial body that is stored in his memory, but first of all - a motor image-stimulus of lunar influence penetrating the whole body, and only then, on on this basis, gradually moving away from it, a personal image of the moon is formed, which has an effect: only now the memory of what is felt every night and not yet realized begins to acquire more and more vivid and exciting features, until finally the already rather inflamed imagination melts the memory into a sensual idea of the culprit and carrier of influence, and then it can be represented as an object. So You, initially inaccessible to any objective experience, but suffered by the whole body, the whole being of a person, turns into He or She.
The fact that the beginning of every essential phenomenon has the character of a relationship that retains its reality over a long time allows us to understand more clearly that spiritual element of "primitive" life, which modern researchers, who pay much attention to it, discuss at length and yet cannot comprehend to the end. . We are talking about that mysterious power, the idea of which in one form or another is contained in the beliefs or the beginnings of science (both here still form one whole) of many "primitive" peoples; we are talking about Mana or Orenda, from which the path leads to Brahman in the original meaning of this concept, as well as to dunamis and charis of "magical papyri" and apostolic epistles. This power was described as a supersensible and supernatural force, proceeding from the categories of our thinking, which are alien to the attitude of the "savage". The boundaries of his world are determined by the living of such situations in which he is present bodily; so, for example, the visits of the dead belong to them “naturally”. To take the insensible as the existent must seem to him absurd. The phenomena to which he ascribes "mystical power" are elementary processes-relationships. i.e., in general, all the events that he thinks about, insofar as they influence him in such a way that he perceives this influence with his whole body, and insofar as a trace of this influence remains in his memory, the image-stimulus. Such power is possessed not only by the moon and the deceased, who bring him torment or delight every night, but also by the sun, which scorches him, and the beast with its menacing howl, and the leader, whose gaze forces him to obedience, and the shaman, whose singing awakens in him strength for hunting. Mana is that which has an effect, then. which turns the face of the moon in the sky into a blood-stirring You. And the trace of this mysterious power remains in the memory when the objective image is separated from the stimulus-image, although it itself manifests itself only in the culprit and bearer of the influence; with its help, a person who possesses it (for example, in the form of a stone with miraculous properties) can himself exert the same effect. The "savage" has a magical "picture of the world", but not because its central point is the ability of a person to magic, but for the reason that the latter is only a special version of that universal magical power, which is the source of all essential influence. In this "picture of the world" causality does not create a continuous chain of events, but rather it can be imagined as constantly arising flashes of force acting on itself, like a volcanic activity, without any sequence and interconnection. Mana is a primitive abstraction, perhaps even more primitive than number, but by no means more supernatural. The ability to reproduce events and states in memory, while improving, builds a sequence of the most significant events-relations, natural upheavals. What is of the greatest importance for the instinct of self-preservation, and what is most attractive to the cognitive instinct, comes to the fore and acquires independence. The insignificant, uncommon, changeable Thou of individual experiences recedes, remains in memory isolated from everything else. gradually objectified and little by little united into groups and species. And the third here appears terrifying in its isolation, sometimes even more ghostly than the moon or the dead, but inexorably manifesting another, "unchanging" partner - "I".
The consciousness of the I is just as weakly connected with the instinct of "self"-preservation, which initially belongs to the dominant position, as with the goals that other instincts serve: it is not the I who wants to continue itself, but the body. which is not yet aware of any Self; not I, but the body wants to create things, tools, toys, the body strives to be "productive". In the cognitive activity of the "savage" one cannot find any cognosco ergo sum, even in such a still naive form, even in such an immature conception of the knowing subject. The I spontaneously emerges from the splitting of the first experiences, saturated with the vital force of the first words I-affecting-You and You-affecting-I after the substantiation and hypostasis of the participle "affecting".
* I know, therefore I exist (lat.). - Note. per.
The main difference between the two main words in the history of the spirit of "primitive" peoples is revealed in the fact that already in the very first event-relationship, the main word I-Thou comes from a person as if in a natural way, not yet taking shape, i.e. even before how he realized himself as I, while the basic word I-It can be said only thanks to this consciousness, only through the isolation of I.
The first basic word is separated into I and You, but it did not arise from their combination, it is older than I; the second main word arose from the combination of I and It, it is younger than I.
The event-relationship, in which the "savage" participates, includes the Self - by virtue of its exclusivity. Since in this event-relationship, in accordance with its essence, only two partners participate in the fullness of their actuality, a person and his future, since the world in this event-relationship becomes a dual system, a person already anticipates in him that cosmic pathos of the I, although he himself this I is still beyond his comprehension.
But the I is not yet included in the natural given, which will pass into the basic word I-It, into the acquisition of experience by which the I, closed on itself, is absorbed. This natural reality is the separation of the human body as a carrier of sensations from the surrounding world. The body learns to recognize and distinguish itself in this particularity of itself, but its self-recognition remains within the bounds of pure juxtaposition and therefore cannot assimilate the latent character of the I in its own capacity.
But when the I left the relation and began to exist in its isolation, it, surprisingly rarefied and acquiring a purely functional character, plunges into the natural reality of the separation of the body from the surrounding world and awakens the I in it in its own capacity. Only now can the conscious act of the I be realized, the first form of the basic word I-It, the experience that absorbs the I, closed on itself: the released I declares itself to be the bearer of sensations, and the world- their object. Of course, this process is carried out not in a "cognitive-theoretical" form, but in one that corresponds to a "primitive" worldview; however, the phrase "I see a tree" is said in such a way that it does not convey the relationship between the I-man and You-tree, but establishes the fact of the perception of the tree-object by the consciousness of man, and this phrase has already established "the boundary between subject and object; the main word I- It - the word of separation - is said.
* PART ONE *
The world is dual for a person due to the duality of his correlation with him.
Man's relation is dual because of the duality of the basic words he can say.
Basic words are not single words, but pairs of words.
One basic word is a combination of I-Thou.
Another basic word is the combination I-It; moreover, without changing the main word, one of the words He and She can take the place of It.
Thus, the I of man is also dual.
For the I of the main word I-Thou is different from the I of the main word I-It.
Basic words do not express something that could be outside of them, but, when spoken, they posit existence.
Basic words come from the human being.
When it says You, it also says I of the I-Thou combination.
When It is said, the I of the I-It combination is also said.
The basic word I-Thou can only be spoken by the whole being.
The basic word I-It can never be spoken by the whole being.
There is no I in itself, there is only I of the main word I-Thou and I of the main word I-It.
When a person says I, he means one of them. The I that he means is present when he says I. And when he says You or It, the I of one of the basic words is present.
Being I and saying I are one. Saying I and saying one of the basic words are one thing.
The one who speaks the main word enters into it and is in it.
The life of a human being is not limited to the area of transitive verbs. It is not limited to such activity, which has Something as its object. I perceive something. I feel something. I represent something. I desire something. I feel something. I am thinking something. The life of a human being does not consist of only this and the like.
All this and the like constitutes the realm of It.
The kingdom of Thou has a different foundation.
He who says You does not have any Something as an object. For where there is Something, there is another Something; each It borders on other It; It exists only because it borders on others. But when it says You, there is no Something. You are limitless.
He who says You does not possess any Something, he possesses nothing. But he is in relation.
They say that a person, gaining experience, learns the world. What does this mean? Man moves on the surface of things and experiences them. He extracts from them knowledge about their current state, a certain experience. He will know what they are.
But not only experience allows a person to know the world.
For, gaining experience, a person comes to know only the world, consisting of It, and It, and again It, from He, and He, and She, and She, and again It.
Gaining experience, I learn Something.
Nothing will change if "internal" experience is added to the "external" experience, following the non-eternal division, which is rooted in the desire of the human race to deprive the mystery of death of its acuteness. Internal as well as external, things among things!
As I gain experience, I learn something.
And nothing will change if we add "secret" experience to the "obvious" experience in that presumptuous wisdom that knows their hidden things in things, preserved for the initiates, and skillfully wields the key. O mystery without mystery, O accumulation of information! It, it, it!
The one who gains experience does not participate in the world. After all, experience is “in him,” and not between him and the world.
The world does not participate in experience. He allows himself to be recognized, but this does not affect him in any way, for the world does not contribute in any way to the acquisition of experience and nothing happens to him.
The world as experience belongs to the basic word I-It. The basic word I-Thou creates a world of relationship.
There are three spheres in which the world of relationship is built.
First: living with nature. Here the attitude oscillates in obscurity, not reaching the level of speech. Creations move before us, but cannot approach, and our You, turned to them, freezes on the threshold of speech.
Second: life with people. Here the relation is open and it is framed in speech. We can give and receive You.
Third: living with spiritual beings. Here the relation is clouded, but reveals itself, it does not have speech, but it generates it. We do not hear You and yet we feel that we have been called, we respond by creating, thinking, acting; with all our being we speak the main word, not knowing how to say You with our lips.
How dared we include in the world of the basic word that which lies beyond the limits of speech?
In every sphere, through everything that is becoming that now and here appears before us, our gaze catches the edge of the Eternal Thou, in each our ear catches its breath, in each Thou we turn to the Eternal Thou, in each sphere accordingly.
I look at the tree.
I can perceive it as a visual image: an unshakable column reflecting the onslaught of light, or abundant splashes of green against a soft silvery blue.
I can feel it as a movement: the flow of juices through the vessels that surround the core, gently holding and seeing off the impatient run of vital currents, the roots absorbing moisture; leaf respiration; endless communication with earth and air - and its secret growth.
I can attribute it to a certain type of tree and consider it as an instance of this species, based on its structure and lifestyle.
I can so overdo it in my mental abstraction from its uniqueness and from the flawlessness of its form that I see in it only the expression of regularities - laws by virtue of which the constant opposition of forces is invariably balanced, or laws by virtue of which the connection of the elements that make up its composition, it arises, then it falls apart again.
I can make him immortal by taking his life, if I represent him as a number and consider him as a pure numerical ratio.
At the same time, the tree remains an object for me, a place in space is determined for it and a life span is released, it belongs to this type of tree and has characteristic features.
However, by will and grace, it may happen that when I look at a tree, I am captured by a relationship with it, and henceforth this tree is no longer It. The power of exclusivity took possession of me.
Wherein. whatever my vision of the tree, I do not need to renounce it. From nothing must I avert my gaze in order to see, and nothing that I know about him, I must not forget. Rather, everything: the visual image and movement, form and copy, law and number are present here in an inseparable unity.
The totality of what belongs to the tree as such - its form and function, its color and chemical composition, its communication with the elements and its communication with the planets - are all present here in the unity of the whole.
A tree is not an impression, not a game of my ideas, not something that determines my state, but it stands before me bodily and relates to me, just as I relate to it - only in a different way. Do not try to emasculate the meaning of the relationship: the relationship is reciprocity.
So, does a tree have a consciousness similar to ours? Experience tells me nothing about this. But did you not set out again - thinking that success is guaranteed - to decompose the indecomposable? It is not the soul of the tree or the dryad that I encounter, but the tree itself.
If I stand before a person as my You and say to him the main word I-You. he is not a thing among things and does not consist of things.
This person is not He or She. he is not limited by other He and She: he is not some point in the space-time network of the world. it is not something present, experiential and describable, a loose bundle of named properties. But he is You, having no neighborhood and connecting links, and he fills all the heavenly space. This does not mean that, apart from him, nothing else exists: but everything else lives in his light.
V.S. Strelov
The Berdichevsky rabbi often sang a song in which there were such words:
All I dream about is You! All I think about is You! Only You, again You, always You! You! You! You!
When I rejoice - You! When I'm sad - You! Only You, again You, always You! You! You! You!
Heaven is you! Earth - You! You are at the top! You are down! At every beginning, at every end, Only You, again You, always You! You! You! You!
The story from the "Hasidic Traditions" cited above, although it refers to one of the characters described by Martin Buber, perfectly conveys the main pathos of the philosopher's life's work: it contains the sincerity and simplicity inherent in babies and wise men (sing to God in your own words!), in it - a bold assertion of God not as an object of religious studies, but as a partner in dialogue, a Personality; in it is the awareness that everything, as St. Paul, “out of Him, by Him and to Him. To him be glory forever, amen” (Rom. 11:36).
Indeed, if we look at the works of Martin Buber, we will see that all of them, written by a profound sage (at the end of his life, Buber became the first President of the Israeli Academy of Sciences), are somehow connected with God and His servants, and reveal the faith of Buber himself: these are the “Hasidic Traditions” repeatedly published in Russia (the second volume, “Late Teachers” has recently appeared), his famous treatise “I and You”, which we intend to consider more closely below, his “Two Images of Faith” (comparison of Pharisaic Judaism and proclamations of Christ and Paul), “The Problem of Man” (where he makes an attempt to trace the history of Western European philosophical and anthropological thought) “Images of Good and Evil”, “Gog and Magog” ... The Russian-speaking reader may not be aware, but Buber was able to sing his own song to the Lord , which partly reflected his philosophical intuitions: on German there is a translation of the Tanakh edited by M. Buber and Franz Rosenzweig.
But how did he come to this? Let us briefly list the main facts of the thinker's life. Martin (Mordechai) Buber (February 8, 1878-June 13, 1965) was born in Vienna in the family of a banker who belonged to the Hasidic movement. My father knew Hebrew, read the Bible, the Talmud, but was also well acquainted with the works of world classics. The upbringing was also carried out by the grandfather and grandmother, who instilled a love for religious books, literature, and poetry. Ulrad, typical for believing families, was observed in the family. Spent several years at school. In his youth, he thought of becoming a writer, and his first work, "The Drama of Life", was written by him at the age of 16.
M. Buber first entered the University of Vienna, and then to Berlin, where V. Dilthey and G. Simmel taught then, continued his education in Leipzig and Zurich. He takes courses in psychiatry to get an idea of a person in all his aspects, both in norm and in pathology. Shows considerable interest in the ideas of mysticism, studies the philosophy of Eastern and Christian mystics of the Renaissance. The topic of Buber's doctoral dissertation was devoted to the study of the teachings of German mystics, primarily two famous mystics of the Middle Ages: Meister Eckhart (1260–1327) and Jacob Boehme (1575–1624).
The Oxford historian of religious philosophy of the 20th century, John Macquarie, describes in this connection the formation of Buber's thought (referring to an article by Buber himself from the collection Pointing the Way), I give a free translation: “At first, he was attracted by the type of mysticism in which the Infinite absorbs the finite soul believer. These moments occur from time to time, preparing the soul for new, higher levels. But soon he became disillusioned with mysticism, where there is a loss of the personal beginning, and begins to perceive it as an escape from Everyday life. In his opinion, such a mystic "turns away from his human existence, from where he was placed, where he ended up due to conception and birth in order to live his unique life." However, Buber believes that it was necessary for him to go through this mystical phase in order to reach his own position, which is to frankly accept the personal existence for which man is intended, to live in dialogue, face to face with what he is. ahead.
Buber was also influenced by Christianity, though experienced through the prism of the ideas of Albert Schweitzer. Buber studies the gospel biography of Christ, New Testament. He views Jesus not as a Christian, but as a Jewish thinker. This is how Buber conceived the idea of the need to establish a dialogue between Judaism and Christianity, which he will further develop in his work “Two Modes of Faith”. In it, he distinguishes two main forms of religious faith. The first of them is characterized by the Jewish thinker as "I trust", "I entrust", the second - "I believe that". An example of the first is the faith that existed in the early period of Judaism, the second found its expression in early Christianity. For the first image of faith, Buber uses the Hebrew word "emuna" and emphasizes "trust". The second type of faith is denoted by the Greek "pistis" with an emphasis on "faith", although both of these biblical words mean both "faith" and "trust". The first type of faith is achieved when a person trusts God with all his being and is faithful to him in all his fullness. "Pistis" is understood as a call "to believe that the man crucified in Jerusalem is their Savior."
It should be noted that Buber did not and could not remain away from political discussions and movements, and in this he resembles his Indian contemporary, M. Gandhi: “A person striving for truth cannot withdraw from life in all its manifestations. That is why my commitment to religion led me into politics; without the slightest hesitation and with complete humility, I can say that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics simply do not know what religion is. Buber becomes an active figure in the Zionist movement, is the editor of the Zionist magazine Mir, which set itself the task of reviving the intellectual and cultural traditions of the Jewish people. He sympathizes with socialism and even writes the work "Three theses of religious socialism." With regard to Arab-Israeli relations, Buber adhered to moderate positions, considering it necessary to create a binational state. With the advent of Nazism, he was forced to emigrate to Switzerland. From this period, an interesting testimony of Nikolai Berdyaev has been preserved: “... I am now in Vichy. My wife and her sister and I are being treated here… Before Vichy I was in Pontigny for a decade dedicated to asceticism. It could have been only four days instead of ten. It was pretty interesting. It was especially interesting for me to meet Bonaluti ... and Martin Buber. Martin Buber is a wonderful Jewish religious thinker, mystic, and a man of extraordinary kindness. He, too, was expelled from the university in Germany as a Jew, he was forbidden to make any public appearances. I compared this with the fact that I was expelled from my homeland and that the Orthodox constantly suspect me of heresy ... ”In 1938, M. Buber and his wife, following their daughter and son-in-law, left Switzerland and settled in Palestine, where they actively participated in the construction of a new state.
In February 1958, Martin Buber celebrated his 80th birthday. His life was now peaceful. Every afternoon, he and his granddaughter Barbara went to the Wailing Wall. They entered a small park, sat down on a bench, ancient olive trees created a coolness here. The granddaughter tried to protect her grandfather from the flow of those who wanted to talk with him. But Buber said: "They are looking for me, and I must meet them." He loved to talk to young people. Once, in his youth, he was asked what he would prefer - books or people. The young man replied that he would choose books. Now he was more drawn to people, to communicate with them. He loved to talk and just as willingly listened to those with whom he spoke. Sh.Y. Agnon, a writer who had a wonderful feeling for people, wrote in his diary: “The late Aaron Eliasberg, who had been friends with Buber since his youth, said to me: Have you met another such person who, like Buber, is ready to continue a conversation with inexhaustible energy? He told me that Buber was able to sit all night long with friends or opponents and discuss spiritual matters with them, and in the morning and afternoon, as if nothing had happened, to do his job, while the rest either slept like the dead, or moved somnambulistically in space. … Yes, Buber was a rare interlocutor. I am afraid that in the new generation you will not find an interlocutor like Buber. An interlocutor who knows how to speak and who knows how to listen.
So let us now let Buber himself speak. We will consider his work "I and You".
Interestingly, even when we begin to think about this work, we fall into the trap of Buber's paradox. Before that, while reading the book, I talked with Martin Buber, heard him, did not analyze, but stood before. Now I have to talk about Martin Buber, about his thoughts, objectifying them - and something goes away ...
Not to mention that we will not be able to recreate that poetic trance that Buber induces on the reader with his repeated formulas over and over again, as if calling us to something: “I and you”, “I”, “YOU”, and, again, and again "Me and you", "I", "I", "You" ...
So, as the reader has already understood, Buber, describing the structure of reality, distinguishes two main relations: I and You, I and It (she, they). The relationship “I and You” is a conversation (note that not only a person can participate in a conversation, but also an object - for example, a spot of light, and the Transcendent - God). The "I and It" relationship is something else: possession, experience, history- but not meeting.
Between I and You there is nothing intermediary - memory, imagination, some special activity of consciousness on the analysis of perception - You are revealed in pure contemplation. The I-It relationship can be mediated.
It is easier for us to be in the relationship "I and It" - they are predictable, here we ourselves control the situation, we own, so to speak, space and time. The relationship "I and You" has no duration, it is tension of the present. Moreover, in "I-Thou" there is nothing but You...
What kind of experience does a person get from You?
None. For You are not revealed in experience.
What then does a person know about You?
Only everything. For he no longer learns anything about him individually.
The I-Thou relationship is a relationship mutual influence(here is an obvious parallel with non-classical science): not only do I teach Bible college students, but they teach me. There is no place here for the perception of the other as an object. In a sense, these relationships can be called love, and the opposite of them will not be hatred (hatred, according to Buber, is the inability to see You in integrity), but indifference ...
Historically, Buber shows, the I-Thou relationship precedes everything else (as it does in primitive societies and in the infant). Although one can argue about social psychology (here I recall B.F. Porshnev, who argued that the division into “us and them”, alas, is primary for society), The I-Thou relationship turns out to be incredibly important for the development of the human personality.. I become and know that I am I only in dialogue with You. Moreover, for culture and creativity, it is precisely this “I-Thou” relationship that is primary, when something is revealed in contemplation, and creativity itself is the process of translating the image into the world of It.
Buber warns how easy it is to replace all communication with You, by which he means, including the life of the Spirit, from where everything is drawn, to “ gaining experience”: “Having lost the desire and ability for lively communication, they became experienced and knowledgeable: they concluded the personality in history, and the speech of the personality was enclosed in libraries; enforcement of the law or its violation - it doesn’t matter what exactly - they codified ... ”Buber believes (and this, one might say, is his answer to Porshnev) that social institutions immerse us in the world of It, or, as Marxists would say, contribute to alienation . And it is in the world of It that evil and nightmare are possible.
But on the basis of these dyads of relationships, Buber also talks about freedom- freedom of man and society, culture. From his point of view, causality reigns in the world of It (it doesn't matter which one - acting or target), while freedom remains in the world of You. It seems that here he is talking about the freedom of the Spirit, about Standing before the Face, and Buber himself would hardly have condemned us for a quote from the Gospel of John: “The Spirit breathes where it wants, and you hear its voice, but you don’t know where it comes from and where it goes : so it is with everyone born of the Spirit ”(John 3:8) - however, Buber himself prefers, in accordance with the cabalistic tradition, to talk about the sparks that a person must endure from such a meeting.
Generations of people put together make up epochs, each of which is distinguished by the originality of its culture. Here, too, Buber believes that the initial impetus for such a large culture comes from the meeting with the Thou, or, to be more precise, it is the voice of the Thou that calls culture out of non-existence.
Buber leads an imaginary discussion with an opponent whether it is possible to build a state, economy, culture, bypassing the world of It. Buber, if we understand his thought correctly, insists that there can be a person who serves the Spirit, serves You, and dares to meet people precisely as bearers of You - although he understands the risk that this can destroy his work. So Buber dreams of transformation of the state and the economy - through specific individuals.
But will I always remain I? The philosopher comes to the conclusion (however, does it come, or was it revealed to him?), that a person can live as “ worthy of special living for experience and use. In this case, in its isolation from others, You, dealing only with It, states Buber, I separates itself from being. It's even worse when I try to arrange a meeting not with You, but with myself. This is the end of life.
Buber says many beautiful words about Socrates, who managed to maintain a relationship with Thou in the form of his daimon, about Goethe, who was on Thou with nature. And this is what he says, being a Jew, about the relationship of Jesus with the Father: “And immediately from the realm of an unconditional relationship we bring here an image: how strong, up to overpowering, the saying of Jesus I, and how competent, right down to the self-evident! For this is the Self of an unconditional relationship, in which man calls his Thou the Father in such a way that he himself is only the Son, and no one else but the Son. Whenever he says I, he can mean only the I of the sacred base word which rises to the realm of the unqualified. If separateness touches him, the connection is stronger; and only from it does he speak to others. In vain do you seek to limit this I by reducing it to the one possessing power in itself, or to limit this You by reducing it to the dwelling in us and again deprive of reality the Real, present relation: I and You remain, everyone can say "You" - and there is then I, everyone can say "Father" - and there is then the Son, the reality remains. Buber is telling his listeners, for a moment, put aside your theological ideas about who Jesus is by nature, and focus more on who He is in relationship. He is the Son, and this is so because His relationship with the Father is a relationship with You. What prevents you from turning to God like that?
In the third part of his work, Buber speaks of just this latter, of turning to God. From his point of view, any genuine appeal to You leads to Him. A person may even consider him an atheist, but if his life is directed towards You, this is already a conversion. Buber insists that such a meeting does not require any special mystical experience, going beyond the present. He refuses to give his prescriptions except for one thing: the only thing that matters is complete acceptance presence as real. "Truly," says Buber, "there is no search for God, for there is nothing in which it would be impossible to find Him." True, a little further on he also speaks of special "servants" - prayer and sacrifice. In general, what was said about love is even more appropriate here: not only do we need God, but God also needs us, this is a mutual relationship, and not a one-sided dependence, as it was customary to emphasize in the writings of that time, and not immersion-dissolution, as one might conclude, without reasoning reading the works of mystics (Buber here slightly reproaches the Buddha, who knew the path of You, but did not teach it). And we, like Simeon New Theologian(Yes, yes, Buber also quotes him), from the depths of our true loneliness (genuine then, if it is not closed on itself), we seek this Presence, we seek this Revelation, we seek this meeting.
We have tried only briefly and briefly to highlight the main ideas that M. Buber expresses in his surprisingly rich work “I and You”. If we remember objectification, a process that nevertheless misses a lot from the primary experience-revelation, we can only guess how complete his religious life must have been, which made it possible to write this work.
With his philosophy of dialogue, M. Buber influenced both subsequent philosophy, and psychology, and the self-consciousness of Judaism and Christianity. But it is unlikely that he himself would like us to remember him only as a great philosopher, a worker of science. Martin Buber was once asked how he felt about Freud's statement that the meaning of life is work and love. Buber chuckled and said that it was a good statement, but he would have supplemented it: work, love, faith and humor. I would like to join this.
M. Buber. Hasidic traditions. Email ed.
See other M. Samkov, priest. Ideology and translation of the Bible. Translation by Buber-Rosenzweig
http://www.bogoslov.ru/text/2430442.html
Brief retelling By: Mark Kellner. The life and work of Martin Buber. http://callofzion.ru/pages.php?id=336
John Macquarrie. Twentieth Century Religious Thought. SCM Press, 1981 - p. 195-196
It should be noted how brilliantly this term is found by the translator V.V. Rynkevich
M. Gandhi, J. Homer. Wisdom of Gandhi. Thoughts and sayings. Email ed.
Given in the article by M. Kellner, see above
Memoirs of the wonderful Shmuel Y. Agnon http://www.berkovich-zametki.com/2010/Zametki/Nomer9/Kopelman1.php
For an analysis of the literary predecessors and contemporaries of the philosophy of dialogue, see the wonderful comments of V.V. Rynkevich in the book by M. Buber. Two types of faith. M., 1995 - pp.433-448
B.F. Porshnev. Social Psychology and history. M., 1979
This is confirmed by the data of the school of object relations in modern psychoanalysis by D. Winnicott and W.R.D. Fairbairn See others, e.g. G. Guntrip. schizoid phenomena, object relations and self.
