Turning to the Other. Donovan D. Johnson
das Ding an sich). Hasidic legend gave Buber one way to formulate this paradox—as myth: “the myth of I and Thou” is the myth “of the one calling out and the one being called out to, of the finite that enters into the infinite and of the infinite that requires the finite.”180 In this formulation we see Buber’s breakthrough to his great innovation, the fruit of his struggle in the months following Landauer’s death, the coming to the fore of the I-Thou relation in his thought as the foundation of his discourse, the axiom and framework of his witness.181
A second breakthrough in Buber’s months of struggle was his formulation of the duality of the primal words I-Thou and I-It, a formulation he intended to use not to build a comprehensive system but to point back to that which was overlooked, the concrete experience of his reader:
The theme that was dictated to the thinker experiencing here was not suited to being developed into a comprehensive system. It was, in fact, concerned about the great presupposition for the beginning of philosophizing and its continuation, about the duality of the primal words. It was important to indicate this duality.182
Buber, as “the thinker experiencing,” received, discovered, as an imperative theme or philosophical foundation, the axiom of the duality of I-Thou and I-It as the two primal positions of concrete human experience. It is true Buber had made an early distinction between “orienting,” a reifying stance, and “realizing,” a making present, in Daniel;183 yet now this distinction has evolved to become the foundational distinction between I-It and I-Thou. His breakthrough here was to identify the two stances as the primal word pairs I-It and I-Thou and to locate the I-Thou encounter no longer in the subject or subjectivity but in “the between.”184 Encounter was about neither subject nor object but rather about the between, the interface where subject meets subject.
The I-Thou encounter now stood out as the treasure which Buber had recovered for mankind: “Although it is the basic relationship in the life of each man with all existing being, it was barely paid attention to. It had to be pointed out; it has to be shown forth in the foundations of existence. A neglected, obscured, primal reality was to be made visible.”185 Buber makes clear that this theme, the primal reality of the concrete, relational nature of human existence, had become lost: “it was barely paid attention to,” it was “neglected” and “obscured.” In the face of this loss or forgetting, the imperative stood forth for Buber: “It had to be pointed out; it has to be shown forth in the foundations of existence; [it] was to be made visible.” That is, “The thinking, the teaching had to be determined by the task of pointing. Only what was connected with the pointing to what was to be pointed to was admissible.”186 With these last words, “Only what was connected with the pointing to what was to be pointed to was admissible,” Buber’s rigorous self-discipline as a witness/thinker/writer stands out.
Buber’s focus as a thinker and teacher, as one who was summoned to be a witness to life in the spirit and who then articulated the metaphor of pointing, sums up the nature of his life task. The metaphor of pointing conveys Buber’s overall discourse as a witness, his rhetoric as one who must use indirect communication to get his readers to see what he knows—the reality they are overlooking thanks to their cultural blinders.
In a very telling confession, Buber revealed the nature of his task as a writer from another angle. In a letter to the American philosopher Malcolm Diamond, he wrote that he does not make a rational or historical argument for relational reality, for that would lead his readers astray. Rather, he seeks to directly address his reader as Thou, to engage the reader in the reality of which he speaks: “In the final analysis, I do not appeal . . . to historical prototypes . . . but to the actual and possible life of my reader. The intention of my writings is really a wholly intimate dialogical one.”187
5. Buber’s Rhetorical Tools Applied in I and Thou—An Overview
I and Thou showcases the range of Buber’s gifts as a master rhetorician. As we have seen, Buber’s struggle with his grief during that second dark, lonely period became his struggle to bring what he had undergone in his spiritual awakening to full expression. This act of testifying was the life task to which he had been called. During the months after Landauer’s murder, the struggle to accomplish this task became inseparable from the gestation and bringing to light of his testament, I and Thou. Therefore, his struggle to find the means to express his awakening resulted in his creation of the rhetorical tools for this task and in their application in the writing of I and Thou. We now turn to consider how the task of witness that requires indirect communication and pointing became embodied in the vision and the rhetoric of I and Thou.
Using dialogical means to convey his message, Buber deftly moves among multiple voices in his discourse. Most commonly he lays down the foundations of his dialogical vision with the authoritative or vatic voice. Occasionally, a negating voice clarifies Buber’s ideas by telling what they are not. From time to time, the voice of an interlocutor breaks in, graphically marked off from the rest of the text through the use of dashes, to advance the exposition through dialogical questions and comments. A debunking voice also arises to critique modernity’s preoccupation with the It-world. At another point an ironic voice indirectly critiques the reductionistic stance of the modern It-world mentality. Throughout the text a poetic or literary voice uses metaphors and literary allusions to make a point. Finally, Buber’s personal voice sounds forth, through which he presents his own experiences of dialogical reality.
Buber provides the straightforward exposition of definitions and distinctions in the authoritative or vatic voice, such as in the laying out of the differences between the I-It stance and the I-Thou stance at the beginning of I and Thou (§§1–9). Working in short declarative sentences, he successively offers the characteristics, workings, power, and limits of each stance. As part of this exposition he uses negations, statements showing how certain ersatz perceptions and concepts are not adequate for understanding his points. For example, at the outset he defines “primal words” by using a pattern of negation and affirmation: “not . . . but . . . “ (§§1c, 2a, 2b). Occasionally, as in §10m, he uses questions to advance the exposition. And from time to time, as in §11, he uses the first-person pronoun. He also uses poetic images such as Weltnetz (“world grid,” §11b) or Himmelkreis (“firmament,” §11b) and metaphors such as “chrysalis” and “butterfly” (§22c and again in §§53c and 61l), and even negations (§11b) to reinforce the distinction between I-It and I-Thou.
In this exposition Buber plays with word roots such as gegen-, as in Gegenwart (“Presence”) and Gegenstand (“object”). In §16a, then in §17a–d, he develops the differences between the two to elaborate his opening distinction between I-Thou and I-It. At times he takes a reproachful tone to expose the illusory use of the It-world (§18a–c). He appeals to the evolution of language (§23b–c), of perceptions, such as of the moon (§23d), of concepts such as mana (§23e), and even the sense of the self (§23f). To show that I-Thou is more primal, basic, and authentic than I-It, he traces the genealogy of the distinction, first in human cultural evolution (§§24–27b), and then in the development of the human individual from prenatal existence to maturity (§§27a–28c). The exposition builds to a climax at the end of part one: there Buber presents two stark alternatives—the reader must choose between the stance that operates in the It-world and the stance that opens to the world of Thou (§29b–c). In the last words of part one, Buber uses the vocative Du, an insistently dialogical device, to reach out and touch the reader intimately, to confront the reader with the decision at hand: “And in all seriousness of truth, you: without It a human being cannot live; but whoever lives only with It is not a human being” (§30g). Kaufmann translates Buber’s du here as “listen.” He notes that Buber uncharacteristically uses this du as the idiomatic German pronoun of address to express intimacy such as that between lovers or close friends.188
Buber explicitly incorporates dialogue into the text of I and Thou by inserting the interjections of a second voice, the voice of an anonymous interlocutor—a modern “everyman”—which is introduced by a dash at the beginning of a paragraph break, followed by a reply in Buber’s voice, also set off with a dash. There are twelve such breaks in the text (§§13, 21, 25, 26, 35, 37, 39, 41, 42, 48, 50, and 57).189 Following Wood’s analysis, these interlocutor