I and Thou

by Martin Buber

Martin Buber's 1923 Ich und Du in Ronald Gregor Smith's 1937 English translation, the first in English. The world is twofold for man: the I-Thou relation of meeting and the I-It world of experience and use. Three parts, delivered as 61 short readings that follow Buber's own star-separated sections.

61 posts

Posts61

Part One, §1–5: To man the world is twofold, in…

I and Thou

Posts61

Part One, §1–5: To man the world is twofold, in…

Part One, §6–8: The man who experiences has no part…

Part One, §9: I consider a tree

Part One, §10: If I face a human being as…

Part One, §11–14: This is the eternal source of art…

Part One, §15–17: In face of the directness of the…

Part One, §18–19: In one of the three examples it…

Part One, §20–21: —You speak of love as though it…

Part One, §22 (i): In the beginning is relation

Part One, §22 (ii): This initial and long-continuing relational character of…

Part One, §22 (iii): Consciousness of the “I” is not connected…

Part One, §23–24: —That melancholy of our fate, then, arose…

Part One, §25 (i): Only brief glimpses into the context in…

Part One, §25 (ii): The primal nature of the effort to…

Part One, §26: Through the Thou a man becomes I…

Part One, §27: To man the world is twofold, in…

Part One, §28: The world of It is set in…

Part Two, §1 (i): The history of the individual and that…

Part Two, §1 (ii): It is the obstacle; for the development…

Part Two, §1 (iii): Take knowledge: being is disclosed to the…

Part Two, §2 (i): The development of the function of experiencing…

Part Two, §2–3: That institutions yield no public life is…

Part Two, §4 (i): —But is the communal life of modern…

Part Two, §4 (ii): The communal life of man can no…

Part Two, §5 (i): Causality has an unlimited reign in the…

Part Two, §5 (ii): Destiny and freedom are solemnly promised to…

Part Two, §5 (iii): Every great culture that comprehends nations rests…

Part Two, §5 (iv): The sickness of our age is like…

Part Two, §6 (i): As power over the incubus is obtained…

Part Two, §6–7: The self-willed man does not believe and…

Part Two, §8 (i): —It is understandable that the world of…

Part Two, §8 (ii): But the I that steps out of…

Part Two, §9: The stronger the I of the primary…

Part Two, §10: —But how if a man’s mission require…

Part Two, §11: —What is self-contradiction?

Part Two, §12: At times the man, shuddering at the…

Part Three, §1–2: The extended lines of relations meet in…

Part Three, §3: If we go on our way and…

Part Three, §4: Every real relation with a being or…

Part Three, §5: Man’s sense of Thou, which experiences in…

Part Three, §6: Men wish to regard a feeling (called…

Part Three, §7 (i): The same thing happens if we begin…

Part Three, §7 (ii): —But what of mysticism? Does it not…

Part Three, §7 (iii): This will, however, be opposed by the…

Part Three, §7 (iv): The Buddha, the “fulfilled” and the fulfiller…

Part Three, §7 (v): We do not know if the Buddha…

Part Three, §7 (vi): The beginning and the extinction of the…

Part Three, §8: Man’s religious situation, his being there in…

Part Three, §9 (i): An animal’s eyes have the power to…

Part Three, §9 (ii): I relate this tiny episode, which I…

Part Three, §10–11: Every real relation in the world is…

Part Three, §12–13: The spheres in which the world of…

Part Three, §14: —But is not solitude, too, a gate?…

Part Three, §15: A modern philosopher supposes that every man…

Part Three, §16: The “religious” man is spoken of as…

Part Three, §17 (i): What is the eternal, primal phenomenon, present…

Part Three, §17 (ii): Man receives, and he receives not a…

Part Three, §18 (i): The eternal Thou can by its nature…

Part Three, §18 (ii): Further, man’s thirst for continuity is unsatisfied…

Part Three, §18 (iii): God remains present to you when you…

Part Three, §18 (iv): Form is also a mixture of Thou…