David Beckwith shared Buddhism - Path To Peaces photo. Options for this story Me and you, not me and you as an it... The primary word I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being. The primary word I-It can never be spoken with the whole being. The life of human beings is not passed in the sphere of transitive verbs alone. It does not exist in virtue of activities alone which have some thing for their object. I perceive something. I am sensible of something. I imagine something. I will something. I feel something. I think something. The life of human beings does not consist of all this and the like alone. This and the like together establish the realm of It. But the realm of Thou has a different basis. When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing for his object. For where there is a thing there is another thing. Every It is bounded by others; It exists only through being bounded by others. But when Thou is spoken, there is no thing. Thou has no bounds. When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing; he has indeed nothing. But he takes his stand in relation. It is said that man experiences his world. What does that mean? travels over the surface of things and experiences them. He extracts knowledge about their constitution from them: he wins an experience from them. He experiences what belongs to the things. But the world is not presented to man by experiences alone. These present him only with a world composed of It and He and She and It again. . . . As experience, the world belongs to the primary word I-It. The primary word I-Thou establishes the world of relation. ~Martin Buber, I and Thou
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 13:42:44 +0000