"To Man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold attitude...in accordance with the twofold nature of the primary words which he speaks. The primary words are not isolated but combined words. The one primary word is the combination I-Thou. The other primary word is the combination I-it. The I of the primary word I-Thou is...different...from that of the primary word I-it.
"Primary words do not signify things, but they intimate relations.Primary words do not describe something that might exist independently of them, but being spoken they bring about existence...If Thou is said, the I of the combination I-Thou is said along with it...There is no I taken in itself, but only the I of the primary word I-Thou or I-it.
"The primary word I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole
being.The pri-
mary word I-it can never be spoken with the whole being."
(I and Thou, p. 3)
"If I face a human being as my Thou and say the primary word I-Thou to him, he is not a thing among things, and does not consist of things. Thus human being is not He or She, bounded from very other He or She, a specific point in space and time within the next of the world; nor is he a nature able to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. But with no neighbour, and whole in himself, he is Thou and fills the heavens. his does not mean that nothing exists except himself. But all else lives in his light...I do not experience the man to whom I say Thou. But I take my stand in relation to him, in the sanctity of the primary word. Only when I step out of it do I experience him once more.
In the act of experience Thou is far away." (I and
Thou, p. 8)
B) All Living is Meeting
"The primary word I-Thou can be spoken only with the whole being. Concen- tration and fusion into the whole being can never take place through my agency, nor can it ever take place without me.I become through my relation to the Thou; as I become I, I say Thou.
All real living is meeting." (I and Thou, p. 11)
"But what does it mean to be 'aware' of a man in the exact sense in which I use the word? To be aware of a thing or a being means, in quite general terms, to experience it as a whole and yet at the same time without reduction or abstraction, in all its concreteness...Such an awareness is impossible, however, if and so long as the other is the separated object of my contemplation or even observation.... [Such an awareness] is only possible when I step into an elemental relation with the other, that is, when he becomes present to me....An effort is being made today radically to destroy the mystery between man and man. The personal life, the ever near mystery, once the source of the stillest enthusiasm, is leveled down." ("Elements of the Interhuman," in The Knowledge of Man, p. 80-81)
"So long as love is "blind," that is, so long as it does not see a whole being, it is not truly under the sway of the primary word of relation. Hate is by nature blind. Only a part of a being can be hated. He who sees a whole being and is compelled to reject it is no longer in the kingdom of hate, but is in that of human restriction of the power to say "Thou." He finds himself unable to say the primary word to the other human being confronting him. This word ["Thou"] consistently involves an affirmation of the being addressed. He [who hates] is therefore compelled to reject either the other or himself...
"Yet the man who straightforwardly hates is nearer to
relation than the man without hate and love." (I and Thou, p. 16)
"Genuine conversation, and therefore every actual fulfilment
of relation between men, means acceptance of otherness. When two men inform
one another of their basically different views about an object, each aiming
to convince the other of the rightness of his own way of looking at the
matter, everything depends so far as human life is concerned on whether
each thinks of the other as the one he is, whether each, that is, with
all his desire to influence the other, nevertheless unreservedly accepts
and confirms him in his being this man and in his being made in
this
particular way. The strictness and depth of human individuation, the elemental
otherness of the other, is then not merely noted as the necessary starting
point, but is affirmed from the one being to the other. The desire to influence
the other then does not mean the effort to change the other, to inject
one's own 'rightness' into him; but it means the effort to let that which
is recognized as right, as just, as true (and for that very reason must
also be established there, in the substance of the other) through one's
influence take seed and grow in the form suited to individuation. Opposed
to this effort is the lust to make use of men by which the manipulator
of 'propaganda' and 'suggestion' is possessed, in his relation to men remaining
as in a relation to things, to things, moreover, with which he will never
enter into relation, which he is indeed eager to rob of their distance
and independence." ("Distance and Relation," in The Knowledge of Man,
p. 69)
C) The Lie
"There are no devout men left,
fidelity has vanished from mankind.
All they do is lie to one another,
flattering lips, talk from a double heart...
those who say, 'In our tongue lies our strength,
our lips have the advantage;
who can master us?'" (from Psalm 12)
"The two basic qualities, on which the common life of humans rests, well- wishing or the good will--that is, the readiness to fulfil for the other what he may expect of me in our relationship with one another--and loyalty or reliability--that is, a responsible accord between my actions and my explicit mind--have gone. They have disappeared so completely that the basis of the common life of humans has been removed. The lie has taken the place, as a form of life, of human truth, that is of the undivided seriousness of the human person with himself and all his manifestations."(Martin Buber, Good and Evil, p. 9)
"Where semblance [or imitation] originates from the lie and is permeated by it, the interhuman is threatened in its very existence. It is not that someone utters a lie, falsifies some account. The lie I mean does not take place in relation to particular facts, but in relation to existence itself, and it attacks interhuman existence as such. There are times when a man, to satisfy some stale conceit, forfeits the great chance of a true happening between I and Thou...Whatever the meaning of the word 'truth may be in other realms, in the interhuman realm it means that men communicate themselves to one another as what they are. It does not depend on saying to the other everything that occurs to him...but on his granting to the man to whom he communicates himself a share in his being. ("Elements of the Interhuman," in The Knowledge of Man, p. 77).
D) The Saving Reality of Guilt
"Existential guilt occurs when someone injures an order of the human world whose foundations he or she knows and recognizes as those of his or her own existence and of all common human existence."(Martin Buber, "Guilt and Guilt Feelings," in The Knowledge of Man, p. 127)
"The evil do not truly exist, and their 'end' brings about only this change, that they now inescapably experience their non-existence, the suspicion of which they had again and again succeeded in dispelling. Their life was 'set in slippery places'; it was so arranged as to slide into the knowledge of their own nothingness; and when this finally happens, 'in a moment,' the great terror falls upon them and they are consumed with terror. Their life has been a shadow structure in a dream of G-d's. G-d awakes, shakes off the dream, and disdainfully watches the dissolving shadow image."(Martin Buber, Good and Evil, p. 40.)
"It is the crucial hour of humans of which we speak. For, to use Pascal's language, the greatness of humans is bound up with their misery. Humans are those beings who are capable of becoming guilty and are capable of illuminating their guilt. (Martin Buber, "Guilt and Guilt Feelings," in The Knowledge of Man, 146).