The World of It:
Our culture has, more than any other, abdicated
before the world of It. This abdication makes
impossible a life in the spirit since spirit is a response of man to his Thou. The evil which results
takes the form of individual life in which institutions and feelings are separate provinces and of
community life in which the state and economy are cut off from the spirit, the will to enter
relation. In both cases I-It is not evil in itself but only when it is allowed to have mastery and to
shut out all relation. Neither universal causality nor destiny prevent a man from being free if he is
able to alternate between I-It and I-Thou. But without the ability to enter relation and cursed with
the arbitrary self-will and belief in fate that particularly mark modern man, the individual and the
community become sick, and the I of the true person is replaced by the empty I of individuality.
In the history of both the individual and the
human race, writes Buber, the proper alternation
between I-It and I-Thou is disturbed by a progressive augmentation of the world of It. Each
culture tends to take over the world of It from its predecessors or contemporaries. Hence in
general the world of objects is more extensive in successive cultures. As a result, there is a
progressive development from generation to generation of the individual’s ability to use and
experience. For the most part this development is an obstacle to life lived in the spirit, for it comes
about in the main ‘through the decrease of man’s power to enter into relation.’ (I
and Thou, op.
cit., p. 37ff.)
Spirit is not in the I but between I and Thou.
To respond to the Thou man must enter into the
relation with his whole being, but ‘the stronger the response the more strongly does it bind up
the
Thou and banish it to be an object.’ Only silence before the Thou leaves it free and unmanifest.
But man’s greatness lies in the response which binds Thou into the world of It, for it is through
this response that knowledge, work, image, and symbol are produced. All of these Thou’s which
have been changed into It’s have it in their nature to change back again into presentness. But
this
fulfillment of their nature is thwarted by the man who has come to terms with the world of It.
Instead of freeing, he suppresses; instead of looking, he observes; instead of accepting, he turns
to account. (Ibid., p.39 f.)
Buber illustrates this statement from the realms
of knowledge, art, and action. In knowledge the
thing which is seen is exclusively present and exists in itself. Only afterwards is it related to other
events or expressed as a general law, i.e. turned into an It so it can enter the structure of
knowledge. ‘He who frees it from that, and looks on it again in the present moment, fulfills the
nature of the act of knowledge to be real and effective between men.’ But it can be left
as It,
experienced, used, and appropriated to ‘find one’s bearings’ in the world. (Ibid.,
p. 40 f.)
‘So too in art; form is disclosed to the
artist as he looks at what is over against him. He banishes
it to be a "structure".’ The nature of this ‘structure’ is to be freed for
a timeless moment by the
meeting with the man who lifts the ban and clasps the form. But a man may simply experience
art: see it as qualities, analyse how it is made, and place it in the scheme of things. Scientific and
aesthetic understanding are not necessary in themselves. They are necessary in order that man
‘may do his work with precision and plunge it in the truth of relation, which is above the
understanding and gathers it up in itself.’ (Ibid., p. 41 f.)
Finally, in pure effective action without arbitrary
self-will man responds to the Thou with his life,
and this life is teaching. It ‘may have fulfilled the law or broken it; both are continually necessary,
that spirit may not die on earth.’ The life of such a person teaches those who follow how life
is to
be lived in the spirit, face to face with the Thou. But they may decline the meeting and instead pin
the life down with information as an It, an object among objects. (Ibid., p. 42.)
The man who has come to terms with It has divided
his life into two separated provinces: one of
institutions -- It -- and one of feelings -- I.
Institutions are ‘outside,’ where
all sorts of aims are pursued, where a man works, negotiates,
bears influence, undertakes, concurs, organizes, conducts business, officiates, preaches....
Feelings are ‘within,’ where life is lived and man recovers from institutions. Here the
spectrum of
the emotions dances before the interested glance. (Ibid., p. 43.)
Neither institutions nor feelings know man or
have access to real life. Institutions know only the
specimen; feelings know only the ‘object.’ That institutions yield no public life is realized
by many
with increasing distress and is the starting- point of the seeking need of the age. But few realize
that feelings yield no personal life, for feelings seem to be the most personal life of all. Modern
man has learned to be wholly concerned with his own feelings, and even despair at their unreality
will not instruct him in a better way -- ‘for despair is also an interesting feeling.’ (I
and Thou, op.
cit., p. 44 f.)
The solution to this lack of real public and
personal life is not freedom of feeling, writes Buber.
True community arises through people taking their stand in living mutual relation with a living
Centre and only then through being in living mutual relation with each other. Community cannot
be set up as a goal and directly attained, but can only result from a group of people being united
around a common goal, their relation to the Eternal Thou. Similarly, true marriage arises through
each partner’s revealing the Thou to the other. The erotic literature of the age which is so
exclusively concerned with one person’s enjoyment of another and the pseudo- psychoanalytical
thinking which looks for the solution to the problem of marriage through simply freeing
‘inhibitions’ both ignore the vital importance of the Thou which must be received in true
presentness if human life, either public or personal, is to exist. (Ibid., p. 45 f.)
In communal life as in the individual it is
not I-It but its mastery and predominance which are evil.
Communal life cannot dispense with the world of It any more than man himself.
Man’s will to profit and to be powerful
have their natural and proper effect so long as they are
linked with, and upheld by, his will to enter into relation. There is no evil impulse till the impulse
has been separated from the being; the impulse which is bound up with, and defined by, the being
is the living stuff of communal life, that which is detached is its disintegration. Economics, the
abode of the will to profit, and State, the abode of the will to be powerful, share in life as long
as
they share in the spirit. (Ibid., p. 48)
Man’s will to profit and to be powerful
are impulses which can be given direction by I-Thou in the
life of the individual and of the community. I-Thou is not only a direction, it is the direction;
for it
is itself the ultimate meaning and intrinsic value, an end not reached by any means, but directly
present. I- Thou is the foundation underlying I-It, the spark of life within it, the spirit hovering
over
it.
What matters is not that the organization of
the state be freer and economics more equitable,
though these things are desirable, but that the spirit which says Thou remain by life and reality. To
parcel out community life into separate realms one of which is spiritual life ‘would mean to give
up once and for all to tyranny the provinces that are sunk in the world of It, and to rob the
spirit
completely of reality. For the spirit is never independently effective in life in itself alone, but
in
relation to the world.’ (Ibid., p. 50.) Thus what is good is not pure spirit, any more
than what is
evil is matter. Good is the interpenetration of spirit into life, and evil is spirit separated from
life,
life untransformed by spirit.
‘Causality has an unlimited reign in the
world of It’ and is ‘of fundamental importance for the
scientific ordering of nature.’ But causality does not weigh heavily on man, who can continually
leave the world of It for the world of relation. In relation I and Thou freely confront each other in
mutual effect, unconnected with causality. Thus it is in relation that true decision takes place.
Only he who knows relation and knows about the
presence of the Thou is capable of decision.
He who decides is free, for he has approached the Face.... Two alternatives are set side by side -
- the other, the vain idea and the one, the charge laid on me. But now realization begins in me.
For it is not decision to do the one and leave the other a lifeless mass, deposited layer upon layer
as dross in my soul. But he alone who directs the whole strength of the alternative into the doing
of the charge, who lets the abundant passion of what is rejected invade the growth to reality of
what is chosen - - he alone who ‘serves God with the evil impulse’ makes decision, decides
the
event.... If there were a devil it would not be one who decided against God, but one who, in
eternity, came to no decision. (Ibid., p. 51 f.)
Direction alone is not enough. To be fulfilled
it must be accompanied by all of one’s power. If
power of impulse is regarded as an evil to be suppressed, then it will accumulate in the soul and
turn negative and will frustrate the very fulfillment that direction and the conscious self desire.
But if the passion of the temptation is brought into the service of responsibility, then what
otherwise appears a mere duty or an external action is transfigured and made radiant by the
intention which enters into it.
To use the evil impulse to serve the good is
to redeem evil, to bring it into the sanctuary of the
good. It is this which is done by the man whose life swings between Thou and It, and it is this
which reveals to him the meaning and character of life. ‘There, on the threshold, the response,
the spirit, is kindled ever anew within him; here, in an unholy and needy country, this spark is to
be proved.’ (Ibid., p. 53.) Thus man’s very freedom to do evil enables him to redeem
evil. What
is more, it enables him to serve the good not as a cog in a machine but as a free and creative
being. Man’s creativity is the energy which is given to him to form and to direct, and the real
product of this creativity is not a novel or a work of art, but a life lived in relation, a life in
which It
is increasingly interpenetrated by Thou.
We make freedom real to ourselves, says Buber,
by forgetting all that is caused and making
decision out of the depths. When we do this, destiny confronts us as the counterpart of our
freedom. It is no longer our boundary but our fulfillment. ‘In times of healthy life trust streams
from men of the spirit to all people.’ But in times of sickness the world of It overpowers the
man
who has come to terms with it, and causality becomes ‘an oppressive, stifling fate.’ Every
great
culture rests on an original response, and it is this response, renewed by succeeding generations,
which creates for man a special way of regarding the cosmos, which enables him to feel at home
in the world. But when this living and continually renewed relational event is no longer the centre
of a culture, then that culture hardens into a world of It. Men become laden with the burden of
‘fate that does not know spirit’ until the desire for salvation is satisfied by a new event
of
meeting. The history of cultures is not a meaningless cycle but a spiral ascent to the point ‘where
there is no advance or retreat, but only utterly new reversal -- the break-through.’ (l and
Thou,
op. cit., p. 56. Except here, Smith changes ‘reversal’ to ‘turning’ in the
2nd edition.)
Thus there is a limit to the evil which man
can bring on himself, a limit to the overrunning mastery
of the world of It. Smith’s translation of Buber’s ‘Umkehr’ as ‘reversal’
does not adequately
convey the idea of the Hebrew teshuvah, man’s wholehearted turning to God, and it is in
this
sense that Buber has used ‘Umkehr’ in earlier works (‘Die Erneuerung des Judentums,’
‘Zwiefache Zukunft.’ Der Geist des Orients und das Judentum,’ and Gemeinschaft)
and
continues to use it in later ones. It is not merely that man arrives at the last pitch of desperation,
the place where he can no longer help himself. When he arrives there he himself performs the
one great act which he can perform, the act which calls forth God’s grace and establishes new
relation. At the very point when man has completely given over his life to the domination of the
lifeless mechanism of world process, he can go forth with his whole being to encounter the Thou.
The one thing that can prevent this turning,
says Buber, is the belief in fate. It is this belief which
threatens to engulf our modern world as a result of the quasi-biological and quasi- historical
thought of the age. Survival of the fittest, the law of instincts and habits, social process, dialectical
materialism, cultural cycles --all work together to form a more tenacious and oppressive belief in
fate than has ever before existed, a fate which leaves man no possibility of liberation but only
rebellious or submissive slavery. Even the modern concepts of teleological development and
organic growth are at base possession by process -- ‘the abdication of man before the exuberant
world of It.’
All
consideration in terms of process is merely an ordering of pure ‘having become,’ of
the separated world- event, of objectivity as though it were history; the presence of the
Thou, the becoming out of solid connexion, is inaccessible to it. (I and Thou, op. cit.,
p.57 f.)
The free man is he who wills without arbitrary
self-will. He knows he must go out to meet his
destiny with his whole being, and he sacrifices ‘his puny, unfree will, that is controlled by
things
and instincts, to his grand will, which quits defined for destined being.’
Then
he intervenes no more, but at the same time he does not let things merely happen.
He listens to what is emerging from himself, to the course of being in the world; not in
order to be supported by it, but in order to bring it to reality as it desires, in its need of
him, to be brought.... The free man has no purpose here and means there, which he
fetches for his purpose: he has only the one thing, his repeated decision to approach his
destiny. (Ibid., p. 59 f.)
In the ‘free man’ of I and Thou
we meet once again the ‘non- action’ of the Tao and the
kavanah, or consecrated action, of the Hasid.
In contrast to the free man stands the self-willed
man who, according to Buber, neither believes
nor meets. He does not know connection but only the outside world and his desire to use it. He
has no destiny, for he is defined by things and instincts which he fulfills with arbitrary self-will.
Incapable of sacrifice, he continually intervenes to ‘let things happen.’ His world is ‘a
mediated
world cluttered with purposes.’ His life never attains to a meaning, for it is composed of means
which are without significance in themselves. Only I-Thou gives meaning to the world of It, for I-
Thou is an end which is not reached in time but is there from the start, originating and carrying-
through. The free man’s will and the attainment of his goal need not be united by a means, for
in
I-Thou the means and the end are one.
When Buber speaks of the free man as free of
causation, process, and defined being, he does not
mean that the free man acts from within himself without connection with what has come to him
from the outside. On the contrary, it is only the free man who really acts in response to concrete
external events. It is only he who sees what is new and unique in each situation, whereas the
unfree man sees only its resemblance to other things. But what comes to the free man from
without is only the precondition for his action, it does not determine its nature. This is just as true
of those social and psychological conditioning influences which he has internalized in the past as
of immediate external events. To the former as to the latter, he responds freely from the depths
as a whole and conscious person. The unfree person, on the other hand, is so defined by public
opinion, social status, or his neurosis that he does not ‘respond’ spontaneously and openly
to what
meets him but only ‘reacts.’ He does not see others as real persons, unique and of value
in
themselves, but in terms of their status, their usefulness, or their similarity to other individuals
with
whom he has had relationships in the past.
‘Individuality,’ the I of I-It,
becomes conscious of itself as the subject of experiencing and using.
It makes its appearance through being differentiated from other individualities and is conscious of
itself as a particular kind of being. It is concerned with its My -- my kind, my race, my creation,
my genius. It has no reality because it has no sharing and because it appropriates unto itself.
‘Person,’ on the other hand, the I of I-Thou, makes its appearance by entering into relation
with
other persons. Through relation the person shares in a reality which neither belongs to him nor
merely lies outside him, a reality which cannot be appropriated but only shared. The more direct
his contact with the Thou, the fuller his sharing; the fuller his sharing, the more real his I. (I and
Thou, op. cit., p. 62 f.) But the I that steps out of the relational event into consciousness of
separation retains reality as a seed within it.
This
is the province of subjectivity in which the I is aware with a single awareness of its
solidarity of connexion and of its separation. . . . Here, too, is the place where the desire
is formed and heightened for ever higher, more unconditioned relation, for the full sharing
in being. In subjectivity the spiritual substance of the person matures. (Ibid., p. 63)
No man is pure person and no man pure individuality;
no man is entirely free and none, except a
psychotic, entirely unfree. But some men are so defined by person that they may be called
persons, and some are so defined by individuality that they may be called individuals. ‘True
history is decided in the field between these two poles.’ (Ibid., p. 65.)
When it is not expressed outwardly in relation,
the inborn Thou strikes inward. Then man
confronts what is over against him within himself, and not as relation or presence but as self-
contradiction, an inner Doppelgänger. The man who has surrendered to the world of outer and
inner division ‘directs the best part of his spirituality to averting or at least to veiling his
thoughts,’
for thinking would only lead him to a realization of his own inner emptiness. Through losing the
subjective self in the objective whole or through absorbing the objective whole into the subjective
self, he tries to escape the confrontation with the Thou. (Ibid., pp. 61,65-72) He hopes to make
the world so ordered and comprehensible that there is no longer a possibility of the dread meeting
which he wishes to avoid. And because he dares not meet the Thou in the casual moments of his
daily life, he builds for himself a cataclysmic reversal, a way of dread and despair. It is through
this way at last that he must go to confront the eternal Thou.
1. I
