Turning to the Other. Donovan D. Johnson

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      The expository voice reaches its most ironic pitch when it presents the opposing perspective as its own: one passage at the end of part one considers the realm of Thou from the point of view of a person who is fully at home in the It-world (§30e–f). For such a person, starting from the benefits and comforts of the It-world:

      Thou moments appear as strange lyric-dramatic episodes with a seductive spell, but dangerous in tearing to the extreme, loosening the proven nexus, leaving behind more questions than satisfaction, convulsing one’s sense of certainty—thus uncanny, dispensable. Why not . . . why not . . . why not . . .? . . . One simply needs to fill each moment with experiencing and using and it ceases to burn (§30e–f).

      Buber seems relentless in driving home this point of view—until the last sentence turns it on its head: “Without It a human being cannot live; but whoever lives with It alone is not human” (§30g).

      At times, Buber uses poetic metaphors to convey the spontaneous in-breaking qualities of the presence of the Thou, such as when he refers to the Presence as sunlight catching on a tree branch (§50j). He also describes the realized state of living in the Presence as a steady moon on a cloudless night (§61h). Similarly, he uses poetic imagery to sketch the figure of the atheist at his garret window lifting his heart with longing in the darkness to the unknown Thou (§59a). Other metaphors he uses include the traces of realized lives that fade to fragmentary images in the minds of their successors (§32h) and the realizing person who in the swirl of his living speech rises up to the starry heavens of the spirit (§32h). He also refers to moments of silent grounding which are intuited as the flight of a musical note in a vast cosmic musical score (§28d). He invokes our global poetic heritage when he quotes from a Hölderlin poem (§36i), alludes to a handful of Goethe’s short lyrics (§40g), refers to a version of a Chinese poem (§32f), recounts classic Hindu tales (§§38 and 50l), and discusses Dante’s Paradiso as poetry (§52h).

In this text, which is primarily a testament to the transformation of his own perspectives, from his spiritual awakening to his being brought to a steady stance in the I-Thou relation, it is no accident that Buber implicitly and at times explicitly alludes to his own experiences, experiences he explicitly presents to his readers in first-person narratives in his other writings. Thus, §36 draws heavily on Buber’s own experience of his spiritual initiation in 1904, even making extensive use of the first-person pronoun, and §60 also directly parallels his earlier account of his spiritual initiation.191 Elsewhere, Buber refers to his experience with his cat (§52a–b) and with a chunk of mica where he uses the vocative to evoke its presence (§52f).192 In addition, Wood reads Buber’s gruesome account of nightmarish night thoughts (§43) as autobiographical.193 In addition to these passages and his rejoinders to the interlocutor, mentioned above,194 there are also other, more implicit autobiographical references in I and Thou.

      For example, in one section Buber draws from his own reflections, using the first-person pronoun to conduct a thought experiment around the perception of a tree (§10). First he sketches a long series of mental actions regarding the tree from the I-It stance (§10a–f). Then he describes how the tree exists from the I-Thou stance (§10g–l, also §24d). He concludes this thought experiment with a dialogical series of questions and answers to bring home the nature of the I-Thou stance (§10m). In the next section, he extends this exposition to taking up one’s stance in relating to another human being as Thou (§11a–g).

      The most dramatic shifts of voice occur for climactic effect. As we have seen, at the end of part one the outlook of a partisan of the It-world is expressed (§30e). Here the realm of Thou can seem uncanny, even threatening to a person determined to be at home in the It-world. At the end of part two the stakes are raised, for such an It-bound person’s fate is shown to be even more terrible. In this case, such a person, introduced again as second person, as Du, “you,”—“As when you, in darkest midnight, lie tormented by a waking dream . . . and you think in the midst of your anguish . . .” (§43a, emphasis added)—is thrown into deepest soul-searching and consciously takes up the nightmare of having to make a choice between two enormous false alternatives (§43). Thus, these culminations of both part one and part two are designed to throw readers off balance. They create a sense of vertigo at the idea of the It-world, designed to nudge readers to take the risk and turn to Thou, the decision which the culmination of part three and the book as a whole call for.

The overall structure of I and Thou in itself is a mark of Buber’s rhetoric. Robert Wood makes the observation that the three parts of I and Thou into which Buber divided it fit the pattern of a symphony in three movements.195 In the classic symphony structure, the first movement establishes the motifs that run throughout the whole work. The second movement, by contrast, presents a complication and a struggle that must be worked to resolution; and the third movement takes the theme and complication given and developed in the first two movements and brings them to a new level and resolution. Similarly, I and Thou begins with Buber’s classic exposition of the differences between the I-It stance and the I-Thou stance. The second part is the agonistic movement in which Buber lays out the problem of modernity as excessively It-oriented, the struggle necessary to overcome the I-It stance, and the transformation that is achieved through the dynamic of teshuvah, turning. The third part develops the human sense of the divine, rejects ersatz approaches along the way, and concludes with a serene vision of the divine-human dialogical process.

      Buber’s rhetorical power is dazzling. Yet, rather than distracting his readers, it underscores his purpose: it displays the power and authenticity of the dialogical life, even as it invites us to participate in it.

      157. Pages 20–22, 34–37.

      158. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 703.

      159. Buber, “Interrogation of Martin Buber,” 18.

      160. Buber, “Postscript,” 137.

      161. Schaeder, Hebrew Humanism, 148.

      162. Buber, “Interrogation of Martin Buber,” 18.

      163. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 689; see page 34.

      164. Buber, “Afterword,” 214 (my translation).

      165. See Buber, “What is Common to All,” 89–109; Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 692–93, 701.

      166. Buber, “Postscript,” 127 (translation modified, emphasis mine); on Buber’s appeal to the reader’s own inner witness or attestation, see also Buber, Good and Evil, 117–18.

      167. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 701.

      168. McDonald, “Søren Kierke­gaard,” para. 11.

      169. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 701 (emphasis added).

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