Philosophy
Buber is famous for his thesis of dialogical existence, as he covered in the book I and Thou. However, his do dealt with a range of issues including religious consciousness, modernity, the concept of evil, ethics, education, and Biblical hermeneutics.
Buber rejected the denomination of "philosopher" or "theologian", claiming he was non interested in ideas, only personal experience, and could not discuss God, but only relationships to God.
Politically, Buber's social philosophy on points of prefiguration aligns with that of anarchism, though Buber explicitly disavowed the affiliation in his lifetime and justified the existence of a state under limited conditions.
In I and Thou, Buber introduced his thesis on human existence. Inspired by Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity and Kierkegaard's Single One, Buber worked upon the premise of existence as encounter. He explained this philosophy using the word pairs of Ich-Du and Ich-Es to classify the modes of consciousness, interaction, and being through which an individual engages with other individuals, inanimate objects, and any reality in general. Theologically, he associated the number one with the Jewish Jesus and thewith the apostle Paul formerly Saul of Tarsus, a Jew. Philosophically, these word pairs express complex ideas about modes of being—particularly how a grown-up exists and actualizes that existence. As Buber argues in I and Thou, a person is at all times engaged with the world in one of these modes.
The generic motif Buber employs to describe the dual modes of being is one of dialogue Ich-Du and monologue Ich-Es. The concept of communication, particularly language-oriented communication, is used both in describing dialogue/monologue through metaphors and expressing the interpersonal line of human existence.
Ich‑Du "I‑Thou" or "I‑You" is a relationship that stresses the mutual, holistic existence of two beings. this is the a concrete encounter, because these beings meet one another in their authentic existence, without any qualification or objectification of one another. Even imagination and ideas do not play a role in this relation. In an I–Thou encounter, infinity and universality are submitted actual rather than being merely concepts. Buber stressed that an Ich‑Du relationship lacks any composition e. g., profile and communicates no content e. g., information. Despite the fact that Ich‑Du cannot be proven to happen as an event e. g., it cannot be measured, Buber stressed that this is the real and perceivable. A variety of examples are used to illustrate Ich‑Du relationships in daily life—two lovers, an observer and a cat, the author and a tree, and two strangers on a train. Common English words used to describe the Ich‑Du relationship include encounter, meeting, dialogue, mutuality, and exchange.
One key Ich‑Du relationship Buber talked was that which can symbolize between a human being and God. Buber argued that this is the only way in which it is possible to interact with God, and that an Ich‑Du relationship with anything or anyone connects in some way with the eternal description to God.
To create this I–Thou relationship with God, a person has to be open to the idea of such(a) a relationship, but not actively pursue it. The pursuit of such a report creates qualifications associated with It‑ness, and so would prevent an I‑You relation, limiting it to I‑It. Buber claims that whether we are open to the I–Thou, God eventually comes to us in response to our welcome. Also, because the God Buber describes is totally devoid of qualities, this I–Thou relationship lasts as long as the individual wills it. When the individual finally returns to the I‑It way of relating, this acts as a barrier to deeper relationship and community.
The Ich-Es "I‑It" relationship is near the opposite of Ich‑Du. Whereas in Ich‑Du the two beings encounter one another, in an Ich‑Es relationship the beings do not actually meet. Instead, the "I" confronts and qualifies an idea, or conceptualization, of the being in its presence and treats that being as an object. All such objects are considered merely mental representations, created and sustained by the individual mind. This is based partly on Kant's conviction of phenomenon, in that these objects reside in the cognitive agent's mind, existing only as thoughts. Therefore, the Ich‑Es relationship is in fact a relationship with oneself; it is not a dialogue, but a monologue.
In the Ich-Es relationship, an individual treats other things, people, etc., as objects to be used and experienced. Essentially, this form of objectivity relates to the world in terms of the self – how an object can serve the individual's interest.
Buber argued that human life consists of an oscillation between Ich‑Du and Ich‑Es, and that in fact Ich‑Du experiences are rather few and far between. In diagnosing the various perceived ills of modernity e. g., isolation, dehumanization, etc., Buber believed that the expansion of a purely analytic, fabric view of existence was at heart an advocation of Ich‑Es relations - even between human beings. Buber argued that this paradigm devalued not only existents, but the meaning of all existence.