[EN] Martin Buber - I and Thou (1966)
* I wrote this reading journal in Korean myself and translated it using ChatGPT.
While reading Martin Buber’s I and Thou, the first feeling that came to me was not that I was encountering an entirely new philosophy, but rather that I was having certain things I had already known intuitively confirmed once again. Sensations of relation that I had felt throughout life but could never clearly articulate—especially those wordless states that open before nature or animals—were organized here into philosophical language. Because of that, this book felt less like receiving unfamiliar knowledge and more like having names given to feelings that had already existed within me.
My song "In a Place Without Language (2022,Unreleased)" expressed something similar years earlier:
Looking back now, it feels as though I had already been trying to express, through music, the very relational intuition that Buber later gave philosophical form.
One of the passages that struck me most early in the book was this:
“But if I am willing, and if grace intervenes, then through my contemplation of the tree I may enter into relation with it. Then the tree ceases to be an ‘It’ and seizes me in the exclusiveness of its ‘Thou.’” (Part I, Primary Words, p.21)
At first, Buber’s thought felt strongly pantheistic. His way of speaking—of divinity revealing itself throughout the world, and of encountering the “Eternal Thou” through relationships with nature and with others—gives the impression of a God diffused through all things. Yet as I continued reading, I came to understand that it is not simple pantheism. Buber does not identify God with the world itself; rather, he speaks of transcendence made present within relationship. God is less a thing in itself than a dimension that appears when beings truly face one another.
What especially delighted me was how often the book brought back sensations I had frequently experienced during meditation. There were many times in nature when the boundaries between myself and the wind, trees, or soil seemed to soften, as though we were becoming one. It was not something first understood through logic, but something the body knew before the mind did. I had encountered scientific analyses or experiential descriptions of such states through Light on Pranayama, the Yoga Sutras, or meditation workshops I had attended, yet actually experiencing it felt like an entirely different dimension.
Another passage that deeply struck me was Buber’s discussion of art:
“When a painter gazes at what stands before him, a form (Gestalt) appears to him. He binds this form into the work. The work does not belong to the world of the gods but to the great world of humanity. And though invisible to human eyes, it is there—it only sleeps… The work longs for encounter with the human being, as in a dream. It waits for someone to release the form bound within it and embrace it for one eternal moment.” (Part II, The Human World, p.83)
This described with uncanny precision what I had recently experienced while making my third album.
Looking back, until my first and second albums I worked within relatively clear plans. I chose directions, considered themes, designed song structures, and felt that I was actively constructing the music. There was inspiration, of course, but overall I had a stronger sense that I was organizing and controlling the work. The albums felt like products of my intention and design.
But the process of making this third album arrived in a completely different way. It did not begin with a clear plan or blueprint. Since I am naturally a planner, I at least set minimal frameworks such as the number of tracks and instrumental arrangements, but the actual content had not been decided or written at all. Instead, from the beginning I felt something like revelation. It was as though I was not writing songs, but that they were writing themselves. Moments came repeatedly when ideas and melodies arrived together. Unexpected scenes, small sensations of daily life, fleeting images passing through the mind—all of them suddenly appeared as songs.
That experience cannot be sufficiently explained by simply saying I had inspiration. It felt closer to something that had already existed deep within me suddenly taking shape as music. Day or night, dawn or midday, I was more like someone trying to gently catch it and translate it into sound. Borrowing Buber’s language, I was not creating the work so much as responding to a form that had appeared before me. That is why this album felt far more vivid, precious, and marked by a difficult-to-explain necessity. They were songs that had simply come to me one day.
Buber also says that a work of art needs the human being. Even after completion, it remains asleep until someone encounters it and receives it. Reading this, I felt music must be the same. The songs I make are not complete merely by existing as files or recordings. Only when someone listens and allows them to move again within memory and emotion does the work truly come alive.
Another passage stayed with me:
“The world of Thou is not a closed world. Therefore, the one who reaches toward it with concentrated spirit will at last become conscious of freedom. If one reflects quietly, escaping from the conviction that ‘there is no freedom’ is itself the first step toward true freedom.” (Part II, The Human World, p.111)
And another:
“He knows that he must cast away the weak and unfree will ruled by material or instinctive things, and surrender himself to the great will that turns from mere necessity toward destiny. Once one has reached this realm, one no longer seeks to interfere in anything, and yet never again overlooks the simple vitality of things.” (Part II, The Human World, p.113)
And later:
“Whoever does not honor the irreducible ultimate unity will never know its meaning. It can be perceived, but not conceptually grasped. The beginning and end of this world are not within me. Yet neither are they outside me. Indeed, beginning and end are not the kind of things of which one can simply say: they exist.” (Part III, The Eternal Thou, p.175)
I was also deeply moved by the sections where Buber speaks of animals:
“The eyes of animals possess the power of a great language. Without the help of sound or gesture, by their steady gaze alone they can clearly express the mystery and anxiety within their bodies… It is the language through which nature first stammers when it is touched by spirit, before it submits to the conquering project of spirit called ‘man.’” (Part III, The Eternal Thou, p.179)
Because I live with a dog, there have been moments when I felt I was reading the world through a dog’s eyes. Such moments truly existed. The animal mode of perceiving the world—through smell, subtle signs, movement, and atmosphere—has been especially intense for me over the past year. When Buber writes of nature, animals, and nonverbal relation, I felt as though I had met someone who understood those experiences.
Another sentence that stayed with me was this:
“The one who wishes to live in the present must enter into living relation with others. Therefore only the one who enters into living relation with others can enter into responsive relation with God.” (Part III, The Eternal Thou, p.192)
It was equally fascinating to learn that Buber had deep interests in Eastern and Indian philosophy. I could sense resonances with the Upanishads and yogic thought: the emptying of the ego, the attempt to connect with something greater, the effort to perceive truths prior to language. Yet I also felt they are ultimately distinct. While some strands of Indian philosophy move toward ultimate unity, Buber preserves the relation between “I” and “Thou” to the end. He values not fusion, but the event of one facing another.
Another striking point was that while reading this book, I naturally thought of new materialism—especially Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter, which I have been reading recently. If Bennett speaks of the vitality and agency of matter itself, Buber seems to speak of the living vitality that arises between matter and myself through relation. They are not saying the same thing, but they share an intriguing refusal to see matter as dead object. Because of this, I was able to think about the relation between matter and human beings from two directions at once: a materialist perspective, and a phenomenological or relational one.
Finally, looking into Buber’s life, I was newly struck by the fact that he was a Zionist. Yet he seemed far removed from the hardline political Zionism often imagined today, and instead closer to a minority position grounded in ethics, coexistence, and mutual recognition. I also wondered whether he must have been controversial in Christian circles. Later I learned that he indeed generated much controversy, while also being deeply loved and influential.
This seems natural, since his thought does not fit neatly inside traditional doctrinal systems. Rather, it stands at the borderlines—between religion and philosophy, human and God, world and relation—and asks those questions anew.
In the end, I and Thou is a book about how to meet another person, but also about how to experience the world as something alive. For me, it will remain a book that allowed me to see in printed words things I had only vaguely known for a long time.
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