# I and Thou *By Martin Buber. Originally published in German as* Ich und Du *(Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1923). There are two English translations: Ronald Gregor Smith's (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1937; second edition with Buber's postscript, 1958) and Walter Kaufmann's (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970, with Kaufmann's prologue "I and You" and notes). For buying and lending, the English edition most likely to be on hand is Kaufmann's: the Touchstone / Simon & Schuster paperback, ISBN 0-684-71725-5 / 978-0-684-71725-8. The outline in section 5 comes from the 1923 German first edition.* > **What I actually read.** The 1923 Insel first edition is in the public domain in the United States, because works published in 1923 entered the US public domain on 1 January 2019. A scan of it is on the Internet Archive ([`ich-und-du`](https://archive.org/details/ich-und-du)): a user upload of a Google-digitized library copy with a "Patricia R. and Arthur J. Kates Collection of Religious Books" bookplate, title page "MARTIN BUBER / ICH UND DU / MCMXXIII / IM INSEL-VERLAG ZU LEIPZIG". I worked through its OCR text to get the three-part structure, the order of the sections, and the German phrases quoted below. Any English rendering of those German phrases is **my own literal translation**, not a quotation from Smith or Kaufmann. I did not read either English translation, both of which are still in copyright (see section 2), so I give no English page numbers. Page references to the 1923 printing are read off the OCR's printed page numbers and are marked "c." because they may be off by one page. Background comes from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Buber (revised May 2026), Wikipedia, publisher and library catalog records, Audible/OverDrive/Hoopla listings, and the archive pages cited in section 4. Related in this vault: the source video note [[Video Summaries/Joel is Curious/The straw man (Logical Fallacies, Part 1)]]. That same short also produced [[Book Summaries/Pirie, Madsen/How to Win Every Argument - Madsen Pirie|How to Win Every Argument]] (Madsen Pirie). Carl Rogers's *On Becoming a Person*, which the same video mentions, is next in the queue. Rogers and Buber held a recorded public dialogue in 1957 (section 4). ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | *Ich und Du* (German); in English *I and Thou*. The literal sense of the title is "I and You": *Du* is the ordinary familiar German "you". Kaufmann's prologue is titled "I and You" for that reason, but he kept *I and Thou* as the book's English title | | Author | Martin Buber (8 February 1878, Vienna – 13 June 1965, Jerusalem) | | First edition | Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1923. 137 pages (Open Library [OL20183681M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL20183681M)). The epigraph on the leaf before Part One is two lines from Goethe's *West-östlicher Divan* (Schenkenbuch): "So hab ich endlich von dir erharrt: / In allen Elementen Gottes Gegenwart" ([Zeno.org text of the poem](http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Goethe,+Johann+Wolfgang/Gedichte/West-%C3%B6stlicher+Divan/Das+Schenkenbuch/%5BSo+hab+ich+endlich+von+dir+erharrt%5D)). The scan prints the lines without naming Goethe | | Structure | Three untitled parts: "Erster Teil", "Zweiter Teil", "Dritter Teil". Each is a run of short sections separated by asterisks. In the 1923 printing Part One ends on p. 43, Part Two on p. 85, and Part Three on the last page (c. 137) | | Later German editions | Schocken Verlag, Berlin, 1936 ([OL6042280M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL6042280M)). A new edition "enlarged by an afterword" (*um ein Nachwort vermehrte Neuausgabe*), Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1958; the afterword is dated Jerusalem, October 1957, according to a [library catalog record](https://mmz.vufindnet.de/mmz/Record/a0012887/Details) (I did not see the afterword itself). Later paperbacks include Reclam (2004 with an afterword by Bernhard Casper, [OL27044590M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL27044590M); 2021, [OL36469763M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL36469763M)) and Gütersloher Verlagshaus (1997) | | English translation 1 | Ronald Gregor Smith. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1937. 119–120 pages per catalogs ([OL16653366M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL16653366M), [OL16376786M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL16376786M)). Second edition "with a postscript by the author added": New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958, 137 pages ([OL21242246M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL21242246M)), and T. & T. Clark, 1958. Reissued as a Scribner Classic (paperback 1984/1986, ISBN 0684182548, [OL7720560M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7720560M); hardcover 2000, ISBN 0743201337, [OL7926544M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7926544M)), and in Britain by Continuum (2004, ISBN 0826476937, [OL22129213M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22129213M)) and Bloomsbury Academic (2013, ISBN 9781472511461, [OL31152641M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL31152641M)) | | English translation 2 | Walter Kaufmann, "a new translation with a prologue 'I and You' and notes". New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970, 185 pages ([OL5315313M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL5315313M)). Touchstone (Simon & Schuster) paperback, 1996, 185 pages, ISBN 0684717255 ([OL13570535M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL13570535M); [WorldCat 233529266](https://search.worldcat.org/title/233529266)). Simon & Schuster's [current product page](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/I-And-Thou/Martin-Buber/9780684717258) lists the same ISBN under its Free Press imprint, dated February 1, 1971, at 160 pages. WorldCat ties ISBNs 0684100444 and 0684155753 to the same text | | Audiobook | Kaufmann translation, unabridged, read by John Lescault. Blackstone Audio, released 18 October 2011, 5 hours 18 minutes ([Audible B005WWTJB2](https://www.audible.com/pd/B005WWTJB2); Open Library lists ISBN 9781455112418, [OL46543993M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL46543993M)). Audible's search also shows a second reading by Deaver Brown (161496615X); I did not open that listing and have not checked which text it uses | | Language | German original; English translations as above. Open Library also lists French (*Je et Tu*), Spanish (*Yo y tú*), Hebrew (*Ani ṿe-atah*), Russian, Korean, Swedish and Romanian editions | | Open Library | Work [OL12337W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL12337W) ("Ich und du"; 69 editions, first published 1923 on the work record; its search index says 1922) | | Cover | [Open Library cover, 1996 Touchstone Kaufmann paperback](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/424819-L.jpg) (cover id 424819) | **Where it came up.** - Video: [The straw man (Logical Fallacies, Part 1)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F_teNsxJ6Q&t=36s), *Joel is Curious*, at **0:36**: "The philosopher Martin Buber wrote that we can meet a person as a you or we can treat them as an it." The video's line is that "a straw man argues with the it." - Requested by Video Summaries on 2026-11-04 from that episode. - Vault note: [[Video Summaries/Joel is Curious/The straw man (Logical Fallacies, Part 1)]]. That note cites the 1937 Smith translation through an Internet Archive item ([`IAndThou`](https://archive.org/details/IAndThou)). See section 2 on why I don't list that scan as a legal free copy. ## 2. Book resources **Reference and catalog pages.** Publisher: [Simon & Schuster, Kaufmann translation, ISBN 9780684717258](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/I-And-Thou/Martin-Buber/9780684717258). Open Library: [work OL12337W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL12337W), editions [1923 Insel OL20183681M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL20183681M), [1970 Kaufmann OL5315313M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL5315313M), [1996 Touchstone OL13570535M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL13570535M), [1958 Scribner Smith OL21242246M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL21242246M). Google Books: [Kaufmann/Touchstone by ISBN](https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0684717255) (an ISBN lookup link; Google's API was over quota, so I did not confirm the record id). WorldCat: [OCLC 233529266 (1996 Touchstone Kaufmann)](https://search.worldcat.org/title/233529266). HathiTrust lists the Touchstone printing ([record 101976597](https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/101976597), search-only). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: ["Martin Buber"](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/). Wikipedia: [*I and Thou*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou). **Copyright, in brief.** - **German original (1923).** Public domain **in the United States** since 1 January 2019, like every work first published in 1923. **Not** public domain in Germany, Austria, Israel or the rest of the EU: Buber died in 1965, so his works there stay protected under the life-plus-70 rule until the end of 2035 (free from 1 January 2036). This is my reading of standard copyright terms, not legal advice. - **Smith translation (1937, rev. 1958).** Treat it as **in copyright**. Smith (1913–1968, Professor of Divinity at Glasgow; [SNAC](https://snaccooperative.org/view/61731064)) died in 1968, so it is protected in the UK and EU, and the text has stayed under publisher license: T. & T. Clark, then Continuum (2004), then Bloomsbury Academic (2013), and Scribner in the US (Scribner Classics, 1986/2000). Some small US presses (Martino 2010, Hesperides 2006/2008, Must Have Books 2021, Clydesdale 2020) reprint *a* translation, which may mean they consider the 1937 US text lapsed. I could not verify its US renewal or restoration status, so I do not treat it as free. - **Kaufmann translation (1970).** In copyright (© 1970 Charles Scribner's Sons, per the Audible listing and WorldCat note). **Free (legal).** - **Internet Archive, 1923 German first edition (US public domain): [`ich-und-du`](https://archive.org/details/ich-und-du).** Full scan with PDF, EPUB and text. Legal to read in the US. Readers in Germany, the EU or Israel should treat it as still in copyright there until 2036. It is a user upload, not a library-curated item. - **English: no legal free copy found.** The Smith and Kaufmann translations are in copyright. The Internet Archive's own scans of the 1953/1958 Smith printings, the 1988 Macmillan and 1996 Touchstone Kaufmann printings, and the 2004 Continuum printing (for example [`ithou0000bube`](https://archive.org/details/ithou0000bube), [`ithoubube00bube`](https://archive.org/details/ithoubube00bube), [`ithou00bube_0`](https://archive.org/details/ithou00bube_0), [`ithou0000bube_n4n5`](https://archive.org/details/ithou0000bube_n4n5)) are all in the **printdisabled / controlled-lending** collection. I did not log in or borrow them. Two other uploads of the 1937 Smith text ([`IAndThou`](https://archive.org/details/IAndThou), "Million Books / Universal Library", and `in.ernet.dli.2015.61530`, Digital Library of India, whose own metadata says "In_copyright") are open-access scans of an in-copyright translation. I am **not** listing them as legal copies. - **Open Library borrow.** The work page shows the book as "borrowable", through the lending scans above (the default lending edition is a French *Je et Tu*). Borrowing the English text needs an Internet Archive account and an available loan. - **Libby/OverDrive.** **Audiobook, yes:** the Blackstone (Kaufmann/Lescault) recording, [OverDrive 589309](https://www.overdrive.com/media/589309). **Ebook:** the only ebook that showed up in an OverDrive catalog search is an eBookIt.com edition ([OverDrive 4984864](https://www.overdrive.com/media/4984864), creator shown as "Martin Boone's Buber"). Its translation is not identified on the listing, so I can't vouch for it. I found no library ebook of the Kaufmann or Smith translations from their main publishers. Whether your library carries any of these is a local question. - **Hoopla.** **Audiobook, yes:** *I and Thou*, Blackstone Publishing, 2011 ([Hoopla 13485710](https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/13485710)). This is presumably the same Kaufmann/Lescault recording, since the publisher and year match; I did not open the Hoopla page to confirm the narrator. No ebook of *I and Thou* came up in the Hoopla search. - **Project Gutenberg.** No Buber titles (Gutendex search for "buber" returns 0). Projekt Gutenberg-DE / Wikisource: no copy of *Ich und Du* found. **Paid.** - **Publisher.** [Simon & Schuster / Free Press paperback, Kaufmann translation, $17.99 list](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/I-And-Thou/Martin-Buber/9780684717258). - **Amazon print.** [Kaufmann paperback, ISBN 0684717255](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684717255); [Smith translation, Scribner Classics paperback, ISBN 0684182548](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684182548); [Smith translation, Scribner hardcover 2000, ISBN 0743201337](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0743201337); [Martino reprint, ISBN 1578989973](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1578989973) (which translation it reprints is not stated in the search result I saw). - **Kindle.** Yes: [*I and Thou*, Trans. Kaufmann, ASIN B0051I4YT4](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0051I4YT4) (Amazon gives a May 17, 2011 ebook date). - **Audible.** Yes: [Kaufmann translation, read by John Lescault (Blackstone, 2011; 5 h 18 min)](https://www.audible.com/pd/B005WWTJB2). - **German.** Reclam paperback, 2021 ([OL36469763M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL36469763M), ISBN 9783150141717). A Gütersloher Verlagshaus edition (1997, [OL12818095M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL12818095M)) also exists; I have not checked whether it is still in print. ## 3. Author biography **Martin (Mordechai) Buber** was born in Vienna on 8 February 1878 and died in Jerusalem on 13 June 1965 ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Buber)). According to the [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/) (Zank and Braiterman; substantive revision 12 May 2026), his parents, Carl and Elise Buber, separated when he was a small child. SEP says he was four; Wikipedia says three. He was raised by his paternal grandparents in Lemberg (now Lviv). His grandfather Solomon Buber was a scholar who produced modern editions of rabbinic midrash. Buber grew up speaking German at home and went to a Polish-language gymnasium. He later wrote that two books had "entrenched directly on" his existence as a teenager: Kant's *Prolegomena* at about fifteen and Nietzsche's *Zarathustra* at about seventeen (SEP, quoting his *Autobiographical Fragments*). He studied philosophy, art history, German literature and psychology in Vienna, Leipzig, Berlin and Zurich between 1896 and 1899, with Georg Simmel and Wilhelm Dilthey among his teachers (SEP). He completed a doctorate in Vienna in 1904. In Zurich he met Paula Winkler, a Munich-born writer (pen name Georg Munk), who became his wife and a long-term collaborator. SEP says they married in 1907; Wikipedia says she converted to Judaism that year. Around 1898 he joined the Zionist movement. Theodor Herzl made him editor of *Die Welt*, but he soon split from Herzl's political Zionism in favor of the "cultural Zionism" of Ahad Ha'am. His first literary fame came from German retellings of Hasidic tales (*Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman*, 1906; *Die Legende des Baal Schem*, 1908). SEP describes these as a close collaboration with Paula; her co-authorship was first mentioned in print by Grete Schaeder in 1972. From 1916 to 1924 he edited the monthly *Der Jude*. From 1916 the family lived in Heppenheim. *Ich und Du* (1923) is the book that made him a philosopher in the world's eyes. SEP describes it as starting out as the prolegomena to a planned five-volume work on the phenomenology of religion that he later abandoned. From 1923 to 1933 he taught at the University of Frankfurt, first as professor of Jewish philosophy and Jewish ethics (a position sponsored by the Frankfurt Jewish community), later as an honorary professor of religion (SEP). He also taught at Franz Rosenzweig's Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus. From 1925 he and Rosenzweig translated the Hebrew Bible into German (*Die Schrift*), and he finished it alone after Rosenzweig's death in 1929. He gave up his Frankfurt post in 1933, ahead of a forced dismissal as a Jew, and ran Jewish adult education in Nazi Germany until 1938. Wikipedia says he resigned "in protest", which is a slightly different emphasis. That year he moved to Jerusalem to teach social philosophy (sociology) at the Hebrew University. In Palestine and then Israel he argued, through Brit Shalom and Ihud, for Jewish–Arab cooperation and a binational state, and after 1948 for the return of Palestinian refugees. That made him, in SEP's words, part of "a loyal opposition". His later books include *Between Man and Man*, *Paths in Utopia* (1947), *Eclipse of God* (1952) and *Tales of the Hasidim*. In the 1950s he lectured widely in the United States: SEP counts more than seventy lectures there, including the 1957 William Alanson White lectures in Washington. Honors included the Goethe Prize of Hamburg (1951), the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1953) and the Erasmus Prize (1963) (SEP; Wikipedia). Wikipedia says he was nominated ten times for the Nobel Prize in Literature and seven times for the Nobel Peace Prize; I did not check the Nobel nomination archive. Paula Buber died in Venice in 1958. Buber died at home in Jerusalem's Talbiya neighborhood in 1965. Biographies: Maurice Friedman, *Martin Buber's Life and Work* (3 vols., 1981–1983) and *Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue* (1955); Paul Mendes-Flohr, *Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent* (Yale, 2019); Hans Kohn's 1930 biography; Gerhard Wehr (1968, 2010). For the book's genesis, see Rivka Horwitz, *Buber's Way to I and Thou* (1978; [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4974962W)). ## 4. Author interviews and talks Buber died in 1965, so there are no recent interviews. These archival recordings and print conversations survive. None I found is about *I and Thou* alone, but the first is the most relevant to it. - **Dialogue with Carl Rogers, 18 April 1957**, at the University of Michigan's Midwest Conference on Martin Buber in Ann Arbor, moderated by Maurice Friedman. The audio tape survives. Rob Anderson and Kenneth N. Cissna published a corrected transcript with commentary, [*The Martin Buber–Carl Rogers Dialogue: A New Transcript with Commentary* (SUNY Press, 1997)](https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-Martin-Buber-Carl-Rogers-Dialogue). They found "hundreds of errors" in the transcripts that had circulated before, starting with Rogers's own typescript. An earlier transcript is [online via J-STAGE](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/psysoc/3/4/3_1960.208/_pdf/-char/en). The two men discuss mutuality, confirmation and the limits of I–Thou in therapy. See also Cissna and Anderson, ["The 1957 Martin Buber–Carl Rogers Dialogue, as Dialogue"](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00221678940341003), *Journal of Humanistic Psychology* 34(1), 1994, which notes that Buber had refused to let his Washington lectures be filmed. The same Joel is Curious short cites Rogers, which is why *On Becoming a Person* is next in the queue. - **NDR television, *Aus erster Hand*, 25 May 1959**: Thilo Koch talks with the 81-year-old Buber in Jerusalem (35 min, German). [NDR Retro page](https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/ndr_retro/Philosoph-und-Religionsforscher-Martin-Buber-im-Gespraech,ausersterhand118.html). - **"Talk with Professor Martin Buber"**: a Kol Yisrael transcription-service interview (interviewer listed as Theodore Herzl) on "the universal religious condition of humankind", 12 min, broadcast on KPFK on 17 June 1965, four days after his death. [Pacifica Radio Archives BB5004](https://pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/bb5004/); restricted distribution. - **"Der Mensch und sein Gebild"**, lecture at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, 9 November 1954 (Bayerischer Rundfunk; about 1 h 48 min in two parts). Held in the Leo Baeck Institute audiovisual collection ([Center for Jewish History finding aid](https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/5/resources/16235)). - **Buber reading his and Rosenzweig's Bible translation**, recorded in 1958 (*Martin Buber liest aus der Heiligen Schrift Israels*, Christophorus). Lawrence Rosenwald discusses it in ["Translating as Saying"](https://ingeveb.org/articles/translating-as-saying) (*In geveb*), and Hoopla lists an album "Anthologie Deutscher Dichtung – Martin Buber liest aus der Heiligen Schrift Israels". This is his voice, though not this book. - **Print.** Buber's "Replies to My Critics" and "Autobiographical Fragments" in Schilpp and Friedman (eds.), *The Philosophy of Martin Buber* (Library of Living Philosophers, Open Court, 1967). This is the closest thing to an extended interview on his philosophy, including the "I have no doctrine… I point to something" passage SEP quotes. *Encounter: Autobiographical Fragments* (Open Court, 1972) prints the autobiographical part separately. - Not found: any recording of Buber reading from or talking specifically about *Ich und Du*. ## 5. Summary **Thesis.** The world is twofold for a human being because a human being's attitude is twofold, and that attitude is carried by two "basic words" (*Grundworte*), which are word pairs, not single words: **I–You** (*Ich-Du*) and **I–It** (*Ich-Es*). There is no "I as such", only the I of one pair or the other. **I–It** is the attitude of experiencing and using: the other is located among other things, measured, ordered and applied, and the I stands back as a subject. **I–You** is relation: it is spoken "with the whole being", it is immediate, mutual and present, and it cannot be had at will ("the You encounters me by grace", c. p. 18, my rendering). Both are necessary. Part One ends: "ohne Es kann der Mensch nicht leben. Aber wer mit ihm allein lebt, ist nicht der Mensch" ("without It a human being cannot live. But whoever lives with It alone is not a human being", p. 43, my rendering). Every particular You is bound to lapse into an It. Buber calls this "die erhabne Schwermut unsres Loses", "the sublime melancholy of our lot". The "extended lines" of all relations meet in the **eternal You**, God, who is the one You that by nature cannot become an It. **Outline (1923 Insel first edition; page numbers approximate, see the note at the top).** *Erster Teil — Part One (pp. [9]–43): the two basic words.* - The twofold world; basic words are word pairs that speak relations, not things. There is no I apart from them (opening pages). - Experience (*Erfahrung*) is "in" the experiencer, not between him and the world. The world as experience belongs to I–It; I–You establishes the world of relation. - **Three spheres of relation:** life with nature (relation "below language"), life with other people (relation open and in speech, given and received), and life with "spiritual beings" or forms of the spirit (relation without speech but language-creating). In each, "we address the eternal You" (c. pp. 12–13). - **The tree** (c. pp. 13–14): I can take it as a picture, as movement, as a specimen of a species, as an instance of law, or as numbers. It can also happen that I am "drawn into relation" with it, and then it is no longer an It. - A person met as You is "not a thing among things", not He or She (c. p. 15). **Art** comes from a form that confronts the artist and wants to become a work through him (c. p. 16). - The You comes by grace, but speaking the basic word to it is my own act. Relation is immediate: no concepts, foreknowledge or fantasy stand between I and You (c. pp. 17–19). - **Love is not a feeling**: "Gefühle werden ‚gehabt'; die Liebe geschieht" ("feelings are 'had'; love happens"). Love is "between I and You" (c. p. 22). Relation is reciprocity: "our pupils form us, our works build us up" (c. p. 23). - **The sublime melancholy**: every You must become an It (c. p. 24). - **"Im Anfang ist die Beziehung"**, "In the beginning is relation" (c. p. 25). Buber appeals to the "sentence-words" of "primitive" peoples' languages, which name whole relational situations (a Zulu word for "far away" and a seven-syllable Fuegian word, as he reports them), and to *mana* and a causality of sudden "flashes" of force (c. pp. 25–30). Two imagined objections and his replies follow (is this a primordial paradise? c. pp. 30–32). - **The child**: the "inborn You" (*das eingeborene Du*), the a priori of relation, shows itself in the infant's drive for contact (c. pp. 32–36). "Der Mensch wird am Du zum Ich": a human becomes an I through the You (c. p. 36). - Coda: the world is twofold again. A person can live in the past tense of It, filling every moment with experiencing and using; without It one cannot live, but whoever lives with It alone is not a human being (c. pp. 39–43). *Zweiter Teil — Part Two (pp. [47]–85): the world of It in history and the self.* - The history of the individual and of the species shows a progressive **increase of the It-world**, and the growth of the experiencing and using functions usually comes at the cost of the power to relate (c. pp. 47–56). - Modern public life split into two tidy "districts", **institutions** (*Einrichtungen*: the "outside", where one works, negotiates, organizes, preaches) and **feelings** (the "inside"). Buber denies that a mechanical state can be fixed by replacing it with a "community of love" built on feelings. True community arises when people all stand in living, mutual relation to a living center, and, from that, to one another (c. pp. 52–56). - I–It is not evil in itself, "as matter is not evil". It becomes evil when it presumes to be what simply is (c. p. 57). - **Causality** rules without limit in the It-world. The person who knows relation knows **freedom and destiny** (*Schicksal*), which belong together, and the possibility of **turning** (*Umkehr*). The arbitrary self-willed man (*Willkür*) is set against the free man (c. pp. 62–72). - A parable from the "Brahmana of the Hundred Paths": the demons put the offerings into their own mouths, the gods into each other's (c. p. 72). - **Person and ego.** The I of I–You appears as *Person* (entering into relation); the I of I–It appears as *Eigenwesen*, a self that sets itself off from others (c. pp. 74–76). Examples of a full, rightful "I": **Socrates** (the I of endless conversation), **Goethe** (the I of pure intercourse with nature), and Jesus's I in relation to the Father (c. pp. 77–80). - **Napoleon** as "das dämonische Du der Millionen", "the demonic You of the millions", who answers You with It, "to whom no one can become a You". He is a third type beside the person and the self-willed ego (c. pp. 80–82). - **Self-contradiction**: when the inborn You is not realized in the world, it turns inward onto the self (c. pp. 82–83). - Coda: the frightened modern person reaches for comforting world-pictures in which either the I is in the world or the world is in the I, each captioned "One and all", until both pictures appear at once (c. pp. 83–85). *Dritter Teil — Part Three (pp. [89]–c. 137): the eternal You.* - "Die verlängerten Linien der Beziehungen schneiden sich im ewigen Du": "the extended lines of relations meet in the eternal You". Every particular You is a glimpse through to it (c. p. 89). - People have addressed their eternal You by many names. The first myths were hymns of praise; only later did the names enter the language of It (c. p. 89). - Meeting God is like meeting someone on a road: we know only our own stretch of the way (c. p. 90). Every real relation is exclusive, and relation to God includes everything else, so God is found neither by staying in the world nor by leaving it, but by bringing all the world to the meeting (c. pp. 91–93). - God is "the wholly Other" and the *mysterium tremendum*, but also "the wholly Same: the wholly Present", "nearer to me than my I" (c. p. 93). The phrases echo Rudolf Otto's *Das Heilige* (1917); Buber does not name him in the text I read. - **Against reducing religion to a feeling** of dependence ("more recently, more precisely, creature-feeling"): feelings only accompany relation (c. pp. 94–96). - **Against doctrines of absorption** (*Versenkung*): both the doctrine of being absorbed into the divine and the doctrine of finding the divine within the self. One appeals to the Johannine "I and the Father are one", the other to Śāṇḍilya's "the all-embracing, this is my Self within the heart". Buber reads the Gospel of John instead as "the gospel of pure relation". This is the book's long critique of mysticism, including a discussion of the **Buddha's** "noble silence" about unity (c. pp. 96–109). - **The eyes of animals** "have the power of a great language". Buber's example is a cat whose glance seems to ask "Can it be that you mean me?" before it lapses back into It (c. pp. 109–111). The *spiritual-being* and *nature* spheres are taken up again, and the sphere of life with people is singled out as the one where language is completed in speech and response (c. pp. 115–120). - "A modern philosopher" says everyone believes either in God or in "idols" (a finite good such as nation, art, power, knowledge or money), so that one need only "smash" the idol and the religious act will turn back to its proper object. Buber answers that relation to an idol is experiencing and using an It, so swapping the object changes nothing: the whole manner of relating has to change (c. pp. 120–122). The philosopher is unnamed in the text; commentators usually identify him as Max Scheler, which I have not verified. - Against the "religious" man who supposes he needs no relation to the world and other beings. Buber separates real community, built from relation, from the "massing" of unrelated human units that modern "sociality" often means (c. pp. 122–125). - **Revelation**: the primal phenomenon is that a person comes out of the moment of supreme meeting not the same as he went in. What is received is "not a 'content' but a presence, a presence as strength" (*eine Gegenwart als Kraft*). That presence holds three things: the fullness of real mutuality, an inexpressible confirmation of meaning, and the fact that this meaning belongs to *this* life and world and wants to be done, not interpreted (c. pp. 125–128). Buber cites "the language of the Bible" (*Die auf Gott harren, werden Kraft eintauschen*, i.e. Isaiah 40:31, my identification) and Nietzsche (*Man nimmt, man fragt nicht, wer da gibt*, "one takes, one does not ask who gives"). - The eternal You cannot by nature become an It, but people keep making God into an It, in doctrine, cult, and the forms of religion. History moves in a "spiral" of revelation, ossification and turning (*Umkehr*), the "way" toward redemption (*Erlösung*). The book's last word is "Erlösung" (c. pp. 128–137). *Added later.* The 1957 afterword (German 1958; Smith's 2nd ed. 1958 "with a postscript by the author added"; Kaufmann's "Afterword"). I did not read it. Amazon's description of the Kaufmann ebook quotes it as saying "The close association of the relation to God with the relation to one's fellow-men ... is my most essential concern." That is a quotation from a retailer page, not checked against the book. Kaufmann's 1970 edition adds his long prologue "I and You" and many footnotes. **Key ideas.** - **Two attitudes, not two kinds of objects.** The same person, tree or work of art can be an It or a You, depending on how one stands toward it. - **Relation is primary.** The self comes out of relation ("a human becomes an I through the You") rather than building relationships from a finished self. - **The between.** Love, encounter and spirit happen *between* I and You, not inside either of them. Feelings accompany relation but do not make it up. - **The necessity and danger of It.** Knowledge, technology, institutions and economics require I–It, and Buber does not condemn it. The trouble starts when It claims to be all there is. - **The eternal You.** Every genuine relation points toward God, who is met in the world and not by fleeing it. Revelation is presence, not information. - **Against mysticism of absorption.** Real relation keeps two partners; it does not dissolve the I into the All. - **The link to the source video.** On the video's reading, a straw man is an I–It move: you argue with your own model of the other person (an It you built) instead of meeting the person who is actually speaking (a You). That is the video's application, not Buber's, though it fits his account of experiencing a person as an object. **Reception, in brief.** SEP calls *Ich und Du* "an instant classic" in German, popular in English from the 1950s among theologians such as Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr and Will Herberg. Martin Luther King Jr. cited it in the 1963 *Letter from Birmingham Jail*. Critics included Franz Rosenzweig, who wrote to Buber that "in your setting up the I-IT, you give the I-Thou a cripple for an opponent" (SEP's translation from Rosenzweig's letters), and, later, Kaufmann himself. His 1983 essay "Bubers Fehlschläge und sein Triumph" ("Buber's failures and his triumph"; quoted in SEP) called the book's I–It a "Manichean insult" and its I–Thou "rashly romantic and ecstatic". For Emmanuel Levinas, SEP says, Buber stayed caught in an aestheticizing attitude, to the detriment of "ethics as first philosophy". ## 6. Fact-check Overall verdict: **mixed**. Publication and structural facts check out against the 1923 scan and catalogs. Several popular summaries, including Wikipedia, embellish or blur the book. | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | *Ich und Du* was first published by Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, in 1923 | Supported | Title page of the [1923 scan](https://archive.org/details/ich-und-du) ("MCMXXIII / IM INSEL-VERLAG ZU LEIPZIG"); [OL20183681M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL20183681M); [SEP](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/). Open Library's search index gives 1922 as the first year, which looks like a catalog slip; the work record says 1923 | | English translations by Ronald Gregor Smith (T. & T. Clark, 1937) and Walter Kaufmann (Scribner's, 1970) | Supported | [SEP, "Buber in English"](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/); [OL16653366M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL16653366M); [OL5315313M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL5315313M); [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou) | | The book has three parts | Supported | "Erster / Zweiter / Dritter Teil" in the 1923 scan (Part One ends p. 43, Part Two p. 85) | | The epigraph is from Goethe | Supported (my identification) | The two lines match Goethe's *West-östlicher Divan*, Schenkenbuch ([Zeno.org](http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Goethe,+Johann+Wolfgang/Gedichte/West-%C3%B6stlicher+Divan/Das+Schenkenbuch/%5BSo+hab+ich+endlich+von+dir+erharrt%5D); [LiederNet](https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=45729)). The 1923 printing does not name the source | | Buber added an afterword dated 1957, first printed 1958 | Supported as cataloged | [Library record of the 1958 Neuausgabe](https://mmz.vufindnet.de/mmz/Record/a0012887/Details) (search summary; I did not open the full record); OL title statements for Smith's 1958 2nd edition, "with a postscript by the author added" | | Kaufmann retranslated the book "at the request of Buber's family", because the old version "was marred by many inaccuracies" and its "thou" was "seriously misleading" | Publisher's claim; unverified | Jacket copy repeated on [Audible](https://www.audible.com/pd/B005WWTJB2) and bookseller pages. I did not see a family statement. Kaufmann's own prologue (unread) argues the *Thou* point | | Buber's tree example has "five separate relations" (Wikipedia) | Disputed (incomplete) | The 1923 text lists five ways of treating the tree as an object (picture, movement, species, law, number), then says that it can also happen that one is **drawn into relation** with the tree. That sixth case is the point of the passage, and Wikipedia's list leaves it out | | Wikipedia's example: one can enter an I–Thou relation with a stranger on a park bench "merely by beginning to think positively about people in general" | Disputed / not in the book | No such example appears in the 1923 text. It contradicts Buber's insistence that relation is immediate and "with the whole being", not a general attitude or feeling (Part One, c. pp. 17–22). Wikipedia gives no source for it | | "You need God in order to be, and God needs you for that which is the meaning of your life" (quoted on Wikipedia) | Unverified | I did not locate it in the German scan with simple searches, and I did not check the English translations. It may be a paraphrase of a Part Three passage | | Martin Luther King Jr. cited Buber's I–It / I–Thou in the *Letter from Birmingham Jail* (1963) | Supported | Text of the letter: "segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an 'I it' relationship for an 'I thou' relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things" ([Encyclopedia Virginia text](https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/letter-from-birmingham-jail/); [The Forward](https://forward.com/culture/548114/martin-buber-i-and-thou-100th-anniversary-ginsberg-king-jewish-philosophy/)). Published wordings differ slightly | | King's "I cannot reach fulfillment without thou" comes from a sermon called "A Testament of Hope" (Wikipedia) | Unverified / probably mislabeled | *A Testament of Hope* is the title of a posthumous anthology of King's writings (and of a 1968/69 essay). I did not trace the line to a specific text | | Buber and Carl Rogers held a public dialogue on 18 April 1957 at the University of Michigan | Supported | [SUNY Press](https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-Martin-Buber-Carl-Rogers-Dialogue); [J-STAGE transcript](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/psysoc/3/4/3_1960.208/_pdf/-char/en); [SEP §7](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/) | | Buber's birth (8 Feb 1878, Vienna) and death (13 June 1965, Jerusalem) | Supported | [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Buber); SEP gives the years 1878–1965 | | He was raised by his grandparents after his parents separated, at age 3 (Wikipedia) or 4 (SEP) | Supported in substance; the age is disputed between sources | [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Buber); [SEP §1](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/) | | Frankfurt: "became an honorary professor in 1930 … resigned in protest" in 1933 (Wikipedia) vs. taught from 1923, later honorary professor, gave up the post in 1933 "to preempt his forced dismissal" (SEP) | Partly disputed | SEP's account, citing Schottroff 1990, is the more detailed and dates his teaching from 1923 | | Nominated ten times for the Nobel Prize in Literature and seven times for the Peace Prize | Unverified here | Wikipedia; I did not query the Nobel nomination archive | | Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 1953; Erasmus Prize 1963; Goethe Prize (Hamburg) 1951 | Supported as reported | [SEP §9](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/); [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Buber) | | The video's paraphrase: "we can meet a person as a you or we can treat them as an it" | Supported (fair paraphrase) | It matches the opening of Part One: the basic words I–You and I–It, and a person met as You is "not a thing among things" | | The 1923 German text is public domain in the US but not in Germany/EU until 2036 | Supported as a reading of standard terms (not legal advice) | US: works published in 1923 entered the public domain on 1 Jan 2019. EU/DE: life + 70; Buber died 1965 | ## 7. Citations and references **What the book draws on.** *Ich und Du* has no notes or bibliography in the 1923 printing. Within the text Buber names or invokes Goethe (the epigraph, and the "I" of Goethe's dealings with nature), Socrates, Napoleon, Jesus, the Buddha, the Upanishadic and Brahmanic traditions (the "Brahmana of the Hundred Paths", i.e. the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa), and ethnographic reports of "primitive" languages (Zulu, Fuegian) and of *mana*. He alludes without naming them to the theology of the "feeling of dependence" (associated with Schleiermacher) and "creature-feeling" and the *mysterium tremendum* (Rudolf Otto), and to "a modern philosopher" on God and idols (usually identified as Max Scheler; unverified here). SEP places the book among the "dialogical thinkers": Ferdinand Ebner, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, and earlier Hamann, Jacobi and Feuerbach. Kaufmann's 1970 notes supply sources for many allusions; I have not read them. **Notable secondary sources.** Zank and Braiterman, "Martin Buber", *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy*. Maurice Friedman, *Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue* (1955) and *Martin Buber's Life and Work* (1981–83). Paul Mendes-Flohr, *Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent* (2019) and *A Companion to Martin Buber* (2025). Rivka Horwitz, *Buber's Way to I and Thou* (1978). Robert E. Wood, *Martin Buber's Ontology: An Analysis of I and Thou* (1969). Kenneth Paul Kramer, *Martin Buber's I and Thou: Practicing Living Dialogue* (2003). Schilpp and Friedman (eds.), *The Philosophy of Martin Buber* (1967). Anderson and Cissna, *The Martin Buber–Carl Rogers Dialogue* (1997). **Links this note used:** - Text and catalogs: [IA 1923 scan `ich-und-du`](https://archive.org/details/ich-und-du); [IA `ithou0000bube`](https://archive.org/details/ithou0000bube); [IA `ithoubube00bube`](https://archive.org/details/ithoubube00bube); [IA `ithou00bube_0`](https://archive.org/details/ithou00bube_0); [IA `ithou0000bube_n4n5`](https://archive.org/details/ithou0000bube_n4n5); [IA `IAndThou`](https://archive.org/details/IAndThou) (not a legal copy, see section 2); [Open Library work OL12337W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL12337W); [OL20183681M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL20183681M); [OL6042280M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL6042280M); [OL27044590M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL27044590M); [OL36469763M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL36469763M); [OL16653366M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL16653366M); [OL16376786M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL16376786M); [OL21242246M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL21242246M); [OL7720560M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7720560M); [OL7926544M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7926544M); [OL22129213M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22129213M); [OL31152641M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL31152641M); [OL5315313M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL5315313M); [OL13570535M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL13570535M); [OL46543993M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL46543993M); [Horwitz, OL4974962W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4974962W); [WorldCat 233529266](https://search.worldcat.org/title/233529266); [HathiTrust 101976597](https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/101976597); [Google Books ISBN 0684717255](https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0684717255); [1958 Neuausgabe catalog record](https://mmz.vufindnet.de/mmz/Record/a0012887/Details); [OL12818095M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL12818095M); [LC catalog record 2013025905, Smith translation](https://lccn.loc.gov/2013025905); [SNAC, Ronald Gregor Smith](https://snaccooperative.org/view/61731064); [Open Library cover 424819](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/424819-L.jpg). - Publisher and shops: [Simon & Schuster](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/I-And-Thou/Martin-Buber/9780684717258); [Amazon Kaufmann paperback](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684717255); [Amazon Smith paperback](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684182548); [Amazon Smith hardcover](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0743201337); [Amazon Martino reprint](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1578989973); [Kindle B0051I4YT4](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0051I4YT4); [Audible B005WWTJB2](https://www.audible.com/pd/B005WWTJB2); [OverDrive audiobook 589309](https://www.overdrive.com/media/589309); [OverDrive ebook 4984864](https://www.overdrive.com/media/4984864); [Hoopla 13485710](https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/13485710). - Author and reception: [SEP, "Martin Buber"](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/); [Wikipedia, Martin Buber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Buber); [Wikipedia, I and Thou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou); [Encyclopedia Virginia, Letter from Birmingham Jail](https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/letter-from-birmingham-jail/); [The Forward on the centenary](https://forward.com/culture/548114/martin-buber-i-and-thou-100th-anniversary-ginsberg-king-jewish-philosophy/); [Zeno.org, Goethe's poem](http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Goethe,+Johann+Wolfgang/Gedichte/West-%C3%B6stlicher+Divan/Das+Schenkenbuch/%5BSo+hab+ich+endlich+von+dir+erharrt%5D); [LiederNet, same poem](https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=45729). - Interviews and talks: [SUNY Press, Buber–Rogers Dialogue](https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-Martin-Buber-Carl-Rogers-Dialogue); [Cissna & Anderson 1994](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00221678940341003); [J-STAGE transcript](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/psysoc/3/4/3_1960.208/_pdf/-char/en); [NDR 1959 interview](https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/ndr_retro/Philosoph-und-Religionsforscher-Martin-Buber-im-Gespraech,ausersterhand118.html); [Pacifica BB5004](https://pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/bb5004/); [Center for Jewish History, Martin Buber Collection](https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/5/resources/16235); [In geveb, "Translating as Saying"](https://ingeveb.org/articles/translating-as-saying). - Source video: [The straw man (Logical Fallacies, Part 1), 0:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F_teNsxJ6Q&t=36s); [[Video Summaries/Joel is Curious/The straw man (Logical Fallacies, Part 1)]].