I and Thou

In an ongoing effort to read things that are already on my shelf, I picked up Martin Buber's slim classic.  It was an interesting short read that left me deeply ambivalent in precisely those places where it didn't leave me deeply confused.  

On the one hand, it appears that Buber is writing a theistic version of non-dual poetry.  Despite the theistic angle, the primacy of the I-Thou relationship he tries to describe is clearly marked by a lack of subject-object division.  This promises to make Buber's Hasidic take on non-duality another chapter in Loy's great catalog of primary source materials.  I find it hard to believe that anyone is capable of writing passionately about such spiritual matters without having directly experienced ... something.  In other words, this is no mere intellectual book that argues for a particular metaphysical world view.  This, I think, legitimately pardons some of its obscurity, and suggests that the wisest approach here is similar to how we might approach Zen literature -- to simply take away what we can understand and lay aside what we cannot for another time.  Seen in this light, the essence of the book is the simple but profound idea that we don't always have to see the world as a collection of discreet things that we the subject experience as objects.  The I-It relationship is not the sum total of all possible experience.  Buber's I-Thou concept points us to another type of experience in which we are seamlessly enmeshed in and connected to the world, rather than separated from it by an unbridgeable metaphysical gulf.  Though Buber would prefer to call this non-dual type of experience "relation" so as to avoid confusing it with the inner experience of the subject, it's clear that, despite the terminology, the I-Thou relationship at least lies in the same family as paradoxical Zen experiences of a mystical unity of diversity.  I and Thou are different, and must come together in a "meeting", but nevertheless we are held together as aspects of one totality (the Eternal Thou).

On the other hand, it's not at all clear that Buber approach to describing or conceptualizing this unfathomable experience is helpful.  How can we really reach the non-dual if we take our experience of other subjects as our root metaphor?  He encourages us to relate to God as if this relation were an extension or generalization of our best relationship to other humans.  Of course, we see other humans (and sometimes natural and spiritual beings) as subjects, not objects.  But has this advanced us into the non-dual?  What is a subject but a thing that requires an object?  And doesn't my recognizing this subjectivity in another simply involve me a game of mirrors where I turn myself into the object that I call subject?  Isn't this way of the describing the non-dual in terms of the Absolute Person bound to fail in the most obvious fashion -- by reifying our own concept of personhood?  I'm certain that Buber feels as if he has answered this objection, if not in the text, then at least in his postscript.

     Is what has here been said valid except as a "personalizing" metaphor? Are we not threatened by the dangers of a problematic "mysticism" that blurs the borderlines that are drawn, and necessarily have to be drawn, by all rational knowledge?
    The clear and firm structure of the You relationship, familiar to anyone with a candid heart and the courage to stake it, is not mystical. To understand it we must some­ times step out of our habits of thought, but not out of the primal norms that determine man's thoughts about what is actual. (I-Thou, 177, Kaufmann translation)

But this response only reinforces my suspicion.  Buber is eager to defend his I-Thou distinction from any charges of "mysticism" which could be leveled at the notion of an Absolute Person or Eternal Thou.  For example: Isn't this latter nothing but a metaphor that drags our 'normal' conception of the you beyond the "primal norms" for which it makes sense?  Buber replies that we all already know what it means to be an I who relates to a You.  This may blunt the charge of mysticism, but only at the price of placing a mystification into the heart of our direct experience.  Do we really know what it's like to be an I or a You because of some "primal norm"?  Is this given?  In fact, it seems to me that this is the whole question.  What's it like to be me?  What's going on?  And what's it like to relate to others with some unstated assumption of mutuality if I don't even know who I am?  We've learned nothing from Nietzsche if not that the presumed unity of my self or your self reflects nothing but the surface of reality, and none of its depths.  

As I say, I reserve the right to change my opinion on this book.  But on this reading at least, I didn't find it led in a particularly useful direction.