Ethics

I and Thou

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Martin Buber

1923

Buber's masterwork, one of the most influential philosophical and religious texts of the twentieth century. He argues that human existence is constituted by two fundamentally different modes of relating: the I-Thou relation, in which persons encounter one another in genuine meeting and mutual presence, and the I-It relation, in which persons treat the world — including other persons — as objects of use and analysis. The eternal Thou, encountered in and through finite relationships, is Buber's name for God.