Introduction
Clarkson (1990) identifies the nature and centrality of the client therapist relationship as a critical factor in successful therapy. She asserts that there are “five different kinds of psychotherapeutic relationship which may be potentially available for constructive use in psychotherapy; namely: the Working Alliance; the Transferential/Countertransferential Relationship; the Reparative/Developmentally Needed Relationship; the I-You Relationship; and the Transpersonal Relationship. According to Clarkson (ibid.) these five “modalities” can act as an integrative framework for different traditions (or approaches) of psychotherapy in spite of seemingly irreconcilable differences or popular stereotypes.
Other writers (Marcel, 1949; Jung, 1964; Heron, 1992) have identified deep relationship and, despite some measure of disagreement relating to the characteristics of such a relationship, they are apparently describing a similar phenomenon. In this regard, Marcel contends (Schilpp and Friedman, 1967) that in the presence of human beings, there is created among them, let us not say even a field of forces, but a creative milieu in which each finds possibilities of renewal.
Many commentators attempt to simplify or systematise the I-Thou relationship in therapy. Examples of this approach to the I-Thou relationship include Gestalt Therapy (Perls, 1950s), Client-Centered Therapy (Rogers, 1951; 1957; 1961; 1969; 1980 and 1983); Existential Psychotherapy (Boss, 1957, 1979; May, 1958, 1969, 1983; Binswanger, 1963; Macquarrie, 1972; Smail, 1978; Yalom, 1980; Deurzen-Smith, 1988); Transactional Analysis (Berne, 1973) and Robert Hobson”s Conversational Model of Psychotherapy (1985). These approaches to the I-Thou relationship have invariably led to Buber”s concepts being misunderstood and misinterpreted in the counselling and psychotherapy literature. It has to be asserted at the outset that the nature of the I-Thou relationship defies objective, empirical conceptualisation. Buber himself suggests a personal approach to the clarification of the I-Thou relationship that focuses on the lived experience of the person. This approach suggests more than simply reading I and Thou. The reader who wishes to traverse the unique terrain that Buber describes has to clarify the I-Thou relationship, and grapple with its message, in terms of his/her own lived experience.
The Educative Relationship: The “Will to Power” versus Eros?
Historically, the process of education may be seen as oscillating between two opposing worldviews. On the one hand there is the traditional, authoritarian tendency that ideologically is predicated on the will to power while on the other hand there is the modern educational theory that is predicated on Eros (Buber, 1965). The former seems to be concerned with the transmission of traditional knowledge and assured values while the aim of the latter is “freedom”. The relationship between Eros and the Will to Power [power over], is noted by Jung (1966) when he says that “where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other.” Although these apparently disparate views regarding education are simplistic ones, they are perhaps of value in disclosing ideological positions and patterns of thought that are recognisable in education today. These apparently conflicting either-or’s seem to be enduring descriptions of a battle between objectivism and subjectivism. In education, the will to power stresses the importance of classical, scientific and technical knowledge, while Eros emphasises the validity of subjective knowledge, where education is held to be a process that seeks to liberate and develop the creative potential of students.
Both the will to power and Eros would seem to have at least one thing in common: the dominance of the subject-object relationship. Knowledge derived exclusively from the subject-object relationship may be seen as fragmented I-It knowledge. From the perspective of the will to power, the student may either be perceived as a passive receiver or object of traditional knowledge to be poured in from above, while in Eros, he or she is assumed to have innate capacities that may be developed. Both of these theoretical positions appear historically in Buber to broadly approximate to those found in Confucius and Socrates (Cohen 1983). For Buber, the contrasting of “old” and “new” educational principles simply in terms of the will to power and Eros is problematic. He maintains that
In fact the one is as little a principle of education as the other . . . Eros and the will to power are alike passions of the soul . . . Education . . . for them only an incidental realm . . . which sets limits to their elaboration; nor can this limit be infringed without the realm itself being destroyed (Buber 1965, p. 93).
Buber asserts, moreover, that when the magical validity of tradition disappears (as it does in postmodernism), the teacher may arrive at the moment where he is no longer an ambassador of traditionally assured knowledge and values, but faces his students as an individual; in the reality of his life he is thrown back on himself, cast on his own resources (ibid.). At this moment, neither the will to power nor Eros can solely be relied upon. Buber maintains (ibid.) moreover that the realm of education is too important a responsibility that is entrusted to us for our influence but not, however, our interference.
The Eros of Inclusion
Both the will to power and Eros are not so separated that no bridge can be flung from them to it, what matters, according to Buber (ibid.) is the threshold and the transformation which takes place on it. The transformation that Buber refers to arises from what he calls Inclusion, ie the educator simultaneously experiencing his or her own and the other person’s side. This experience shatters the assurance of the erotic as well as the cratetic [ie cynical] man. The process does not eliminate the single instinct of Eros nor the will to power, rather it reverses its system of direction.
The I-Thou relationship engages the whole person in experiencing an event from the side of the other person as well as from one’s own side: Buber (1947) calls this feature inclusion, or, making the other person truly present. For Buber, inclusion is where the real process of education begins and on which it is based. Buber (ibid.) apparently does not mean that the person who has had such an experience would have this two-sided sensation in every such meeting. Rather, that the one extreme experience makes the other person present to him/her for all time. It is an experience where a transfusion has taken place after which a mere elaboration of subjectivity is never again possible. According to Buber, in these circumstances
Only an inclusive power is able to take the lead; only an inclusive Eros is love. Inclusiveness is the complete realization of the submissive person, the desired person, the “partner”, not by the fancy but by the actuality of the being (Buber 1965, p. 97).
Where inclusion is present in a relationship, Buber calls that relationship a dialogical one. Significantly, it is “the Eros of inclusion” that Buber calls love. An inclusive love is to be differentiated from feelings of love which reside within each partner. This is the love of a subject (myself) for an object (another self). However, an inclusive love (Buber, 1967), is one that witnesses to existence. It is a total acceptance. One accepts the other person as he or she is, wholly. Feelings of love, of which empathy might be an expression, are qualitatively different to a love that witnesses to existence. Kaufmann (1967) considers Buber”s description of love to be a love of human beings that predisposes one to sense their wants and to bear their grief. According to Friedman (1967) love in Buber”s sense is a supra-individual reality between the two [partners]. This “betweeness”, however, is to be understood primarily as the responsibility of an I for a Thou and not just to him. In the I-Thou relationship, therefore, it becomes clear that an inclusive love is at work.
Kristiansen (1996) and the Danish philosopher and theologian, Knud E. Løgstrup, describe the ineffective and demeaning nature of dispensing I-It knowledge and that forms of genuine dialogue more appropriate for the classroom promote greater retention, higher student and teacher satisfaction. Stewart (ibid.) contextualises these themes in terms of an enhanced sense of ethical community. Both Kristiansen and Løgstrup describe a relational philosophical anthropology and a complementary ethics grounded in existential trust. Løgstrup’s concept of the “ethical” appears to be similar to that of Buber’s in terms of authentic being and valuing. Løgstrup reminds us of Buber’s exhortation to the teacher to
trust, trust in the world, because this human being exists - that is the most inward achievement of relation in education. Because this human being exists, meaninglessness, however hard pressed you are by it, cannot be the real truth. Because this human being exists, in the darkness the light lies hidden, in fear salvation, and in the callousness of one”s fellow-men the great Love (Buber 1947, pp. 125-6).
Buber saw the teacher’s work as that of bringing about a rebirth in the child. He maintains that the educator, who brings the precious ore in the soul of his pupil to light and frees it from dross, affords him a second birth, birth into a loftier life (Herberg 1956). This rebirth relies on trust. The educational implications of Buber’s I-Thou relationship, the educational spirit in Buber’s writings, concerns our ability to relate to the whole person, to the world and, as Buber believed, to God (Gordon, 1973). The educator informed by Buber’s philosophy of dialogue therefore is someone who wishes to transcend activities that have something for their object. He wishes to convey the spirit. One cannot do this if one does not relate to the whole person. This involves one”s whole self, as an educator and human being. The educator’s task is to realise this spirit in education. Gordon asserts that this
implies more than suggesting a behavioral-humanistic model or seeking out other human beings as a holiday task. It means that the educator”s whole existence should be impregnated by the feeling that we can humanize the world by relating. It means living on an outpost of the I-It . . . being open to the first stuttering words of a child or a teenager’s need to confide. It means constantly seeking the humane answer to ethical situations confronting us and not the political-economical-It way out (Gordon 1973, p. 222).
The challenges of Buber’s educational thought are unlikely to be disclosed by attempting to make them part of a model for teaching [or a model for psychotherapy either]. Objectifying and analysing the I-Thou relationship only succeeds in producing misinterpretation and distortion. Gordon notes that Buber’s legacy will be fulfilled only when teachers realise that their role is not and cannot be confined to working within a model. While true education demands much more than models can disclose, it is nevertheless, a veiled goal, never fully realised, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.
The I-Thou/I-It Distinction
According to Buber (1958), there are two types of relationship: the “I-It” and the “I-Thou”. The I-It relationship occurs between the subject, the “I”, and whatever object it encounters in the world, which is the “It” (thus the subject-object relationship). The world has no active part in this relationship and allows itself to be experienced passively as an object or utilised as an instrument. In the I-It relationship, the objectified or instrumentalised It does not wholly engage the I (ie the ego or self).
The world of “It” is the world of “things” among other “things;” the goal-directed world of “means” and “ends.” In the world of It, we employ a functional outlook and things are objects to be manipulated, dissected, analysed, measured, controlled or ignored. Essentially, therefore, the world of It is the world of disunity, of separation between subject and object; a world where mutual relationships are rendered impossible. Buber suggests however that
THE LIFE of human beings . . . does not exist in virtue of activities alone which have something for their object. I perceive something. I am sensible of something. I imagine something. I will something. I feel something. I think something. The life of human beings does not consist of all this and the like alone. This and the like together establish the realm of It . . . (Buber 1958, p. 16).
The “I-Thou” relationship on the other hand, which may be entered into with another person, but does not necessarily preclude an I-Thou relationship between for instance, animals, trees or art and poetry, concerns the world of “Thou”. The realm of Thou
. . . has a different basis. When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing for his object. For where there is a thing there is another thing. Every It is bounded by others; It exists only through being bounded by others. But when Thou is spoken, there is no thing. Thou has no bounds. When Thou is spoken, the speaker . . . takes his stand in relation (Buber 1958, pp. 16-17).
The world of I-Thou is one of unity and its characteristic situation is that of genuine meeting. The reality of this meeting produces no reduction of either the I or the Thou. The world of I-Thou involves a recognition of the boundlessness of the other; a respect for the freedom of the Thou whose encounter requires complete openness; a surrender of becoming for being, of dissimulation for genuineness and a refusal to dominate. Involvement in the I-Thou relationship affirms each side in simultaneous existence, without which, the individual would be living in a fog where each existence is self-contained and isolated.
There are three spheres in which the world of relation arises: first, our life with nature; second, our life with persons, and third, our life with “spiritual beings” or intellectual essences (for example art, poetry and knowledge). Love may occur in all three spheres of relation which means that everything is a potential channel of creativity, revelation and redemption. However, it is not simply a question of either-or, of relation versus irrelation, but rather a pattern of life in which relation necessarily alternates with irrelation, with the former taking precedence (ibid.). Neither is the call to be seen as an invitation towards a continuous stand of relation (Schilpp and Friedman, 1967), rather as an acceptance of what, in terms of a preferred pattern of I-Thou relationships is a discontinuity of essentiality and inessentiality to all being.
Given the preeminence of the I-Thou relationship in Buber’s thought, one could ask if the encounter may be willed or deployed as a means to an end? Apparently it cannot. Buber asserts that
The Thou meets me through grace - it is not found by seeking. But my speaking of the primary word to it is an act of my being, is indeed the act of my being . . . The primary word I-Thou can be spoken only with the whole being . . . (Buber 1958, pp. 24-5).
Even though Buber’s language is somewhat convoluted, it is quite clear that for him the I-Thou relationship cannot be willed. Such a fusion (ibid.) into the whole being can never take place through my agency. For Buber, therefore, there are two primary word combinations that can be spoken by human beings: I-Thou and I-It. But “The primary word I-Thou can be spoken only with the whole being”. The words “Thou” and “It” cannot be used in isolation from the “I” of “I-Thou” nor the “I” of “I-It”: The former impels us into a stand of relation in and to the world, while the latter impels us into a stand of irrelation in and to the world. In saying either of these primary words, for example, by naming an object in the natural world, we bring the I-Thou or the I-It relation into existence, through the act of thought or speech itself. When he considers that thought or speech may bring the I-Thou or the I-It relationship into existence, Buber (1947) apparently does not necessarily mean that Thou-saying is dependent or related to mental processes or the spoken word. Rather he appears to point to something that he calls “real speech”. Real speech springs from one's capacity to be receptive, accepting and aware. He maintains that the I-Thou relationship is limited only by the limits to one”s awareness. Awareness in this sense is described by Buber (1954) as making present the person of the other. Buber is worth quoting at length for the insights he provides into the I-Thou relationship as a twin process of address and response that is independent of mental activity or oral speech.
. . . in a receptive hour . . . a man meets me about whom there is something, which I cannot grasp in any objective way at all, that “says something” to me [ie addresses me] . That does not mean, says to me what manner of man this is, what is going on in him, and the like. But it means, says something to me, addresses something to me, speaks something that enters my own life. It can be something about this man, for instance that he needs me. But it can also be something about myself. The man himself in his relation to me has nothing to do with what is said. He has no relation to me, he has indeed not noticed me at all. It is not he who says it to me . . . but it says it . . . the saying I am referring to is real speech. In the house of speech there are many mansions, and this is one of the inner.
The effect of having this said to me is completely different from that of looking on and observing. I cannot depict or denote or describe the man in whom, through whom, something has been said to me. Were I to attempt it, that would be the end of saying. This man is not my object; I have got to do with him. Perhaps I have to accomplish something about him; but perhaps I have only to learn something . . . it is only a matter of my “accepting”. It may be that I have to answer at once, to this very man before me; it may be that the saying has a long . . . transmission before it, and that I am to answer some other person at some other time and place, in who knows what kind of speech . . . in each instance a word demanding an answer has happened to me.
We may term this way of perception becoming aware.
It by no means needs to be a man of whom I become aware. It can be an animal, a plant, a stone. No kind of appearance or event is fundamentally excluded from the series of the things through which from time to time something is said to me. Nothing can refuse to be the vessel for the Word. The limits of the possibility of dialogue are the limits of awareness (Buber 1947, pp. 26-7).
There appears to be a resonance here between awareness and the notion of “presence” in Marcel (1956). For Buber, any object: an animal, a plant or a stone can become a “Thou”: If it absorbs the whole of one”s attention. In this respect it follows that words are unnecessary to the I-Thou relationship. Buber (1947) considers that an I-Thou relationship may occur between human beings in silence: providing one is really there. Such an encounter, which implies “presence”, may come about during
. . . one of the hours which succeed in bursting asunder the seven iron bands about our hearts - imperceptibly the spell [an inability to communicate oneself] is lifted . . . he releases in himself a reserve. . . . Unreservedly communication streams from him, and the silence bears it to his neighbour. For where unreserve has ruled, even wordlessly, between men, the word of dialogue has happened sacramentally (Buber 1947, p. 20).
What is clear from experience is that I-Thou relationships fleetingly ebb and flow, whereas I-It relationships have become, in Buber”s language, “gigantically swollen” and may dominate the relational horizon. Increasingly, both at home and at work, we are becoming further immersed in a world of “things” while glimpses of the I-Thou relationship appear less often. The more time is spent immersed and devoted to the world of things, the less we seem to have to do with people as people. People meet, albeit superficially at a social level, but this meeting rarely becomes one of genuine encounter. It is also possible for people to live most of their lives in a world of I-It relations without ever experiencing an I-Thou relationship. Buber suggests (Kaufmann 1970) that we cannot live without the world of I-It, however, he warns that whoever lives only with It, is not really living at all, is not human. He asserts that it is human life itself that comes into being through the lived experience of the I-Thou relationship.
Human life and humanity come into being in genuine meetings . . . men need, and it is granted to them, to confirm one another in their individual being by means of genuine meetings [I-Thou relationships] (Glatzer 1966, p. 47).
Life lived exclusively in a world of I-It relations, therefore, has negative consequences not only for man’s development and sense of unique wholeness, but also for his individual “being” and humanness. Buber clearly regards the I-Thou relationship as the central focus and confirming act of human experience and being. The nature of this relationship is, however, difficult to specify but its significance appears to emerge from the lived experience of the I-Thou relationship itself. In this sense, definition of the I-Thou is elusive. If the I-Thou relationship transcends philosophy, psychology, linguistics and affectivity, then by extension the I-Thou relationship must also resist objective, empirical conceptualisation. Of the “truth” of the I-Thou relationship Buber argues that we are to ask not “what” but “how” (Glatzer, 1966). It is, not a question of concern for an objective definition of the content of the I-Thou relationship, therein lies distortion, rather we are to approach the I-Thou relationship through its lived experience between persons.
An Existential Approach to Clarifying the I-Thou Relationship
According to Wingerter (1973) existential concerns and their writings transcend the level of objective thinking. He asserts that where writers choose to ignore transcendence in its fullest sense they loose the essence of thinking that is to be found in the writings of Buber, Marcel, Heidegger and Jaspers. Approaches to understanding and clarifying Buber’s I-Thou relationship, therefore, need to acknowledge the ontological realm that Buber refers to (ibid.). In terms of the I-Thou relationship, one cannot speak of application and implication without caricature. Abstract thought fails also to endorse the ontological need. Existence pure and simple is bound up with the narrow understanding of experience and beings with no affirmation of the Mystery that envelops these beings.
What many commentators fail repeatedly to realise is that for Buber (Wingerter, 1973), there is a level of ontology and that only on this level does it become meaningful to talk of the I-Thou relationship in the sense that Buber uses the term (ibid.). One degrades what Buber talks of if one forgets or is unaware that the concepts of existential philosophy are such that I can not think them without being in them (Jaspers, 1955), and that these concepts are meant to produce in oneself and in communication something which is man himself and not something meant by him (ibid.). Genuine existential thought is indissolubly connected with the being of the thinker, and is not a content to be known like any other.
Buber (1965) acknowledges two essentially different areas of human life (I-Thou and I-It). It was only after a long time that he came to realise that the sphere of the interhuman (I-Thou) is “a separate category of our existence, perhaps even a separate dimension. Any understanding of Buber needs to be based on the difference between the two realms. Marcel (1960) notes the “formidable confusion of these two spheres”. An objective stance or attitude is perfectly valid, but not when one is engaged in existential thinking. When our standpoint is this side of the ontological, objective thinking is fine. However, Buber”s standpoint is in the ontological, and it is to commit a category error to treat the ontological, that which belongs to Mystery, or to being, on a level of thinking that is below the level of the ontological. Systemization and objectivisation are inimical to that which is ontological. One cannot approach the I-Thou relationship as a spectator or objective thinker. Buber”s writings do not lend themselves to the kinds of clarification and objectivisation one meets in the literature. Wingerter observes
There is a tendency on the part of all of us, in our part of the world especially, to transfer terms that are meaningful on an ontological level only to a level where we can more easily deal with them, but nevertheless to a level where ontological terms loose all of their essential and distinctive meaning (Wingerter 1973, pp. 245-6).
Buber appears to be on the level of Being when he talks of the I-Thou relationship and “Being itself is the Transcendence which shows itself to no investigative experience, not even indirectly”. Clearly an objective approach to Being is undesirable if not well nigh impossible. Similarly, Marcel (1960) asserts that techniques are never able to gain access to the infrangible sphere of Being.
The sphere that Buber points to is meaningful only if one admits that there is a realm that transcends that of objectivity pure and simple. The level of the ontological is beyond that of solutions to problems, applications and implications (Wingerter, 1973). To fail to recognise this is to attribute objectivity to that which is not objective and never can be. Buber”s writings are meaningful, therefore, only if an ontological perspective is brought to bear on them.
One cannot choose between I-Thou or I-It. As Marcel observes (1956), in reflecting on a mystery we tend inevitably to degrade it to the level of a problem. Jaspers (1955) asserts that the truth of existential thought never lies in its content as such, but rather what happens to me in the thinking of it. Similarly, Wingerter (1973) remarks that that which is genuinely existential belongs to a level that transcends thinking about needs, problems, and feelings. A genuine existentialist”s attitude need have nothing to do with objective knowledge at all. His concern is with knowledge of Being, or at least ontological knowledge of some kind.
Difficulties with a Philosophical Approach to the I-Thou Relationship
A philosophical approach to the I-Thou relationship seeks to make the I-Thou part of a metaphysical system or ontology. Gordon (ibid.) considers Wood (1969) to be a prime example of how not to approach the I-Thou relationship philosophically. Buber himself (Schilpp and Friedman, 1967) cautioned against just such an attempt when he asserts that the I-Thou relationship
. . . was not suited to being developed into a comprehensive system . . . although it is the basic relationship in the life of each man with all existing being, it was barely paid attention to. It had to be pointed out; it had to be shown forth in the foundation of existence. A neglected, obscured, primal reality . . . No system [theological, philosophical, ontological or psychological] was suitable for what I had to say. Structure was suitable for it, a compact structure but not one that joined everything together (Schilpp and Friedman 1967, pp. 692-3).
Caution about attempting to clarify the I-Thou relationship through a philosophical approach is again reemphasised when Buber writes that he builds no towers, that he erects bridges; but that their columns are not sunk in “isms” and their arches are not fit together by means of “isms” (Gordon 1976, p. 73).
Gordon considers that although I and Thou has philosophical implications, when Buber wrote the book he did not intend to lead us, as readers, to a philosophical analysis of the I-Thou relationship, which may confine the I-Thou to “the contemplative individual, one who might feel at home with philosophical jargon”. Rather, Gordon (ibid.) believes that Buber points to the I-Thou relationship that every human being can encounter. This is reflected, he maintains, in Buber’s poetic style. A poetic style may speak to every human being. The personal significance of the I-Thou relationship also rests in its being grounded in everyday human experience (ibid.), in occurrences that come our way in daily life: A point identified by Clarkson (1990) when she observes that the I-Thou relationship has most continuity with healing relationships that occur in ordinary life. Only then Gordon suggests
. . . will the reader be able to interpret the I-Thou in terms relating to [his] own existence; only then will [he] be able to relate to the novel terrain which Buber explored (Gordon 1976, p. 75).
Paradoxically, however, Gordon considers that the failings of the philosophical approach may suggest to us how to read and relate to I and Thou.
Martin Buber wrote for readers who intended to relate fully to what they read and not merely scan the print or underline the major points. And relating fully to I and Thou means viewing its tenets through the prism of our deepest personal experience (Gordon 1976, p. 75).
Buber’s caution that the I-Thou relationship “was not suited to being developed into a comprehensive system” seems also to extend to the “ism” of existentialism, and existential writing too! What is needed perhaps is an openness to mystery. More than any of the I-Thou commentators referred to above, Buber himself drives home the point that the search for the meaning of the I-Thou relationship is
. . . not to be won and possessed through any type of analytic or synthetic investigation or through any type of reflection upon the lived concrete. Meaning is to be experienced in living action and suffering itself, in the unreduced immediacy of the moment. Of course, he who aims at the experiencing of experience will necessarily miss the meaning, for he destroys the spontaneity of the mystery. Only he reaches the meaning who stands firm, without holding back or reservation, before the whole might of reality and answers it in a living way. He is ready to confirm with his life the meaning which he has attained (Buber in Glatzer 1966, p. 62).
Gordon (1976) considers that the search for the meaning of the I-Thou relationship involves searching our personal experience for moments that would clarify this relationship. Living with this clarification and being open to new moments when one can speak the basic word Thou. The reader will then attain the meaning and personal significance of the I-Thou and will also have rejuvenated a dormant aspect of his own existence.
Love and the I-Thou Relationship
Although the world is unable to be fully comprehended through a system of concepts, Buber (1957) suggests that it may yet bestow a wonderful secret that the humble and faithful beholding, grasping, knowing of any situation bestows. No, says Buber (ibid.), the world is not comprehensible; but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings. Similarly, Krishnamurti (1969) asserts “. . . love is not the product of systems, of habits, of following a method. Love cannot be cultivated by thought (Krishnamurti 1969, p. 116).
When we seek to “know” the world through the embracing of one of its beings, Buber bids us remember that
Each thing and being has a twofold nature: the passive, absorbable, usable, dissectable, comparable, combinable, rationalizable, and the other, the active, non-absorbable, unusable, undissectible, incomparable, noncombinable, nonrationalisable. This is the confronting, the shaping, the bestowing in things. He who truly experiences a thing so that it springs up to meet him and embraces him of itself has in that thing known the world (Buber 1957, p. 27).
Conclusion
In Buber’s search for a philosophy of the whole person, the significance of the I-Thou relationship cannot be underestimated. For him the lived experience of the I-Thou relationship, is the defining act of our humanness and personhood. However, the I-Thou relationship cannot be contained by paradigms or models nor can it be willed. Such attempts describe the world of I-It. The I-Thou relationship, perhaps an “event” of existential communion, involves grace and a turning (Hbr. Teshuvah) towards the other person from the fullness of one's being. Other commentators seem to agree. Feltham (1995) writing about the unique impact Buber has had in our time on the potential for abuse, healing and even radical transformation within the interpersonal relationship asserts that the I-Thou encounter (which may parallel the encounter with God)
. . . is associated with presence and grace rather than intention, prescription and non-egalitarian helping relationships. This kind of encounter has nothing to do with the therapeutic use of “immediacy” or the self-conscious development of genuineness. Buber refers to the importance of “the between” and “the primally simple fact of encounter”. None of this is predictable or exploitable, even for benevolent ends. When it is healing, it is so by grace rather than by design (Feltham 1995, p.32 ).
The most important thing to learn would appear to be that the search for wholeness in personal existence in the West cannot come about through a relationship to self, but only in a relationship to another self. As limited and conditioned as we may be, our being together provides glimpses of the unlimited and the unconditioned. The interpersonal realm, the sphere of between, that is, between persons, is assumed to be the dimension where humanness and personhood are constituted and confirmed. This person-defining locus is inclusive of all people.
Although the I-Thou relationship has implications for education, philosophy, psychology, theology and sociology, Buber's formulation of the I-Thou relationship appears not specifically to be the exclusive preserve of the educationist, philosopher, psychologist, theologian, counsellor or psychotherapist. Rather, Buber seems to have been writing for the I-Thou relationship that every human being may encounter.
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