ABSTRACT
Author’s Aims I and Thou addresses fundamental and perennial questions regarding the nature of human involvement in the world and in relation to God. However, Buber’s way of answering these questions is highly inventive. His division of human existence into two distinct attitudes, that of the I-It and the I-Thou, is an original theory. Later in his career, Buber spoke in almost mystical terms about what inspired him, remarking that he felt “impelled by an inward necessity,” and that a vision which he had had since his youth had come to a point of steady clarity and that he “had to bear witness to it.”1 For him, “A neglected, obscured primal reality was to be made visible,” one that was-at the time-“barely paid attention to.”2 Among other things, his theory challenged prevailing scientific or technological modes of engagement with the world simply as something to be used. It also contested the terms of contemporary politics, and the rejection of faith in God, and reemphasized the deep relational dimension of human life.
