I-Weaving-Thou?

Martin Buber's I and Thou

Martin Buber, in I and Thou, talks of "relation" as taking precedence over objects in the grand scheme of things. He identifies the two "vital primal words" out of which all "primal experiences" emerge as I–affecting–Thou and Thou-affecting-I (see pp. 21-22, Ronald Gregor Smith translation). These primal words get "split asunder" by us, in our wrongheadedness. The participle affecting is "given eminence as an object." The primal relation between oneself (I) and another (Thou) mutates into using Thou as a means to an end, the end usually being some sort of personal gratification. Thus does a separate "I" arise from I–Thou and thenceforth try to control things. In consequence, each Thou becomes an It: an object.

The Walter Kaufman translation of I and Thou pictured here renders these two words of primal relation as "I–acting–You" and "You–acting–I" (p. 73). Kaufman says in a footnote that the German original for "I–acting–You," Ich–wirkend–Du, is "as odd as the translation [he gives] above."

The German verb wirken means to act, to take effect, to operate, to weave. What if we think of Buber's primary words as connoting "I–weaving–You" and "You–weaving–I"? That would make it seem as if our separate and individual beings are somehow illusory, that each being has to be "woven" by another, and vice versa, out of the relation of one to the other that paradoxically takes precedence over being itself. Each relatant may possess some sort of intrnisic, inert substance — or not. But the intrinsic, inert substance of the individual relatants should not be confused with the reality they weave when they act together, one with another.

Thomas M. King's Enchantments: Religion and the Power of the Word

The primacy of relation over being is a main concern of Thomas M. King in Enchantments: Religion and the Power of the Word.

In Plato's writings, the dialogue titled The Sophist has a protagonist named, simply, "the Stranger" (see pp. 168ff.) "The Sophist" is the Stranger's interlocutor. The Sophist uses verbal trickery to demonstrate that the higher world of Pure Being is All — so much so that the "lower world" in which we think we live is an illusory nonentity! There is no material world. There is only the true world of abstract ideas.

The Stranger dissents. He offers a different, albeit odd definition of what it means to exist (pp. 172-3):

My notion would be, that anything which possesses any sort of power to affect another, or to be affected by another, if only for a single moment, however trifling the cause and however slight the effect, has real existence; and I hold that the definition of being is simply power ([Greek] dunamis). ...

We said that a being was an active or passive energy, arising out of a certain power which proceeds from elements meeting with one another.

Here, the "elements meeting with one another" would seem to correspond to Buber's I and Thou. Power, dunamis (the Greek word from which we get dynamic), active or passive energy: these formulations contrast starkly with the everyday notion of brute objects or elements existing independently of relations, and only then entering into various relations with one another.


My limited understanding of quantum physics suggests to me that this is the message here as well: there are really no fixed "things" at the bottom of material existence. Rather, there are dynamic relationships among entities we (erroneously) think of as solid things.

These "things" are the quarks (the constituents of protons and neutrons) and the leptons (such as an electron). They are elusive, uncertain, indeterminate beings ... until, that is, we engage them, in the act of observing them. Our observation somehow "weaves" them into the sort of hard, firm, measurable existence we need them to furnish to us.


Another analogy comes from the world of music. A simpleminded view of music would be that it is made up of notes. Yet the real truth is that music is composed of relationships among notes.

Take "Happy Birthday":Music readers can see that the first phrase ("Happy birthday to you...") has the notes C–C–D–C–F–E. Music theorists know that these represent tones 5–5–6–5–8–7 of the F Major scale, where, in effect, 8 (F) equals 1, the F an octave lower. The entire song ends on 8 or F. This is the tonal center of the song when the song is played in the key of F Major. The other tones — for instance, 5 or C — "want" to arrive at the tonal center.

Yet there is nothing intrinsic to C that makes it want to arrive at F. It is only the relationships that are set up among the various tones as the melody unfolds that make it clear to the ear that the final destination is, and has to be, F.

If "Happy Birthday" is transposed into the key of C Major, then the final destination becomes C. Tone 5 of that new scale is G. So all the C notes in the notation above become G notes, all the F notes become C notes, and so on — yet the tune, the tones, and the dynamic relationships remain the same!

Conclusion: whatever the intrinsic properties (if any) of the notes, what really counts is the dynamic relationships that are set up among the notes of the melody, even as it unfolds. It is as if the tones of the melody weave one another out of the material — the "yarn" or "thread" — of the otherwise inert notes.