Page 9 - Eclipse of God

viii Introduction to the 2016 Edition

To begin to understand what Buber means by “the eclipse
of God,” we must first consider his assessment of his histori-
cal moment. In his 1923 I and Thou Buber presents himself in
the role of physician engaged in curing humanity’s “time of
3
sickness.” Humanity is sick, Buber claims, because we have
lost access to our fundamental state of being, our “ontological
orientation,” which he describes as the “I- Thou” relation and
in later work as the dialogical situation. Buber’s basic claim is
deceptively simple. He suggests that human beings have two
attitudes toward the world, attitudes that are captured in what
he calls the “I- It” relation and the “I- Thou” relation. The “I- It”
relation is an instrumental relation: I relate to an object (any
object, including another person) in terms of how the object
serves my needs. For instance, I have an “I- It” relation with
a pen when I use it to write. I can also have an “I- It” rela-
tion with another person when I use that person to fulfill my
particular needs— for service (a store clerk), for making me
feel good about myself (a child, a spouse, a friend), or for an-
other end (a business partner in the service of making money).
These relationships are not intrinsically bad. They are in fact
necessary and are often productive aspects of human life. The
problem, according to Buber, is that human beings have lost
access to a more fundamental relationship— the “I- Thou” re-
lationship, which is not one of instrumentality but of mutu-
ality. The difference between the “I- It” and “I- Thou” relations
is as much about the “I” as it is about the other to whom the
“I” relates. As Buber puts it, “For the I of the primary word
4
I- Thou is a different I from that of the primary word I- It.”
I am different in the “I- Thou” relationship because the other
affects me. In an “I- It” relationship, in contrast, I understand

3 Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 53.
4 Ibid., 19.