Block, SkipCaptcha, Upload, Automoderated users, edit, rollback
14,716
edits
Changes
User:VargasMilan/I and Thou/Part 1 (view source)
Revision as of 16:52, July 22, 2019
, 16:52, July 22, 2019+ sect. 27
The inborn ''Thou'' is realised in the lived relations with that which meets it. The fact that this ''Thou'' can be known as what is over against the child, can be taken up in exclusiveness, and finally can be addressed with the primary word, is based on the ''a priori'' of relation.
The inborn ''Thou'' is realised in the lived relations with that which meets it. The fact that this ''Thou'' can be known as what is over against the child, can be taken up in exclusiveness, and finally can be addressed with the primary word, is based on the ''a priori'' of relation.
In the instinct to make contact (first by touch and then by visual "touch" of another being) the inborn ''Thou'' is very soon brought to its full powers, so that the instinct ever more clearly turns out to mean mutual relation, "tenderness." But the instinct to "creation," which is established later (that is, the instinct to set up things in a synthetic, or, if that is impossible, in an analytic way—through pulling to pieces or tearing up), is also determined by this inborn ''Thou'', so that a "personification" of what is made, and a "conversation", take place. The development of the soul in the child is inextricably bound up with that of the longing for the ''Thou'', with the satisfaction and the disappointment of this longing, with the game of his experiments and the tragic seriousness of his perplexity. Genuine understanding of this phenomenon, which is injured by every attempt to lead it back into more confined spheres, can only be promoted if, during its observation and discussion, its cosmic and metacosmic origin is kept in mind.
In the instinct to make contact (first by touch and then by visual "touch" of another being) the inborn ''Thou'' is very soon brought to its full powers, so that the instinct ever more clearly turns out to mean mutual relation, "tenderness." But the instinct to "creation," which is established later (that is, the instinct to set up things in a synthetic, or, if that is impossible, in an analytic way—through pulling to pieces or tearing up), is also determined by this inborn ''Thou'', so that a "personification" of what is made, and a "conversation", take place. The development of the soul in the child is inextricably bound up with that of the longing for the ''Thou'', with the satisfaction and the disappointment of this longing, with the game of his experiments and the tragic seriousness of his perplexity. Genuine understanding of this phenomenon, which is injured by every attempt to lead it back into more confined spheres, can only be promoted if, during its observation and discussion, its cosmic and metacosmic origin is kept in mind. For it reaches out from the undivided primal world which precedes form, out of which the bodily individual who is born into the world, but not yet the personal, actualised being, has fully emerged. For only gradually, by entering into relations, is the latter to develop out of this primal world.
For it reaches out from the undivided primal world which precedes form, out of which the bodily individual who is born into the world, but not yet the personal, actualised being, has fully emerged. For only gradually, by entering into relations, is the latter to develop out of this primal world.
T{{sc|hrough the}} ''Thou'' a man becomes ''I''. That which confronts him comes and disappears, relational events condense, then are scattered, and in the change consciousness of the unchanging partner, of the ''I'', grows clear, and each time stronger. To be sure, it is still seen caught in the web of the relation with the ''Thou'', as the increasingly distinguishable feature of that which reaches out to and yet is not the ''Thou''. But it continually breaks through with more power, till a time comes when it bursts its bonds, and the ''I'' confronts itself for a moment, separated as though it were a ''Thou''; as quickly to take possession of itself and from then on to enter into relations in consciousness of itself.
Only now can the other primary word be assembled. Hitherto the ''Thou'' of relation was continually fading away, but it did not thereby become an ''It'' for some ''I'', an object of perception and experience without real connexion—as it will henceforth become. It became rather an ''It'', so to speak, for itself, an ''It'' disregarded at first, yet waiting to rise up in a new relational event. Further, the body maturing into a person was hitherto distinguished, as bearer of its perceptions and executor of its impulses, from the world round about. But this distinction was simply a juxtaposition brought about by its seeing its way in the situation, and not an absolute severance of ''I'' and its object. But now the separated ''I'' emerges, transformed. Shrunk from substance and fulness to a functional point, to a subject which experiences and uses, ''I'' approaches and takes possession of all ''It'' existing "in and for itself", and forms in conjunction with it the other primary word. The man who has become conscious of ''I'', that is, the man who says ''I-It'', stands before things, but not over against them in the flow of mutual action. Now with the magnifying glass of peering observation he bends over particulars and objectifies them, or with the field-glass of remote inspection he objectifies them and arranges them as scenery, he isolates them in observation without any feeling of their exclusiveness, or he knits them into a scheme of observation without any feeling of universality. The feeling of exclusiveness he would be able to find only in relation, the feeling of universality only through it. Now for the first time he experiences things as sums of qualities. From each relational experience qualities belonging to the remembered ''Thou'' had certainly remained sunk in his memory; but now for the first time things are for him actually composed of their qualities. From the simple memory of the relation the man, dreaming or fashioning or thinking, according to his nature, enlarges the nucleus, the substance that showed itself in the ''Thou'' with power and gathered up in itself all qualities. But now also for the first time he sets things in space and time, in causal connexion, each with its own place and appointed course, its measurability and conditioned nature.
The ''Thou'' appears, to be sure, in space, but in the exclusive situation of what is over against it, where everything else can be only the background out of which it emerges, not its boundary and measured limit. It appears, too, in time, but in that of the event which is fulfilled in itself: it is not lived as part of a continuous and organised sequence, but is lived in a "duration" whose purely intensive dimension is definable only in terms of itself. It appears, lastly, simultaneously as acting and as being acted upon—not, however, linked to a chain of causes, but, in its relation of mutual action with the ''I'', as the beginning and the end of the event. This is part of the basic truth of the human world, that only ''It'' can be arranged in order. Only when things, from being our ''Thou'', become our ''It'', can they be co-ordinated. The ''Thou'' knows no system of co-ordination.
But now that we have come so far, it is necessary to set down the other part of the basic truth, without which this would be a useless fragment—namely, a world that is ordered is not the world-order. There are moments of silent depth in which you look on the world-order fully present. Then in its very flight the note will be heard; but the ordered world is its indistinguishable score. These moments are immortal, and most transitory of all; no content may be secured from them, but their power invades creation and the knowledge of man, beams of their power stream into the ordered world and dissolve it again and again. This happens in the history both of the individual and of the race.