Lexical Acrobatics

A little mini-review I wrote one day nearly seven years ago as a bored IT analyst at the Worst Job I Ever Had. The funnest part of my day, believe it or not, was the train ride in to and out of the city every day. I put away a lot of interesting reads: Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Simmons’ Hyperion, Brin’s Startide Rising, a biography of Julius Caesar and Rome of his time, Elegant Universe by physicist Brian Greene, and the subject of my mini-review, the famous I and Thou by philosopher Martin Buber. Forgive my insolence at giving this masterful genius and his crowning work a failing grade; let’s chalk it up to youthful indiscretion and not mention it again, eh? This was never meant for public consumption.

I think I mostly sought to gripe about the single most annoying characteristic of philosophy: the incredibly self-sabotaguing almost-rookie-mistake of obscure writing. Clarity should always be key. Always, regardless what you write. If you cannot explain your ideas to an average man of average intelligence, what does that say? That you are a super intellect, a god amongst men? Or someone who is gifted in all things but the art of communication? (I am aware that sometimes the medium is the message and obscurity is a desired goal in philosophical writing. I am also aware that translations – I and Thou was originally written in German – are often done, poorly, long after the original thinker has passed on.) My frustration was evident after reading the book; I truly wanted to grasp and internalize Buber’s ideas, and did so for the main ones, but somehow fell off track about midway through my reading.

Here ’tis, in all its unedited splendor:


4.22.02

Buber’s I and Thou starts off promising, but unfortunately, like many a philosophical book, it soon leads into the land of run-on sentences, lexical acrobatics, and twisted meanings where everyday language loops back on itself and takes on new descriptions. Initially it was very easy to follow, sort of a dialectic between a friendly teacher and a “man-on-the-street.” I was able to grasp his main ideas, the overall theme of the book. It was only after he tried to describe various deeper ideas observed in the world, such as self-contradiction and the legal and economic systems in light of those few main ideas that I got lost and my mind started uncontrollably drifting. The book was short (a merciful trait not shared by many similar philosophic epics) and divided into three main sections. The first dealt with the individual; the second, with his relation with his fellow man; and finally, the individual’s relation to God.

The basic ideas from the book were self-evident; like looking at something from a different vantage point. The more we treat or “experience” others as ‘Thou’ instead of ‘It’, the more spiritual, the more fuller, the more we interact and the more real we ourselves become. Strive to treat others as ‘Thou’ and you will self-actualize. God is represented as the infinite-I. We only live when we are in relationship. All living is defined by relationship, and we become more real as we participate in the ‘I-Thou’ relationship.