Buber: I and Thou

According to Martin Buber, man has two distinct ways of engaging with the world, one of which the modern age ignores. There is a distinction drawn between the two modes of engaging the world, the first of these Buber calls “experience” (the mode of I-it). This mode is familiar to the modern man. The object of experience is viewed as the thing to be utilized or a thing to be used for a purpose. There is a necessary distance between the experiencing (I) and the experienced (It), the one is subject and the other is object. In contrast the second mode explained by Buber is “encounter” (the mode of I-You). In this mode the individuals enters into a relationship with the object encountered. The You we encounter is encountered in its entirety and not experienced as a place in space and time. 

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