It and Thou

Lindsey Renoll

September 20, 2014

Redick

It and Thou

After reading the excerpt from Martin Buber’s book, I think I understand what the distinction between interacting with the constituents of a particular place as objects—it— versus subjects—thou means. In all honesty, a large portion of the reading went straight over my head, but there were small segments that did stick with me and cause me to gain some kind of understanding of it and thou. Based off of Buber’s book, it seems that every person can decide whether something is an object or a subject.

Whether someone views something as an object or subject all depends on how the person views the world. For example, an impious person would view religion and all its aspects as an object. They can learn about the religion without ever actually “interacting” with it or experiencing it. But for a religious person they view their faith as a subject that they will grow with. This is similar to the idea of a sacred place and Lane’s axioms where he states that a sacred place can be tred upon without being entered. A religion can be taught to someone but unless they believe then they won’t actually experience the religion.

This idea of one person viewing something as a subject or object and another person viewing it as something different doesn’t just mean religion, someone can view something physical as an object while another views it as a subject. This could possibly be applied to animals, one person may believe animals are capable of being subjects with projects that interact with them as they also go after their project, while another person doesn’t view animals as subject, but instead as objects that are there but do not have their own projects and don’t affect a persons project. For me, I view animals as subjects because I interact with them and they interact back. I believe animals experience projects, just like humans, and sometimes their project involves me. But for other people animals are objects, they believe animals don’t have souls and they don’t experience projects.  They merely exist.

Overall, I believe the distinction between subjects, thou, and objects, it, is up to any person, not every person will agree what is a subject and what is an object. The idea of subject and object doesn’t just apply to religion, but almost anything physical or spiritual too.