Escreva o seu resumo aqui. "I and Thou" (Ich und Du) is a masterpiece of philosophical anthropology which lays the foundation
of dialogical thought, developedduring the twentieth century mainly by Jewish philosophers from Buber to Levinas. This book describes the category of "being-with" (mitsein), "encounter" or "dialogue" as the "anthropological proto-category". This means that the essence of a human being lies in his relational or dialogical nature, which defines the most distinctive trait of personhood. What distinguishes a "person" from an "object" or "something in general" is exactly, according to Buber, the capacity of being-with-someone. Admitedly, one can conceive the
possibility of "objectifying" or "reifying" (from Latin "res"="thing") a human being when he is treated as a tool or a commodity (Marx had already denounced this possibility), however this remains an act of violence that cannot change the essence of personhood. The philosophical tour de force consists here in refusing the
ontological legitimacy of the model of the "thing" (as in Modern Philosophy with its "thing-wise" terminology, expressed above all by the Cartesian "res cogitans") to deal with the concept and the reality of "personhood". It goes without saying that the ontological souvereignty and absolute independence of the "I" or "Subject" is completely jeopardised, for if the essence of the "I" relies on his "relational" quality then there is room for a fundamental asymmetry within the Self. In other words, the "being" of the Self cannot be found "within" Itself but only in its belonging to a shared "being-with". Thou is the "I"'s origin. To sum up, this book holds the radical primacy of intersubjectivity over subjectivity.