I and Thou, Trans. Kaufmann

I and Thou, Martin Bubers classic philosophical work, is among the 20th centurys foundational documents of religious ethics. The close association of the relation to God with the relation to ones fellow-men is my most essential concern, Buber explains in the Afterword. Before discussing that relationship, in the books final chapter, Buber explains at length the range and ramifications of the ways people treat one another, and the ways they bear themselves in the natural world. One should beware altogether of understanding the conversation with God as something that occurs merely apart from or above the everyday, Buber explains. Gods address to man penetrates the events in all our lives and all the events in the world around us, everything biographical and everything historical, and turns it into instruction, into demands for you and me. Throughout I and Thou, Buber argues for an ethic that does not use other people (or books, or trees, or God), and does not consider them objects of ones own personal experience. Instead, Buber writes, we must learn to consider everything around us as You speaking to me, and requiring a response. Bubers dense arguments can be rough going at times, but Walter Kaufmanns definitive 1970 translation contains hundreds of helpful footnotes providing Bubers own explanations of the books most difficult passages.