MAN BECOMES EVER MORE
Buber perceives man becoming more through his human capacity to relate to other being in all forms from the materialistic to the spiritual in "I-Thou," "I-It," and "We" ways.[8] Gestation, with the closeness of mother and child, has left man with an ingrained knowing of the experience of closeness. Thus, throughout man's life his condition of existence is affected by and desires relationship with and closeness to other being. The closeness of the conditions of gestation is never again possible, hence existential loneliness. Yet because of this prenatal experience Buber conceives of man as born with a "Thou"—another—before he is conscious of himself, his "I." With growing consciousness he sorts out his "I" from his "Thou." You can see the late infant doing, acting through, this separation. During this growing phase, often to the care-taking adult's frustration, he repeatedly, intensely, and excitedly throws his toys or bottle out of the crib, carriage, or playpen. Often he runs away from his "Thou," his parental security source, to a safe distance with intense awareness of what he is doing. While internalizing these and subsequent "Thous" as part of his "I," his knowing place, paradoxically, he sorts out who he is, and who and what is other than himself. So with ever more relationship, ever more experience, he becomes ever more the person he has the human capacity to be. He becomes more through his relations with others, never the same as these others, though he does internalize these others as part of himself.
Buber describes "I-Thou" relating, man merging with otherness, as always necessitating an "I," a man, capable of recognizing self as at a distance, apart from otherness. Therefore, his "I-Thou" relating, a merging of beings, is not like the psychological defense, unconscious identification. Buber's "I-Thou" relating emphasizes awareness of each being's uniqueness without a superimposing, or a deciding about the other without a knowing. Such relating is a turning to the other, offering the other authentic presence, allowing the authentic presence of the other with the self, and maintaining one's capacity to question. It is not then identification or an idealization of the other. Within this mysterious happening of "I-Thou" relating, when both participants are human, each becomes more. Buber refers to the event of this merging of otherness, of man with other being, as "the between." Humanistic nursing is concerned with "the between" of nurses and their others. Their others, the {45} microcosms of their communities, would be patients, patients' families, professional colleagues, and other health service personnel.
Buber describes man's ability to come to know and relate in "I-It" as man looking back, reflecting on his past "I-Thou" relations. Looking back these "I-Thou" relations are viewed as an object to be known, as "It". "I-It" relating allows man to interpret, categorize, and accrue scientific knowledge.
Finally man relates with others as "We." This permits the phenomenon of community and of adult unique contribution. So man becomes through relating with family, others, and community, like Hesse's onion or a being who actively moves toward ever more integuments, qualities, threads, and complexity.[9] Many unique contradictory type beings, then, have influenced the becoming of each individual human person. In a sense each unique person might be viewed as a community of the beings with whom he has meaningfully related in struggle and/or complementariness. In fact Buber talks of thinking man as a dialogue of internalized "Thous."