Birth, Sehnsucht and Creation: Reading Buber between Plato and Kierkegaard

Abstract

Martin Buber conceives human potential through the trope of pregnancy and birth. His portrayal of this phenomenon in I and Thou comprises a natural connection between mother and child during pregnancy and the potential for future, spiritual connections, articulated as I–Thou relations, which the child may accordingly achieve with their surroundings. Analyzing this model reveals Buber’s literary-philosophical engagement with the works of Plato and Søren Kierkegaard, and illuminates his perspective on human abilities and limits. Moreover, the context of Plato and Kierkegaard elucidates the way Buber connects an inborn human yearning (Sehnsucht) for I–Thou relations to participation in the divine creation of the world. This connection between Sehnsucht and creation, between I–It and I–Thou relations, diminishes the gap between human and God, emphasizing the significant role divine creation plays in the I–It reality.

1. Introduction

Rabbi Bunam said to his disciples: “Everyone must have two pockets, so that he can reach into the one or the other, according to his needs. In his right pocket are to be the words: ‘For my sake was the world created,’ and in his left: ‘I am earth and ashes’”

(Buber 1991, pp. 249–50).

This commonly recited Hasidic legend, attributed to Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa (1767–1827), appears in the book Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber (1878–1965).1 It presents two irreconcilable perspectives, both of which define the religious subject. On one hand, they must accept human insignificance relative to the world into which they were created, and therefore also in relation to the God who created this world; on the other hand, they must accept that the world was created for human beings, and God therefore accords significance to individual human actions within creation. Despite the inherent contradiction between these two perspectives, the presence of the notes in two pockets of the Hasidic master portrays the tension between them as necessary to the religious life. Tales of the Hasidim relates legends regarding many Hasidic masters, but it is no coincidence that Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa held particular importance for Buber.2 As a religious philosopher, Buber is centrally concerned with questions relating both to the individual’s mission in the world and to the limits of human ability vis-à-vis God as creator of the world.

Towards the end of World War I, Buber began developing his philosophy of dialogue, which he formulated comprehensively for the first time in I and Thou (1923) (Buber 1923).3 Although this work marks the beginning of a new phase in the thought of the then forty-five-year-old Jewish-German intellectual, it nevertheless maintains a dual characterization of the human’s path in the world, consistent with Buber’s earlier writings until then (Shapira 1999, pp. 79–129). The main theoretical development he presents here and maintains in subsequent writings involves the assertion of human limitations in relation to, and dependence on his surroundings in the world and on God (Horwitz 1988, pp. 133–220; Mendes-Flohr 1989, pp. 93–126).4 From the start, I and Thou establishes two ways in which a human being may relate to the world and to God. “I–Thou” represents a mutual and present affinity between a person and all that they may encounter, in which God is revealed. “I–It” features limiting, defining, and partial encounters; hence God, who cannot be limited, defined, or partial, is absent from, and supposedly cannot be expressed through any I–It relation.5 On the surface, these two relationships, represented as Grundworte (primary words), standing for archetypes of expression or communication, are unconnected one to the other, constituting an unbridgeable gap between human beings and God, between the finite human reality and the eternal reality of God.

In this essay, I illustrate human potential for engaging eternity as portrayed in I and Thou through Buber’s discussion of pregnancy and birth. I demonstrate Buber’s literary-philosophical engagements with Plato’s and Kierkegaard’s treatments of human ability and dependence, and their influence upon his own. Consequently, this essay will identify the connection between Sehnsucht, the innate ability of humans in the I–It reality to seek and yearn for I–Thou relations, and the creation that occurs in I–Thou reality. In this regard, I differ from Rivka Horwitz who contends that Buber “agreed with Kierkegaard in not founding his I–Thou and I–It conceptions on creation” (Horwitz 1988, p. 213).6 While others have compared Buber and Kierkegaard,7 no focused analysis has related Buber’s ‘double pregnancy’ model to Plato.8 This model, central to Buber’s effort to reduce the gap between humans and God, between finite and infinite, embeds divine potential in the human and her surroundings in the world and connects between the two modes of relation, I–It and I–Thou. The connections between these Grundworten clarify the human’s mission in the world, as God’s partner in the world’s creation.

2. The ‘Double Pregnancy’

In the first part of the book, Buber draws insight from two phenomena on the relation between the Grundworten. First, he turns to the “spiritual history of the primitive man”9 in order to identify their “fundamental difference” (Buber 1985, p. 22),10 then affirms their connections by doing so. The affinity that prevails between I and Thou precedes the stage in which the person “has recognised himself as an I”. The person’s emergence into self-consciousness occurs “when the I of the relation has […] taken on a separate existence” (Buber 1985, pp. 22–23).11 This transition from I–Thou to I–It becomes clearer through the second phenomenon Buber presents, when following the pregnancy and birth of a child: from a “purely natural combination” between a mother and her fetus during pregnancy, prior to the fetus’s independent existence, to the child’s detachment from their mother at birth. This separation enables the development of self-consciousness detached from the previous relation (Buber 1985, pp. 24–25).12 On the surface, I–Thou and I–It differ according to the measure of self-consciousness.13 However, Buber’s observation of the “primitive man” leads him to distinguish more broadly between his Grundworten. First, I–Thou expresses a joining of I and Thou, whereas I–It expresses the separation of I and It. The second distinction between the two relations is ontological-chronological. I–Thou is primal and precedes the I–It relationship (Buber 1985, pp. 22–23). This chronology is apparent in both the “primitive man’s” development of self-consciousness and the birth of a child, and aligns with Buber’s assertion of the necessity of the transition from I–Thou to I–It: “every Thou in our world must become an It” (Buber 1985, p. 16). Therefore, the transition from I–Thou to I–It entails a clear and necessary connection between the Grundworten.

However, Buber sends contradictory messages regarding the ability to transfer in the opposite direction, from I–It to I–Thou, complicating the connection between the reality of I–It and its subsequent I–Thou. On one hand, I–Thou is repeatedly described as a primal, original, initial reality, especially in relation to the “primitive man” and society. It is depicted as “the original relational event” (Buber 1985, p. 22), as “the true original unity, the lived relation”, and most prominently emphasized in the statement “[i]n the beginning is relation” (Buber 1985, p. 18),14 referring to the relation (Beziehung) of I–Thou. Defining I–Thou as a primal, original reality that precedes the I–It relation determines the chronology between the Grundworte and affirms the necessary connection of I–Thou to the subsequent I–It reality. Yet this leads to the conclusion that there is no reality prior to I–Thou, and that even if there were such a reality (I–It) at the earliest stage, it is certainly not connected to a subsequent I–Thou relation, which is by definition primal and original. Transition from I–It to I–Thou does not therefore seem possible.

On the other hand, Buber stresses that I–It can become I–Thou, portraying a clear connection between them: “every thing in the world, either before or after becoming a thing, is able to appear to an I as its Thou […]. The It is the eternal chrysalis, the Thou the eternal butterfly” (Buber 1985, p. 17). Pronouncing that every “thing” (It) can appear to the person (I) as a Thou suggests an I–It reality that precedes I–Thou and undermines its precedence in the earlier chronology. Furthermore, Buber connects the person’s I–It relation and the I–Thou affinity that follows it with a chrysalis-butterfly analogy, indicating that the latter continues and actualizes the former. Yet, if Buber lays out a chronology between I–Thou and I–It and defines the former as a primal, original reality, it is hard to imagine a prior I–It reality that gets actualized through transition to I–Thou.

This engrained tension bears implications not only on Buber’s approach to the specific reality that precedes I–Thou, but also on his approach to the subsequent I–It reality and its potential to transition into future I–Thou relations. This tension might be better understood in light of the difference Buber presents between the two transitions: the Thou “is bound [muß] to become an It” whereas the It “may [kann] become a Thou” (Buber 1985, p. 33; 2019a, p. 58). While the transition from I–Thou to I–It is necessary, the transition from I–It to I–Thou is merely possible. I–Thou relations entail mutuality (“relation is mutual”) and require “both will and grace” to occur (Buber 1985, pp. 8–9). The person’s will for I–Thou is not sufficient since they depend on the grace of Thou as well. The transition’s dependence on the will of Thou explains why it is only possible, but not necessary. Therefore, the reality created by the I and Thou is both different and disconnected to some degree from any previous reality, even though the person is able to transition from an I–It relation to an I–Thou relation, suggesting there is somewhat of a continuum, as with a chrysalis and butterfly. Accordingly, characterizing I–Thou as a primary reality and characterizing it as an actualization of the potential embedded in the preceding reality requires a more flexible interpretation.15

A study of Buber’s conception of pregnancy and birth will illuminate the contradictory relation between the I–It and its subsequent original reality of I–Thou. He asserts that we “receive fuller knowledge” from considering the birth of a child than the insights drawn from the “primitive man” (Buber 1985, p. 24). Still, his choice of pregnancy and birth as a model for the transition from I–Thou to I–It, a singular event that does not recur, just as a specific baby cannot be reborn or return to its mother’s womb, emphasizes that, for the human situated in the I–It reality, I–Thou will always be an event taken place in the past, and its future recurrence will never be possible for them. This may seem to run contrary to his claim that every It can become Thou.16 Nonetheless, Buber consciously chose this phenomenon, signifying that even the problematic implication for the ability to transition to I–Thou holds relevance for his doctrine.

This tension can be resolved by attending to Buber’s description of two connections that culminate in birth, one natural (naturhafte) and the other spiritual (geisthafte). While the natural connection of pregnancy represents an originary event that precedes a person’s existence and belongs to their past, the spiritual connection is an event that may occur in their future. The person could enter into a new I–Thou relation, replacing the initial connection which existed with their mother: “Time is granted to the child to exchange a spiritual connexion, that is, relation, for the natural connexion with the world that he gradually loses” (Buber 1985, p. 25). This model echoes Buber’s reflection on his relations with his own mother, who left him at the age of three as a result of her divorce arrangements with Buber’s father. As Buber relates in Autobiographical Fragments, this separation had an impact on him as a boy and fueled his anticipation of their reunion thirty years later. Although this longed-for reunion with his mother was eventually a failure, inspiring Buber to coin the term Vergegnung (mismeeting), it did not prevent him from believing in the possibility of engaging in future I–Thou relations (Buber 2002b, pp. 21–23; 2016, pp. 274–75).17 In the narrow sense, the problem of the single-event birth as paradigm has been addressed, since, in addition to the initial natural connection, every person is capable of entering into future, spiritual I–Thou connections.

However, from a broader perspective, presentation of these natural and spiritual affinities has great relevance to our understanding of Buber’s doctrine. There is no requirement to renounce the implications of the natural single-event birth. Rather, it clarifies the necessity of describing I–Thou in the contradictory combination of initial characterization and primal potential. For this purpose, it is helpful to summarize the elements of Buber’s naturhaftes-geisthaftes (natural-spiritual) pregnancy model. Quoting a Talmudic midrash, he maintains that throughout the natural connection, the human being knows all, and at birth this knowledge is forgotten: “this connexion has such a cosmic quality that the mythical saying of the Jews, ‘in the mother’s body man knows the universe, in birth he forgets it’”.18 Every person is separated at birth from the primal naturhafte connection with their mother, a connection that precedes their existence. Thus, the primal connection is embedded from the start in each person’s separated I–It reality, “as a secret image of desire,” a longing and yearning (Sehnsucht) to be actualized in a new geisthafte connection (Buber 1985, p. 25; 2019a, p. 53).19 But this Sehnsucht that begins with the human being’s birth is not the only significance of the primal naturhafte connection. The natural connection embeds in each human being (I), and in every It around them, the latent potential of entering spiritual affinities in the world. That is to say, every geisthafte affinity (I–Thou) is possible, owing to the preceding I–It reality, as each I–It reality itself springs from a primal naturhafte connection. Actualizing this potential through a spiritual I–Thou affinity is also original and involves a new geisthafte birth.20 Buber’s definition of an original reality bound up with birth enabled by a prior reality and may subsequently enable a later original reality, calls for further attention. Since the elements of Buber’s pregnancy-birth model correspond with Western philosophical traditions, explicating this correspondence will clarify Buber’s insistence on characterizing his I–Thou affinity as an initial reality, while also actualizing a potential embedded in its preceding reality.

3. Reading Buber between Plato and Kierkegaard

The components of Buber’s pregnancy-birth model, as well as the rooted tension in the relation I–It has to its subsequent I–Thou reality, resonate with the opposing doctrines presented in Plato’s Meno and Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments, on the topic of human potential for knowledge and the manner in which this knowledge is acquired.21 In Plato’s Meno, Socrates summarizes a paradox presented to him by Meno:

[A] man cannot inquire either about what he knows or about what he does not know? For he cannot inquire about what he knows, because he knows it, and in that case is in no need of inquiry; nor again can he inquire about what he does not know, since he does not know about what he is to inquire

(Plato, Meno 80e).22

It is not possible to inquire, look, or search (translations vary)23 for something that one does not know, since one can neither know what to look for, nor recognize its absence and thus the need to ‘search’ for it. Therefore, if learning is a ‘search’ for a truth that one does not know, learning is not possible. Socrates solves this by explaining that a human soul is immortal, having been born numerous times and seen all, and therefore “has acquired knowledge of all and everything” (Plato, Meno 81d). Nevertheless, during each birth the soul forgets its knowledge and therefore learning is actually an act of recollecting, a ‘search’ for that which has been forgotten.24 Great similarity obtains between Socrates, Buber, and the Talmudic midrash which Buber refers to in the above citation.25 In all three, the human being knows all in their mother’s womb and then forgets it at birth.26

The similarity between Plato’s Meno and Buber highlights that both embed a realizable potential within the human being based on a primal reality. For Plato, the forgotten knowledge is the primal reality of the human being that enables the ‘search’ for knowledge as an act of recollection, and its eventual achievement or acquisition. For Buber, the naturhafte connection, separated at birth, is the primal reality of the human being and their surroundings, the manifest Its in the world, which embeds within them the potential to enter a future geisthafte affinity. The act of Sehnsucht (yearning) for a future affinity, which also appears later as Beziehungstreben (“effort to establish relation”),27 is innate in the human being (Buber 2019a, p. 54). Buber’s Sehnsucht is very similar to the Platonic ‘searching’, referring to a striving for truth. It even shares resemblance to some of the translation possibilities of this term (Plato’s ‘search’) from Greek (ζήτησις) to the German language (Suche; Forschung), as in various translations of Meno.28

Nonetheless, Buber and Plato disagree regarding the way the primal reality is attained. In Buber’s doctrine, using Plato’s terms, prenatal knowledge depends upon the naturhafte connection of I (child) and Thou (mother), and accordingly, attaining any knowledge of the truth post-partum will only be possible in a new geisthafte connection, through an encounter between two. In contrast, according to Plato, a person’s prenatal soul knows everything through seeing,29 and therefore the post-partum individual is able to know all through the autonomous act of recollection. Knowing all is an ability of the independent individual, if only they will recollect, since the knowledge is embedded in them. For Plato, the ability to attain knowledge of truth derives from the individual’s independent mind, while for Buber, it is limited and dependent on an additional factor.30 The critical point of this comparison for the purposes of the current argument is its engagement of potential and actualization generally, without necessary relation to specific epistemological concerns regarding the acquisition of knowledge.

In Philosophical Fragments, written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, Kierkegaard (1813–1855) disagrees with Plato, arguing that knowing all is not embedded in the human and that the ability to search for knowledge is limited (Kierkegaard 1985, pp. 9–13).31 The context for this controversy is the hypothesis of divine truth. Kierkegaard’s Climacus attempts to deal with its revelation to the human being, whose reality is finite. In order to discuss the relationship between God and human beings, and between the eternity and history, Kierkegaard distinguishes human knowledge, which is the product of reason, from revealed knowledge, which is beyond it. Truth acquired by divine revelation cannot be acquired by human philosophy. While Socrates views all truth as deriving from one natural source,32 Kierkegaard separates human-worldly truth, philosophy dependent on reason, from divine truth, dependent on revelation. For this reason, Kierkegaard renounces the Socratic model of human potential, which embeds knowledge of all in the human mind, and consequently the person’s ability to search and obtain it, leaving knowledge of all dependent on divine revelation. Kierkegaard agrees with Meno’s paradox, i.e., that a person cannot search for what is unknown to them, since for this purpose they had needed to know about it, and therefore, the act of searching for divine knowledge is impossible for the human.33 Ergo, learning, through which one can receive revelation and acquire divine knowledge, must also come from God. According to Kierkegaard, one may have ‘faith’ that there is truth beyond the worldly reason, but even such ‘faith’ could not be supported by worldly reason alone, and is therefore paradoxical (Kierkegaard 1985, pp. 62–65).

Kierkegaard defines Socratic primal knowledge as a condition, both for the human ability to know all and for learning as an act of recollection that will enable actualization of innate ability. For Kierkegaard, both eternal knowledge acquired through revelation and the conditions that enable the learning of this knowledge, in the sense of comprehending it, come from God.34 Since the conditions for learning, i.e., the ability to understand revealed divine knowledge, are not within the human’s autonomous reach, God must create them in humans before revealing himself. This new creation within the human being generates a reality unlike the one prior to it and separate from it. Kierkegaard compares this new creation to planting an acorn in a clay pot, which breaks as a result of its growth into an oak, and to old leather bottles bursting as a result of filling them with fresh wine (Kierkegaard 1985, p. 34). As in a difficult birth, which Kierkegaard includes among his allegories, divine creation of these conditions in humans is both separate from the reality that precedes it and independent of them, and is to be related to as a rebirth. Hence, God’s revelation, in which the eternal enters temporal human reality, is an event that includes both the creation of a new reality, i.e., new conditions, and the revelation of divine truth.

Having established the similarity between Buber and Plato, Buber’s similarity to Kierkegaard, Plato’s adversary, now becomes evident as well, especially on the point that explains the significance of characterizing Buber’s I–Thou relation as an initial reality. In both philosophies, knowledge of all, which is acquired through divine revelation, is beyond the ability of the human mind and not dependent upon it alone.35 Not only the person is unable to generate revelation, but the entrance of the divine into temporal worldly-human reality originates in a creation of a reality different from any that preceded it. Thus, this encounter between eternal and temporal must be initial.36 Divine revelation is separate from that which precedes it and involves the creation of a new reality in the person’s rebirth.

While the similarity between Kierkegaard in his Philosophical Fragments and Buber suggests the former’s influence on the latter,37 Buber diverges from his predecessor by making the human a partner in the creation of the new reality and replacing Kierkegaard’s ‘faith’ with potential embedded in the I–It reality, expressed through Sehnsucht, a discussion of which I return to below.38 The fact that Buber integrates elements from both Kierkegaard’s and Plato’s doctrines in I and Thou helps clarify the importance and implication of the two conflicting elements in his theory: the original and initial character of I–Thou affinity and the potential that precedes it. This integration testifies to the fact that Buber does not fully accept either Plato’s or Kierkegaard’s doctrines.

Buber’s doctrine blurs the controversy between Plato and Kierkegaard by interpreting these elements in combination. Like Plato, Buber embeds the knowledge of truth within the human primal reality as a potential, yet, like Kierkegaard, he implies that God’s revelation, in which knowledge of truth is achieved, has no connection whatsoever to its prior reality. This should be seen as a new-initial reality. The use of a prior reality as a basis for potential, as in Plato, is established through the human’s independence and unlimited ability, while the use of revelation as an event detached from the human reality that preceded it, as in Kierkegaard, is established through the human’s dependence on God and the minimization of their ability. Consequently, Buber’s ‘double pregnancy’ model, which includes a primal naturhafte connection as well as a new, future geisthafte connection, seems to incorporate conflicting elements in Plato and Kierkegaard. This model implies that the human possesses an unlimited ability to bring about I–Thou relations in which truth is acquired, and at the same time positions this reality, including the truth obtained through it, as reliant on divine grace.

Buber combines Kierkegaard’s definition of conditions embedded within the human as the potential to search (as in Sehnsucht) for I–Thou relations with the contrasting human dependence on the new divine creation that begins this relation. This contrast is at the center of Meno’s paradox and question: “Why, on what lines will you look, Socrates, for a thing of whose nature you know nothing at all? Pray, what sort of thing, amongst those that you know not, will you treat us to as the object of your search?” (Plato, Meno 80d). It is impossible to search for the future geisthafte connection if it is separate and different from the primal naturhafte connection. On the other hand, it is not possible to create a reality (the future I–Thou) separate and different from its previous one if such a reality stems from a primal existence. Unlike Plato’s and Kierkegaard’s solutions, Buber leaves this paradox as is and avoids choosing one or the other. Instead, he combines them in I and Thou and embraces both this impossible ‘search’ and ironic ‘creation’.39 Buber presents the searching as the person’s Sehnsucht for a new, future I–Thou relation that differs from that which preceded it: “Not as though his yearning meant a longing to return”. But he also describes how a person “has stepped out of the” I–It reality, which originated in the naturhafte connection, and “into […] creation”, the geisthafte connection (Buber 1985, p. 25). Buber thus connects the person’s Sehnsucht with the I–Thou reality that succeeds it and between creation and the I–It reality that precedes it, as though these exist on a continuum, despite their essential paradox.40

4. Sehnsucht and Creation: The Human-Worldly Potential

For Buber, humans and God both play roles in Sehnsucht and creation. Any answer to the question of whether a person is able to search for God using the finite conditions of the world or whether they depend on God to create eternal conditions in the world would simply recapitulate the division between the Platonic human search and the Kierkegaardian divine creation. Buber is neither willing to renounce the gap between the human and the divine, nor between finite and eternal reality, but blurs this gap through divine potential, which he grants to the human and their worldly reality. To establish this claim, it is essential to clarify that I–Thou is first and foremost a connection between the human and the world,41 and that only through interacting with the world does the human meet God: “He who truly goes out to meet the world goes out also to God” (Buber 1985, p. 95). First, the naturhafte connection between child and mother is that of human and world: “Every child that is coming into being rests, like all life that is coming into being, in the womb of the great mother, the undivided primal world” (Buber 1985, p. 25). The separated I–It reality to which the child is born corresponds to a separation between human and world. Accordingly, the future geisthafte connection, I–Thou, is also one that is formed between human and world, as the It becomes Thou. For this precise reason, the human is able to yearn for it. Second, Buber teaches us that meeting the divine, the eternal Thou, can only be possible through a human’s (I) affinity with her surroundings in the world (Thou): “[…] in each Thou we address the eternal Thou” (Buber 1985, p. 6). The human’s interaction with the world is the condition that qualifies them to receive divine truth, the ‘creation’ of the new reality within which God reveals himself.

Therefore, a person can yearn among the Its of the world for I–Thou affinity within which the eternal conditions will be created, but, contrary to Plato, successful Sehnsucht does not depend on the person alone, but on the connection between the human (I) and world (Thou). The eternal conditions that are created are not attained by the individual, since their creation requires both human and world. However, contra Kierkegaard, the fact that the human plays a part in this eternal creation, and that it occurs between them and the finite world, expands their abilities and reduces their dependence on God. The I–It reality is finite while the I–Thou reality is eternal. Nonetheless, both realities are formed by the relation between human and world, and God’s revelation is determined according to their type of relation. This point is crucial, since it accentuates the connection of the human and world, creating an eternal reality together with the human who had previously searched (yearned) for affinity with the (then-separate) world, actualizing the potential embedded within them. This also distinguishes Buber’s Sehnsucht from Kierkegaard’s faith, which is when a person is paradoxically drawn away from the existing worldly conditions—reason—to what may be beyond the world.42 Sehnsucht for I–Thou affinity is not an act of evading the world with which the human comes into contact, since the transition into creation requires contact with the world as well.

This does not revoke God’s role in creation, but affirms that divine potential is already embedded in the human (I) and world (It) in the reality preceding creation (I–It), and is actualized in their affinity (I–Thou). Of course, revelation of divine truth that is beyond human knowledge and abilities requires, as Kierkegaard argues, the creation of a new reality within the human, finite reality, a creation that emanates from God, a condition that does not exist within or depend on the human. While Buber agrees that the creation of a new reality needs to be divine, unlike the reality that preceded it, and out of human reach alone, he departs from Kierkegaard’s approach, claiming that the human takes part in God’s creation: “We take part in creation, meet the Creator, reach out to Him, helpers and companions” (Buber 1985, p. 82).43 God created the world that includes humans, and when humans act in the world, by engaging with it in I–Thou relations, they take part in world creation as God’s partners. In fact, a double creation is actualized with every I–Thou relation. I–Thou relation is both an action that the world, created by God, exercises and applies on the human (“Creation happens to us, […] we submit”. Buber 1985, p. 82), as well as an action that the human performs in the world, as God’s partner, taking part in the creation of the world.

Buber explicitly refers to God as “the Creator” of the world, in which and with which humans engage in I–It relations, thus undermining the position of Rivka Horwitz that Buber does not offer “a theory of the creation of a relation between God and the world” (Horwitz 1988, p. 211). As Maurice Friedman shows, the centrality of a primordial divine creation in I and Thou is consistent with Buber’s later writings (Friedman 1993, pp. 113–14).44 Hence, according to Buber, divine potential is embedded within the human and the world in the I–It reality in order for humans to create eternal conditions through their I–Thou affinity. The world is a “divine destiny” and God needs Man in it: “[…] do you not know too that God needs you—in the fullness of His eternity needs you?” (Buber 1985, p. 82).45 This teaches that I–It relations are significant to Buber’s philosophy, both because the world plays an essential part in the human’s Sehnsucht, and because the reality of I–It bears divine potential embedded in its original creation.46

Buber’s concept of creation and the potential embedded in the reality of I–It match the ‘double pregnancy’ model. The primal, naturhafte connection between mother and child, created by God, embeds in the human’s relations with the world divine potential to engage in future geisthafte connections, I–Thou relations, and create new eternal realities in which revelation may occur. Analysis of this model in I and Thou in the context of the doctrines of Plato and Kierkegaard elucidates Buber’s perspective on human abilities and limits and the connection of Sehnsucht to creation. Unlike the Platonic search, the potential of the Buberian Sehnsucht is limited, as the human alone is incapable of creating eternal reality, and therefore incapable of searching for God. Unlike Kierkegaardian faith, the human’s Sehnsucht is directed towards the world through I–It relations, with which they can engage in mutual I–Thou relations, thanks to primal divine potential that creates the eternal reality. In this way, Buber connects Sehnsucht and creation, I–It and its subsequent initial reality of I–Thou, and reduces the gap between the human and God without eliminating it. This understanding correlates with Buber’s statement that “there is no such thing as seeking God, for there is nothing in which He could not be found” (Buber 1985, p. 80). Buber’s ‘double pregnancy’ model offers, above and beyond this simplistic statement, a comprehension of the human’s divine potential in the world, from birth into the I–It reality, through Sehnsucht to creation.