The Word and the Spiritual Realities (the I and the Thou): Pneumatological Fragments

This volume will constitute the first published English translation of Ferdinand Ebners seminal 1921 work, Das Wort und die geistigen realitäten - long available in major languages but never in English. It is frequently compared with Martin Bubers I and Thou, published in 1923, which actually draws its central I-Thou insight from Ebner.

In recent centuries, Philosophy reflects a turn toward the autonomous subject versus a biblical sense of person. The limits/failures of science manifest in the horrors of World War I led to the emergence of a Dialogical Personalist Philosophy in reaction to the universal doubt of Cartesian thought and to German idealism, which engages the idea or representation but not the reality of things-in-themselves.

The core of Ebner: human speech is constitutive of human existence: humans are given the word. Having the word is a miraculous gift from God. It is only in the word, in language, that an I meets a Thou, that relationship and self-identity can occur, and this word is given in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh: In the beginning was the Word; Jesus, the Logos of St. Johns Gospel, mediates between God and man and stands between I and Thou. It is through Jesus that it is possible to address God in the human thou. The key to lifes meaning, to the centrality of relationship, and to Gods continuous action in HIs creation, is found in the I-Thou question: why the I can never be found in itself, and so must look in the thou, while the false I will try to possess the thou as an object of power. This is Ebners critique of idealist thought: reality, truth, and personal identity are neither ideas, nor found in ideas, therefore, Descartes cogito must be rejected, for the existence of the I cant be founded or proved by solitary thinking, but only in relation with a thou. See more