Das Du-Bewusstsein

The subject of this study is the socio-philosophical foundation of a philosophy of the second person singular. The so-called philosophers of dialogue, Ferdinand Ebner, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, whose writings—according to the thesis of this study—have already thought out and identified the socio-ontological foundation of a ‘you’ consciousness, are re-read. These philosophers, who in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century carried out a necessary upheaval of the paradigm of thought valid until then, pursued a twofold line of argumentation: criticism of idealistic philosophy, of its subject-centrism, and at the same time the drafting of a socio-ontological determination of being-with, of the interhuman. The basic thesis of the philosophers of dialogue, as well as of this book, is that the consciousness of the I is based on an epigene of a primordial experience of the Thou.