Martin Buber's inborn Thou: A phenomenological account

This paper investigates Martin Buber’s concept of the inborn Thou in relation to the concept of trust. Drawing mostly on phenomenological and psychological resources, I want to argue that the inborn Thou is a form of proto-trust, or more exactly, the first manifestation of what could be called trust towards the other, and towards the world. Trust will also be considered in its relation to familiarity, and I am going to suggest, using different conceptions from several authors, that the connection between familiarity and trust could be better highlighted using once again Buber’s main concept from the book I and Thou. I will investigate the phenomenon of cooperation and companionship in infancy, drawing mostly on the phenomenological theory of intersubjectivity and the one of interaction. My starting point will be Martin Buber’s few pages on the development of the dialogical life on the infant. The phenomenological side of our inquiry will consist mainly in the tradition of the dialogical side of this broad discipline, and here I could recall the contributions of Beata Stawarska and Stephan Strasser. Concerning the psychological side of our thesis, Daniel Stern, Colwyn Trevarthen and Stein Bråten are going to be fundamental sources for our argument that there is an innate sociality of the human being, which manifests itself in the desire for establishing genuine relations between I and Thou. Moreover, trust will again be addressed when we are going to analyze the early interactions between the infant and her primary caregiver. Familiarity and trust will prove themselves in the end to be directly proportional to each other. My main claim would be that one does not speak about an acquisition of trust and familiarity, but rather about the development of both of them from the very beginning of the infant’s life.