The preceding chapter presented the first lap of William James's quest for intimacy, in which he adopted the insider's approach to understanding the nature of his own self through an introspective analysis of its conditions of identity over time. The next lap in his journey is his attempt to achieve a deep intimacy, ultimately a union, with the inner life of other persons, both natural and supernatural, even with the world at large, including the animals and fishes that were mentioned in his ad in the Personals.

The I–Thou Experience

James begins with a special inward manner in which one person experiences another as a “Thou” rather than an “It,” and then extends this to the experience of the world at large, resulting in panpsychism. His analysis of the I–Thou experience bears a striking resemblance to that offered by Martin Buber some thirty years later. In his book I and Thou, Buber distinguishes between the I–It and the I–Thou modes of experience. The former is James's pragmatic mode of experiencing worldly individuals in terms of how we can ride herd on them and use them for the achievement of our goals. Toward this end we conceptualize them in a way that enables us effectively to use them. But in an I–Thou experience the relata enter into each other. Through a fusing of their originally separate consciousnesses they enter into what Buber terms “relational processes and states,” in which they partially fuse or mush together.