Becoming a person and being alive: Discovering the I in I-Thou relations

Abstract The account in Chapter 6 moves us beyond mere survival—managing to avoid urges to end one’s life, or creating a brittle, narrow, and destructive survival identity. This chapter explains how we can ‘find life’, or the fullness of our humanity, when we are held in deep regard. It shows more precisely how being treated as a Thou helps us to find or become a better I. This is one of the key sources of our moral awareness, thinking, and agency. When we become fuller selves, we become more reliable, unified, sincere, or less fragmented. We can enter into commitments with ourselves and with others whom we care about. Using this framework, the chapter shows how an I-Thou prison provided more chances to grow and change, and more moral opportunities to prisoners than an I-It prison. Being treated as a moral subject was a route to becoming a better moral agent: how people were regarded impacted on what they did individually and socially, but also on what they became: on the development and expression of their personhood. The development of agency, the discovery of interests, and the growing of a voice were all linked to well-being, or a sense of being more ‘alive’. Vitality and expression might be seen as the opposite of depression and despair. In an I-Thou environment, as Rosa put it, ‘the wire to the world begins to vibrate intensely’. There was less violence in this setting, and enthusiasm among prisoners for its psychologically-informed and community-oriented practices.