While Martin Buber is best known for his conception of the so-called I-Thou relation, many of his philosophical writings are concerned with the wider realities of communal being together. The aim of this paper is to examine this largely neglected aspect of Buber’s work by focusing on the concept of the “essential We” (wesenhaftes Wir). As I will argue in this paper, this concept did not develop in a philosophical vacuum, but in critical dialogue with pre-eminent thinkers of the phenomenological tradition. Contra Heidegger, Buber defends the claim that the We must be explored via an investigation of dyadic I-Thou relations. As I further demonstrate, this idea coincides in many respects with Husserl’s approach towards the We, although both conceptualize the I-Thou relation in different ways. While Husserl conceives of the relation between an I and a you as one that foregrounds the similarities between self and other and thereby allows one to adopt a common we-perspective, Buber celebrates the I-Thou relation’s ability to make visible the other person’s particularity and otherness. However, instead of putting these different accounts into competition, I argue that both highlight important features of two distinct forms of group alignment considered in recent social psychology.

虽然马丁·布伯 (Martin Buber) 以其所谓的“我-你”关系的概念而闻名，但他的许多哲学著作都关注更广泛的集体共处现实。本文的目的是通过关注“基本的我们”（wesenhaftes Wir）的概念来检验布伯工作中这个在很大程度上被忽视的方面。正如我将在本文中论证的那样，这个概念并不是在哲学真空中发展起来的，而是在与现象学传统的杰出思想家的批判性对话中发展起来的。与海德格尔相反，布伯为“我们”必须通过对二元“我-你”关系的调查来探索的主张进行辩护。正如我进一步证明的那样，这个想法在许多方面与胡塞尔对待我们的方法不谋而合。，尽管两者都以不同的方式概念化了 I-Thou 关系。胡塞尔认为我和你之间的关系突出了自我和他者之间的相似性，从而允许人们采用共同的我们的观点，而布伯则赞扬我-你关系能够使他人的特殊性变得可见，并且他性。然而，我并没有将这些不同的解释置于竞争中，而是强调了最近社会心理学中考虑的两种不同形式的群体对齐的重要特征。