1 Published in Levinas and Analytic Philosophy: Second-Person Normativity and the Moral Life, edited by Michael Fagenblat and Melis Erdur, p. 80-100. New York: Routledge, 2020. Please cite from published version. Buber, Levinas, and the I-Thou Relation Patricia Meindl, Felipe León and Dan Zahavi Abstract Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas—two of the most prominent Jewish thinkers of the 20th century—both refused to conceive of one’s relation to the other in purely cognitive terms. They differed, however, in their characterization of the structure and nature of the intersubjective encounter. Whereas Buber emphasized the horizontal and reciprocal character of the I-Thou relation, Levinas insisted that the relation between self and other is in the first instance a vertical relation of responsibility. In the following contribution, we will present and analyze the disagreement between Buber and Levinas and assess to what extent their exchange might be relevant for contemporary debates on second-person engagement. Introduction Research on social cognition looks quite different today than it did two or three decades ago. Back then, a central question was whether simulation theory or theory-theory offered the right account of social cognition. Today, after a period where people favored hybrid mixtures of both types of theories, various alternative accounts have gradually become part of the standard repertoire. One of the proposals that has gained increasing momentum during the last ten years, not only within philosophy, 1 but also in developmental psychology 2 and in social neuroscience, 3 is the idea that we should replace the traditional privileging of either first-person experience or third-person observation with a theory that explicitly foregrounds second-person engagement. Despite all the enthusiasm, it still remains contested what exactly second-person engagement amounts to. What is involved in relating to a person as a you, rather than as a he or she? Does the adoption of a second- person perspective on someone entail that one directly engages with the person in question, rather than simply observing him or her from afar? Can one approach the other as a you