“Buber did not strictly follow Judaism’s religious laws. Worried that an “internal slavery” to religious law stunts spiritual growth, he did not believe that revelation could ever be law-giving in itself, but that revelation becomes legislation through the self-contradiction of man. Principles require acting in a prescribed way, but the uniqueness of each situation and encounter requires each to be approached anew. He could not blindly accept laws but felt compelled to ask continually if a particular law was addressing him in his particular situation. While rejecting the universality of particular laws, this expresses a meta-principle of dialogical readiness.” – https://iep.utm.edu/buber/

“—When man does not test the a priori of relation in the world, working out and actualizing the innate You in what he encounters, it turns inside. Then it unfolds through the unnatural, impossible object, the I—which is to say that it unfolds where there is no room for it to unfold. Thus the confrontation within the self comes into being, and this cannot be relation, presence, the current of reciprocity, but only self-contradiction” (119).

Thus, is there a possible I-You relation held in regard with the self? No. This enactment can happen, but it is only ever self-contradiction. Some may try to posit it as relation, perhaps even the truly religious relation, where one turns within to try to turn beyond, but it fails. It cannot be relation. It is something of the irrational. This is a horrified fleeing from the Doppelgänger, that which is the double you, your double. One will only keep re-finding their deception. “Here is the edge of life” (120). It is mad delusion, this unfulfilled attempt at relation found only a fulfillment in delusion, “… now it gropes around in the labyrinth and gets lost ever more profoundly” (120).er? Can one have an I-You relation with the self? (pp.119-120)”