Everything about Martin Buber totally explained
Martin Buber (
8 February 1878 –
13 June 1965) was an
Austrian-
Israeli-
Jewish
philosopher, translator, and educator, whose work centered on
theistic ideals of religious consciousness, interpersonal relations, and community. Buber's evocative, sometimes poetic writing style has marked the major themes in his work: the retelling of
Hasidic tales,
Biblical commentary, and
metaphysical dialogue. A
cultural Zionist, Buber was active in the Jewish and educational communities of
Germany and
Israel. He was also a staunch supporter of a
binational solution in
Palestine, instead of a
two-state solution, and after the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel, of a regional federation of Israel and Arab states. His influence extends across the humanities, particularly in the fields of
social psychology,
social philosophy, and
religious existentialism.
Life and work
Martin (
Hebrew name:
מָרְדֳּכַי, Mordechai) Buber was born on
February 8 1878 in
Vienna into a Jewish family. His grandfather,
Solomon Buber, in whose house in
Lemberg (now Lviv,
Ukraine) Buber spent much of his childhood, worked as a renowned scholar in the field of
Jewish tradition and
literature. Buber had a multilingual education: the household spoke
Yiddish and
German, he picked up Hebrew and French in his childhood, and Polish at secondary school.
In 1892, Buber returned to his father's house in Lemberg. A personal religious crisis led him to break with Jewish
religious customs: he started reading
Immanuel Kant,
Søren Kierkegaard, and
Friedrich Nietzsche. The latter two, in particular, inspired him to pursue studies in philosophy. In 1896, Buber went to study in
Vienna (philosophy,
art history, German studies,
philology). In 1898, he joined the
Zionist movement, participating in congresses and organizational work. In 1899, while studying in
Zürich, Buber met
Paula Winkler (a non-Jewish Zionist writer who later converted to Judaism) from
Munich, his future wife.
Approaching Zionism from his own personal viewpoint, Buber disagreed with
Theodor Herzl about the political and cultural direction of
Zionism. Herzl envisioned the goal of Zionism in a nation-state, but didn't consider Jewish culture or religion necessary. In contrast, Buber believed the potential of Zionism was for social and spiritual enrichment. Herzl and Buber would continue, in mutual respect and disagreement, to work towards their respective goals for the rest of their lives.
In 1902, Buber became the editor of the weekly
Die Welt, the central organ of the Zionist movement. However a year later Buber became involved with the Jewish
Hasidism movement. Buber admired how the Hasidic communities actualized their religion in daily life and culture. In stark contrast to the busy Zionist organizations, which were always mulling political concerns, the Hasidim were focused on the values which Buber had long advocated for Zionism to adopt. In 1904, Buber withdrew from much of his Zionist organizational work and devoted himself to study and writing. In that year he published his thesis:
Beiträge zur Geschichte des Individuationsproblems (on
Jakob Böhme and
Nikolaus Cusanus).
In 1906, Buber published
Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman, a collection of the tales of the
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, a renowned Hasidic
rebbe, as interpreted and retold in a
Neo-Hasidic fashion by Buber. Two years later, Buber published
Die Legende des Baalschem (stories of the
Baal Shem Tov), the founder of Hasidism.
From 1910 to 1914, Buber studied myths and published editions of mythic texts. In 1916 he moved from
Berlin to
Heppenheim. During
World War I he helped establish the
Jewish National Commission in order to improve the condition of
Eastern European Jews. During that period he became the editor of
Der Jude (German for "The Jew"), a Jewish monthly (until 1924). In 1921 Buber began his close relationship with
Franz Rosenzweig. In 1922 Buber and Rosenzweig co-operated in Rosenzweig's
House of Jewish Learning, known in Germany as
Lehrhaus.
In 1923 Buber wrote his famous essay on existence,
Ich und Du (later translated into English as
I and Thou). Though he edited the work later in his life, he refused to make substantial changes. In 1925 he began, in conjunction with Rosenzweig, translating the
Hebrew Bible into
German. He himself called this translation
Verdeutschung ("Germanification"), since it doesn't always use literary German language but attempts to find new dynamic (often newly-invented) equivalent phrasing in order to respect the multivalent Hebrew original. Between 1926 and 1928 Buber co-edited the quarterly
Die Kreatur ("The Creature").
In 1930 Buber became an honorary professor at the
University of Frankfurt am Main. He resigned in protest from his professorship immediately after
Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. On 4 October 1933 the
Nazi authorities forbade him to lecture. In 1935 he was expelled from the
Reichsschrifttumskammer. He then founded the
Central Office for Jewish Adult Education, which became an increasingly important body as the German government forbade Jews to attend public education. The Nazi administration increasingly obstructed this body.
Finally, in 1938, Buber left Germany and settled in
Jerusalem, in
British-occupied Palestine. He received a professorship at
Hebrew University there, lecturing in
anthropology and introductory
sociology. He participated in the discussion of the Jews' problems in
Palestine and of the Arab question - working out of his Biblical, philosophic and Hasidic work. He became a member of the group
Ichud, which aimed at a
bi-national state for
Arabs and Jews in Palestine. Such a binational confederation was viewed by Buber as a more proper fulfillment of Zionism than a solely Jewish state. In 1946 he published his work
Paths in Utopia, in which he detailed his
communitarian socialist views and his theory of the "dialogical community" founded upon interpersonal "dialogical relationships".
After
World War II Buber began giving lecture-tours in
Europe and the
USA. In 1951 he received the
Goethe award of the
University of Hamburg and in 1953 the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. In 1958 Buber's wife Paula died, and in the same year he won the
Israel Prize. 1963 Buber won the
Erasmus Award in
Amsterdam. On 13 June 1965 Buber died in his house in the
Talbiyeh quarter of Jerusalem. Until then he held friendly connections to old Prague friends like the philosopher
Felix Weltsch, who led the weekly paper
Selbstwehr in Prague, to
Max Brod and to
Hugo Bergman.
Philosophy
Buber is famous for his synthetic thesis of dialogical existence, as he described in the book
I and Thou. However his work dealt with a range of issues including religious consciousness, modernity, the concept of evil, ethics, education, and Biblical hermeneutics.
Dialogue and existence
In
I and Thou, Buber introduced his thesis on human existence. Inspired partly by
Feuerbach's concept of ego in
The Essence of Christianity and Kierkegaard's "Single One", Buber worked upon the premise of existence as encounter. He explained this philosophy using the word pairs of
Ich-Du and
Ich-Es to categorize the modes of consciousness, interaction, and
being through which an individual engages with other individuals, inanimate objects, and all reality in general. Philosophically, these word pairs express complex ideas about modes of being - particularly how a person exists and actualizes that existence (see
existentialism). As Buber argues in
I and Thou, a person is at all times engaged with the world in one of these modes.
The generic motif Buber employs to describe the dual modes of being is one of dialogue (
Ich-Du) and monologue (
Ich-Es). The concept of communication, particularly language-oriented communication, is used both in describing dialogue/monologue through metaphors and expressing the interpersonal nature of human existence.
Ich-Du
Ich-Du ("I-Thou" or "I-You") is a relationship that stresses the mutual, holistic existence of two beings. It is a concrete encounter, because these beings meet one another in their authentic existence, without any qualification or objectification of one another. Even imagination and ideas don't play a role in this relation. In an I-Thou encounter, infinity and universality are made actual (rather than being merely concepts).
Buber stressed that an
Ich-Du relationship lacks any composition (for example structure) and communicates no content (for example information). Despite the fact that
Ich-Du can't be proven to happen as an event (for example it can't be measured), Buber stressed that it's real and perceivable. A variety of examples are used to illustrate
Ich-Du relationships in daily life - two lovers, an observer and a cat, the author and a tree, and two strangers on a train. Common English words used to describe the
Ich-Du relationship include encounter, meeting, dialogue, mutuality, and exchange.
One key
Ich-Du relationship Buber identified was that which can exist between a human being and God. Buber argued that this is the only way in which it's possible to interact with God, and that an
Ich-Du relationship with anything or anyone connects in some way with the eternal relation to God.
To create this I-Thou relationship with God, a person has to be open to the idea of such a relationship, but not actively pursue it. The pursuit of such a relation creates qualities associated with it, and so would prevent an I-You relation, limiting it to I-It. Buber says by being open to the I-Thou, God will eventually come to you. Also, because the God Buber describes is completely devoid of qualities, this I-You relation lasts as long as the individual chooses. When the individual finally chooses to return to the I-It world, they act as a pillar of deeper relation and community. An example of this is Jesus Christ.
Ich-Es
The
Ich-Es ("I-It") relationship is nearly the opposite of
Ich-Du. Whereas in
Ich-Du the two beings encounter one another, in an
Ich-Es relationship the beings don't actually meet. Instead, the "I" confronts and qualifies an idea, or conceptualization, of the being in its presence and treats that being as an object. All such objects are considered merely mental representations, created and sustained by the individual mind. This is based partly on Kant's theory of
phenomenon, in that these objects reside in the cognitive agent’s mind, existing only as thoughts. Therefore, the
Ich-Es relationship is in fact a relationship with oneself; it isn't a dialogue, but a monologue.
In the
Ich-Es relationship, an individual treats other things, people, etc., as objects to be used and experienced. Essentially, this form of objectivity relates to the world in terms of the self - how an object can serve the individual’s interest.
Buber argued that human life consists of an oscillation between
Ich-Du and
Ich-Es, and that in fact
Ich-Du experiences are rather few and far between. In diagnosing the various perceived ills of
modernity (for example isolation, dehumanization, etc.), Buber believed that the expansion of a purely analytic, material view of existence was at heart an advocation of
Ich-Es relations - even between human beings. Buber argued that this paradigm devalued not only existents, but the meaning of all existence.
Note on translation
Ich und Du has been translated from the original German into many other languages. However, because Buber's use of German was highly idiomatic and often unconventional, there has naturally been debate on how best to convey the complex messages in his text. One critical debate in the English-speaking world has centered around the correct translation of the key word pairs
Ich-Du and
Ich-Es. In the German the word "Du" is used, while in the English two different translations are used: "Thou" (used in Ronald Smith’s version) and "You" (used by
Walter Kaufmann). The key problem is how to translate the very personal, even intimate German "Du", which has no direct equivalent in English. Smith argued that "Thou" invokes the theological and reverential implications which Buber intended (for example Buber describes God as the eternal "Du"). Kaufmann asserted that this wording was archaic and impersonal, offering "You" because of its colloquial usage in intimate conversation.
Despite this debate, Buber’s book is widely known in the English-speaking world as
I and Thou, perhaps because the Smith translation appeared years before the Kaufmann one. However, both the Smith and Kaufmann translations are widely available and can be considered complementary.
Ronald Smith also translated Buber's
Good And Evil, published by Prentice-Hall in 1952. Based on five Davidic Psalms, this little book describes a continuing 'generation of the lie', a most interesting perspective. Of the several quotes on the back page of the book, Maurice Friedman said, "
Good and Evil is without question one of the clearest, most profound, and most concrete treatments of good and evil in modern times." Relatively unknown, this small but profound work deserves notice, particularly in contemporary times, as it exposes a heretofore hidden element of society.
Hasidism and mysticism
Buber was a scholar, interpreter, and translator of
Hasidic lore. He viewed Hasidism as a source of cultural renewal for Judaism, frequently citing examples from the Hasidic tradition that emphasized community, interpersonal life, and meaning in common activities (for example a worker's relation to his tools). The Hasidic ideal, according to Buber, emphasized a life lived in the unconditional presence of God, where there was no distinct separation between daily habits and religious experience. This was a major influence on Buber's philosophy of anthropology, which considered the basis of human existence as dialogical.
Buber's interpretation of the Hasidic tradition, however, has been criticized by scholars such as
Chaim Potok for its romanticization. In the introduction to Buber's
Tales of the Hasidim, Potok notes that Buber overlooked Hasidism's "charlatanism, obscurantism, internecine quarrels, its heavy freight of folk superstition and pietistic excesses, its zaddik worship, its vulgarized and attenuated reading of Lurianic Kabbalah." Even more severe is the criticism that Buber deemphasized the importance of the Jewish Law in Hasidism. This is ironic, considering that Buber often delved into Hasidim to demonstrate that individual religiousity didn't require a dogmatic, creedal religion.
Buber and Zionism
Already in the early 1920s Martin Buber started advocating a
binational Jewish-Arab state, stating that the Jewish people should proclaim "its desire to live in peace and brotherhood with the Arab people and to develop the common homeland into a republic in which both peoples will have the possibility of free development."
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Buber rejected the idea of Zionism as just another national movement and wanted instead to see the creation of an exemplary society; a society which would not, he said, be characterised by Jewish domination of the Arabs. It was necessary for the Zionist movement to reach a consensus with the Arabs even at the cost of the Jews remaining a minority in the country. In 1925 he was involved in the creation of the organisation
Brit Shalom (Covenant of Peace), which advocated the creation of a binational state, and throughout the rest of his life he hoped and believed that Jews and Arabs one day would live in peace in a joint nation. Nevertheless he was connected with decades of friendship to zionists and philosophers like
Chaim Weizmann,
Max Brod,
Hugo Bergman and
Felix Weltsch, who were close friends of his from old European times in Prague, Berlin and Vienna to the Jerusalem of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.
After the Israeli state gained independence in 1948, Buber advocated Israel's participation in a federation of "Near East" states wider than just Palestine.
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