Martin Buber

Martin Buber (Hebrew: ‫ ;מרטין בובר‬German: Martin Buber; Yiddish: ‫ ;מארטין בובער‬February 8, 1878 –
June 13, 1965) was an Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of
dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I–Thou relationship and
the I–It relationship.[1] Born in Vienna, Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with
Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. In 1902, he became the editor of the
weekly Die Welt, the central organ of the Zionist movement, although he later withdrew from
organizational work in Zionism. In 1923, Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und
Du (later translated into English as I and Thou), and in 1925, he began translating the Hebrew
Bible into the German language.
He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature ten times, and Nobel Peace Prize seven times.[2]

Contents

 1Biography
 2Major themes
 3Zionist views
 4Literary and academic career
 5Philosophy
o 5.1Dialogue and existence
 5.1.1Ich-Du
 5.1.2Ich-Es
 5.1.3Note on translation
 6Hasidism and mysticism
 7Awards and recognition
 8Published works
o 8.1Original writings (German)
o 8.2Collected works
o 8.3Correspondence
 9See also
 10References
 11Sources
 12Further reading
 13External links

Biography[edit]
Martin (Hebrew name: ‫מ ְרדֳּ כַי‬,
ָ Mordechai) Buber was born in Vienna to an Orthodox Jewish family.
Buber was a direct descendant of the 16th-century rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen, known as the
Maharam of Padua. Karl Marx is another notable relative.[3]After the divorce of his parents when he
was three years old, he was raised by his grandfather in Lvov.[3] His grandfather, Solomon Buber,
was a scholar of Midrash and Rabbinic Literature. At home, Buber spoke Yiddish and German. In
1892, Buber returned to his father's house in Lemberg, today's Lviv, Ukraine.
Despite Buber's connection to the Davidic line as a descendant of Katzenellenbogen, a personal
religious crisis led him to break with Jewish religious customs. He began reading Immanuel
Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche.[4] 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 his future wife, Paula Winkler, a "brilliant Catholic writer
from a Bavarian peasant family"[5] who later converted to Judaism.[6]
Buber, initially, supported and celebrated the Great War as a 'world historical mission' for Germany
along with Jewish intellectuals to civilize the Near East.[7]
In 1930, Buber became an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main, but resigned
from his professorship in protest immediately after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. He then
founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education, which became an increasingly important body
as the German government forbade Jews from public education. In 1938, Buber left Germany and
settled in Jerusalem, Mandate Palestine, receiving a professorship at Hebrew University and
lecturing in anthropology and introductory sociology.
Buber's wife Paula died in 1958, and he died at his home in the Talbiya neighborhood of Jerusalem
on June 13, 1965. They had two children: a son, Rafael Buber, and a daughter, Eva Strauss-
Steinitz.[3]

Major themes[edit]
Buber's evocative, sometimes poetic, writing style marked the major themes in his work: the retelling
of Hasidic and Chinese tales, Biblical commentary, and metaphysical dialogue. A cultural Zionist,
Buber was active in the Jewish and educational communities of Germany and Israel.[8] He was also a
staunch supporter of a binational solution in Palestine, 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.[9]
Buber's attitude toward Zionism was tied to his desire to promote a vision of "Hebrew
humanism".[10] According to Laurence J. Silberstein, the terminology of "Hebrew humanism" was
coined to "distinguish [Buber's] form of nationalism from that of the official Zionist movement" and to
point to how "Israel's problem was but a distinct form of the universal human problem. Accordingly,
the task of Israel as a distinct nation was inexorably linked to the task of humanity in general".[11]

Zionist views[edit]
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 did not consider Jewish culture or religion necessary. In contrast, Buber believed the potential of
Zionism was for social and spiritual enrichment. For example, Buber argued that following the
formation of the Israeli state, there would need to be reforms to Judaism: "We need someone who
would do for Judaism what Pope John XXIII has done for the Catholic Church".[12] 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 he became involved with the Jewish Hasidimmovement. 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, he 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.[13]
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".[14]
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 characterized 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 organization 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. In 1942, he co-founded the Ihud party, which advocated a
bi-nationalist program. Nevertheless, he was connected with decades of friendship to Zionists and
philosophers such as 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 through the 1960s.
After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Buber advocated Israel's participation in a federation of
"Near East" states wider than just Palestine.[15]
From 1906 until 1914, Buber published editions of Hasidic, mystical, and mythic texts from Jewish
and world sources. In 1916, he moved from Berlin to Heppenheim.
During World War I, he helped establish the Jewish National Committee[16] 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, he and Rosenzweig co-operated in Rosenzweig's House of Jewish Learning,
known in Germany as Lehrhaus.[17]
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 Franz Rosenzweig, translating the Hebrew Bible into German.
He himself called this translation Verdeutschung ("Germanification"), since it does not always use
literary German language, but instead attempts to find new dynamic (often newly invented)
equivalent phrasing to respect the multivalent Hebrew original. Between 1926 and 1930, Buber co-
edited the quarterly Die Kreatur ("The Creature").[18]
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 October 4,
1933, the Nazi authorities forbade him to lecture. In 1935, he was expelled from
the Reichsschrifttumskammer (the National Socialist authors' association). 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.[19] The Nazi administration increasingly
obstructed this body.
Finally, in 1938, Buber left Germany, and settled in Jerusalem, then capital of Mandate Palestine. He
received a professorship at Hebrew University, there lecturing in anthropology and
introductory sociology. The lectures he gave during the first semester were published in the
book The problem of man (Das Problem des Menschen);[20][21] in these lectures he discusses how the
question "What is Man?" became the central one in philosophical anthropology.[22] 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 Ihud, 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,[23] 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 lecture tours in Europe and the United States. In 1952, he argued
with Jung over the existence of God.[24]

Philosophy[edit]
Buber is famous for his 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.[25]
Buber rejected the label of "philosopher" or "theologian", claiming he was not interested in ideas,
only personal experience, and could not discuss God, but only relationships to God.[26]
Politically, Buber's social philosophy on points of prefiguration aligns with that of anarchism, though
Buber explicitly disavowed the affiliation in his lifetime and justified the existence of a state under
limited conditions.[27][28]
Dialogue and existence[edit]
In I and Thou, Buber introduced his thesis on human existence. Inspired by Feuerbach's The
Essence of Christianity and Kierkegaard's Single One, Buber worked upon the premise of existence
as encounter.[29] 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. Theologically, he associated the first with the
Jewish Jesus and the second with the apostle Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus, a
Jew).[30] Philosophically, these word pairs express complex ideas about modes of being—particularly
how a person exists and actualizes that existence. 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).[31] 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[edit]
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 do
not play a role in this relation. In an I–Thou encounter, infinity and universality are made actual
(rather than being merely concepts).[31] Buber stressed that an Ich-Du relationship lacks any
composition (e. g., structure) and communicates no content (e. g., information). Despite the fact
that Ich-Du cannot be proven to happen as an event (e. g., it cannot be measured), Buber stressed
that it is 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 is 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-ness, and so would prevent an I-You relation, limiting it to I-It. Buber claims that if we are open to
the I–Thou, God eventually comes to us in response to our welcome. Also, because the God Buber
describes is completely devoid of qualities, this I–Thou relationship lasts as long as the individual
wills it. When the individual finally returns to the I-It way of relating, this acts as a barrier to deeper
relationship and community.
Ich-Es[edit]
The Ich-Es ("I-It") relationship is nearly the opposite of Ich-Du.[31] Whereas in Ich-Du the two beings
encounter one another, in an Ich-Es relationship the beings do not 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 is not 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 (e. g., 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[edit]
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 on 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
Modern English. Smith argued that "Thou" invokes the theological and reverential implications which
Buber intended (e. g., Buber describes God as the eternal "Du"). Kaufmann asserted that this
wording was archaic and impersonal, offering "You" because (like the German Du) it has 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 Smith's translation appeared years before Kaufmann's. However, both translations
are widely available.

Hasidism and mysticism[edit]

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 (e. g., 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.
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.[17]
Buber's interpretation of the Hasidic tradition, however, has been criticized by Chaim Potok for its
romanticization. In the introduction to Buber's Tales of the Hasidim, Potok claims that Buber
overlooked Hasidism's "charlatanism, obscurantism, internecine quarrels, its heavy freight of folk
superstition and pietistic excesses, its tzadikworship, its vulgarized and attenuated reading of
Lurianic Kabbalah". Even more severe is the criticism that Buber de-emphasized the importance of
the Jewish Law in Hasidism.

Awards and recognition[edit]

 In 1951, Buber received the Goethe award of the University of Hamburg.
 In 1953, he received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
 In 1958, he was awarded the Israel Prize in the humanities.[32]
 In 1961, he was awarded the Bialik Prize for Jewish thought.[33]
 In 1963, he won the Erasmus Prize in Amsterdam.