Martin Buber

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MARTIN· BU:BER"

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Ian W. Alexander: BERGSON Arturo Barea: ·tJNAMUNO • E. K. Be:tiriet~: sTEFAN GEORGE w. H. Bruford: wHEKHOV ' .. . ... . Ill Roy Campbell: i.o~cA. J. M. Cockin:g: PRousT. · Wallace Fowlic~: PAUL ci.AUDEL Hugh Garten: GERHAR'I' HAU:P'I'MANN ·.Marjorie Grene: MAR'I'.IN \fELDEGGER .· C. A. Hackett: RIMBAtio · tJ Hanns Hammelinanri:. :HOFMANNS'I'HAL Rayner Heppenstall: LE~N BLOY. H. E. Holthtise~: ItiL KE M. Jarrett~Kerr~~C.R.: ¥AURIAC P. Mansell Jones: 'BAlrDELAIRB P. Mansell Jones· :!!MILE VER~AEREN ~nko Lavrin: GONtHAROV t> Rob Lyle: MIS'l'RA;L Richard March: KLEIST Jose Ferrater Mora: ORTEGA Y GASSE'I' Iris Murdoch: SAR'l',RE . L. S. SaJzberger: HO.LDERLIN Elizabeth Sewell: PAUL VALERY . CecilSp.rigge: BE~EDET-'I'O CROCE Enid ·starkie: ANDRE GIDE J; P. Stern: ERNS'I' JUNGER · ·Anthony Thodby: F.LAUBER'l' E. W. F. Tomlin: SIMONE WEIL · Martin Tu.rnell: JAcQuEs RIVIE·RE Bernard Wall: MANZONI

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Other titles are in preparation

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BOWES & BOWES

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.. ·ann~l.l.nCing:this conclusion i~ peculiarly appr~- •· · pr1ate. It should be noted_ that Nietzsche does not affirm an atheism. His statement is that God .· ·.-· · is dead. .This is to say that God is now d~ad, . though _once, presumably, he lived. _Nietzsche believes the. death of. God is the price both .. Judaism and Ch~istianity ·must pay for. their . · piersiste~t freezing of the human spirit, fortheir ·· · hist~1;ical· efforts to ·endose God withiri moral, .. dogmatic, ·ip;d. ritual formu1re. Martin B-t1ber is one who sees the H()lY as the

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.I centre of the human situation, whose view of the ! Holy is essentially_ Hebraic, but whose concern ~ 1 is for the achievement of that human community l. I in which the Holy, beyond creed and catechism, i · may be realized. I do n<Jit t!iink he ~ould ·object .I to being called,. with considerable qualification, a holy fool; ·indeed, the holy fool 'in Western tradition is one nustaken for a.fool, because .the. presence of God is so profmi'ndly i.nternalized· .· · .· .. ·....•.· as to betome one with the life of the body, the . .. ·. intellect, and the spirit. The Phitokalia, the ··.. · . explicit mystic doctrine of the holy fool, is con;. · · cerned with precisely this-.the restructuring .of t;. ·.... : ·.-1·,. . ·. ~:

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courage to will hls own death ... J:n place of God, . whose role rests on his. transc~p.dence · of death, will a:rise the manifold divinities of men who ·achieved God's role through suicide. The ulti.·. . 1!late i!l,eanthg .of life, 'is. k>cated in its destruction~ .· The Absoll.lte is only a protective fl.lSe, which .· each man ca!l drcurrrvent by orie supr~me act.· .. Kirillov commits Dsuicide. He.has:, sphe believes; .. • .. . . . . becoine G.IDd. ·· · ··.· .• God was fashioned, it appears; o~f~f man~s.·.· · · . horror ofa _disea~ed existence.·····Mail's.d;estrll:C:~-~/· clan. of God· is a protest against the ·app#ept\- : failure. of .his .dominion~ What Dost,aev~~y,·:i11 . · .r87o, percdved.through his ch~racter Kir11lol7,·a· ·.··• long· 'line· of ·thinkers .. has. subsequently inter-.· · Iectualized., and .grounded ·m:ore deeply. The ···· · succession froni Nietzsche and Stitner~. Ot:o Heidegger, ·•. S~rtre, and Jung, is.··. an unbroke~ tradition of various but concentrated efforts to co~firtn the death of God and the· bequest of his · · .· ·. •. , .· · _pd~~r to ~ enthroned. and apotheosized ·man~ . . ·· · . · In contrast to. the modetn mood, .da~sic · · philo~ophy was still a'Qle to encounter the deepest 11}ystery with reverence. Its techniques, ·though pre~sposed · to the 'Objectifying detachment of science, were turned to. ultimate reality. . Plato . sought the .eternal harmony without which the · 13

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transiency of the phenomenal world would be · unmitigated · in its·. meaninglessness and fragmentation. Aristotle, although 'purifying' Plato. ofhis unchanging forms, nevertheless acknow-:-. ledges the necessity of~ ·first druse'! unmoyed, yet ordering the sequence of motion, the highe.st . good by' virtue of his· unceasing contemplation .· ··of his own. harmonizing perfectio~..·Ho\vever .. much _lucidity the universe .dfsdos.enion•Btiber was an exemplary pro~ · duct of the. emancipation. . He·. ma!ntatlled. the .• intensity and dedication of Jewish ~cholarshlp; in spite of the increasing alienation of Jewish youth,. •. . the attenuated piety of liberated adults, and ·the· ··· nafruwing. ranatk:i~m of a threatened orthodoxy. . In~ ac:ldition to, being 3: wealthy ~anker and a · leader.in'the Jewish co~rimnity, Salomon Buber ,wa8' one of the most ·b~!lliant and perceptive of . m.odern. editors.of classic .tabbink texts. In his· hoine Bl1ber absorbed the world of Biblical and ': Rabbinic tho~ght and learned the refinements of ·.· ~lassic:Hebre\y., which grandfather wro.te. and , .· spoke: with doql}ence. Presumably in the home. : of hi~ grandfather Buber enjoyed his. all:-too-brief ·. and .tretnbling years of piety.. In his thirt~enth . . . year~h,owever, shortly after his corifirmatio:ti 4lto theJewish religious community, J3ub~r notes in a · letter ye~rs . later, he · ceased · to observe the 185

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., wrapping of the. tejillin.l. He remarks, in the ·same letter, that his grandfather, although an en. lightened Jew, would pray · nevertheless ip .a small~ intimate Hasidic Klaus, using a prayer book · filled with mys_tic direction~ The irAplication of > this letter to Rosenzweig, confirmed many times . by his own utterance, 'is that in these early years.·. of adolescence .he ceased a1lformal ·r~ligious ·,· observances. His reasons for tHis, as for 6th¢! his det'artures from normative Judaism; ar~ . profoundly based, as will be seen later. It is . somewhat questionable to inflate, as he does in his · · .•. ·. correspondence with Rosenzweig on thes~ issti~s, the implicit wisdom a'hd sens~bility of the child. ·. The intuitiv~ decisi~ns of y~uth, though frtll, rich,. and· intense, do not possess the for~ed and· ·... ·textured .subtleties -of mature rationalizatidn; . . ·· It is enough that Buber records that he ceased, _in • ·. -.··this period his formal obedience to Jewish law. It was in these years, under the guidance ofhi,s . . ·. gdndfather, that Buber made 'the discovery of · . · ._ the Hasidim, a pietist movement characterized by inten~e concent:ratibn upon directness of · relation with man, nature, · and · God. Tpe · >

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. .Hasidim, some .of whose. communities. . were . . · . locatedin Sadagor and Czortkow hi Galicia, were · dis~iples of the great Rabbi Israel of Rizhin~ It was in their midst that the Bubers spent many ' . . summer months; and ptoesumably. in their synagogues t_hat Martin Buber prayed as a boy.·· . Shortly after his fourteenth birthday he returned · to the home of his father· in Lemberg; entering a Polish Gy!jlnashiin, and in: the sumrner of 1896 ·· he enrolled in ·the philosophic faculty• at.·the University of Vienna. _·;.\. .These were the years when the resthetic renaissance evoked ·the last passion of the . romantic traditiot'-, wheil Schopen:hauer and . Nietzsche fixed the tone of phil~sophic state- ·. ·. n:ient, when . Stefan George and Hoffmansthal · . were inauguratitig their careet:s, when Rilke was · ·shbrtly -to establish the rhythm of a beauty in . tension witJ:l the divine. It was the era of the lo~t . ·.. . . · coilsciousne~s, drowned in a ·sea of images and · ·..• _.meanings, ·. · subtleties · .and. radiations, · . whose .

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Lettet of Octobet r, 1922, to.F. Rosenzweig,'quoted in Franz Rosenzweig, On jewish Learning, ed., by N. N. Glatzer, Schocken Books. New York, 1955~

source·· nobody knew, whose direction few fathomed~ ··. The dream was characterized by s~arch and longing, the concrete life was one of the~e(lasse, the alienated, the distressed. ·This was particularly .true of the Jewish com.:. munity of Vienna, few of whose members knew·.

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:1 . or cared anything for their so recently discarded Jewish past. Buber, ·in ,these years, was not i I unlike his fellow Jews.. Not the Hasiclim ·of. his youth but the past formed ·of Chri~tian saints .\ . "'. and · spiritual heroes ot:cupied .his att~ntiori-·. ~· Jacob Boehme, Meister Eckhart (Buber · somel' times worked with C-ustav Landauer on the latter's modern rendering of the works of Meister .I . Eckhart), Nicholas ofCusa; '-·! · . .· t.t .·· .·l.. The ehoice of spirittial influences is never . casual. Influences .of this kind are selected (one how). by a kind of pre-rational inclina.·.· ·. i . ···wonders . ·, . '. . . ... .[ · tion; .. Certain kinds pf speculation attract . . and>· ·.· l form· one subtiy, presumablY.: becaus~ one' has. . . \.' .· implicitly 'aslted' t_o be. so formed. · It is note·.1· worthy that Buber was : attracted . by those · · I mystics who sought. to explore the internality, the implicativeness of relations between man and God-.·who, like Boehme, were· · co'nsdous of . divine passion .and concern, · of the . divine fire · ' and ·the creative rol~ of evil arid, like Cusa; struggled for a greater whole, for a binding ·· . community in. which God fornis and encom·.· passes man,. while sustaining. man as an accurate image of divine life~· . • . . . ·~· f What emerges in .the. record of Buber's : academic years is a. revolt· against the complacent .·!

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satisfaction ·of the sciences, against the .. triumph of rel~tivism in 'the social scientific and human:.. istic disciplines. The decisiv(! step in the. direc:. .tiort of. p:l~~rig concrete his vague, although intense, preoccupati~n ""oith Western mystics. and .~osme>logists is his gradual:enttan2e. speculative . .. . . . - ... . . into the Zionist mov< ·. of both self and environment by the intensity of his expe:dence. By 192.3, . when I and. Thou appeared;· the existential emphasis had passed . ·. into •the dialogic, . never to return except as a · .... ~esse:r stage of the dialogic. .. . Outing the twenties Bube:r became acquainted .. · with. perhaps · the :most remarkable Jewish .the~logian and, in my estimation~ one of the .. :··· most· remarkable figures of our tinie, Franz ·. Rosenzweig. Together. they sha1:ed in. forming c 33

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at Frankfurt atn Main a progr~mme of cultural ·and educational activities which, perhaps more . than any other, came close to realizing the 0nly urban religious community the West has known in modern times. Adlong the fruits of their of.. collaboration were a translation· into Getman . c ·.. ·. ·. . . . most of the books of the Hebre)Y Bible, a trartsla- · tion whichhas been hailed as piobably the great- . est since the Luther Bible.· •:As ·· \f'ell;. ·. Buber · joined 'Rosenzweig in the work of the Freies · ]iidisches Lehrhaus (Free .Jewish Academy),. ·founded in 192.0 under Rosenzweig's direction~ 1 . . The Lehrhaus was a unique institution of· open: · seminars on Jewish religious" history, theology, . Bible, Hebre\v language : and literature. . At its height it had an enrolment of I,too st1.1dents; or · • .··.approximately 4 per cent of the entire Jewish •· · population of Frankfurt-·a. remarkable figure if ·.one·. considers •the nature· and seriousness· of its . programme; For a decade after I 92.3 Briber was . professor. of Jewish theology and later history of reli:gions.at the University of Frankfurt am Main. . With the access of Nazi tyranny~ Buber remained in .Germany' tO·. supply spiritual ,lead~r-. .

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See N. ~t ·.·Glatzer,·.. The · flrankfort Lehrhaiu, Year.· Book I of The Le6 Baeck Institute, East and West Library. London, .1956, pp. ;~:o5-2.2., 1

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ship and utrlty to • the German-Jewish com~ , munity; however, in 19;8, at the age of sixty, he dep,arted for Israel, there to become p~ofessor of social . phil?,sophy at the . Hebrew · University. During the strife that a~companied the .prelude· and consummation of the State of Israel, Huberassumed a position (the natural consequence of his spiritual Zionism) which. ali~nated vast ele-:. ments of the Israeli community. Arguing with Judah ¥agnes, Ernst Simon, and othl-!t:S, ·that the only solution to the Jewish problem was a bi-:national state · in which the Arabs and Jews .· ·should jointly participate ~nd share, he· aroused great bitterness and resentment. It ~itS a posi., · tion~ noble and Olympian, to say 11:heleast, but not designed to realize w:hat appeared to be a motivation earliei: in his .. career-namely, the possibility of actualization. The realities were not on his side, and the ·realities., whatever ·the force .of spirit, di4 not contain sufficien,t possi- · bilities for achieving concord. ..... · At present, honoured on two continents, having visited the United States in 1951 lecturit1g ·. tq, wide audiences, .. and having received the Pewte Prize of the German :Book Tradein ~95 3, Buber is now in semi-retirement in Jerusalem. He is at work completing the translation of the , 35 ,.,;

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·. of th.e nar~~tive. it would be retained as a ·rn.inor incident,. unfortu~ate and somewJ:iat sus-·· . .picious~ in an otherwise exemplary career...· . · Kierkegaard . chose, .however, to make his (}ecision of renunciation the emotional- centre of . his llfe and the touchstone of his way t.o Chris- . . tianity .• In ·defining the content of his solitude ·· .. Kkrkegaard is at pains to emphasize that to be · ·'·. · 'a Single ()ne, a solitary man whose contact :with .tf1e. wbrld is . su11.deted, .is paradoXically 'the instrument whereby to embrace the world in its · truth; its fullness; and lts divinity. . .. · The category of the. single one is,. as Kierke~ gaard observes, that 'through whi~h, from the religious standpoint, tiine and history. and tjle. . race must pass'. The. elaborated choice that !bn- : fronts, man is whetherto become a single one,. . or be assimilated to the faceless ~ctow~l'. The · .

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choice is insularity and isolation 'or .anonymity.· It is clear that · the Christian paradox lies for . . lqerkegaard precisely in the acknowledgment . that~ thoug\1 one must become a single one to achieve community··~with 'God, one can never become a perfec~ single one-there are· always unfulfilled stages of . depth and growth which define the ineradicable conditions of his finitude before Goa. Tcf become a single one therefore · is to direct oneself solely to God. The'"'way of affirmation is pursued by the bramble path of ·denial. · 'In .order · to come to love,' writes · Kierkegaard about his renunciatioti' of Regina:, . 'I had to remove the object;'. · Buber begins his constructive reply to Kierke.:.. gaard by ndting what Kierkegaard. had failed to recall: it is. precisely. the Jesus to whom Kierke. gaard makes himself tontempo'raneous who is the spokesman of that double cdmmandment of the Hebrew Bible-to love God with aU one's might and to love . one's ·neighbour as oneself. . Presumably the . enrichment of the single one .does .. not lie in the path of divestment and simplifica- ... · tion but in ·the embrace of manifold relation. Tht single man is bidden to become pivot between , the love of God and the love of man, turning the one in.to the. enrichment of the other and .

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realizing the :t"ullness of the other· as witness to the creative affection of the . One. . 'We are · created along with one another and directed.to a • life with one another. Creatures are placed in my way so that I, their fellow creature, by means of them and with. them find the way to God. A . .· . God reached by their exclusion would not be the . God of all lives in whom all life is fulfilled.' 1 It .is not. diffi,£ult for Buber~to d~monstrate, from tl)is source of convittion, that a reassessand society. . ment ofman's role in the commufl.ity . . . . must follow. If it is true that man's life with others is not a delusion o~ a· diabolic temptation·, it must then share what is c;,onsidered essential to life. · If cfue grants that the Single One is related essentially to God, but· o;n.e acknowledges God as existing in relation to the created manifold, then,. in some sense, every man is bound by the nature .of God to share· with others. Where Kierkegaard wills to polarize· the individual and . the mob, Buber · chooses to view .them both l1nder the regis of a transformlng redefinition. It ·is .true, Buber will admit, that both. the single · man and the mob.· ought to b~ kept apa.rt, but only to the_ extent that th~ single man ·is '~elf~

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deceiving and the crowd is, in fact, a mob with.out humanity. · When the individual and the · mo.l? take their centre in God- and oneaclillowledges God, through the other and inakes his way . to· God through :the· other, then both the single orie resumes his nexus with others and :others< · become transformed through him. : The position which Buber elaborat~d ip The · 'Question Jt.J.the :1ingle One was one developed in . th,e midst of crisis when the Si~gle. e.>n.es of . Europe w~re wrapped in·· despair a~d· the ~oh. , indeed ruled.. It is perhaps oneofthe: fe'Y do~u-::'.. ni~nts of the spirit, . composed in our ·tim~; written with. prop,hetic direction to the h9t:1~\b( crisis. The attitude he assumed~ how~~~£.'.::'· . one· which had come tO maturity before and one ori whi~h it wasinfactbased. ·· ·. •.. . In Dialogue (1.92.9),1 an autobiog~aphic tecol. lection. intended to, explore fu~th:er hi.s phil, osophy of I and Thou, Buber recqunts an inci•dent ·which presumably took place .some time · · . . .· · towards the- end of what might l?e termed 'his . ~j

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Between Man and Man. London-New York, 11948, 5~·

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ence he describes, but one gathers from his reference th;Lt it must have taken place during the period from 19o~p6 the end of theFirst World War.. · ·

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. · ' ;Buber. retired from public acti~lty·:~6i';k~rsue his . studies of· Hasidic sources~ · Withlli a. period of . .. fiv~ years he published anl1mber of works. ort.th.e ··· Hasidic ·literature as well as on :&:astern and ._, . _-•· Ch.ristiarJ. mysticism. The· \mystic way, as he . rightly ·understood it, involved two alternative . . .. ·. · paths : that of absorption' · of the I . into . the · .. . .· absolute at the sacrifice of selfhood or the draw·.. · ing of the absolute into the seit and •the conse< · ·. quent e\pansion of selfhood. Mysticism, what-_ . ·· ever 'its forms, is consummated by the a.n.tlihila~ 'tion of relation-either the world disappears' into "-..·the One or the One is drawn into the welter of ,·the world to transfigure it. The consequence of •.•.••. either .alternative is; from the .view of the initi· . ·.... ate;' a m..oment of ultimate preoccupatio11. ~ith !:.,. -the; Self and the sacrifice of the wodd a~d ·others. ;•,,]t;:~as .duririg such· a period that the· :following :3: creative life, what Buber describes he ackiio~~;·>. ledges to be an. aCt of grace .which was paid for. . with •a life and atoned for by an· urir.elenting: .··.search for the authenticity of mec;:ting~ ........ · .· . ·.It is ~ignificant as well that in this inddent 6ne : ·. rnay date what l discern_ to be the pr.oph¢.ti.c ' concentration of Bubei:'s career. The mystic·i~ · . . ...· satls.liene not easily comprehended~ Where. -it is . ! resisted with finality the views· Buber .develops .1 l are successfully resisted.. Where it is successfuily . ~- .· ! · encountered_ a11d._assumed, an initial premise is !. ·granted, from which all follows. .

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, To man the world is twofold, in accordance ~th his twofold attitude. The attitude of man is twofold; in accordance with the twofold nature of the primary 47

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words which he speaks. ·The : preliminary words are not isolated words,· but combined words~ The one primary word is the coml,>ination I-Thou. The· other primary1 word is the . combination l-It; wherein~ without a· change in the primary word, one of the .words He and She can replace It. ·Hence the I of mart is also twofold.· For the I of the primary word · 1-:Thou is a different I from tl:iat o£c1~he primary . word l-It.], -

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Many senses a11.d values are contained· by this self-consciously ambiguous ·language; yet the . . . .· ambiguity neither obscures thought nor distorts fundamentaf darity. ·One may casually discard .· · Buber's mode ·of expression as annoyingly metaphoric or even mystic, but such would be to· miss the point. If we assume that what Buber seeks is a manner of expression which ·cuts beneath the separateness of the world-.the di~­ crimination_ of.· subject-knowers. and objectsknown which are presumably required by the · empirical sciences-·his language is eminently precise. The. world is .·not an o!(jectum to .. be seized and reduced to .manipulable form'tllre. .Su,ch may be necessary in disciplines where utility .

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· an.d application are central or, in speculative· inquiries; where the knowledge derived will be conv;erted by engineers or technicians · into .applicable fprmulre .. (pure mathematics, astro- · .· physics, biochemistry); What Buber concerns himself with is the human consequence of know~ ·ledge-··what does knowledge do to man? How does .man's way ofknowing the world (whet_ller ·.. know:ipg be pufsued through' .science,. or ..art, · . through speculation, or .the passions) affe'ct; :.1#~ ·fundamental· attitude towards th~ .world.? :Th~> · ..

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Thou of another, the world oflt wanes and the Thou emergesever mo.re dearly. Buber makes quite clear the an~logy of lllOVement in the speaking_ of Thou to th~ activity of .· grace. Grace, a term constricted and frayed ~by. · · theological .usage, describes spontaneity and undetermined choice. The I not only encounters i l' its :fhou but is discovered hy it. Recall the · ma!lner in which Buber has d~scribt!d his conversion-'He had come to me, he had come in . . . . . this hour'-.and n,ote that the Thou is not fore'- ·•· · ordained or prescribed~ It.· comes and passes, addresses and is gone, discovers and vanishes. . Each nlari,. each single 'I, ~comes before · the . . . . . .. moment 111 which the Thou ts present and encounters . it in.. a .• t;ofold. manner: .·he either ignot~s the challenge of grace and the Thou dissolves into an object of time and space, or the I . is. filled arid transformed, relation is. achieved, and the !-Thou, the nexus !-Thou, is realized. As Huber comments;/'all real living is meeting', so . the Thou both forms the. I and enables it to address the world (as grace) and .the I speaks to the Tliou (as meedng). ·It is not .difficult to ~ee the consequenGCs which Buber will derive frbm · . ,.. ·: ·.· this fundamental insight-the W:otld of freedom, · ·. , ;: · destiny, gtace . are affirmed_. Freedom, for no · · Q,

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·Thou is spoken in coercion; destiny,for freedom_ faces an open future in which time and space -vanish before the Thou. · Buber is-y:1ofantast, . .. . ' nor is I and ThQu a· useless mystique~··· It is. a useJess mystique if one chooses tO view the world under the continuing hege- . . mony. of tired distinction:s. As Buber ass~sses tll(! sitUation of man (and it shotil~ not h~J The iffithediate consequence .ofBubet's ·l:an~; .; '~~ " · . version 1 is a ·revised understanding .6£,. th~: ': -. > •.· religious life.·· !fit is true that love is ~responsi-· ·,· i bility of an I for a Thou', 2 that the young ma~ • who came to him by 'destiny in the forenoon wa~ . • .. · to be met and the Thou was to .be spoken, then . injleed religi~n which- withdraws m~n from the · stteam of life falsifies" the truth.of life. If the end. · of religion is to teach mari. the right way to · 1

Op. Cit., pp. I 3 et

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53

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· conduct· hims¢if b~fpre God,then surely the right way is. one \vhith iestores man to the flow of life, .rather than removing him:.(rom it. The.atti~ude . of I and Thou is, if anything, anti-myst4k. Though the popular mind · often confuses the difficult · and. slightly lyrical w!th the mystic st~nce, it is .· .···· · 'the . ·impatience of the ·popular·· mind that is at fauJ_t,~. Unfortunately life does· not speak easily, however simple its ultimat~ trut~s mat be ..·What · ':'..·. Buber•derives from his conversion is explored ·.···.·.: ·. · · · £1-irther. in the final section of I and Thou. If all :·tru~ rel~tionis ultimately that of an I to its Thou; >)nd the lhnita:tion of tiine and insight and human ·. ~delltyand the recalcitrance oHfinitude consbtntly /' (Qtce. the r. Thdu to beconie, in turn, l-It, then, ·:" ::,--: . : indeed; the perfect Thou would be that being !·;:;~·:·;i1;t. ·. which, pi~ dejinens, could. not become It; Bubel: ·>~< -t;(i is tiot..satisfi,ed \vith a merely formal, a posterior.i,. ·.e-. ·• : c16fihlti6~ oE'God's 11ature; God is not; by extra. · . :p6latiort, the. ThoU. who ca~ot become it (it is .·. · ~neweakness, I fear, in·the.ffiethod of I and Thou 1 1f it is true < tha~ God ~ppears last and pot first). .

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i I am ca~tious in this c:ritidsm because ,I am awat:e of_· the ohservatio_n 6f the greatest.ofpU:re methodologiSts, Aristotle (P hJ'Sics, Book I, p. 1 84a~ : We iriU:st proce~d ~m that which is clearer and more accessible to us. to ·wh~t is clearer in nature; nevertheless,· by admitting this, it. is no less true that what is clearer in nature may be prior :in the ~'

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eternaL Thou is He who can never be.:. · . L .. . . ~otne It; understanding of God'~ attributes . · :·/ be~omes considerablv cleater. God is the un·. , . . con:ditione~~.this i~ billy to say that God is self- . identical. · Since' (Jod cannot become It, no thing limits him~ Ifru.1y !nan c?uld persevere forever .iri the speaking of Thou, such a man ,would be . ··. (Jod; but such· cannot be, for man cannot :.y;oid ·. the constYictin~ limitations . of his situation. · Man cannot· banish the It; he can seek only to ·. transform it. This isthe religious passion, 'not to disregard everything but to see everything in the Thou, not to .renounce the world but to it on its true basis'.·. · · ·. ' establish . The Thou is the Holy and· is ~described .by Buber.predsely in the terms of the Holy.· 'God ....,.:. is the "wholly Other"; but He ~lso ·the wholly ·· _,.: ·Same, the wholly ··Present. ·Of course· He •is the ·· ·. M.J$te~ium Tremendum that ~ppears and overthrows; but H:e is also the mystery of the self- . ¢vident,. nearer to me than my I.' The· Hoiy, . as Rudolf Otto interpreted its character~ consists ·. of the contrasting .elements of Tremendum and that

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ot!@er of being to what we immediately comprehend. Al-. · · though God, the eternal 'Thou, pre-exists the Thou spoken in finitude, only through the discovery of the Thou of finitude may one discover· the never-ending eternal Thou.

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Fascinosans, the .awesome . and terrifying ·set,.. .off . . by the magnificence and· appeal of God.·. (}od ·repels and draws close. This is the Holy deffu~d; ·the eternal Thou which, by the fact t~at He does not succumb to our efforts at''manipti.lation in the days of our falling aw.ay, both .. terrifies us and " . draws us near. Both moments_ expre~s the tot~li,ty of the Holy; and the Thotds described by .nothl~g accurately if not- by the€Holyf fo:r Holy · is the term which will not sub111it tcdimiting. · construction. The Holy; as the Thou, surpasses . the effort to cottciin it;. and ,yet,· mysteriously~ ' though it eludes·. us, is paradoxically, at every moment, close at hand. u . .. It is the binding up of man. and:the eternal Thou 'which makes possible the. rein7f, ,· niehts ~-· 'there is· a becoming of the. Gocl :that:'fs?~ . . Wh~t is ·meant by God's. ·answer to--:M:~s·es' ·....

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his name: . Eljyeh asher ehyeh-P . 'J:'h~··:•- ?'(,;>:,. .··. 'thonrlst'formulation 2 is patently a rniscons~~~c~ :· .,P_;~:~t!' tion of the Biblical text· and a falsification of the ·... ·.:.•. ~.:\t~l Hebrew spirit-not I Am Who Am, but 'He t:;:::: 3 · • -~-' .· Who. Is Here' . . ' or 'He Who Will De Prese1lt'~ . . . . ·.. ·. This is to s~y that the eternal Thou is He Who · · · .. . Will Be Present each moment that His presence is sought.. God unfolds according to his nature_, and this unfolding is what confirms meatl,ing in ;

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J, I and Thou, p. 82. . . · . 4111Gilson, E., God and Philosophy, Yale U.¢versity Press. New Haven, 1941, · .

Cf. Moses, p. H· Also Israel and the World, 'The Faith · of Judaism', p. 53; Prophetic F(lith, pp. 28...:9• 3

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life. It is th~t- which sanctifies the 'speaking of .·Thou, which conyerts it from. an isol~ted ·statement ofperson.il dlscov~ry into a speaking which is cons~quential for all of cr~atic>:n. F,r • The woild of It is augmented in each age,.the techniques of mariipulation and perversion are ~attired and perfected, violence becomes subtler, ·th~1~eapons of distortion ate fashiohed more brillhmtly...· The Holy is screent:d oflj and what light h sheds is filtered endlessly until but the · · · . · . 111erest stream i1himiiiates the darkn~ss'. In those .· • ages, however, · where the greatest distortion occurs there frequently~ emerges the greatest re.;. discovery ·.of . the Thou. ·Alt precis~ly those . moments. wh~n the. world of It accumulates and . the WordofGod seems most remote: and in:.. ··effective; th~ ~orld halts: and regains its breath. , The world_ is constarttly·ca.rried··forward t().;an .. ·. abyss a,11d in the hou:r when it would d~stroy itselt 11: cbnfrorits itsdfanew and thereby reper·Ceives the Thou;· Jrt such moments there is . .·renewal and a .reversal mart's way. 'But the · · event that from the' side. of'the world is called is called frotn God's side .salvation.' ·1 .. reversal .. ·. . ·.·.:.· ..: .. . .

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Buber's use· of the idea.of man's 'reversal' or ~tutm:t.g 'is an adaptation and redefirtition cl the Hebrew .word for ' 'repentance' .(t'shu\Tah) which means, quite literally~ both' a turning away from evil and a turning. God. ·

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Buber addressed .·.a gathe~ing of .some: twenty students,. at whiCh I wa$ preserit, in the spring of... . ·. I952.· He,,was ·asked by one if he considered himself 'a Jewish theologian'. His response was .· that he did not consider· himself a theologian, but · ·. a religious thinker. He did not, moreover, regard · himself .as a Jewish religious thinker,. if one meant by such thatihis position as a Jew required his support of normative Judaism add his opposi. tion. to what traditionally worild be deemed nonJe~ish traditions~ . He considered himself; if I remember his answercorrettly, to .be ·a Hebrew thinker. By this presumably he meant one whose fundamental sources of insight were more closely · akin to · that of Hebrew Scripture than to any . other, but that, by virtue of the implicit uni"versality and breadth of Hebrew insight, he felt close to all others who manifest its · essential tilt!Pth;_,...whate:Ver the 'limitations which they im- . · pose upon its authentic and total disclosure. Buber is an exegete, not ·a critic of the Bible, 59 .

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His task is not that of .imposing upon the Bible · the· superior enlighteriment of a detached and uncommitted intellect,. hut of exposing the ipner. unlike the ··· spirit of the Bible.· .The exegete;w .. crjtic, is essentially one wh.o .acknowledges that God. communicates hill).self in the Bible and . believes that, by pl;cing himself open to his w .·-magiC circle··of faith, acknowledge that no proof ;~;' ri/·~:tbe str\cf senSe the mobilizing conception ofJeJ.rls.~faith, 'the kingdom of priests' (that,is; kqhanim; those who serve God direcdy) · and 'a holy ~ation~ (that is, a nation consecrated · . 1 . . ' ..· :to9pd a~ its ruler arid''Lord) disappears and're~ . . emerges ia ~cumenical . dream of Chr.fsti~!l.;; ;w#;~--·'"·"" unity which is nevertheless. con~ummated tnde~. penoently .of the national and civil life of pio~ ·. fe$.shtg Christians. Individuals) not indhddtia!s ~s.. as~cts .~f'the larger corporate com~unity, b~~ ·'; coih~··chrisdans, bblt the community as such does< · · •> .· not,~~ess any longer to divine truth~ . . . ' ;,_::,~i.: .: un amenta reac o u atsm;.iii,"~>