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I And Thou
by Martin Buber, Walter Kaufman (Translator), S. G. Smith (Translator)
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I and Thou, Martin Buber's classic philosophical work, is among the 20th century's foundational documents of religious ethics. "The close association of the relation to God with the relation to one's fellow-men ... is my most essential concern," Buber explains in the Afterword. Before discussing that relationship, in the book's final chapter, Buber explains at length the range and ramifications of the ways people treat one another, and the ways they bear themselves in the natural world. "One should beware altogether of understanding the conversation with God ... as something that occurs merely apart from or above the everyday," Buber explains. "God's address to man penetrates the events in all our lives and all the events in the world around us, everything biographical and everything historical, and turns it into instruction, into demands for you and me." Throughout I and Thou, Buber argues for an ethic that does not use other people (or books, or trees, or God), and does not consider them objects of one's own personal experience. Instead, Buber writes, we must learn to consider everything around us as "You" speaking to "me," and requiring a response. Buber's dense arguments can be rough going at times, but Walter Kaufmann's definitive 1970 translation contains hundreds of helpful footnotes providing Buber's own explanations of the book's most difficult passages. --
Michael Joseph Gross
Book Description
Today considered a landmark of twentieth-century intellectual history, I and Thou is also one of the most important books of Western theology. In it, Martin Buber, heavily influenced by the writings of Frederich Nietzsche, united the proto-Existentialists currents of modern German thought with the Judeo-Christian tradition, powerfully updating faith for modern times. Since its first appearance in German in 1923, this slender volume has become one of the epoch-making works of our time. Not only does it present the best thinking of one of the greatest Jewish minds in centuries, but has helped to mold approaches to reconciling God with the workings of the modern world and the consciousness of its inhabitants.
This work is the centerpiece of Buber's groundbreaking philosophy. It lays out a view of the world in which human beings can enter into relationships using their innermost and whole being to form true partnerships. These deep forms of rapport contrast with those that spring from the Industrial Revolution, namely the common, but basically unethical, treatment of others as objects for our use and the incorrect view of the universe as merely the object of our senses, experiences. Buber goes on to demonstrate how these interhuman meetings are a reflection of the human meeting with God. For Buber, the essence of biblical religion consists in the fact that -- regardless of the infinite abyss between them -- a dialogue between man and God is possible.
Ecumenical in its appeal, I and Thou nevertheless reflects the profound Talmudic tradition from which it has emerged. For Judaism, Buber's writings have been of revolutionary importance. No other writer has so shaken Judaism from parochialism and applied it so relevantly to the problems and concerns of contemporary men. On the other hand, the fundamentalist Protestant movement in this country has appropriated Buber's "I and Thou encounter" as the implicit basis of its doctrine of immediate faith-based salvation. In this light, Martin Buber has been viewed as the Jewish counterpart to Paul Tillich.
This is the original English translation, available in America only in this hardcover edition of I and Thou. Martin Buber considered Ronald Smith's the best of the English translations and it was prepared in the author's presence. The more poetic rendering, this translation can be looked at as the King James Version of Buber's I and Thou.
A must read for all who deal with
humans, July 21, 2002
Reviewer: Erich Eugene Geary from Texarkana, Texas United States
I Thou is truly one of the books that changed the way people think. I Thou is a book that has changed the world, and that is not an exaggeration. Buber's influence on counseling and psycho therapy is
undeniable. Carl Rogers revised his thinking after his encounter with Buber and I Thou. I Thou teaches fundamental truths about interaction, interpersonal relationships, and true dialog. Martin Buber will long stand as the seminal work for dialog and interpersonal interactions. But, don't take my word for it, read the book.
Deep insight from profound intellect and enormous caring., June 28, 1998
Reviewer: A reader from Cape Cod, Mass., U.S.A.
Martin Buber offers a deeply integrative philosophical perspective only paralleled in Taoism, and this book explains in
incredible detail the nature and implication of what arguably is the true meaning of the revelations left by every known enlightened being.
In developing as an individual in the Western world, there is no substitute for reading and fully grasping this book. It is a map for the territory of life, nuanced and incredibly subtle; deeply human, warm and loving, but never easy.
Read this book and be forever changed.
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