Remembering Martin Buber and the Importance of Dialogue

My previous blog post was about a contemporary Jewish woman who is an atheist. This post is about Martin Buber. a historical Jewish man who stressed the importance of dialogue between people and of the encounter with God, the basis of his philosophical thought and writings. 

Martin Buber was born in 1878 (145 years ago) to an Orthodox Jewish couple in Vienna. From 1881~92, he was raised by his grandfather in what is now Lviv, Ukraine. In 1899, while studying philosophy in Zürich, he met Paula Winkler, who was a Catholic, and they married in 1901.

Martin and Paula, who converted to Judaism, worked as a couple in the Zionist movement. Unlike most Zionists, though, the Bubers believed that that movement should focus on fostering cooperation between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and they envisioned a binational state where both could coexist in harmony.

Buber was a prolific author, and Ich und Du, his best-known and most influential book, was published 100 years ago (in 1923). It was first translated into English in 1937 and issued under the title I and Thou.

A central emphasis of Buber’s book is the difference between the word pairs “I-It” and “I-Thou.” His philosophy centered on the encounter, or dialogue, of people with other human beings through relationships, which ultimately rest on and point to a relationship with God, “the eternal Thou.”

In 1938, when he was 60, Buber moved to Jerusalem where he resided until he died in 1965.

“I-It” is the primary stance of modern science. As Buber states in I and Thou, “the basic word I-It” is “the word of separation.”**

In the I-It realm, the natural world and everything in it is seen as something to be observed, examined, categorized. It is completely related to in an objective manner. Other humans, too, are often seen objectively. In that way, they, like natural phenomena, are experienced but not encountered.

When the physical world is considered an It, it can be used and manipulated for one’s own benefit without compunction. That, in fact, is one of the reasons for the ever-growing ecological crisis of the present time.

Unfortunately, when people are considered as Its, they too can easily be used, manipulated, and discriminated against without qualms. That is seen most clearly in the way enemies in warfare are always seen as Its who need to be destroyed.

“I-Thou” is primarily the stance of those who emphasize relationships and seek interaction with other people and even the natural world through subjective encounter rather than objective experience. 

The I-Thou (I-You) realm is one of dialogue, where there is mutual respect between people. Both the I and the You speak clearly and listen attentively, accepting both the uniqueness and the similarity of each other.

This I-Thou relationship can be enjoyed to a degree with even the non-human world, and that has been practiced by animistic religions such as that of traditional Native American peoples and of Shinto in Japan.

In the Handbook of Contemporary Animism (2013), Graham Harvey sees the animist perspective as similar to Buber's emphasis on "I-Thou." Animists relate to the world of animals, trees, and even inanimate objects in an I-Thou manner rather than in an I-It way.

And even in the present time, some modern environmentalists are called “tree-huggers” because of their desire to embrace an I-Thou relationship with the world of nature.

The distressing problem, however, is that modern industrial civilization and a world of eight billion people cannot be sustained by a worldview that relates to nature primarily in an I-Thou manner.

According to Buber, the basis of all I-Thou relationships is God, “the eternal Thou.” Through encounter with the eternal Thou, individuals are transformed and their understanding of the world and their place in it is fundamentally altered.

Buber believed that such encounter is essential to human flourishing and meaningful existence.

In my view, Buber was correct, indeed, and that is the reason I want us all to remember him and his emphasis on the importance of encounter with God and of having dialogue with other people.

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** The first (1937) English translation of Buber’s Ich und Du was by Ronald Gregor Smith. This citation is from Walter Kaufmann’s 1970 translation (p. 66 of the Kindle edition). At the beginning of that edition, Kaufmann has a helpful prologue of more than 40 pages. Buber’s book alone is only about 120 pages, but it is difficult reading and most of us need to read it more than once in order to fully grasp what he is saying.