The thought of Martin Buber and the philosophy of dialogue

Martin Buber (1878–1965), born in Vienna and formed in the tradition of the Haskalah and neo-Kantianism, was a philosopher, Bible translator, and actor in the Jewish spiritual renewal of the twentieth century. His major work, Ich und Du ("I and Thou," 1923), articulates a philosophy of dialogue distinguishing the authentic "I-Thou" relationship from the instrumental "I-It" relationship, in which the Other is grasped as a person rather than as an object. Buber also devoted a significant portion of his work to transmitting Hasidism, collecting and reinterpreting the tales of the masters for a Western audience. A cultural Zionist close to Ahad HaAm, he emigrated to Palestine in 1938, taught philosophical anthropology and sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and campaigned for a binational state and Judeo-Arab reconciliation within the Brit Shalom movement. His thought exerted a lasting influence on dialogical Christian theology, humanistic psychology, and moral philosophy in the twentieth century.

Sources & resources

• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan
• Jewish Virtual Library ↗