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In the Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, Ken Kesey is quoted as saying about Buber's I and Thou that "you can read 'I and Thou' for two hours and not get over it for the rest of your life. Buber tells you how you stand, either in a dialogic relationship with the creative force or in a position of 'havingness' where you are a thing bounded by other things." Before World War II, Buber was one of the more prominent scholars and theological thinkers in Germany dealing with such topics as the establishment of a nation-state for Zionism. I and Thou was written in 1923 in the cosmopolitan intellectual atmosphere of the Weimar Republic. "In 1925 he began, in conjunction with Rosenzweig, translating the Hebrew Bible into German. He himself called this translation Verdeutschung ("Germanification"), since it does not always use literary German language but attempts to find new dynamic (often newly-invented) equivalent phrasing in order to respect the multivalent Hebrew original." -Wikipedia entry for Martin Buber. What is most interesting about Buber's writing style is the appearance of phrases that seem new and take some time to understand. I and Thou is marked by some of this focus on making Hebrew understood by German speakers. So Buber was struggling to alter language in order to express ideas that do not lend themselves particularly well to being understood with established languages. Having fled the Third Reich and the very real threat of persecution, Buber eventually settled in Israel and completed his studies of the dialogic relationship. I and Thou treats communication as a spiritual act rather than the way most of us think of it...as a series of mechanical processes resulting in communicative awareness by percipient communicants. Buber's explanations of how spiritual communication occurs and how much it is subject to command and control are quite interesting as elements of a difficult line of inquiry, regardless of their tie-ins with specific theological schools of thought and irrespective of the application of traditionally accepted theological critiques. Speaking of critiques, some might enjoy comparing Buber's somewhat romantic interpretations of Hasidism with interpretations of same purporting to be more definitive.Read full review
Buber, a genius in his time is inscrutable. There’s no point in reading this today. Lots of other philosophers are more accessible
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Classic work of liberal Jewish theology. Don't get the earlier translation. Kaufman's introduction is especially helpful.
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