Martin Buber

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

God is the eternal Thou: not spoken about, but spoken to

A personal GodStated explicitly

For Buber, God is the eternal Thou: the one who by essence cannot become an It and in whom the lines of all relations with beings are extended. God cannot be spoken about as an object; He can only be addressed. That is why Buber distrusts both the metaphysics that defines Him and the mysticism that dissolves Him into a unity with no one to address. In the afterword he added to I and Thou in 1957 he admits that calling God a person is indispensable for whoever meets Him, though the word does not exhaust Him: He is the absolute Person, the one without limits who nevertheless enters into direct relation with man. Eclipse of God describes the modern age as a time when the Thou is hidden behind the It that man interposes, not as proof that He does not exist.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

There is no I as such: man becomes an I through the Thou

A self cultivated in relationshipStated explicitly

For Buber there is no I as such, prior to relations. There are two primary words, I-Thou and I-It, and the I of one is not the I of the other: when a man says Thou with his whole being he is a person; when he says It he is a subject who uses and knows things. In the beginning is the relation, and man becomes an I through the Thou: the child discovers his I after having lived the encounter. That is why Buber shifts the question what is man? towards the sphere of the interhuman, the between: human reality lies neither in the isolated individual nor in the collective, but in what happens between one and another. The true self is not discovered by looking inward but by responding.

Why do we suffer?

We suffer when the It invades everything and God is eclipsed

Separation from GodInferred from their doctrine

Buber answers not with a theory of evil but with a reading of the texts in which the righteous man suffers. In his commentary on the Psalms he dwells on Psalm 73: the psalmist sees the wicked prosper and nearly stumbles, until he enters the sanctuary and understands that his good is nearness to God; suffering is not explained, but relation passes through it. From Job he retains that God gives him not reasons but presence. On the scale of the age, the diagnosis of I and Thou is that the world of It grows without measure and modern man no longer knows how to say Thou; Eclipse of God describes this time in which something interposes itself between heaven and earth. The deepest suffering is broken relation, with God and with others.

What happens after death?

Of death we know nothing; the life entrusted to us is enough

Silence or reserveStated explicitly

Buber keeps a deliberate reserve before the hereafter. In a short reply written for a survey on life after death, collected in his last book, he acknowledges that of death we know nothing except that we shall die, and that the fitting thing is to accept it as the limit of what we can imagine, without claiming to picture what lies beyond. This sobriety is consistent with his reading of the Hebrew Bible, which centres faith on the relationship with God in this world, and with all his thought: eternity is touched in the present encounter with the Thou, not in speculation about an afterwards. He does not deny Jewish hope or trust in God in the face of death; he refuses to turn them into knowledge.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

The Thou comes by grace, but answering is an act of one's whole being

Through grace and loveStated explicitly

Buber distrusts the word salvation understood as flight from the world or as a technique. In I and Thou he puts it precisely: the Thou meets one through grace, it is not found by seeking; but speaking the primary word to it is an act of one's own being. Relation is at once choosing and being chosen, suffering and action. In The Way of Man according to the Teaching of Hasidism he translates this into a practice without method: to examine oneself, to discover the unique way that belongs to each person, to begin with oneself without ending with oneself, and to do things with one's whole being, in the place where one stands. Redemption is not elsewhere: the world is hallowed in dealings with beings and things, and God answers to that.

Is a teacher necessary?

The master gives no doctrine: he shows something and helps one find one's way

Helpful but not indispensableStated explicitly

Buber said of himself that he had no doctrine: he only showed something. That is also his idea of the master. In his Hasidic books he admires the tsaddik as a helper: someone who, through his presence and whole life, helps each person find his unique way without exempting him from travelling it. In The Way of Man he recalls Rabbi Zusya's saying: in the world to come he will not be asked why he was not Moses, but why he was not Zusya. Buber criticised the degeneration of Hasidism into dynasties of righteous men before whom the faithful abdicate their responsibility. In his addresses on education, the good educator influences by what he is, not by what he imposes, and respects the other side of the relation.

Is the world real?

The world is not divine play but divine destiny: it is hallowed, not abandoned

A good and real creationStated explicitly

Buber affirms the world as real creation, addressed to man like a word. In I and Thou he writes that the world is not divine play but divine destiny, and that God is found neither by abandoning the world nor by staying in it as a possession, but by saying Thou to beings. Things can become It, objects of use and knowledge, and that is not bad in itself; what is grave is that the It should invade everything. Against mysticisms that declare reality illusory, Buber defends the concreteness of this world and this moment. His reading of Hasidism insists on the same thing: meaning is not sought elsewhere but realised by hallowing the everyday, here.

What is love?

Love is not a feeling: it is an I's responsibility for a Thou

Love of God and neighbourStated explicitly

Buber carefully distinguishes love from the feelings that accompany it. Feelings are had; love happens: it is not in the I as its content but between the I and the Thou. That is why, he writes in I and Thou, love is the responsibility of an I for a Thou, and in this lies the equality of all who love, from the least to the greatest. Whoever loves in this way can love even someone he does not find agreeable, because he loves not a quality but the whole person. In his Bible translation with Rosenzweig, the commandment in Leviticus asks one to love one's neighbour as one like oneself. Love of God and love of the other are not two loves: the eternal Thou is met in every Thou.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Freedom and destiny embrace: destiny needs the free man

Destiny and responsibilityStated explicitly

In the second part of I and Thou, Buber writes that freedom and destiny belong to each other. The free man is not the one who does what he likes, but the one who wills without arbitrariness: he believes in reality, in the real bond between I and Thou, and he believes in destiny and that destiny needs him. It does not lead him; it waits for him; he must go out to meet it without knowing where it is, but knowing that he must go with his whole being. The opposite is not determinism but the arbitrariness of one who knows only the world of It, for whom everything is causality or whim. For Buber decision is real, and in it man answers a call he has not chosen.

Why meditate or pray?

To pray is to say Thou, not to sink into oneself

Friendship with GodStated explicitly

For Buber, prayer is the purest form of the I-Thou relation: speaking to God instead of speaking about Him. In the third part of I and Thou he criticises the doctrines of absorption, which propose sinking into oneself or dissolving the I into the One, because they abolish precisely the two who speak to each other; he himself, in his youth, had sought ecstatic states and abandoned them after an episode he recounts in his autobiographical fragments. From Hasidism he retains prayer with one's whole being, without reserve, and the idea that there is no profane place or hour for turning to God. Eclipse of God laments that modern man no longer knows how to say Thou and merely thinks of God in the third person.

Can reason know the ultimate?

God is not thought as an object: He is met in relation

The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly

Buber was a philosopher and a university professor, and he did not despise reason; but he held that the ultimate is not an object of knowledge. In Eclipse of God he analyses how philosophy, by turning God into an idea, concept or postulate, transforms Him into an It and loses precisely what religion affirms: a Thou who can be addressed. Faith is not accepting propositions but trust in Someone within a relationship; in Two Types of Faith he thus distinguishes it from faith as assent to statements. That is why knowledge of God is not the culmination of reasoning but an encounter that cannot be proved or reduced to doctrine. Reason orders the world of It; the Thou is given in another sphere.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

The individual is not saved by withdrawing: he answers the world and his people

Engage with the worldStated explicitly

Buber explicitly rejected salvation through withdrawal. In The Question to the Single One he argues with Kierkegaard: the Single One does not meet God by turning his back on the crowd but by taking on his responsibility in the world, politics included. His life was consistent with this: he took part in cultural Zionism from 1900, directed Jewish adult education in Nazi Germany, defended in Palestine a binational state and understanding with the Arabs, and in Paths in Utopia proposed a communal socialism of small living communities against centralised socialism. For Buber religion that takes refuge in inwardness is suspect: the holy is realised in common life, in relation to the other.