Amazon.com
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
Martin Buber's I and Thou has long been acclaimed as a classic. Many prominent writers have acknowledged its influence on their work; students of intellectual history consider it a landmark; and the generation born since World War II considers Buber as one of its prophets.
The need for a new English translation has been felt for many years. The old version was marred by many inaccuracies and misunderstandings, and its recurrent use of the archaic "thou" was seriously misleading. Now Professor Walter Kaufmann, a distinguished writer and philosopher in his own right who was close to Buber, has retranslated the work at the request of Buber's family. He has added a wealth of informative footnotes to clarify obscurities and bring the reader closer to the original, and he has written a long "Prologue" that opens up new perspectives on the book and on Buber's thought. This volume should provide a new basis for all future discussions of Buber.
Customer Reviews:
A half-departure from liberal theology.......2007-08-27
Ich und Du ("I and Thou") is one of those philosophical texts which, like Schopenhauer's Die Welt und Wille als Vorstellung, consist of the elaboration of a single thought. The thought is stated up front: human beings have a double relation to the world: Ich-Du and Ich-Es. The Ich-Es relation reifies and separates things out (whether they be "internal" or "external" things), while the Ich-Du relation is nothing but relation itself. The Eswelt is a world of nebeneinander and the laws that govern nebeneinander, while the Duwelt is a seamless experience of "presence." The Ich that reaches out and the Du that reaches back (neither of which reflects on "what" they individually are) constitute an exclusive circular reality (Ausschließlickheit) untroubled by causal and spatiotemporal regress. To be sure, the Duwelt collapses into the Eswelt, which means that the Ich and the Du degenerate into so many instances of Es, but there is always the possibility of resurrecting the Ich & Du hidden within the Es.
There are different kinds of Ich-Du relation: 1) with nature (presumably before we know to call it "nature"), in which case we stand at the "threshold of speech"; 2) with human beings, in which case speech coincides with the Ich-Du relation; and 3) with "spiritual beings," in which case the relation itself is speechless, but it can generate speech. (This third relation is very much in the spirit of romantic poesis.) A special subset of the third relation is the relation to God, who is the Du beyond every particular Du. God is the only Du with whom our relation cannot degrade into an Ich-Es relation, because there is no Es beyond every individual Es for which God could be mistaken. (There are, too be sure, many things which people falsely call "God," things which are really part of nature or of ourselves, such as Schleiermacher's Abhangigkeitsgefühl or Rudolf Otto's Kreaturgefühl, as Buber specifically points out).
What is essential in every case is the duality of the relation. Buber warns against interpreting the Ich-Du as a self-relation of the Ich (i.e. Hegel) or as a kind of "symmetry breaking" (to use a term from physics), which can be restored to oneness at the proper mystical "heat."
One of the explicit objects of this text is to move beyond liberal Protestant theology, i.e. beyond a theology that grounds the religious in some quality of subjective experience. For Buber, religion occurs before there is a subject, and once we arrive at the subject, we find it impossible to even think of religion apart from the subject's relation to another. Buber exploits the pronoun Du ("you") to draw our attention to an experience of encounter (rather than reflection or feeling) inadequately addressed by rational philosophy, and he employs this experience in the service of religion.
Buber may not go far enough, however. He moves beyond the subject, but he does not move beyond religion-as-experience, which is the real drawback of liberal theology. In a sense, Buber is freeing God from the subject only to bind him down to "relation" (Beziehung), which hovers somewhere between subject and object, and is not obviously "religious" at all. There is nothing in Buber's argument protecting it, for example, from a biological-evolutionary explanation of the Ich-Du relation, or a psychoanalytic one. Buber overcomes one obstacle only to land himself before another one.
Sorry if that was a little technical.
a baffler.......2007-07-18
This book is for intellectual heavy-hitters, and unfortunately I am not one of them, thus am forced to rely on others' interpretations for the answer to the question: What was Buber talking about? I have absolutely no idea - the text rambles on as if it were about something...but is very abstract. I could not find anything in it with which to identify or relate to my experience, except for a few comments about creative acts. This book is for readers accustomed to philosophical texts. It is not for the untrained or casual reader - it is for the academic reader.
Unending Bloom.......2007-06-03
This is a difficult book that (purposefully) subverts all the standard modes of philosophical discourse in favor of metaphorical imagery. It does this because its subject matter, the spiritual happening that gives life its meaning, cannot be contained in static, philosophical concepts. The occurrence of the I/Thou, the event of meaningful relation, defies all notions of matter and logic. Matter and logic belong to the I/It world- the necessary but spiritually void public world. As the It world grows in strength, this book serves as a beautiful reminder of who we are and what we can be. And as philosophy again loses its soul and degenerates into mere technique, this little book can remind us what philosophy's true domain is- wisdom.
........2007-05-17
How can you describe such a book? Through his prose, Buber takes the reader to a place that is almost holy. I'd been waiting my entire life for this text.
About Authentic Meeting.......2006-08-17
I find the notes of Walter Kaufmann very valuable and gives another way of understanding the Old Testament. If you get an edition of I AND THOU, I highly recommend getting one translated with notes by Walter Kaufmann. The main theme of Buber in this book is that there are two basic relationships with life I-Thou and I-It. When we meet life in I-Thou we enter the sacred and are truly authentic to each other. From this basic relationship comes a kind of Monotheism as well as the ethics of personal conscience and integrity and meeting another person in their fullness, rather than reducing them or life to a thing which can be manipulated or analyzed or even objectively known. I feel that Buber opened the heart and core of the Old Testament to me, beyond what my previously more Christian studies implied was there (making any message there inferior to what the New Testament gives). Before then all I could get was outmoded laws, grisly wars, strange folklore, and proverbial common sense with an occasionally wise statement which was a nugget of gold in the strange medley of books. But once I got what this kind of authentic relating was about, something seemed to unify for me about the Old Testament and the rest made sense. I still find a lot of what I used to find there, but with the key Buber gave, I could see something growing at the very heart of Judaism behind all those books about what it meant to meet each other authentically and to feel I divinity that says I AM.
Customer Reviews:
Don't confuse this with "Good and Evil" by Michael Pearl.......2007-01-10
This is not the Bible Comic "Good and Evil" by Michael Pearl. That is c.2006, ISBN-10: 1892112388.
Profound & Deep.......2000-12-07
After reading several Carl Rogers books and papers I was led to Martin Buber's works. Martin Buber was one of the most profound thinkers of our times. Not an easy read but a one well worth the time and effort. Illuminating and insight on the subject of good and evil.
A oasis in the dryness of my time.......1999-09-22
There is a sense that this is one of the most important book in my life. I have re-read it for the last 3 summers and i have found different things that i needed. Buber has a distinct method of communication that pulls from you who you are... i hear his subtlety in my ear even now. Buber is brilliant.
Average customer rating:
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Martin Buber's I and Thou: Practicing Living Dialogue
Kenneth Paul Kramer
Manufacturer: Paulist Press
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ASIN: 0809141582 |
Book Description
Martin Buber's classic philosophy of dialogue, I and Thou, is at the core of Kenneth Paul Kramer's scholarly and impressive Living Dialogue: Practicing Buber's I and Thou. In three main parts, paralleling the three of I and Thou, and focusing upon Buber's key concepts --"nature," "spirit becoming forms," "true community," the "real I," the "eternal Thou," "turning,"--and the two fundamental dialogues--the "I-Thou" and the "I-It"--the book clarifies, puts into practice and vigorously affirms the moral validity of Buber's philosophy, with its extension to love, marriage, the family, the community, and God, in the conviction that "genuine dialogue" will effect better relations with one another, the world and God.
Well-researched, and replete with a glossary of Buberian terms, practice exercises for true dialoguing, and discussion questions, Living Dialogue emerges as an invaluable guide to I and Thou.
Highlights:
· a lens through which to see and understand the philosopher and his work anew · a must-read for undergraduates, as well as relationship counselors, therapists, and general readers, who will benefit from the work's clarity and ease of expression · includes a foreword by Maurice Friedman
Customer Reviews:
A Classic Companion.......2003-12-04
Martin Buber's I and Thou: Practicing Living Dialogue is an excellent introduction and overview of Buber's I and Thou. Kenneth Kramer is extremely readable and conveys complex ideas in a manner that allows the reader to grasp the concepts with much more facility. Through the use of illustrations, referencing other work by Buber, side by side exerpts of Smith's and Kaufmann's translations, and additional insights offered by Kenneth Kramer and Mechthild Gawlick, Buber's challenging masterpiece is presented in a way that is engaging and understandable. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a "user friendly" introduction to Buberian thought. It is a great resource for students and teachers of philosophy, theology, or modern thought. This book made such an impact upon me, that I am keeping multiple copies on hand so that I don't have to lend my own.
Book Description
The Martin Buber-Carl Rogers Dialogue offers a corrected and extensively annotated version of this central text in human sciences. Focusing on the sole meeting between these two central figures in twentieth-century intellectual life, Anderson and Cissna return to the original 1957 audio tape and to a variety of other primary sources as they correct and clarify the historical record.
The authors highlight hundreds of errors, major and minor, in previously distributed and published transcripts--beginning with the typescript circulated by Rogers himself. They also show how an accurate text enhances our understanding of the relationship between Buber's philosophy and Rogers's client- and person-centered approach to interpersonal relations. Anderson and Cissna discuss the central issues of the conversation, including the limits of mutuality, approaches to "self," alternative models of human nature, confirmation of others, and the nature of dialogic relation itself. Although Buber and Rogers conversed nearly forty years ago, their topics clearly resonate with contemporary debates about postmodernism, forms of otherness, cultural studies, and the possibilities for a dialogic public sphere.
Book Description
Martin Buber believed that life's deepest truth lies in human relationships. In this classic work he puts this belief into practice, applying it to the concrete problems of contemporary society.
Customer Reviews:
the most important book of my life.......1999-12-31
I read this book as part of a high school class, and the conversations within our class as a result of it were just amazing. a very deep and spiritual book. buber believes that there are three relationships people can have: relationships between man and things, between man and god, and between man and man. to put it simply, to have a relationship with things, you must go to them. to have a relationship with god, god has to come to you. but in relationships between man and man, we can come to each other...
read "Dialogue"
Book Description
There is no adequate understanding of contemporary Jewish and Christian theology without reference to Martin Buber. Buber wrote numerous books during his lifetime (1878-1965) and is best known for I and Thou and Good and Evil. Buber has influenced important Protestant theologians like Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr. His appeal is vast--not only is he renowned for his translations of the Hebrew Bible but also for his interpretation of Hasidism, his role in Zionism, and his writings in psychotherapy and political philosophy. In addition to a general introduction, each chapter is individually introduced, illuminating the historical and philosophical context of the readings. Footnotes explain difficult concepts, providing the reader with necessary references, plus a selective bibliography and subject index.
Book Description
Martin Buber’s work suggests that real life begins with two individuals engaged in dialogue, not just taking care of one’s own needs as described in social Darwinism.
Arnett argues that the end of the age of abundance demands that we give up the communicative strategies of the past and seek to work together in the midst of limited resources and an uncertain future. Today’s situation calls for an unwavering commitment to Buber’s “narrow ridge” concern for both self and community.
Arnett illustrates the narrow ridge definition of interpersonal communication with rich examples. His vignettes demonstrate effective and ineffective approaches to human community. An effective approach, he makes clear, incorporates not only openness to others’ points of view but also a willingness to be persuaded.
Customer Reviews:
Organizational Communication for a New Era.......2006-06-05
This is a vital philosophical interpretation of Buber's work necessary for any student of Organizational and/or Ethical communication. I draw on Arnett's work, as both a student and as a corporate communicator, for his relevant and inspirational insights into everyday communicative situations that are not covered in most employee handbooks. Arnett's understanding and interpretation of the philosophical anthropologist Martin Buber's most important theories is the foundation of this book, but it is also Arnett's heartfelt prayer for a renewal of hope in creating, communicating and belonging to communities.
timely and insightful application.......2005-08-31
This theoretically and practically helpful book is still current after almost two decades in print. I use it in my classes each year, and students comment regularly on its helpfulness. The discussion of responsibility and power in organizational life is insightful. I recommend this book to thoughtful persons interested in engaging ideas in the marketplace, the public square, and interpersonal interaction.
Blah Blah Blah.......2002-04-19
I very much expected to have the opportunity to review and develop my personal communication method with the reference of this books material. Instead I found myself sifting through lists of theory and reference, after reference, to other authors ideas compacted into nutshell form. If I wanted the ideas of these other authors I would have bought their material instead. I quickly found a use for this book as a wedge style book stop in my den. Thanks for nothing.
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Martin Buber's I and Thou: Practicing Living Dialogue
