l-Thou & l-lt

"There comes a time in a man's life," says Philosopher Martin Buber, "when he should begin to bring the crop into the barn." In Buber's case, the harvest includes a goodly share of the honors the world pays to a man who has thought deeply and originally. Last week, at the age of 85, frail, white-bearded Philosopher Buber flew from Israel to Amsterdam to accept one of Europe's highest intellectual prizes: the $28,000 Erasmus Award, presented to one or more persons who have contributed to the spiritual unity of Europe.* The award cited Buber for "enriching the spiritual life of Europe with his versatile gifts for more than half a century." Buber is one of the master stylists of modern German prose, and his German translation of the Old Testament is one of history's most successful efforts to re-create the oral quality and poetry of the Hebrew Bible in another language. In his novels and folk tales, he has been responsible for re-creating the legend and lore of the Hasidim--the sect of joyfully pious Jews who flourished in the ghettos of Eastern Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. But Buber is best known for his philosophy of dialogue. It is not only one of the most important modern influences on Jewish thought, but it has also affected scores of Christian thinkers--among them, Roman Catholic Philosopher Jacques Maritain, Orthodoxy's Nikolai Berdyaev, Protestants Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. To Reinhold Niebuhr, he is "the greatest living Jewish philosopher." Dag Hammarskjold was Buber's disciple and Swedish translator.

Zionists & Mystics. Buber was born in Vienna, but grew up, after his parents' divorce, in the home of his grandfather in Austrian Galicia. Devoutly observant as a child, Buber gave up Jewish religious practice at the age of 13, and came strongly under the influence of German idealism and phenomenology as a student of philosophy at Vienna University. Buber was an active Zionist, and for several years he worked closely with Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann. But at the same time he was deeply influenced by Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard, and some of his first writings were on the German Christian mystics Jakob Boehme, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa.

In 1904 Buber came across a testament of Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the 18th century's wonder-working Baal Shem Tov (the good master of the divine name) who founded Hasidism. Buber gave up politics and journalism to spend five years studying Hasidic texts, then wrote the first of his ten books that retell the legends and learning of the Hasidic rabbis. During the early '30s, he and the late Rabbi Leo Baeck were the unquestioned leaders of Germany's Jewish community; Buber organized schools, edited anti-Nazi journals, and in "The Question to the Single One" wrote a classic damning indictment of modern totalitarianism. In 1938, a rescue committee at Jerusalem's Hebrew University hired him, and he taught there until his retirement in 1951. He now lives quietly in a book-cluttered house on Lovers of Zion Street, tidying up his works for a collected edition--a mammoth task, since his bibliography runs to more than 800 items.

Subject & Object. Buber's philosophy is not an organized system of thought but an original fusion of striking insights, drawn from his encounter with other men's thought. From Kierkegaard, for example, he derived his sense of man's "uniqueness" before God--although in criticism of Kierkegaard Buber adds that man cannot meet God by turning from the world. In Hasidism he discovered not merely colorful folklore but an approach to life that was suffused with the joy of existence because it sanctified and hallowed the everyday world.

His best-known insights are expressed in a brace of terms that are vying with Freud's id and superego as concepts to toss around at highbrow cocktail parties: I-Thou and I-It.

I-It describes the relation of a subject to an object--the casual conversation of a diner with a waitress, the way a man treats a chair or typewriter. Such relations are essential to the maintenance of life, but man's authentic existence comes into being only when a personal I meets a personal Thou--a direct meeting or dialogue in which two people accept each other, in love or hate, as truly human and unique. The I-Thou relation is found also in the world of faith: it expresses the kind of personal encounter the Psalmists and ancient prophets had with the Lord of Israel--the kind of encounter to which man today is summoned.

Buber believes that man's earthly task is to realize his created uniqueness through these I-Thou meetings--as a Hasidic rabbi called Zusya put it on his deathbed: "In the world to come they will not ask me, 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?' " The demands of authentic existence mean that man cannot blindly follow the prescripts of law but must accept an "ethic of responsibility," in which moral action is a response to what the situation demands at a given time. For Buber, another consequence of the I-Thou philosophy is a social ideal of a true community that rejects both individualism and collectivism; he finds a blueprint for this kind of "We-You" community in nonMarxist, Utopian socialism, as exemplified in the kibbutzim of rural Israel.

Buber's philosophy of dialogue also leads to a striking interpretation of Scripture. Neither an infallible guide to man's conduct nor a collection of legends, the Bible is a dialogue between the speaking I of God and the hearing Thou of Israel. Buber's disciple Maurice Friedman calls it "the historical account of God's relation to man seen through man's eyes." Admiration & Shock. Buber is the most widely read Jewish thinker of the century, although there are plenty of Catholics and Protestants who are more enthusiastic about his work than some of his fellow Jews are. Since he does not follow the detailed rules of the Halakah in his daily life and scorns the narrow legalism of the Talmudic law, he has been mercilessly criticized by Orthodox rabbis as a heretic. Some Reform Jews, on the other hand, feel that Buber has romanticized the Hasidic movement and overemphasized the importance of this unique sect for modern Judaism. And even among Jews who accept the principles of his "life of dialogue," some are shocked that onetime Zionist Buber has spent more than 40 years working for the improvement of Arab-Israel relations.

Buber believes that an I-Thou meeting between men is more than ever necessary in a world threatened by atomic ruin. "Politicians do not talk with one another to reach a real understanding based on their aims," says Buber, who has little expectation that world leaders will listen to him. "I think the main problems existing between great powers should be talked over in a different way. They should talk to each other as do good merchants who have opposed each other but have begun to see that it's worthwhile to find out if, perchance, their common interests are more important and have more weight than their opposed interests. At this hour of history, true peace is only possible through some form of cooperation."

* Among previous winners: Existentialist Philosopher Karl Jaspers, Roman Catholic Theologian Romano Guardini, Painters Marc Chagall and Oscar Kokoschka.

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