Martin Buber

'The publication of Martin Buber's I and Thou was a great event in the religious life of the West.' Reinhold Niebuhr Martin Buber (1897-19) was a prolific and influential teacher and writer, who taught philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem from 1939 to 1951. Having studied philosophy and art at the universities of Vienna, Zurich and Berlin, he became an active Zionist and was closely involved in the revival of Hasidism. Recognised as a landmark of twentieth century intellectual history, I and Thou is Buber's masterpiece. In this book, his enormous learning and wisdom are distilled into a simple, but compelling vision. It proposes nothing less than a new form of the Deity for today, a new form of human being and of a good life. In so doing, it addresses all religious and social dimensions of the human personality. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith>

The first major biography in English in over thirty years of the seminal modern Jewish thinker Martin Buber An authority on the twentieth-century philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965), Paul Mendes-Flohr offers the first major biography in English in thirty years of this seminal modern Jewish thinker. The book is organized around several key moments, such as his sudden abandonment by his mother when he was a child of three, a foundational trauma that, Mendes-Flohr shows, left an enduring mark on Buber’s inner life, attuning him to the fragility of human relations and the need to nurture them with what he would call a “dialogical attentiveness.” Buber’s philosophical and theological writings, most famously I and Thou, made significant contributions to religious and Jewish thought, philosophical anthropology, biblical studies, political theory, and Zionism. In this accessible new biography, Mendes-Flohr situates Buber’s life and legacy in the intellectual and cultural life of German Jewry as well as in the broader European intellectual life of the first half of the twentieth century.

How did one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of the 20th century grapple with the founding of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—one of the most significant political conflicts of his time? Samuel Hayim Brody traces the development of Martin Buber's thinking and its implications for the Jewish religion, for the problems posed by Zionism, and for the Zionist-Arab conflict. Beginning in turbulent Weimar Germany, Brody shows how Buber's debates about Biblical meanings had concrete political consequences for anarchists, socialists, Zionists, Nazis, British, and Palestinians alike. Brody further reveals how Buber's passionate commitment to the rule of God absent an intermediary came into conflict in the face of a Zionist movement in danger of repeating ancient mistakes. Brody argues that Buber's support for Israel stemmed from a radically rich and complex understanding of the nature of the Jewish mission on earth that arose from an anarchist reading of the Bible.

Theologian, philosopher, and political radical, Martin Buber (1878–1965) was actively committed to a fundamental economic and political reconstruction of society as well as the pursuit of international peace. In his voluminous writings on Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine, Buber united his religious and philosophical teachings with his politics, which he felt were essential to a life of public dialogue and service to God. Collected in ALand of Two Peoples are the private and open letters, addresses, and essays in which Buber advocated binationalism as a solution to the conflict in the Middle East. A committed Zionist, Buber steadfastly articulated the moral necessity for reconciliation and accommodation between the Arabs and Jews. From the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 to his death in 1965, he campaigned passionately for a "one state solution. With the Middle East embroiled in religious and ethnic chaos, A Land of Two Peoples remains as relevant today as it was when it was first published more than twenty years ago. This timely reprint, which includes a new preface by Paul Mendes-Flohr, offers context and depth to current affairs and will be welcomed by those interested in Middle Eastern studies and political theory.

In this volume, Dan Avnon analyzes and reconstructs Buber's corpus of mature writings, revealing the radical nature of Buber's response to the most fundamental questions of human existence. The book invites the reader to reexamine conventional notions of the role of language, thought, and writing in communicating impressions of reality. An essential introduction to Buber's work and his unique approach to writing.

"A new collection of essays highlighting the wide range of Buber's thought, career, and activism. Best known for I and Thou, which laid out his distinction between dialogic and monologic relations, Martin Buber (1878-1965) was also an anthologist, translator, and author of some seven hundred books and papers. Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form, edited by Sarah Scott, is a collection of nine essays that explore his thought and career. Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form shakes up the legend of Buber by decentering the importance of the I-Thou dialogue in order to highlight Buber as a thinker preoccupied by the image of relationship as a geode to spiritual, social, and political change. The result is a different Buber than has hitherto been portrayed, one that is characterized primarily by aesthetics and politics rather than by epistemology or theology. Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form will serve as a guide to the entirety of Buber's thinking, career, and activism, placing his work in context and showing both the evolution of his thought and the extent to which he remained driven by a persistent set of concerns"--

As a deeply religious thinker who disclaimed all rationalistic systems, Martin Buber produced an insightful critique of modern philosophical ethics, one that became productive soil for another nontraditional philosophical ethic: feminism's care ethic. In light of the recent emphasis on the new morality, antifoundationalism, and postmodernism in ethics, the dialogical ethics of Martin Buber merits close examination. Most important, Walters compares and contrasts Buber's and feminism's personalist ethics in light of two considerations: the lack of attention by feminist writers to the feminist-Buber linkage and the long-standing and general inattention by twentieth-century thinkers to the ethical dimensions of Buber's thought.