Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buberwas an Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I–Thou relationship and the I–It relationship. Born in Vienna, Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. In 1902, he became the editor of the weekly Die Welt, the central organ of the Zionist movement, although he later withdrew from organizational work in Zionism. In...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth8 February 1878
CountryGermany
The work produced is a thing among things, able to be experienced and described as a sum of qualities. But from time to time it can face the receptive beholder in its whole embodied form.
I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.
The tradition of the camp fire faces that of the pyramid.
The historical religions have the tendency to become ends in themselves, and, as it were, to put themselves in God's place, and, in fact, there is nothing that is so apt to obscure God's face as a religion.
Real faith means holding ourselves open to the unconditional mystery which we encounter in every sphere of our life and which cannot be comprised in any formula. Real faith means the ability to endure life in the face of this mystery.
Nothing so tends to mask the face of God as religion; it can be a substitute for God himself.
Power abdicates only under the stress of counter-power.
We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to aflict the world so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully
We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the world, so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully.
The one who count are those persons who-though they may be of little renown-respond to and are responsible for the continuation of the living spirit.
God is the mysterium tremendum that appears and overthrows, but he is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.
As long as the firmament of the You is spread over me, the tempests of causality cower at my heels, and whirl of doom congeals.
When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.
To produce is to draw forth, to invent is to find, to shape is to discover...