Contemporary PhilosophersTHE WORLD OF NIETZSCHE • MARCEL • BUBER

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Was born in a small town of Rocken, Germany A father, who is a Lutheran Pastor, died when Neitzsche was only four years old, and

Nietzsche grew up in a family consisting of his mother, grandmother, two aunts, and a younger sister.

He attended a top boarding school and studied philology at University of Bonn and Leipzig Given an academic position at the age 20 for being exceptional Have contracted dysentery, diphtheria and syphilis The cause of acquisition of syphilis is when he was brought to a brothel (male) Lived mostly in Switzerland and Italy He suffered to other several health issues that led to prior his life of insanity Saw a man beating up a horse and intervene and ended up collapsed and loses

completely his sanity. Spent 11 years as a vegetable, oblivious to his surrounding, and was tended by his aunt.

Died at the year 1900

Themes, Arguments, and IdeasThe Nihilism of Contemporary Europe While most of his contemporaries looked on the late nineteenth

century with unbridled optimism, confident in the progress of science and the rise of the German state, Nietzsche saw his age facing a fundamental crisis in values. With the rise of science, the Christian worldview no longer held a prominent explanatory role in people’s lives, a view Nietzsche captures in the phrase “God is dead.” However, science does not introduce a new set of values to replace the Christian values it displaces. Nietzsche rightly foresaw that people need to identify some source of meaning and value in their lives, and if they could not find it in science, they would turn to aggressive nationalism and other such salves. The last thing Nietzsche would have wanted was a return to traditional Christianity, however. Instead, he sought to find a way out of nihilism through the creative and willful affirmation of life.

Themes, Arguments, and IdeasGOD IS DEAD

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

Nietzsche’s works express a fear that the decline of religion, the rise of atheism, and the absence of a higher moral authority would plunge the world into chaos. The western world had depended on the rule of God for thousands of years — it gave order to society and meaning to life. Without it, Nietzsche writes, society will move into an age of nihilism. Although Nietzsche may have been considered a nihilist by definition, he was critical of it and warned that accepting nihilism would be dangerous.

Themes, Arguments, and IdeasPerspectivism

Nietzsche claimed the death of God would eventually lead to the loss of any universal perspective on things, and along with it any coherent sense of objective truth.Nietzsche himself rejected the idea of objective reality arguing that knowledge is contingent and conditional, relative to various fluid perspectives or interests.[156] This leads to constant reassessment of rules (i.e., those of philosophy, the scientific method, etc.) according to the circumstances of individual perspectives.This view has acquired the name perspectivism.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche proclaims that a table of values hangs above every great people. He points out that what is common among different peoples is the act of esteeming, of creating values, even if the values are different from one people to the next. Nietzsche asserts that what made people great was not the content of their beliefs, but the act of valuing. Thus the values a community strives to articulate are not as important as the collective will to see those values come to pass. The willing is more essential than the intrinsic worth of the goal itself, according to Nietzsche. "A thousand goals have there been so far," says Zarathustra, "for there are a thousand peoples. Only the yoke for the thousand necks is still lacking: the one goal is lacking. Humanity still has no goal." Hence, the title of the aphorism, "On The Thousand And One Goals".

Themes, Arguments, and IdeasPerspectivism

The idea that one value-system is no more worthy than the next, although it may not be directly ascribed to Nietzsche, has become a common premise in modern social science. Max Weber and Martin Heidegger absorbed it and made it their own. It shaped their philosophical and cultural endeavor, as well as their political understanding. Weber for example, relies on Nietzsche's perspectivism by maintaining that objectivity is still possible—but only after a particular perspective, value, or end has been established.

Among his critique of traditional philosophy of Kant, Descartes and Plato in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche attacked thing in itself and cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) as unfalsifiable beliefs based on naive acceptance of previous notions and fallacies. Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre puts Nietzsche in a high place in the history of philosophy. While criticizing nihilism and Nietzsche together as a sign of general decay,he still commends him for recognizing psychological motives behind Kant and Hume's moral philosophy:

For it was Nietzsche's historic achievement to understand more clearly than any other philosopher...not only that what purported to be appeals of objectivity were in fact expressions of subjective will, but also the nature of the problems that this posed for philosophy.

Themes, Arguments, and IdeasThe Doctrine of the Will to Power On one level, the will to power is a psychological insight: our

fundamental drive is for power as realized in independence and dominance. This will is stronger than the will to survive, as martyrs willingly die for a cause if they feel that associating themselves with that cause gives them greater power, and it is stronger than the will to sex, as monks willingly renounce sex for the sake of a greater cause. While the will to power can manifest itself through violence and physical dominance, Nietzsche is more interested in the sublimated will to power, where people turn their will to power inward and pursue self-mastery rather than mastery over others. An Indian mystic, for instance, who submits himself to all sorts of physical deprivation gains profound self-control and spiritual depth, representing a more refined form of power than the power gained by the conquering barbarian.

Themes, Arguments, and IdeasThe Perspectivist Conception of Truth Nietzsche is critical of the very idea of objective truth. That we

should think there is only one right way of considering a matter is only evidence that we have become inflexible in our thinking. Such intellectual inflexibility is a symptom of saying “no” to life, a condition that Nietzsche abhors. A healthy mind is flexible and recognizes that there are many different ways of considering a matter. There is no single truth but rather many.

Themes, Arguments, and IdeasChristianity as a Life-Denying Force Throughout his work, particularly in The Antichrist, Nietzsche writes

scathingly about Christianity, arguing that it is fundamentally opposed to life. In Christian morality, Nietzsche sees an attempt to deny all those characteristics that he associates with healthy life. The concept of sin makes us ashamed of our instincts and our sexuality, the concept of faith discourages our curiosity and natural skepticism, and the concept of pity encourages us to value and cherish weakness. Furthermore, Christian morality is based on the promise of an afterlife, leading Christians to devalue this life in favor of the beyond. Nietzsche argues that Christianity springs from resentment for life and those who enjoy it, and it seeks to overthrow health and strength with its life-denying ethic. As such, Nietzsche considers Christianity to be the hated enemy of life.

Themes, Arguments, and IdeasThe Revaluation of All Values

While it is hard to give a definitive account of the eternal recurrence, we can undoubtedly claim that it involves a supreme affirmation of life. On one level, it expresses the view that time is cyclical and that we will live every moment of our lives over and over an infinite number of times, each time exactly the same. In other words, each passing moment is not fleeting but rather echoes for all eternity. Nietzsche’s ideal is to be able to embrace the eternal recurrence and live in affirmation of this idea. In other words, we should aim to live conscious of the fact that each moment will be repeated infinitely, and we should feel only supreme joy at the prospect.

Works

Homer and Classical Philology (1868) The Birth of Tragedy (1872) “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (1873) The Gay Science (1882) Thus Spake Zarathurstra (1883) Beyond Good and Evil (1886) On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) The Antichrist (1888) Ecce Homo (1888) The Will to Power (1901) Thoughts out of Season (1909)

Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) Marcel was the only child of Henri and Laure Marcel The death of his mother, in 1893 when Gabriel was not quite four years old left an

indelible impression on him. a French philosopher  playwright  music critic leading Christian existentialist The author of over a dozen books and at least thirty plays, Marcel's work focused on

the modern individual's struggle in a technologically dehumanizing society. Though often regarded as the first French existentialist, he dissociated himself from figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre, preferring the term 'Philosophy of Existence' to define his own thought. The Mystery of Being is a well-known two-volume work authored by Marcel.

Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) Marcel was not a “dogmatic pacifist,” but experiences in World War I as a non-

combatant solidified to Marcel the, “Desolate aspect that it [war] became an object of indignation, a horror without equal,” (AE 20) and contributed to a life-long fascination with death. It was during the war that many of the important philosophical themes in Marcel’s later work would take root, and indeed, during the war, Marcel began writing in a journal that served as a framework for his first book,Metaphysical Journal (1927)

After the war, Marcel married Jaqueline Boegner, and he taught at a secondary school in Paris.

Marcel became engaged as a playwright, philosopher, and literary critic. 

Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) His most significant philosophical works include Being and Having (1949),The

Mystery of Being, Volume I and II (1950-51), Man against Mass Society (1962) and Creative Fidelity (1964). 

Marcel became known for his very public disagreements with Jean-Paul Sartre. the most fundamental ideological disagreement between the two was over the

notion of autonomy.

Freedom A strange inner mutation is spreading throughout humanity, according to Marcel. 

As odd as it first seems, this mutation is evoked by the awareness that members of humanity are contingent on conditions which make up the framework for their very existence.  Man recognizes that at root, he is an existing thing, but he somehow feels compelled to prove his life is more significant than that.  He begins to believe that the things he surrounds himself with can make his life more meaningful or valuable.  This belief, says Marcel, has thrown man into a ghostly state of quandary caused by a desire to possess rather than to be.  All people become a master of defining their individual selves by either their possessions or by their professions.  Meaning is forced into life through these venues.  Even more, individuals begin to believe that their lives have worth because they are tied to these things, these objects.  This devolution creates a situation in which individuals experience the self only as a statement, as an object, “I am x.”

FREEDOM The objectification of the self through one’s possessions robs one of her freedom,

and separates her from the experiences of her own participation in being.  The idolatrous world of perverted possession must be abandoned if the true reality of humanity is to be reached (SZ 285).  Perhaps most known for his views on freedom, Marcel gave to existentialism a view of freedom that marries the absolute indeterminacy of traditional existentialism with Marcel’s view that transcendence out of facticity can only come by depending upon others with the same goals.  The result is a type of freedom-by-degrees in which all people are free, since to be free is to be self-governing, but not all people experience freedom that can lead them out of objectification.  The experience of freedom cannot be achieved unless the subject extricates herself from the grip of egocentrism, since freedom is not simply doing what desire dictates.  The person who sees herself as autonomous within herself  has a freedom based on ill-fated egocentrism.  She errs in believing freedom to be rooted on independence.

PARTICIPATION Marcel was an early proponent of what would become a major Sartrean existential

tenet:  I am my body.  For Marcel, the body does not have instrumental value, nor is it simply a part or extension of the self.  Instead, the self cannot be eradicated from the body.  It is impossible for the self to conceive of the body in any way at all except for as a distinct entity identified with the self (CF 23).  Existence is prior, and existence is prior to any abstracting that we do on the basis of our perception.  Existence is indubitable, and existence is in opposition to the abstraction of objectivity (TW 225).  That we are body, of course, naturally lends us to think of the body in terms of object.  But individuals who resort to seeing the self and the world in terms of functionality are ontologically deficient because not only can they not properly respond to the needs of others, but they have become isolated and independent from others.  It is our active freedom that prevents us from the snare of objectifying the self, and which brings us into relationships with others.

PARTICIPATION When we are able to act freely, we can move away from the isolated perspective of the

problematic man (“I am body only,”) to that of the participative subject (“I am a being among beings”) who is capable of interaction with others in the world.  Marcelian participation is possible through a special type of reflection in which the subject views herself as a being among beings, rather than as an object.  This reflection is secondary reflection, and is distinguished from both primary reflection and mere contemplation.  Primary reflection explains the relationship of an individual to the world based on her existence as an object in the world, whereas secondary reflection takes as its point of departure the being of the individual among others.  The goal of primary reflection, then, is to problematize the self and its relation to the world, and so it seeks to reduce and conquer particular things.  Marcel rejects primary reflection as applicable to ontological matters because he believes it cannot understand the main metaphysical issue involved in existence:  the incommunicable experience of the body as mine.  Neither does mere contemplation suffice to explain this phenomenon. 

PARTICIPATION Contemplation is existentially significant, because it indicates the act by which the

self concentrates its attention on its self, but such an act without secondary reflection would result in the same egocentrism that Marcel attempts to avoid through his work.

Secondary reflection has as its goal the explication of existence, which cannot be separated from the individual, who is in turn situated among others.  For Marcel, an understanding of one’s being is only possible through secondary reflection, since it is a reflection whereby the self asks itself how and from what starting point the self is able to proceed (E 14).  The existential impetus of secondary reflection cannot be overemphasized for Marcel:  Participation which involves the presence of the self to the world is only possible if the temptation to assume the self is wholly distinct from the world is overcome (CF 22).  The existential upshot is that secondary reflection allows the individual to seek out others, and it dissolves the dualism of primary reflection by realizing the lived body’s relation to the ego.

PARTICIPATION Reflexive reflection is the reflection of the exigent self.  It occurs when the

subject is in communion with others, and is free and also dependent upon others (as discussed in 2).  Reflexive reflection is an inward looking that allows the self to be receptive to the call of others.  Yet, Marcel does not call on the participative subject to be reflective for receptivity’s sake.  Rather, the self cannot fully understand the existential position without orientating itself to something other than the self.

Creative Fidelity For Marcel, to exist only as body is to exist problematically.  To exist existentially is to

exist as a thinking, emotive, being, dependent upon the human creative impulse.  He believed that, “As soon as there is creation, we are in the realm of being,” and also that, “There is no sense using the word ‘being’ except where creation is in view,” (PGM xiii).  The person who is given in a situation to creative development experiences life qualitatively at a higher mode of being than those for whom experiences are another facet of their functionality.  Marcel argues that, “A really alive person is not merely someone who has a taste for life, but somebody who spreads that taste, showering it, as it were, around him; and a person who is really alive in this way has, quite apart from any tangible achievements of his, something essentially creative about him,” (VI, 139). 

Creative Fidelity This is not to say, of course, that the creative impulse is measurable by what we

produce.  Whereas works of art most explicitly express creative energy, inasmuch as we give ourselves to each other, acts of love, admiration, and friendship also describe the creative act.  In fact, participation with others is initiated through acts of feeling which not only allow the subject to experience the body as his own, but which enable him to respond to others as embodied, sensing, creative, participative beings as well.  To feel is a mode of participation, a creative act which draws the subject closer to an experience of the self as a being-among-beings, although higher degrees of participation are achieved by one whose acts demonstrate a commitment to that experience.  So, to create is to reject the reduction of the self to the level of abstraction—of object, “The denial of the more than human by the less than human,” (CF 10).

Creative Fidelity If the creative élan is a move away from the objectification of humanity, it must be

essentially tied relationally to others.  Creative fidelity, then, entails a commitment to acts which draw the subject closer to others, and this must be balanced with a proper respect for the self.  Self-love, self-satisfaction, complacency, or even self-anger are attitudes which can paralyze one’s existential progress and mitigate against the creative impulse.  To be tenacious in the pursuit– the fidelity aspect– is the most crucial part of the creative impulse, since creation is a natural outflow of being embodied.  One can create, and create destructively.  To move towards a greater sense of being, one must have creative fidelity.  Fidelity exists only when it triumphs over the gap in presence from one being to another—when it helps others relate, and so defies absences in presence (CF 152).

PRESENCE The term “presence” is used in various ways in the English language, although each

connote a “here-ness” that indicates whether or not a subject was “here”.  One of the differences in how we use the term is in the strength of a thing’s “here-ness”.  Two people sitting in close physical proximity on an airplane might not be present to each other, although people miles away speaking on a phone might have a stronger awareness of being together.  There is mystery in presence, according to Marcel, because presence can transcend the objective physical fact of being-with each other.   Presence is concerned with recognizing the self as a being-among-beings, and acknowledging the relevance of others’ experiences to the self, as a being.

PRESENCE The notion of presence for Marcel is comprised of two other parallel notions,

communion and availability.  Together, communion and availability enable an individual to come into a complete participation with another being.  Although “presence” is found throughout Marcel’s work, he admits that it is impossible to give a rigorous definition of it.  Rather than working out a lexical definition of the term, we ought to evoke its meaning through our shared experiences.  Marcel demonstrates this by noting how easy it is to find ourselves with others who are not significantly present at all, and at other times we are present to those who are not physically with us at all.  The mark of presence is the mutual tie to the other.  For Marcel, it means that the self is “given” to the other, and that givenness is responsively received or reciprocated.  (The reciprocity of presence is a necessary condition for it.)  Presence is shared, then, in virtue of our openness to each other.

Hope and the Existential Self The existential life that Marcel paints as possible for humanity is largely one of

hope—but not one of optimism.   Being in the world as body allows one to seek out new opportunities for the self, and so Marcelian hope is deeply pragmatic in that it refuses to compute all of the possibilities against oneself.  But the picture is not rosy.  Hope for Marcel is not faith that things will go well, because most often, things do not go well.  The depravity of the problematic man threatens to suffocate.  Yet, even if there is despair in our situation, there is always movement towards something more.  This movement towards is the philosophical project for Gabriel Marcel.  If there is always movement, and always more to reach for, the existential self is never complete (and indeed, this is why Marcel refused to categorize his existential project as a “system” or “dialectic”).  The mystery of being for the existential self is unsolvable, because it is not a problem to be solved.

Hope and the Existential Self The notion of “hope” for Marcel relies upon a significant Marcelian distinction

between problem and mystery.  For the problematic man each aspect of life is reduced to the level of a problem, so that the self and all of its relationships, goals, and desires are treated as obstacles to be conquered.  Life is, for the problematic man, a series of opportunities to possess, and the body is alienated from the problematic man’s own corporeality.  Not only is such a person separated from his own being as a result, he is distanced from the true mystery of being.  If I am my body, and I want to inquire into being, I must grasp that being is a philosophical mystery to be engaged with rather than a problem to be solved.  The existential self, upon recognizing that the self is not something that is possessed, can then shift his thought from questioning the significance of his own existence as a matter of fact, to questioning how he is related to his body.  The vital cannot be separated from the spiritual, since the spiritual is conditioned on the body, which can then provide for opportunities and so, for hope.

MARTIN BUBER The setting of Buber's childhood and youth was the Austro-Hungarian empire of the

fin-de-siècle Its cosmopolitan capital Vienna was home to late Romantic music, sophisticated

theatrical productions, and psychologically perceptive literature. Among the young Buber's first publications are essays and translations into Polish

of the poetry of his older peers (e.g., Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal). In historical and cultural terms, Buber's philosophical and literary voice is best

understood as related to the Viennese culture of his youth which saw the rise of radically new approaches to psychology (Otto Weininger, Sigmund Freud) and philosophy (Ludwig Wittgenstein), and where solutions to the burning social and political issues of city and empire were often expressed in grandly theatrical oratory (Lueger, Hitler) and in estheticizing rhetoric and self-inscenation (Theodor Herzl).

MARTIN BUBER Buber's parents (Carl Buber and Elise née Wurgast) separated in 1882. For the next ten years, Martin lived with his paternal grandparents, Solomon and

Adele Buber, in Lemberg (Lvov). Solomon, a ‘master of the old Haskala’ (Martin Buber) who called himself ‘a Pole of the

Mosaic persuasion’ (Friedman [1981] p. 11), produced the first modern editions of rabbinic midrash literature yet was greatly respected even by the ultraorthodox establishment.

His reputation opened the doors for Martin when he began to show interest in Zionism and Hasidic literature.

Home-schooled and pampered by his grandmother, Buber became a bookish aesthete with few friends his age and the play of the imagination as his diversion.

He easily absorbed local languages (Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, German) and acquired others (Greek, Latin, French, Italian, English). German was the dominant language at home, while the language of instruction at the Franz Joseph Gymnasium was Polish. This multilingualism nourished Buber's life-long obsession with words and meanings.

MARTIN BUBER In 1900, after his years of study , Buber and his partner, Paula Winkler, moved to Berlin where

the anarachist Gustav Landauer (1870-1919) was among their closest friends. Landauer played an important role in Buber's life when, in 1916, he criticized Buber for his

public enthusiasm for the German war effort. This critique from a trusted friend had a sobering effect, triggering Buber's turn from an

aestheticizing social mysticism to the philosophy of dialogue. In Frankfurt, Buber met Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) with whom he was to develop a close

intellectual companionship. After the war, Rosenzweig recruited Buber as a lecturer for the newly established center for

Jewish adult education (Freies jüdisches Lehrhaus), he persuaded Buber to take on a widely visible lectureship in Jewish religious studies and ethics at Frankfurt University, and Rosenzweig became Buber's chief collaborator in the project, initiated by the young Christian publisher Lambert Schneider, to produce a new translation of the Bible into German.

Buber lived and worked in Frankfurt until his emigration to Palestine in 1937. The remainder of his life he lived and taught mostly in Jerusalem, teaching social philosophy.

Zionism Recruited by his older compatriot, the Budapest-born and Vienna-based journalist

Theodor Herzl, Buber briefly edited the main paper of the Zionist party, Die Welt, but soon found a more congenial place in the ‘democratic faction’ led by Chaim Weizmann, then living in Zurich.

Buber's phases of engagement in the movement's political institutions alternated with extended phases of disengagement, but he never ceased to write and speak about what he understood to be the distinctive Jewish brand of nationalism. Buber seems to have derived an important lesson from the early struggles between political and cultural Zionism for the leadership and direction of the movement.

He realized that his place was not in high diplomacy and political education but in the search for psychologically sound foundations on which to heal the rift between modernist realpolitik and a distinctively Jewish theological-political tradition.

Buber sought a healing source in the integrating powers of the religious experience.

Early Philosophical Influences Among Buber's early philosophical influences were Kant's Prolegomena which he read at the age of fourteen, and

Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Whereas Kant had a calming influence on the young mind troubled by the aporia of

infinite versus finite time, Nietzsche's doctrine of “the eternal recurrence of the same” constituted a powerful negative seduction.

By the time Buber graduated from Gymnasium he felt he had overcome this seduction, but Nietzsche's prophetic tone and aphoristic style are evident in Buber's subsequent writings.

In Vienna he absorbed the latest literature and poetry, most importantly the oracular poetry of Stefan George which influenced him greatly, although he never became a disciple of George.

Early Philosophical Influences In Leipzig and Berlin he developed an interest in the ethnopsychology of Wilhelm

Wundt, the social philosophy of Georg Simmel, the psychiatry of Carl Stumpf, and thelebensphilosophisch approach to the humanities of Wilhelm Dilthey.

In Leipzig he attended meetings of the Society for Ethical Culture (Gesellschaft für ethische Kultur), then dominated by the thought of Lasalle and Tönnies.

Social Philosophy Although his earliest writings were literary and theatrical reviews, Buber's major

interest was the tension between society and community. The political arena for his social, psychological, and educational engagement was

the Zionist movement. Buber's interest in social philosophy was stimulated by his close friendship with

Gustav Landauer who was also among the authors Buber recruited for the forty volume series on “Society” (Die Gesellschaft) that he edited for the Frankfurt publishing house Ruetten & Loening.

As a pioneer of social thought and a student of Georg Simmel, Buber participated in the 1909 founding conference of the German sociological association.

While Buber's social-psychological approach to the study and description of social phenomena was soon eclipsed by quantitative approaches, his interest in the constitutive correlation between the individual and his and her social experience remained an important aspect of his philosophy of dialogue.

I and Thou: The Dialogic Principle Buber's best known work is the short philosophical essay Ich und Du (1923), first translated into English in 1937 by Ronald Gregor Smith. In the 1950's and 60's, when Buber first traveled and lectured in the USA, the essay became rather popular in the English speaking world.

Since then it has been associated with the intellectual culture of the student movement's spontaneity, authenticity, and anti-establishment sentiment.

I and Thou is considered to have inaugurated “a Copernican revolution in theology (…) against the scientific-realistic attitude” (Bloch [1983], p. 42), but it has also been criticized for its reduction of fundamental human relations to just two — the I-Thou and the I-It — of which the latter appears as a mere ‘cripple’ (Franz Rosenzweig in a letter to Buber in Sept. 1922).

Walter Kaufmann, who produced a second English translation of I and Thou, went further in his criticism. While he did not regard the lack of deep impact of Buber's contributions to biblical studies, Hasidism, and Zionist politics as an indication of failure, he considered I and Thou a shameful performance in both style and content.

I and Thou: The Dialogic Principle In style the book invoked “the oracular tone of false prophets” and it was ‘more affected than honest.’

Writing in a state of “irresistible enthusiasm,” Buber lacked the critical distance needed to critique and revise his own formulations.

His conception of the I-It was a “Manichean insult” while his conception of the I-Thou was ‘rashly romantic and ecstatic,’ and Buber ‘mistook deep emotional stirrings for revelation.’ (Kaufmann [1983], pp. 28-33)

Buber always insisted that the dialogic principle, i.e., the duality of primal relations that he called the I-Thou and the I-It, was not a philosophical conception but a reality beyond the reach of discursive language.

In the initial exuberance of making this discovery Buber briefly planned for I and Thou to serve as the prolegomenon to a five-volume work on philosophy, but he realized that, in Kaufmann's words, “he could not build on that foundation” and hence abandoned the plan.

I and Thou: The Dialogic Principle It has been argued, however, that Buber nevertheless solved the inherent “difficulty of dialogics that it reflects on, and speaks of, a human reality about which, in his own words, one cannot think and speak in an appropriate manner” (Bloch [1983] p. 62) by writing around it, inspired by one's conviction of its veracity.

The debate on the strength and weakness of I and Thou as the foundation of a system hinges on the perhaps fallacious assumption that the five-volume project Buber intended to write but soon abandoned was indeed a philosophical one.

Buber's contemporaneous lectures at the Freies jüdisches Lehrhaus and at the University of Frankfurt as well as his letters to Rosenzweig indicate quite clearly that he was concerned with the development of a new approach to the study of religion (Religionswissenschaft) (cf. Schottroff) rather than with a new approach to the philosophy of religion.

The Vagueness of Buber's Language The preponderance in Buber's writings of abstract nouns such as “experience,”

“realization,” and “encounter,” and his predilection for utopian political programs such as anarchism, socialism, and a bi-national solution to the conflict in Palestine point to a characteristic tension in his personality.

The philosopher of the “I and Thou” allowed very few people to call him by his first name; the theorist of education suffered no disturbance of his rigorous schedule by children playing in his own home; the utopian politician alienated most representatives of the Zionist establishment; and the innovative academic lecturer could hardly find a proper place in the university he had helped to create — the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Some of the most dedicated students of this inspiring orator and writer found themselves irritated by the conflict between their master's ideas and their own attempts at putting them into practice. In the final analysis it seems as if Buber always remained the well-groomed, affected, prodigiously gifted, pampered Viennese boy whose best company were the works of his own imagination, and whose overtures to the outside world were always tainted by his enthusiasm for words and for the stylized tone of his own voice.

Man of Letters Buber's wide range of interests, his literary abilities, and the general appeal of his

philosophical orientation are reflected in the far flung correspondence he conducted over the course of his long life.

He published the works of the Jewish Nietzschean story-teller Micha Josef Berdiczewsky.

He was a major inspiration to the young Zionist cadre of Prague Jews (Hugo Bergmann, Max Brod, Robert Weltsch) and became a major organizer of Jewish adult education in Germany where he lived until 1937

Honors and Legacy Among the honors Buber received are the Goethe-Prize of the City of Hamburg (1951), the

Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Frankfurt am Main, 1953), and the Erasmus Prize (Amsterdam, 1963).

Significant students who considered their own work a continuation of Buber's legacy were Nahum Glatzer (Buber's only doctoral student during his years at the university in Frankfurt, 1924-

1933, later an influential teacher of Judaic Studies at Brandeis University), Akiba Ernst Simon (historian and theorist of education in Israel who first met Buber at the Freies

jüdisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt, founded by Franz Rosenzweig, and who returned from Palestine to work with Buber and Ernst Kantorowicz for the Mittelstelle für jüdische Erwachsenenbildung from 1934 until 1938),

Maurice Friedman (Buber's American translator and a prolific author in his own right who introduced Buber to American religious scholarship),

Walter Kaufmann (who, despite his critique of Buber's I and Thou as a poeticized philosophy helped to popularize it in the USA),

and several significant Israeli scholars (Shmuel Eisenstadt, Amitai Etzioni, Jochanan Bloch) who knew Buber in his later years when he taught seminars on social philosophy and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

REFERENCES:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Will_to_Power_%28manuscript%2

9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gay_Science http://www.philosophy-index.com/nietzsche/god-is-dead/

D END.