Martin Buber

The paper examines the dominancy of narrative in Hasidic religious life through the discourse of narrative ethics and its implications for theology, specifically feminist theology, and for religion in general.
I claim that the centrality of storytelling in Hasidism reflects and constructs an essential attitude toward religious life. This attitude directs one to narrative and contextual thinking, which focuses on the specific person, circumstances, emotions, as opposed to law, norm, and abstract determination. This centrality of storytelling is connected to a deep Hasidic awareness of the restriction of normative religious life, a finite facet of the infinite paths to God

Martin Buber, L'insegnamento del Tao. Scritti tra Oriente e Occidente, Il Melangolo, Genova 2013. Italian translation of: Die Lehre vom Tao; Buddha; Chinesische Geister- und Liebesgeschichten (Vorwort); China und wir; Dem Gemeinschaftlichen folgen. Foreword: pp. 5-14. Reviews: Roberta Ascarelli: Buber in vena orientale (Il Manifesto, 01/12/2013).

La tesi presenta inizialmente il pensiero di Jacques Derrida sull'animalità. Il tema affrontato è la sovranità dell'uomo sul resto dei viventi, in particolare nei riguardi della discriminazione dell'animalità. Nei capitoli a seguire si attua un'emancipazione dell'animalità e non dall'animalità come la corrente umanista voleva. Attraverso l'ontogenesi del concetto di "umanità" viene decostruito il costrutto che sorregge la soglia che divide l'uomo dagli animali, laddove essi partecipano all'animalità in maniere differenti. L'emergenza di questa composizione dei temi trattati si erge ad azione esemplare con cui Derrida, prima di morire, ha lasciato delle tracce da seguire durante il ricevimento del premio Adorno.

The term “ethical monotheism” is an important marker of Judaism’s tumultuous transition into the modern era. The term emerged in the context of culture wars concerning the question of whether or not Jews could or should become emancipated citizens of modern European states. It appeared in arguments whether or not Judaism could be considered a Religion of Reason—a symbolic, motivational  representation of a universal morality—and in debates about whether or not Judaism could or should reform itself into a Religion of Reason. This book is both a decisive departure from those discussions and an attempt to add a further, post-modern statement to their ongoing development. As a departure, it refuses to take for granted a philosophical conception of Religion of Reason as the standard for ethical monotheism according to which Judaism was to be evaluated or reformed. As a continuation, the book undertakes a phenomenology of Jewish modes of ethical religiosity that allows it to inquire about what kind of ethical monotheism Judaism might be. The introduction and the conclusion present the argument of the book and explain its structure. Readers may benefit from reading those sections first, and then going on to the evidence in chapters 1 to 5.

An schematic outline of a coherent alternative to the "Anselmian" greatest-being theology that develops themes from the existential tradition, panentheism, process thought, and contemporary open theism. This approach depends centrally on a process-conception of perfection.

Vortrag vom 06. Dezember 2017, am Bezirkskrankenhaus Bayreuth

Anhand der künstlerischen Arbeiten einer Traumapatientin unternommene philosophische Wanderung. Von der Oberfläche her werden Themenkomplexe wie "Leibselbst", "das Böse" und "das Fremde" im Kontext des künstlerisch-therapeutischen Prozesses der Patientin betrachtet

This is a new, 2021 edition of Buber's masterpiece, complete with explanatory notes, glossary, and an interpretative essay. A bibliography is also included, along with testimonies of people who have read and lived with the book. Buber's "Ich und Du" (I and Thou) ranks as a twentieth-century classic of philosophical literature. The present book offers the first complete commentary on Buber's book.

Renée van Riessen besprak in haar afscheidslezing vier vensters op nabijheid en dat levert talloze waardevolle inzichten op. In zijn reactie op deze lezing doet Rik Peels een poging tot een christelijke inbedding van nabijheid. Hij stelt daarbij vragen als: wie dien ik nabij te zijn? Zijn er grenzen aan nabijheid? Is er hoop als je geen nabijheid vindt in deze wereld?

En el presente trabajo de investigación se llevará a cabo una amplia descripción del pensamiento del filósofo hebreo austríaco Martin Buber, en lo que le compete con respecto al tema de Dios y el hombre, marcado claramente en tres de sus obras que yo he considerado las más importantes. Estas obras básicas son ¿Qué es el hombre?, Yo y tú y Eclipse de Dios, todas escritas por el mismo filósofo. En el desarrollo del mismo se presentarán opiniones de distintos filósofos del hombre y de la religión, así como quienes han hecho comentarios propiamente al pensamiento de Buber.

The purpose of this brief paper is to elucidate the concept of the person as a member of a communal or civil society. It will try to answer the question as to what makes a person a person, and the corollary question as to how the person should be related to communal society.

In the second half of the twentieth century, American Jewry was faced with multiple issues that challenged its sense of identity and ideology. The aftermath of the Holocaust and the impact of the destruction of European Jewry alongside the powerful forces of acculturation at work in modern American society, posed the need for a reevaluation of traditional practices and ideologies and their place in Modern day society. The adjustments and challenges within American Jewry were consistent with those taking place in the American society at large.

Within this context, Shlomo Carlebach, a young European Hasidic scholar, was sent by the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe in the late nineteen-forties, to do pioneering 'missionary' work in America. Carlebach’s success depended upon his ability to be creative, innovative, and adaptive in his attempts to transform the acculturated youth that he targeted. By the time Carlebach died in 1994, he had become famous as “the foremost Jewish religious songwriter of the 20th century” and as a pioneer figure of Jewish spiritual renewal in America and worldwide.

Beyond his use of music and song, one of Carlebach’s main medium was through storytelling. Through his own unique and distinct style, Carlebach enchanted his audience with Hasidic tales and lore, creating an atmosphere of authenticity that both attracted and magnetized his audience. Rather than challenge modern society, Carlebach’s recreated stories which paradoxically provided a sense of past and present at once, synthesizing Hasidic legends with the trends and ideologies of his time. Similar to his acquaintance, Martin Buber, Shlomo Carlebach provided a romantic, bizarre, eccentric and selective account of Hasidic tales, which not only constitutes a link to the past - but created a sense of Jewish identity in the modern day world as well.

This paper will analyze the ideological themes concurring in Carlebach’s stories and the paradoxical sense of “modern-day authenticity” as portrayed through them.

‘The Education of Character,’  one of several articles that Martin Buber dedicated to the subject of education, was originally delivered as a lecture to teachers. The central and most intriguing aspect of this article, however, concerns its implicit registers – expression of aesthetic and mystical concerns that Buber does not acknowledge in his explicit voice. These issues were first raised in Buber’s early work, Daniel,  published in German in 1913. Subsequently, Buber became highly ambivalent about this book, expressing certain reservations about it and even prohibiting its reissue for many years. Yet the voices articulated in Daniel recur in ‘The Education of Character,’ despite Buber’s own efforts to silence them. It is as if Buber’s discussion of the concepts of realization (Verwirklichung) and orienting (Rientierung) were secretly and imperceptibly transplanted from Daniel into ‘The Education of Character’ by another person.
‘The Education of Character’ concerns the encounter between pupil and educator and the myriad ways in which such an encounter can take place in an educational setting. Buber’s explicit discussion, that conceals the silenced voices within the text, centers on the creation of an aesthetic encounter, (unintentionally) presenting the pupil as a sort of artwork.
The aesthetic dimension of the pupil-educator encounter is not merely some marginal aspect of Buber’s article. An aesthetic encounter poses the potential threat of shaping a relationship based on admiration and even leading to a forbidden romantic connection. In this context, I call for reconsideration of the possibility of conducting a full dialogic encounter within an educational framework. As stated in the conclusion, educator and pupil cannot share such a dialogic affinity because of the high price each pays within the educational process. Moreover, an in depth examination of Buber’s text will suggest that his conception of dialogic education, based on “an interaction between two fully present human beings,” results in a kind of Socratic dialogue, guiding the listener in a clearly defined and “preferred” direction chosen by the educator. This study maintains that once teachers are aware of the tension between dialogue and instruction and the failure it embodies, they become capable of producing an “inclusive, directed dialogue.”

Through a comparative analysis of themes and motives associating the love poetry of the “Serbian Bob Dylan” Bora Đorđević and the fiction of the French novelist Michel Houellebecq, with an emphasis on Đorđević’s collection of poetry Pusto ostrvo (i.e. “Desert Island”, 2017) and Houellebecq’s novel La possibilité d’une île (engl. transl. The Possibility of an island, 2005), we aim at showing a number of similarities in their approach to the problem of frailty and pain of love. Both authors explore the causes of and the solution for the antagonism between egoism and need for love in a couple. From the theoretical point of view, our comparison hinges on three basic dichotomies : eros/ agape (D. de Rougemont, L’Amour et l’Occident, 1960 ; Engl. Trans. Love in the Western World, 1940), love-need/ love-gift (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 1960) and I-Thou/ I-It (Martin Buber, Ich und Du, 1923 ; engl. transl. I and Thou, 1937). Confronting the many aspects of love offered by the poet and the novelist, we argue that they both consider ageing, selfishness and romantic illusion as the major impediments to a lasting love. Love’s labor is always lost when reduced to sexual intercourse, which “has all too short a date”, so that the rest of life turns into solitude and pain. Still, the crucial trigger of love misery is in us: the self-centered love or eros is a beggar who takes pleasure in its own desire, whereas sexuality is that fundamental and life-long instinct of transcending the limits of self by knowing the other and belonging to him/her. Considered in such a context, the motif of island represents a new Eden where love and joy of two blended individuals become possible.

This article addresses the tension between history and myth in three biblical commentaries written by the German-Jewish thinker Martin Buber (1878-1965): Königtum Gottes (Kingship of God, 1933); Torat Ha-nevi'im (The Prophetic Faith, 1942); and Moshe (Moses, 1945). I argue that these commentaries represent a distinct, late stage in the development of Buber's biblical hermeneutics, and I examine them closely to offer a new perspective on his life's work and to illustrate how he drew theological conclusions from sacred text using techniques of close reading and historical critical analysis. I begin with an analysis of Buber's reading of the book of Judges in Königtum Gottes and then continue to his account of the covenant-forming events at Mount Sinai in Moshe. Finally, I turn to Torat Ha-nevi'im and Buber's understanding of the relationship between God and the people in the context of the destruction of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. I show that Buber's aim in the commentaries was to articulate the narrative of what he saw as the "true history" of Judaism, with Judaism understood as a theological tradition developed by individuals in dialogical relationship with God. His examination of particular instances of human-divine relationship in the biblical narrative lends nuance to this understanding. Thus, aspects of Buber's commentaries may also be read as revisions of the philosophy of dialogue for which he is best known.

This is a Sample Extract from Paul-Louis Landsberg's 'The Experience of Death', the Kerr translation revised and edited by Edouard d'Araille. Paul-Louis Landsberg's 'The Experience of Death' is an extended essay philosophical essay on the nature of Death by a key Existentialist Philosopher who died in a German concentration camp. Part of the group embracing Sartre, Camus and de Beauvoir, Landsberg's essay is worth readin alongside the sections on death from Martin Heidegger's 'Being and Time' ('Sein und Zeit'). It is perhaps the most impactful analysis of death by any of the existentialist philosopher if not by all known authors. This extract includes a page which providesd more biographical information on Landsberg and a brief bibliography of his most significant works. The very first chapter from this essay is included in this sample. The actual essay (as published) is followed by an equally trenchant essay on the nature of suicide. Landsberg approaches his subject from the Christian point-of-view as well as that of a secular existentialist. He was himself a Christian yet he did not force this belief upon readers through his writing. A book that makes a deep impact upon anyone who dares to accompany the author on his dark yet exciting exploration of the ultimate 'end'.

Celem artykułu jest zwrócenie uwagi na rolę, jaką odgrywa relacja zachodząca między lekarzem a pacjentem. W szczególności tekst odnosi się do kwestii związanych z komunikacją interpersonalną w polskiej współczesnej medycynie klinicznej, która postrzegana jest w kategoriach problemu. O ile bowiem temat ten spotkał się z zainteresowaniem etyków, psychologów i socjologów związanych z medycyną, o tyle jest on pomijany w programach studiów akademii medycznych. Poszczególne części artykułu poświęcono podmiotowości pacjenta, jakości komunikacji i związanych z nią problemami, barierami komunikacyjnymi oraz strategiami walki z nimi.

Difficult conversations between doctors and patients

Abstract:
The aim of the paper is to bring attention to the role of the relations existing between doctors and patients. The text addresses especially the issues of interpersonal communication in contemporary Polish Clinical Medicine, which is considered an open problem. Particular sections of the paper are devoted to the subjects of patientcentered care, the quality of communication and the related problems, communication barriers and strategies for overcoming them.
Keywords:
communication, ethics, doctor-patient relations, communication barriers, personalism

What do Jews think scripture is? How do Jews view the anthology they variously call Tanakh, Miqra or “the Bible? Until now, no book has surveyed the answers Jews through the ages have given to these questions. This is the more surprising, since one would think that the conception of the Book among the People of the Book would be a topic of interest. The way Jews construct scripture, after all, is one way Jews construct themselves. The purpose of this anthology is to fill this gap. The seventeen essays in this collection explore how various figures, movements, or texts conceptualize scripture. Issues they address include:
- Ways in which the Tanakh is and is not thought to be authoritative
- The  relationship between Tanakh and tradition (in rabbinic parlance: between the Oral and Written Torahs)
- The question of who has the authority to interpret scripture
- The special status of the Bible’s language, or the ways its use of language differs from that of other texts
- The relationship of scripture to God and/or heavenly intermediaries
- The place of the Tanakh in the life of Jewish communities"

The first part of the article demonstrates the case for the existence of a distinct concept of Time in apocalyptic literature and in the writings of the Yahad. The second part addresses the force of the ‘here and now’ in these two corpora. While earlier readers of apocalypticism like Martin Buber denied the force of a concrete theopolitical hour in apocalypticism in contrast to biblical prophetic literature, the force of this ‘hour’ is demonstrated here. In fact, readers of Daniel and members of the
Yahad experienced a ‘thick’ present, with the dimension of time playing a crucial role in the fabric of reality. This was especially the case in sectarian hermeneutics, as discussed here, with surprising analogies to problems raised in 20th century continental philosophy.

W artykule zostały przedstawioneteksty autorstwa argentyńskiego pisarza Jorge Luisa Borgesa zainspirowane postacią Martina Bubera. Borges nie był filozofem i nie był Żydem, ale w jego twórczości odnajdziemy liczne odwołania do tradycji i symboliki żydowskiej oraz nawiązania do idei i myśli filozofów żydowskiego pochodzenia. Martin Buber był jedną z inspiracji argentyńskiego pisarza i zarazem jedną z najważniejszych. To dzięki wczesnej lekturze dzieł Bubera odkrył Borges baśniowy świat chasydów,
zainteresował się też kabałą. Zarówno Buber, jak i Borges należą do grona tych pisarzy, których dzieła – używając słów G. Wehra – „ten i ów zalicza
do zbioru pism sakralnych”, a ich wkład dla intelektualnego poznania świata ma niebagatelne znaczenie.

Humankind’s failure to relate to Nature (which I define as that which is not constructed by humankind) with respect is shown by the environmental crisis. This crisis has been manifested since the industrial revolution by the massive exploitation and the destruction of Nature. The modern environmental movement arose in reaction to the environmental crisis, and the rise of this movement saw the creation of various environmental philosophies. In this thesis I shall construct such an environmental philosophy based on Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, which I shall term Buberian Environmentalism. In Part One I shall demonstrate that Buber’s philosophy of dialogue is relevant for environmental ethics, hence demonstrating that Buberian Environmentalism is able to offer both an explanation of the environmental crisis as well as a way to resolve it. In Part Two I shall elaborate on my account of Buberian Environmentalism, locating its place in the metaethical world and within the umbrella of Deep Ecology. Finally, in Part Three, Buberian Environmentalism will be applied as a defence of vegetarianism.

The Holocaust raises the question of the viability of Mahatma Gandhi's non-violence strategy in relation to extremely cruel, merciless regimes. I examine Gandhi's advice to European Jewry during Hitler's regime, namely to resist non-violently and refuse to cooperate with the Nazi persecution, and the responses of Jewish intellectuals such as Buber and Magnes. I also relate to Gandhi's reaction upon the revelation of the extent of the Holocaust horrors. I claim that despite the seeming naivety, perhaps even outrageousness, of Gandhi's advice, it is worth examining, as it contrasts the horrors of the Holocaust with Gandhi's non-violence doctrine.

Von »Ich und Du« bis zum Nachwort zu den diesbezüglichen Schriften versammelt der Band Bubers Grundtexte zum dialogischen Prinzip. In ihnen geht es um Begegnung, den Dialog zwischen dem Ich und dem Anderen, zwischen Mensch und »ewigem Du«, also Gott. Auf der Grundlage der Bedeutung von Beziehung vertieft Buber die Frage nach dem Einzelnen, den Anderen und nach Gottes Ort in der Zwischenmenschlichkeit. Für den Kenner des Hauptwerkes von Buber wird insbesondere der Zugang zu den handschriftlichen Vorlagen der Haupttexte wie »Ich und Du« oder »Zwiesprache« wertvoll sein.
Kommentierung: Andreas Losch unter Mitarbeit von Bernd Witte

This review confirms Herman’s work as a praiseworthy contribution to East-West and comparative philosophical literature. Due credit is given to Herman for providing English readers with access to Buber’s commentary on, a personal translation of, the Chuang-Tzu; Herman’s insight into the later influence of I and Thou on Buber’s understanding of Chuang-Tzu and Taoism is also appropriately commended. In latter half of this review, constructive criticisms of Herman’s work are put forward, such as formatting inconsistencies, a tendency toward verbosity and jargon, and a neglect of seemingly important hermeneutical issues. Such issues, seemingly substantive but neglected by Herman, are the influence of Buber’s prior familiarity with Hasidic teachings on his encounter with Chuang-Tzu, as well as the prevalence of Hasidic and Taoist thought in Buber’s conception of good and evil.