Martin Buber
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 August 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 July 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199840731-0088
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 August 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 July 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199840731-0088
Introduction
Martin Buber (1878–1965) was among the most distinguished Jewish religious thinkers in the 20th century. Although he published mostly in German and lived in Germany from his early twenties until his emigration to Palestine at the age of sixty, he regarded himself as a Polish Jew. Born in Vienna, after the divorce of his parents he was raised from the age of three by his paternal grandparents in the Austrian-Hungarian province of Eastern Galicia, which had a predominantly Polish and Ukrainian population as well as a large, overwhelmingly traditional Jewish minority. In the home of his observant grandparents he received tuition in classical Jewish texts and secular subjects; he would later attend a Polish high school. He pursued his higher education in Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, and Zurich, earning his doctorate in 1904 with a dissertation on medieval German mysticism. He continued to publish widely on mysticism as a freelance author and editor, eventually introducing to European audiences the hitherto unknown world of Jewish mysticism, especially as represented by Hasidism. He also issued works on art, folklore, literature, mysticism and myth, philosophy, and sociology. A veritable polymath, his interests ranged from art to theater, from Celtic to Chinese myths, from Finnish to Yiddish folklore. The full scope of his extraordinary erudition is documented by the thematic division of the twenty-two volume, critical edition of his works in German currently under preparation. (See Martin Buber Werkausgabe, cited under Original German Texts: Collected Editions). He was also active in promoting religious socialism and adult education; he made his mark in the public sphere, however, primarily as a Zionist intellectual who advocated the spiritual and cultural renewal of post-traditional Jewry; indeed, already in 1901 he spoke of a “Jewish Renaissance,” which inspired Zionists and non-Zionists alike. Toward this renaissance, he undertook, initially with Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929), a non-Zionist, the translation of the Hebrew Bible, which would resonate the original dialogical and thus religious character of the Hebrew. He is best known, however, for I and Thou, published in German in 1923, in which he distinguished between I-Thou (Ich-Du) relations, characterized by dialogical mutuality, and I-It (Ich-Es) or instrumental relations. He further developed this doctrine as a philosophical anthropology in which he challenged the ontological presuppositions of Dilthey, Heidegger, Husserl, Kant, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Simmel, and later Levinas. Upon immigrating to Palestine in 1938, he taught social philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was prominently engaged in promoting a bi-national state as the basis for a just political solution to the Palestinian-Zionist conflict.
General Overview
Given Buber’s ramified literary interests and public activities, the scholarly literature on him is correspondingly diverse. These may be broadly divided between critical assessments of his writings on Jewish Renewal and Zionism, and those on his philosophy of dialogue. Although English translations of his work appeared sporadically since the 1920s, it was only after World War Two that most of his works began to appear in English translation. In turn, Buber’s life and thought would increasingly command the interest of American scholars.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Abraham Isaac Kook
- Aggadah
- Agudat Yisrael
- Ahad Ha' am
- American Hebrew Literature
- American Jewish Artists
- American Jewish Literature
- American Jewish Sociology
- Ancient Anti-Semitism
- An-sky (Shloyme Zanvil Rapoport)
- Anthropology of the Jews
- Anti-Semitism, Modern
- Apocalypticism and Messianism
- Aramaic
- Archaeology, Second Temple
- Archaeology: The Rabbinic Period
- Art, Synagogue
- Austria, The Holocaust In
- Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1867-1918
- Biblical Archaeology
- Biblical Literature
- Bratslav/Breslev Hasidism
- Buber, Martin
- Buczacz
- Bukharan Jews
- Canada
- Central Asia, Jews in
- Chagall, Marc
- China
- Classical Islam, Jews Under
- Cohen, Hermann
- Culture, Israeli
- David Ben-Gurion
- David Bergelson
- Dead Sea Scrolls
- Death, Burial, and the Afterlife
- Debbie Friedman
- Demography
- Deuteronomy
- Dietary Laws
- Dubnov, Simon
- Dutch Republic: 17th-18th Centuries
- Early Modern Period, Christian Yiddishism in the
- Eastern European Haskalah
- Emancipation
- England
- Environment, Judaism and the
- Eruv
- Ethics, Jewish
- Ethiopian Jews
- Feminism
- Film
- Folklore
- Folktales, Jewish
- Food
- Forverts/Forward
- Frank, Jacob
- Gender and Modern Jewish Thought
- Germany, Early Modern
- Ghettos in the Holocaust
- Goldman, Emma
- Golem
- Graetz, Heinrich
- Hasidism
- Hasidism, Lubavitch
- Haskalah
- Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) Literature
- Hebrew
- Hebrew Bible, Blood in the
- Hebrew Bible, Memory and History in the
- Hebrew Literature and Music
- Hebrew Literature Outside of Israel Since 1948
- History, Early Modern Jewish
- History of the Holocaust
- Holocaust in France, The
- Holocaust in Germany, The
- Holocaust in Poland, The
- Holocaust in the Netherlands, The
- Holocaust in the Soviet Union, The
- (Holocaust) Memorial Books
- Holocaust Museums and Memorials
- Holocaust, Philosophical and Theological Responses to the
- Holocaust Survivors, Children of
- Humor, Jewish
- Ibn Ezra, Abraham
- Indian Jews
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Israel Ba'al Shem Tov
- Israel, Religion and State in
- Israeli Economy
- Israeli Film
- Israeli Literature
- Israel's Society
- Italian Jewish Literature (Ninth to Nineteenth Century)
- Jewish American Women Writers in the 18th and 19th Centuri...
- Jewish Bible Translations
- Jewish Culture, Children and Childhood in
- Jewish Diaspora
- Jewish Economic History
- Jewish Folklore, Chełm in
- Jewish Genetics
- Jewish Heritage and Cultural Revival in Poland
- Jewish Names
- Jewish Studies, Dance in
- Jewish Territorialism (in Relation to Jewish Studies)
- Jewish-Christian Polemics Until the 15th Century
- Joseph Ber Soloveitchik
- Josephus, Flavius
- Kalonymus Kalman Shapira
- Karaism
- Khmelnytsky/Chmielnitzki
- Kibbutz, The
- Ladino
- Languages, Jewish
- Late Antique (Roman and Byzantine) History
- Latin American Jewish Studies Latin American Jewish Studie...
- Law, Biblical
- Law in the Rabbinic Period
- Life Cycle Rituals
- Literature Before 1800, Yiddish
- Literature, Hellenistic Jewish
- Literature, Holocaust
- Literature, Latin American Jewish
- Literature, Medieval
- Literature, Modern Hebrew
- Literature, Rabbinic
- Magic, Ancient Jewish
- Maimonides, Moses
- Maurice Schwartz
- Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought
- Medieval Anti-Judaism
- Medieval Islam, Jews under
- Meir, Golda
- Menachem Begin
- Mendelssohn, Moses
- Messianic Thought and Movements
- Middle Ages, the Hebrew Story in the
- Midrash
- Minority Literatures in Israel
- Minsk
- Modern Germany
- Modern Hebrew Poetry
- Modern Jewish History
- Modern Kabbalah
- Moses Maimonides: Mishneh Torah
- Music, East European Jewish Folk
- Music, Jews and
- Nathan Birnbaum
- Nazi Germany, Kristallnacht: The November Pogrom 1938 in
- Neo-Hasidism
- New York City
- North Africa
- Orthodoxy
- Orthodoxy, Post-World War II
- Palestine/Israel, Yiddish in
- Palestinian Talmud/Yerushalmi
- Philo of Alexandria
- Piyyut
- Poetry in Spain, Hebrew
- Poland, 1800-1939
- Poland, Hasidism in
- Poland Until The Late 18th Century
- Politics and Political Leaders, Israeli
- Politics, Modern Jewish
- Prayer and Liturgy
- Purity and Impurity in Ancient Israel and Early Judaism
- Queer Jewish Texts in the Americas
- Rabbi Yeheil Michel Epstein and his Arukh Hashulchan
- Rabbinic Exegesis (Midrash) and Literary Theory
- Rashi's Commentary on the Bible
- Reform Judaism
- Revelation
- Ritual Objects and Folk Art
- Rosenzweig, Franz
- Russia
- Russian Jewish Culture
- Sabbath
- Sabbatianism
- Sacrifice in the Bible
- Safed
- Sarah Schenirer and Bais Yaakov
- Scholem, Gershom
- Second Temple Period, The
- Sephardi Jews
- Sexuality and the Body
- Shlomo Carlebach
- Shmuel Yosef Agnon
- Shulhan Arukh and Sixteenth Century Jewish Law, The
- Sociology, European Jewish
- South African Jewry
- Soviet Union, Jews in the
- Space in Modern Hebrew Literature
- Spinoza, Baruch
- Sutzkever, Abraham
- Talmud and Philosophy
- Talmud, Narrative in the
- The Druze Community in Israel
- The Early Modern Yiddish Bible, 1534–1686
- The General Jewish Workers’ Bund
- The Modern Jewish Bible, Facets of
- Theater, Israeli
- Theme, Exodus as a
- Tractate Avodah Zarah (in the Talmud)
- Translation
- Translation in Hebrew Literature, Traditions of
- United States
- Vienna
- Vilna
- Warsaw
- Weinreich, Max
- Wissenschaft des Judentums
- Women and Gender Relations
- World War II Literature, Jewish American
- Yankev Glatshteyn/Jacob Glatstein
- Yemen, The Jews of
- Yiddish
- Yiddish Avant-garde Theater
- Yiddish Linguistics
- Yiddish Literature since 1800
- Yiddish Theater
- Zamenhof
- Ze’ev Jabotinsky
- Zionism from Its Inception to 1948