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hilaritas's review
4.0
In this short but dense collection of essays, Buber explicates the progressive purgation of the concept of transcendental personhood from modern philosophy. He primarily approaches this history through his I-Thou vs. I-It schema. It's also clear that many of his categories ultimately derive from Kierkegaard (although Buber tries to distance himself from SK in his chapter here on the religious suspension of the ethical). Buber grapples with a number of thinkers, including Kant, Sartre, Heidegger, and Jung. There's a lot of fascinating depth to unpack in Buber's thought, although I don't think he's going to convince anyone antipathetic to religion with this book.
The primary deficiency here, which is common to many mystics, is that it's hard to talk coherently about a vision of the Absolute beyond all categories of bounded immanence and/or human categories of thought. God for Buber is defined by His relationality, but He's also beyond all relations as we know them on a finite level. There's an inherent tension in God as an Absolute (and thus incommensurable to any finite being) and God as intimate other. It's not always exactly clear what Buber means when he's talking about God, although he's certainly impassioned about the subject. Buber advances philosophical arguments to a point, but his conclusions are not appeals to reason but appeals to experience: the truly religious person will "just know" who God is and what He demands in any situation, including the ethically unthinkable (e.g., Abraham and Isaac). That's great for the fervent believer untroubled by any whisper of doubt, but what about the rest of us louche, ironic creatures of modernity?
I felt this collection ended quite abruptly, and I think it could have benefited from one more piece where Buber tries to provide a little more positive theology (or if that's not really possible for him, at least to sketch his vision of the via negativa in more depth). Worth reading for his mystical fervor (and his scornful and pithy dismissal in the supplemental epilogue of Jung's attempted rebuttal) if nothing else.
The primary deficiency here, which is common to many mystics, is that it's hard to talk coherently about a vision of the Absolute beyond all categories of bounded immanence and/or human categories of thought. God for Buber is defined by His relationality, but He's also beyond all relations as we know them on a finite level. There's an inherent tension in God as an Absolute (and thus incommensurable to any finite being) and God as intimate other. It's not always exactly clear what Buber means when he's talking about God, although he's certainly impassioned about the subject. Buber advances philosophical arguments to a point, but his conclusions are not appeals to reason but appeals to experience: the truly religious person will "just know" who God is and what He demands in any situation, including the ethically unthinkable (e.g., Abraham and Isaac). That's great for the fervent believer untroubled by any whisper of doubt, but what about the rest of us louche, ironic creatures of modernity?
I felt this collection ended quite abruptly, and I think it could have benefited from one more piece where Buber tries to provide a little more positive theology (or if that's not really possible for him, at least to sketch his vision of the via negativa in more depth). Worth reading for his mystical fervor (and his scornful and pithy dismissal in the supplemental epilogue of Jung's attempted rebuttal) if nothing else.
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