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Martin Buber, the Life of Dialogue, by Maurice S. Friedman; The Writings of Martin Buber, edited by Will Herberg
- Abstract
It is Professor Friedman’s great merit to have shown the gradual growth of Buber’s thought from “an early period of mysticism through a middle period of existentialism to a final period of developing dialogical philosophy.” That this growth was an altogether organic one is affirmed by Will Herberg in his preface to the Meridian volume: “Each of the stages is transcended and subsumed in its successors: one aspect of the mystical reappears in the existential, and the existential is fulfilled and deepened in the dialogical.” Professor Friedman also succeeds admirably in showing the transformation of Buber from a somewhat uneasy mystic isolated with his private meditations into what Paul E. Pfuetze has called a “Social Self ready and eager to communicate with the Thou of any person or group who might want to lay claim on him. Finally, by focusing his study on Buber’s concept of the dialogue between I and Thou, Professor Friedman is able to see the unity of Buber’s contributions to fields as disparate as epistemology, pedagogy, psychology, ethics, social philosophy, and theology.
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