Eidos VII, 1

June/Juin 1988

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS

MARTIN BUBER AND THE ETERNAL

Maurice Friedman
New York: Human Sciences Press, 1986. Pp. 191.

Maurice Friedman has done more than anyone else to make Martin
Buber accessible to the English-speaking world. His ambitious
three volume Martin Buber's Life and Work1 alone would have
guaranteed him that status; the many translations and commentaries
he has produced on Buber's work move the question beyond any
doubt.
While Friedman is clearly the most able and prolific commen­
tator in English on Buber, he is also the most conservative. His
work on Buber is that of a true disciple. It is always clear that
Buber is the master, that he has shown us the way to truly authen­
tic existence. Friedman is the defender of the faith against all
critics; of any interpreter of Buber, he is the one that is least
willing to find fault with Buber, and always seems most affronted
by any challenge to Buber's insights in philosophical anthropology.
This should not, however, be taken as a serious criticism of Fried­
man. It is all too rare in philosophical circles to find someone that
is willing to make a stand with a system of thought, and who is
able to defend that system so competently. Nevertheless, one
94 COMPTES RENDUS

should be aware that Buber will always be given the benefit of the
doubt.
This latest work outlines various themes in Buber's philoso­
phy which develop out of religious concerns. As Friedman points
out, it would be misleading to speak of Buber's philosophy of
religion, for strictly speaking he has none. Rather, he has a philo­
sophical anthropology which touches on all areas of human exist­
ence. For example, Buber's first expression of his mature philo­
sophy, I and Thou, is not a book on religion, even though it is shot
through with religious implications. In the same way, it is not a
book on education, or politics, or sociology, or psychology, even
though it bears implications for each of these areas.
The book is divided into nine chapters, plus an appendix
which addresses Stanley Hopper's essay "Eclipse of God and
Existential Mistrust." Most of the chapters have appeared elsewhere,
as essays in journals or volumes on Buber. Friedman is quick to
tell us, though, that this is not simply a' collection of unrelated
papers. "It comes together in a gestalt" he says, "an integral state­
ment of my understanding of Buber's philosophy of religion and its
implications for ethics, the history of religion, interreligious dia­
logue, and religious education." (MBE1})
Friedman's purpose is to ask religious questions of Buber.
The first two chapters are an attempt to outline Buber's dialogical
thought in religious terms by describing dialogue itself, and also by
examining some specifically Biblical themes such as creation, red­
emption, and the Messianic hope in (in his words) "existential"
terms. He goes from there to address a number of important
questions in the philosophy of religion: the relationship between
revelation and reason, the relationship between religion and ethics,
the nature of existential guilt and trust, the nature of the history of
religion, interreligious dialogue (Oriental, in particular), and reli­
gious education.
In some ways the first short chapter is the most important of
the book. Its purpose is to turn this book into the unified state­
ment Friedman hopes for, and this is accomplished by making the
 BOOK REVIEWS 95

distinction between reflection on universals as the absolute and

reflection on the relation between particulars as the absolute. This
reflection can be in philosophy, psychology, or, as in this case,
religion. The essence of Friedman's book is to investigate the ways
in which concrete, lived relation provides the rubric for understand­
ing religious questions.
Part of the task of making this distinction explicit involves
clarifying the I-Thou relation. Although this relation has great
intuitive appeal, it is not an easy concept to outline clearly. The
critics of Buber that Friedman addresses (Hepburn, 45ff; Hopper,
165f£) have problems with the precise nature of this relation. For
Hepburn, the question is over the nature of knowledge that is
gained by the I-Thou relation. For Hopper, the I-Thou is a meta­
phor in which the Thou refers to something apart from the relation.
To both of these Friedman insists that the Thou is not something
previously existent, with which I (as also previously existent) have
a relationship. The I-Thou relation is the meeting of (in this case)
man with the Eternal Thou, which we think of as God.
The I-Thou is Buber's primary ontological category. It seems
strange, then, that critics of Buber invariably attack him on this
point. One would expect that this most important of terms would
be fairly unambiguous. Yet, this does not seem to be the case.
Friedman's account of Buber's philosophy of religion could just as
easily be taken as an attempt to delineate the relation between I
and the Eternal Thou as it occurs in the arenas of ethics, history,
biblical interpretation, and interreligious dialogue -- hence, the
book's title. Nevertheless, it is not clear that, despite his protest­
ations and explanations, this category is all that self-evident.
Theodor Adorno's position on the I-Thou relation is that it
has an "aura" about it that makes it convincing, but that ultimately
it is a deceptive concepe It is clear that, for Buber, to be fully
human is to have the sort of authenticity that the I-Thou relation
describes. However, this authenticity is jargon for Adorno. The
objective content, which includes history, is subsumed in subject­
96 COMPTES RENDUS

ivity. Put another way, jargon is unable to explain the connection

between language and its objective content (JAxiii).

Behind this jargon [of authenticityJ is a determining doctrine of the 1­

Thou relationship as the locale of truth:'a doctrine that defames the
objectivity of truth as thingly, and secretly warms up irrationalism. As
such a relationship, communication turns into that transpsychological
element which it can only be by virtue of the objectivity of what is
communicated; in the end stupidity becomes the founder of metaphysics.
(JA16)

The question, Adorno says, is whether we can conceive of

metaphysical content as being bound to the I-Thou relation. If it is
bound to the I-Thou relation, metaphysical content must grow out
of the immanent. Adorno's point is that the threshold between the
natural and the supernatural disappears. Because of this, there is
an infatuation with the living, and consequently a disregard for
death. Transcendence is generated out of the fact that spontaneous
relationships between persons cannot be reduced to objective poles.
The result of this, Adorno says, is that this sort of existentialism
overelevates the dynamism of mortality into the sphere of immor­
tality (JA17).
Trent Schroyer, who introduced Adorno's Jargon of Authen­
ticity, summarizes Adorno's position on the I-Thou relation as
the shift to subjectivity as an in-it-selfness... rohe words are referred to
the immediacy of life, to attitudinal and qualitative aspects of self-exper­
ience. One needs only to be a believer; the objective content of belief has
been eclipsed in the subjectivization of objective content. To be be a
Christian seems to be a personal question - independent from the histor­
ical divinity of Christ. Without necessarily intending to do so, this
extreme subjectivity transforms existentialistic language into a mystifiC­
ation of the objective constraints that block the autonomy and spontaneity
of the historical subject. (JAxiv)

Whether or not one accepts Adorno's critical theory in gen­

eral, his response to Buber seems to be well taken. Buber clearly
wants to affirm the objectivity of the world, but in the end the
distinction between philosophical reflection and the object of reflec­
 BOOK REVIEWS 97

tion is blurred, and objective consciousness becomes self experience.

The I-Thou relation is what is real, and the poles of the relation
only become real through the relation. However, the relation is
subjectivized. I believe that this is what lies at the root of the
criticisms of Buber by Hepburn and Hopper. They are struggling
to find a clear understanding of the nature of the I-Thou relation.
Their attempts are found wanting by Friedman, but the philosophi­
cal account that he offers is not satisfying either. I-Thou is "meet­
ing", "dialogue", the "between" - but what do these mean? While
one might admit that there is an intuitive feel for the force of the
I-Thou relation, it seems remarkably difficult to describe it in un­
ambiguous terms.
Friedman's main explanatory tool in this book, to illuminate
the force of I-Thou, is to outline it in various concrete arenas. This
is consistent with the stated intention of the relation, that it should
be between particulars. On the whole, his exposition of the various
places in which the I-Eternal Thou relation appears is quite good, if
one takes that relation in the intuitive sense. I was disappointed to
see so little on mysticism (although the index claims that all of
chapter 7 is on the topic). Friedman has a long essay on Buber's
relation to mysticism3 that was reprinted in the first volume of
Martin Buber's Life and Work and which is very good. I realize that
it is probably too much to ask that it be reprinted again so quickly,
but it is much more interesting than his treatment in chapter 7.
The only really annoying thing about this book was complete­
ly out of the author's control. There were an inordinately large
number of typographical errors, which the proofreaders should
have caught.

Bruce Janz, University of Waterloo

98 COMPTES RENDUS

NOTES

1. Maurice Friedman, Martin Huber's Ufe and Work: The Early Years 1878-1923 (New
York: E. P. Dutton, 1982); The Middle Years 1923-1945 (New York: E. P. Dutton,
1983); The Later Years 1945-1965 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1984).
2. Theodor W. Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press, 1973), p. 16-17. Referred to in the text as "JA".
3. Friedman, "Martin Buber's Encounter With Mysticism" Human Inquiries: Review of
Existential Psychology and Psychiatry X (1970), 43-81.