Martin Buber

A new collection of essays highlighting the wide range of Buber's thought, career, and activism.

Best known for I and Thou, which laid out his distinction between dialogic and monologic relations, Martin Buber (1878–1965) was also an anthologist, translator, and author of some seven hundred books and papers. Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form, edited by Sarah Scott, is a collection of nine essays that explore his thought and career.

Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form shakes up the legend of Buber by decentering the importance of the I-Thou dialogue in order to highlight Buber as a thinker preoccupied by the image of relationship as a guide to spiritual, social, and political change. The result is a different Buber than has hitherto been portrayed, one that is characterized primarily by aesthetics and politics rather than by epistemology or theology.

Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form will serve as a guide to the entirety of Buber's thinking, career, and activism, placing his work in context and showing both the evolution of his thought and the extent to which he remained driven by a persistent set of concerns.

1. Introduction: A Martin Buber Renaissance, by Sarah Scott
Part I: Religious Dialogue
2. Martin Buber and Catholic-Atheist Dialogue, by Peter A. Huff
3. Reading Martin Buber's Bible: Translation and Commentary, by Claire E. Sufrin
Part II: Theopolitics
4. Is the Dialogue Between Heaven and Earth an I-Thou Relation?, by Samuel Hayim Brody
5. The Hasidic Zaddik as Theopolitical Leader, by Yemima Hadad
Part III: Zionism and Bi-Nationalism
6. Exile and Alienation in Martin Buber's Philosophical Anthropology, by William Plevan
7. Martin Buber, Metaphysics, and the Aesthetics of Bi-Nationalism, by Zachary J. Braiterman
Part IV: Philosophy
8. Chaos, Abgrund, and Wirbel: On Buber's Notion of Ambivalence, by Asaf Ziderman
9. The Eloquent Muteness of Creatures: Affect and Animals in Martin Buber's Dialogical Writings, by Dustin Atlas
10. Monologue Disguised as Dialogue: Almodóvar's Talk to Her and Buber on the "Lovers' Talk", by Sarah Scott
List of Contributors
Index