New Buber Book Available Now

 

My new book, Turning to the Other: Martin Buber’s Call to Dialogue in I and Thou, was published on September 2. It was written to invite readers today to a fresh understanding of the pivotal work of Martin Buber, one of our greatest modern thinkers.

This book probes several dimensions of the life-world of Martin Buber and the message of I and Thou. It constitutes a quest for understanding Buber’s call to dialogue and ultimately for an adequate response to this call. It thus lays open a dialogical approach to I and Thou as a modern classic.

The first half of the book is a series of forays into different dimensions of Buber’s world. It begins with his dual spiritual initiation, which was the crucial development, the immediate context out of which I and Thou was created. It next presents the unusual nature of Buber’s message and the rhetorical tools he had to develop to proclaim it. His struggle with the depths of grief in the face of the loss of his closest friend led to the unique rhetoric of I and Thou.

Then, the book considers Buber’s relationships, for it was out of the elements of his own experience of dialogue that his understanding of dialogue evolved. The book also probes major dimensions of Buber’s thought world, his existential sensibilities as well as his deep involvement with both Zionism and Hasidism. Alongside these focal areas, Buber’s strong interest in Taoist spirituality was a major expression of his more “universal” interests.

The last half of the book is a close examination of what Buber was trying to say in I and Thou. Buber’s book is structured in three parts. First, it lays out his distinction between I-Thou dialogue and life in the It-world; then it presents the struggle to live a dialogical life in the face of the terrible power of the It-world, and finally it sketches the realization of dialogue that is possible for those who turn to it. A poetic testament, not a scholarly treatise, I and Thou has no references—many of its allusions are implicit. The challenge has been to find the book’s many and varied connections with its cultural contexts. One of these, explored at the end of Turning to the Other, is the deep, wise Jewishness of Buber’s masterpiece. In sum, Turning to the Other finds Buber’s prophetic voice in his call to dialogue and follows it right through the pages of I and Thou.

Turning to the Other is available at an online discount price from Wipf and Stock Publishers and you can access a preview of its first fifty pages at this website:

https://wipfandstock.com/turning-to-the-other.html

It is also available at Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Turning-Other-Martin-Bubers-Dialogue/dp/1532699131/ref=sr_1_1?Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=31&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=11&dchild=1&qid=1601524199&refinements=p_27%3ADonovan+Johnson%2Cp_28%3Aturning+to+the+other&s=books&sr=1-1&unfiltered=1

About Me

I have been a scholar, a teacher, and a writer. I studied theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and I received a Ph.D. in English literature at the University of California at Irvine. Along the way I have had two professors who have deeply influenced me in the practice of dialogical reading: Otto Michel (1903-1993), Professor on the Evangelisch-theologische Fakultät and founder of the Institutum Judaicum at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität, Tübingen, Germany, taught me to read the texts of the Johannine tradition in dialogical interaction with its Hebraic substrate, the Hebrew Bible; and Allan W. Anderson (1922-2013), Professor of Religion at San Diego State University, taught me to read the Bible in dialogical interaction with the Hindu scriptures.

I taught Humanities and Writing at the University of California for fifteen years, followed by twenty years at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Washington, teaching Humanities, specializing in World Religions and Cross-Cultural Studies.

On October 14, 2012, when I participated in a discussion of I and Thou, it became my call to engage with it more deeply and to turn to engage with Martin Buber. For me, the text, the voice, and the person stand together as one in witness to dialogue, to encounter with others and with the eternal Thou.

For seven years I studied the writings, the thought, the life, and the times of Martin Buber. I retranslated much of I and Thou from the original German, read widely in Buber’s work, and began to piece together how his life was his dialogue with his cultural contexts.

My writings during this period turned into a book, Turning to the Other: Martin Buber’s Call to Dialogue in I and Thou. It was published by Wipf and Stock on September 2, 2020.

For the past several years I have been an active hiker in the Pacific Northwest. I have focused on the trails, the geology, and the flora of Mount Rainier, the great gem of the Cascade Range, the home to several life zones, and the most glaciated peak in the U.S. south of Alaska. 

Way-Stations Along the Path

Buber’s passion for hiking is such that it penetrates into the metaphorical language of I and Thou. A strong example of this stands out in §48:

 When one proceeds along his way and simply wishes that it might be the way, the quality of his aspiration finds its expression in the strength of his striving. As he progresses, each moment of Thou-relating becomes a way-station that opens up a glimpse of the ultimate fulfillment. In this process the person is at once both not a participant and yet a participant to the extent that he proceeds with ready expectancy. With this ready expectancy—but not seeking—he advances along the path. In this manner, he has his self-surrender [Gelassenheit] and tangency before all things, which helps them. But once he finds fulfillment, his heart does not turn away from them; instead, everything now meets him in the oneness. He blesses all of the stopping places that have sheltered him as well as all those he will yet come to. For this finding is not the end-point but only its continual mid-point along the way.

This is a difficult passage, but it is laced with the elements of the trekker’s world—the path along which the trekker progresses, the trekker’s movement toward the goal of the trek, the way-stations or viewpoints along the way which show what lies ahead, and the stopping places that provide shelter as he proceeds. The trekker can be present to each moment of encounter along the way at the same time as the yearning for the goal propels him forward. In this duality, the immediate next step and the ultimate objective of the trek abide together in this oneness. Buber’s metaphorical language in this passage appeals to the pleasures of a good trek. 

A Dialogical Moment at Eagle’s Roost, a Way-Station on the Trail to Spray Park

(elevation 1470 meters), Mount Rainier National Park 

Trekking with Buber

 

At the time when Martin Buber was preparing his seminal book I and Thou for publication, he considered the following sentence for its motto:

“This book presents the beginning of a way that I intend to continue in and in which I intend to lead others.”

(Buber, quoted in Rivka Horwitz, Buber’s Way to I and Thou, 55; see Turning to the Other, 38)

Buber was an avid hiker. This blog expands on his avocation, using it as a metaphor of associating with him in dialogue. To trek is to undertake a serious journey on foot. Buber’s “way” in the proposed motto, Weg in German, commonly refers to just such a path for just such a journey. This blog is a place where we will “trek” alongside Buber, moving with him in a dialogue which is our journey afoot with him.

Perhaps, like Cervantes’ Don Quixote, we may discover that on this dialogical trek with Buber, “The way is always better than the inn.” («El camino es siempre mejor que la posada»). We need not rush to any predetermined goal; every step along the way is a moment to behold.  

Buber’s proposed motto for I and Thou, his pivotal creative work, can be read in terms of trekking: like a trekker’s map, the book presents, locates “the beginning of a way,” the trailhead for a trek that Buber firmly envisions, a trek along which he “intends to lead others.” His intentions mark both an envisioned course into the future and an envisioned role for himself as a leader of others. Thus Buber becomes the lead hiker on a journey, a trek, an adventure of discovery and transformation that lies before us.