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:
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