Between Man and Man by Martin Buber (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 121 standing of the Bible. A truer understanding of what Christian belief really is would dissipate that problem. Frank believes a substitute for the Christian creed can be found in "a statement of the meaning (his it~ics) of scientific knowledge in terms of its emotional significance for living, so that modern astronomy, geology and biology will provide the equivalent of 'now I lay me down to sleep,' in which the traditional cosmology, biology, and psychology were expressed" (p. 284). Trinity College, Washington, D. C. EVA J. Ross Between Man and Man. By Martin Buber(translated by R. G. Smith). New York: Tl1e Macmillan Co., 1948. Pp. 218, with index. $8.50. Martin Buber, formerly of Frankfurt University, is presently Professor of Social Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The English version of his I and Tlwu appeared in 1987. Its theme is amplified in Between Man and Man, which is a collection of five works, brought together for English 'readers and felicitously translated by Ronald G. Smith. The works cover the years from 1925 to 1989 and include Dialogue (1929), The Question to the Single One (1986), two addresses on problems of education, one given in 1925 and the other in 1989, and finally Dr. Buber's inaugural course of lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1988). Between Man and Man is not likely to dim the reputation of this foremost Jewish philosopher and mystic; whether it fulfills the expectation of clarifying his thought is another question. The unifying thread of the collection is what Dr. Buber calls the " dialogical principle." Its gist seems to be that in trying to fathom the significance of man, one must begin with neither the individual nor with the collectivity of human beings, but " only with the reality of the mutual relation between man and man." Dr. Buber insists that this relation cannot be expressed'in words. Yet it is not of the mystical order, nor explicable in terms of tenderness of eroticism. In fact, the author says it cannot be conveyed in ideas to a reader, but only illustrated by examples drawn from personal life. The success of his examples may be judged from his concluding words: "No more knowing is needed. For where unreserve has ruled, even wordlessly, between men, the word of dialogue has happened sacramentally." (p.4) The author's thought is perhaps clearer when, more concretely, he speaks of the Word of God. "We expect," he writes, " a theophany of which we know nothing but the place, and the place is called community. In the public catacombs of this expectation there is no single God's Word which BOOK REVIEWS can be clearly known and advocated, but the words delivered are clarified for us in our human situation of being turned to one another. There is no obedience to the coming one without loyalty to his creature. To have experienced this is our way." (p. 7) In such a process differences of faith are inherent. They are lodged, according to Dr. Buber, in the ever-changing human scene. Dogma, even when its claims of origin are certain, proves itself highly effective armor against revelation. For revelation tolerates no perfect tense. So the author declares that as nothing can so hide the face of our fellow-man as morality, so religion can hide from us as nothing else can the face of God. Yet even in the face of such relativism and subjectivism Dr. Buber clings firmly to truth-understood, of course, in his own unique way. He traces the ills of the time to persons being collectivized and to truth being politicized. "There is need of man's faith in the truth as that which is independent of him, which he cannot acquire for himself, but with which he can enter into a real relation of his very life; the faith of human persons in the truth as that which sustains them all altogether, in itself inaccessible but disclosing itself, in the fact of responsibility which awaits test, to him who really woos the truth." (p. 8~) Between Man and Man rejects collectivism which swallows the individual just as trenchantly as it criticizes the...