APPENDIX ON BUBER

Professor Nahum N. Glatzer has drawn my attention to a number of passages in works of Martin Buber concerning the importance of studies and urged that I was unfair when I said Buber had completely bypassed the Jewish commandment to invest in studies as much time as possible.

I stand corrected. Though I mentioned that Buber did much to revive Judaism and its meaning for modern Jews with little or no religious background, I did not say, what I think I sould have said, that Buber’s contribution in the direction of adult education was a remarkable one. As far as German Jewry is concerned, the only effective response to Nazism was the Jewish adult education movement in which Buber was one of the leading figures; it was a movement which started in earnest only when the Nazis were already in power; for many German Jews who survived the holocaust, their physical survival was the result of this spiritual revival. But this is merely a dramatic and impressive chain of events; it is the cold philosophy behind it which concerns us here. It is a quaint mixture of a new secular Judaism, with accent on heritage and history and on moral values, with a tinge of Jewish religion. Come to think of it, Buber’s religion in this respect is extremely similar to that of Robert Boyle, which I have already discussed. Except that Boyle, though he believed that miracles had merely symbolic value, also believed they had ocurred. Unlike Buber, Boyle was no Bultmannian. And, of course, he had no need to add the idea that his own Protestant religion is an ingredient in the proper blend of cultural refinement. (He granted this as far as Catholicism was concerned and he preached the preservation of Catholic statues, etc.)

To return to Glatzer’s criticism, one could try to answer it thus: Buber’s public activity aside, in his philosophy, such as expressed in his I and Thou, there is no room for scholarship.

This reply is erroneous, however, since Buber wants his reader to be a gentleman and a scholar. One could reply to this, however, that it is not important to be a gentleman, only a scholar. In another chapter in this volume, in the notes on ‘Unity and Diversity in Science’ to be precise, I have described the atmosphere of philosophy and of science in central Europe around Buber’s time as advocating just such a view (be a scholar and not much of a gentleman). This makes me reconsider my assessment of Buber: his recommentation to his reader to be a gentleman and a scholar is more original and bold than I have acknowledged. Nevertheless, and very reluctantly, I do have to conclude without full agreement with Glatzer: for Buber and Polanyi alike, the gentleman is a scholar only on condition that his critical faculties are not too sharp; whereas according to most others in Buber’s environment (Mach, Boltzmann, Planck, Freud) you should be as critical as you can though this is most likely to reduce you standing as a gentleman as it could lead to your being rather venomous towards some of your colleagues. Contrary to both, I say, there is no conflict between the sharpest criticism and the highest cultivation of the art of living - I mean, there need be no conflict, and thus no place for venom; indeed the gentleman and the scholar can reinforce each other. It is a historical question whether this is the idea expressed in the Talmudic tradition; I think it is very much so. One can reject the casuistic aspect of Talmudism yet endorse much of its other aspects, particularly that of friendly controversies for the greater glory. There is a complete parallel here with Buber’s suggestion that we reject the magical aspect of Hassidism while endorsing its advocacy that we intensify and enhance the meaning of life. Though the Kabbalistic aspect of Hassidism was significant, and was studied by Buber, its Talmudic aspect was no less significant, and Buber never did it justice. He accepted a part of the Hassidic Kabbalism, and rejected another part. Inasmuch as Hassidism rebelled against excessive Talmudism, Buber fully accepted the rebellion. Of the rest of the Hassidic Talmudism, at best Buber preferred to ignore it.

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Source: Agassi Joseph. Science in Flux. Springer,1975. — 559 p.. 1975

APPENDIX ON BUBER

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