Turning to the Other. Donovan D. Johnson
Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 1:97.
79. Buber, I and Thou, §46e, §60a, §61h.
80. Buber, “Foundation Stone,” 70–71.
81. Buber, “Foundation Stone,” 71.
82. Buber, “Foundation Stone,” 71.
83. Buber, “Baal-Shem-Tov’s Instruction,” 181 (my translation).
84. Buber, “Dialogue,” 14–15.
85. Buber, “Dialogue,” 15.
86. Buber, “Dialogue,” 15.
87. Buber, “Dialogue,” 15.
88. Buber, “Spinoza,” 94; see Buber’s other references to human life as divine-human dialogue: “Dialogue between Heaven and Earth,” 221; “Replies to My Critics,” 710; “Prejudices of Youth,” 51.
89. Buber, “Foundation Stone,” 70.
90. Buber, “Hasidism and Modern Man,” 24.
91. Buber, “Postscript,” 123.
92. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 703.
93. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 702.
94. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 689–90, 691 (emphasis his); compare this first-person account with Buber’s more general statement on the impact of the unconditional in “Herut,” 153: “The unconditional affects a person when he lets his whole being be gripped by it, be utterly shaken and transformed by it, and when he responds to it with his whole being . . .”
95. Buber and Rogers, “Dialogue between Martin Buber and Carl R. Rogers,” 168; see also, Buber, “Elements of the Interhuman,” 81.
96. Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 1:245. It is important to note that Friedman’s claim and my thesis are exactly the same here. Yet Friedman does not develop the connections and implications of this trauma. These connections and implications are the core of my argument here.
97. Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 1:249.
98. Martin Buber to Fritz Mauthner, May 7, 1919, in Buber, Letters, 244 (translation modified).
99. Lunn, Prophet of Community, 338–39.
100. Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 1:257. Each of these three major events referred to by Friedman precipitated a crisis of loss for Buber. According to Buber’s “Autobiographical Fragments,” discussed in chapter 4 below, pages 55–59, 73–75, his mother’s disappearance when he was a young child precipitated Buber’s lifelong sense of a great void. This sense of abandonment at the loss of his mother shaped his turn to dialogue and relation as core values. His sense of guilt and his soul-searching in response to his mismeeting with the young Mehe and Mehe’s subsequent death on the front at the beginning of the war led to his “conversion,” his shift from an otherworldly to a this-worldly spirituality. And his loss of Landauer was the final blow in this series of losses. It provoked the process that led to I and Thou.
101. Buber, quoted in Schaeder, “Martin Buber,” 24.
102. Buber and Rogers, “Dialogue between Martin Buber and Carl R. Rogers,” 168 (emphasis Buber’s).
103. Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 1:257.
104. Buber, “Distance and Relation,” 70.
105. This talk is excerpted in Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 1:247.
106. Buber, cited in Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 1:255; see also Buber, “Landauer und die Revolution.”
107. Buber, cited in Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 1:256.
108. Buber, quoted in Schaeder, “Martin Buber,” 28. This imperative becomes a refrain in Buber, “What is to be Done?,” 109–11.
109. Buber, “Holy Way,” 108–9.
110. Buber, “Holy Way,” 113.
111. Mendes-Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue, 19.
112. Winokuer and Harris, Principles and Practice, 31.
113. Winokuer and Harris, Principles and Practice, 34.
114. Stein, “On Modern Initiation,” 99.
115. Winokuer and Harris, Principles and Practice, 26.
116. Buber and Rogers, “Dialogue between Martin Buber and Carl R. Rogers,” 168.
117. Buber, “Afterword,” 209–24.
118. Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, 447–48.
119. Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, 447.
120. Buber, “Afterword,” 215.