Heidegger and Jewish Thought by Ladipod Elad

Author:Ladipod, Elad
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 5119121
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International

MARTIN BUBER

Buber’s 1938 lecture series entitled “What Is Man?” constitutes his first programmatic address of Heidegger’s philosophy.18 It is striking that it took Buber so long to seriously address Heidegger, whose Sein und Zeitimmediately left its mark on the intellectual world in which Buber operated. This prolonged silence is particularly noteworthy if we take into account that Heidegger had recorded some critical remarks regarding Buber’s Ich und Du already in his early academic lectures in the 1920s.19 Taking its title from Kant’s famous fourth question, this lectures series surveys what Buber sees as a chronicle of failed attempts, by ancients and moderns alike, at formulating a satisfying philosophical anthropology. Ultimately, Buber posits his own dialogical philosophy, with its stress on the “between” of human existence, intersubjectivity and relationality, as the long sought-after response to the question: What is man?

In this survey, the discussion dedicated to Heidegger’s existential anthropology is by far the longest and most detailed. In Buber’s interpretation, Dasein does not denote concrete human existence, but rather an abstract extraction of one’s relation to one’s own being. Heidegger’s scheme deals with merely a partial element of human existence, and thus inherently neutralizes the possibility of a genuine encounter with the other, which involves one’s being in its actuality and wholeness. As such, Heidegger upholds an enclosed, self-relating account of human existence. While he is aware that Heidegger insists that Dasein is in-the-world and with-others, Buber nevertheless claims that the relations of “solicitude” [Fürsorge] of which Heidegger speaks are merely functional, not “essential” relations—a distinction that holds strong correspondences to his I-It and I-Thou relations.20 Dasein, it is determined, is a solipsistic construction, unable to experience genuine encounter with anyone outside itself. In short, “Heidegger’s ‘Dasein’ is monological.”21

A substantial portion of the reading of Heidegger in “What Is Man?” is made in the light of and in a comparison to Kierkegaard. From the very outset, Buber establishes that Heidegger has “taken over Kierkegaard’s mode of thinking,” by which he means the focus on the individual’s existential experience in her strive for realization in faith. Yet Buber is quick to add that not only has Heidegger continued Kierkegaard’s general trajectory, he has also “broken off its decisive presupposition,” namely, its theological orientation. Indeed, twice Buber explicitly states that Heidegger “secularizes” Kierkegaard.22

To best understand what is meant by this, it is crucial to first recount Buber’s interpretation of Kierkegaard. In a slightly earlier work “The Question to the Single One” [Die Fragean den Einzelnen] (1936), Buber distinguishes his own existential account of the Single One from Max Stirner’s (1806–1856) and especially from Kierkegaard’s.23 In Buber’s rendition, for Kierkegaard, being a Single One is the ultimate realization of the individual’s existence before God, the fulfillment of the faithful Christian’s spiritual development as a faithful Christian. Importantly, for Buber’s Kierkegaard, the goal of becoming a Single One is “the entry into a relation.”24 However, this is an exclusive relation to God, one which excludes all other relations. Becoming a Single One necessitates a renouncing and distancing of oneself from the “crowd” in order to “stand alone before God.

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