Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue , the first study in any language to provide a complete overview of Buber's thought, remains the definitive guide to the full range of his work and the starting point for all modern Buber scholarship. As well as summarizing Buber's early intellectual development and attitudes - his mysticism, his youthful existentialism, his philosophy of Judaism and religious socialism - it focuses on the two crucial issues of his mature thought: his dialogic or I-Thou philosophy, (...) and his probing of the nature and redemption of evil. As a sensitive, intuitive and perennially fascinating account of one of the twentieth century's great spiritual teachers, and as an influential classic in its own right, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue reveals the implications of Buber's thought for theory of knowledge, education, philosophy, myth, history and Judaic and Christian belief. This fully revised and expanded 4th edition includes a new preface from the author, an expanded bibliography incorporating new Buber scholarship, and two new appendices in the form of essays on Buber's influence on Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin. (shrink)

Martin Buber believed that life's deepest truth lies in human relationships. In this classic work he puts this belief into practice, applying it to the concrete problems of contemporary society.

Better than any other single work, Daniel enables us to understand the significance of the transition Buber made from his early mysticism to the philosophy of dialogue. The book is written in the form of five dialogues, in each of which Daniel and his friends explore a crucial philosophical problem-the nature of interconnection of unity, creativity, action, form, and realization as these illuminate the relations of man to God and the world. Daniel occupies a central position in Buber's life work.

Brian Hendley; Martin Buber on the Teacher/Student Relationship: a critical appraisal, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 12, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Page.

Recognized as a landmark of twentieth century intellectual history, I and Thou is Buber's masterpiece.

This dissertation offers a beginning to a formulation of a philosophy of education based in existentialism. The bulk of this project focuses upon three key issues: choice, dialogue, and freedom, identified in the first chapter and examined, each in turn, in the next three chapters. Each issue is researched through close textual examination of the corresponding seminal existential philosopher: for choice, Soren Kierkegaard; for dialogue, Martin Buber; and for freedom, Jean-Paul Sartre. The results of these investigations are applied directly to (...) educational contexts in order to illuminate important connections and build bridges for the practitioner. ;Overall, the project is brought together in a coherent existential framework through the assumption of three fundamental forms of lived experience that educators must consider. The first lived experience is that of being separate and isolated. The second is the experience of relationship, of coming together with another individual; and third, is the lived experience of "belonging," of community, of something beyond just self and one other. ;Towards this end, chapter one provides grounding in existentialism and its historical connection to education by highlighting key issues addressed by leading existential educational theorists. In chapter two, Kierkegaard, becomes the exegetically mined source for understanding choice and the existential individual. Chapter three presents a critical re-reading of key educational texts through the lens of Buber's entire corpus in order to reveal and clarify the issue of dialogue and the lived experience of relationship. Chapter four charts Sartre's change as a philosopher of freedom throughout his written work. Through comparative analysis, this chapter touches upon the edges of democracy itself and considers both the reach of freedom and the role of community. ;The final chapter uses the first four chapters as a springboard for framing a philosophy of education based in existentialism by focusing upon three fundamental areas necessary to any philosophy of education: ontology , epistemology , and axiology . The result challenges and supports educators, parents, and learners and offers suggestions for a way towards a fuller, richer, more genuinely engaged existence for all becoming persons. (shrink)