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Chapter 10
10.1. MARTIN BUBER (A.D. 1878 - 1965)

10.1.1. The Life and Works of Buber

Martin Buber was born in Vienna in 1878 of

Austrian Jewish Parents. He spent his
childhood in Lvov, Galicia with his
grandfather Solomon Buber who was a well-
known business man and rabbinic literature
scholar. Martin studied philosophy and art
history from 1896 to 1900 at University of
Vienna, Leipzig, Zurich and Berlin. He was
an active Zionist in his twenties with Herzl
and Weizmann. His work was instrumental in the revival of Hasidism
(Jewish mysticism).

Martin was involved in several Zionist journals, from editor to becoming

the founder of a publishing house. Even though he was a Jew, his culture
was altogether Germanic and his progression of thought was anchored in
Biblical and Hebraic heritages. His work was impressive because he
sought after the roots of man from a biblical perspective. He was a
corrective to the more ambitious teachings of Heidegger and Sartre. His
most famous contribution is the development of the I-Thou philosophy.

From 1924 to 1933, he was a professor of the philosophy of Jewish

religion and ethics at Frankfurt-am-Main University. This was the only
chair in Jewish religion at any German University. In 1938, Buber left
for Palestine and took an appointment as professor of sociology of
religion at the Hebrew University. Partnering with Y. L. Magnes, they
led the Yihud movement which was devoted to Arab-Jewish
understanding pointing to the creation of a bi-national state. After a few
others lecture venues, he eventually died in 1965.

The major works of Buber include I and Thou in 1923 (English trans in
1957); Eclipse of God (1952 Eng. trans.); Good and Evil (1953); The

Prophetic Faith (1960), and Two Types of Faith (namely, Jewish and
Christian, 1961). Buber’s I and Thou is also a representative
confrontation between God and man where each being confronts the
existence of the other in his completeness—one as man, the other as
God.

10.1.2. The Philosophy of Buber

Buber’s perceptiveness is an attempt to show that there is a basic

difference between relating to a thing (or the observed object) and to the
person himself. According to Buber, things and persons are both
observed as ‘It’ when characterized as not genuine relationships between
the parties. But the relationship becomes genuine when there is a “I-
Thou” relationship between the two parties. When a person is seen as an
“It,” then I am alone and act as sole observer and judge. When the
person (object) becomes the “Thou,” the universe is seen in light of him
and he is no longer just another person (object) among many resulting in
a different involved “I”.

I-Thou versus I-It.

An I-Thou relationship is one that treats others as an end not as a means.

We should love people and use things; we should not use people and
love things. We should treat others as a subject (an I) not as an object (an
It).

Three things hinder I-Thou relations: First, seeming rather than being.
Second, speechifying rather than real dialogue; Third, imposing oneself
on another rather than unfolding oneself to another. Genuine existential
experiences are always person to person. One takes off his mask and
speaks as a real person to another real person. Only this is true
communication.

The I-Thou relationship is risky because there is no hiding place to

buffet any personal need. In addition, the Thou is viewed as one who has
full freedom associated with his otherness and has the freedom to act
unpredictably. If the responses of the I-Thou relationship becomes one

of where the Thou is calculated, then the relation shifts to an I-It

relationship. The I-It relationship is not a present relationship but one
based upon the past, based upon a previous knowledge of his past. The I-
Thou relationship is one truly based on the present because it is in a
position of unpreparedness for the expected and unexpected. This is
related to genuine listening to the Thou, where the I does not know what
is going to be said as compared to pseudo-listening where the I pretends
to listen and assumes what he is going to hear based on some past
experience.

A Contrast of Buber with Sartre

Since Jean Paul Sartre (see below) was an atheistic existentialist and
Buber a theistic one, it is enlightening to contrast their views. The
following chart summarized their differences.

Sartre Buber
Others are Hell (They are the Others are Heaven (They help me
means of my objectifying discover my true subjectivity in
myself) interpersonal relations.)

There is ultimate meaning (grounded in

There is no ultimate meaning
God)

Common project I-Thou I-Thou Relation

Relation

For Sartre, others are hell because they reflect an objectification of me,
not the real I that as a subject transcends any objectification. Therefore,
there is no ultimate meaning, no real I-Thou relationship. Hence, the
best we can do is have common projects with others (e.g., join a group
with others who are doing the same thing). At one time Sartre joined the
Communist Party to fulfill this. Buber, on the other hand believe that we

could find meaning in an I-thou experience with others grounded in

God, the ultimate Thou.

Buber's view of God

In Buber’s view, man is in a dialogue with God where each is the other’s
Thou. Life for man is a constant transition from the Thou to the It back
to the Thou. For Buber, there is really only One Thou; it is God and
whose nature cannot become an It. Therefore, though man may hate
God, he cannot reduce God to the status of a thing and turning God into
an It. It is here where Buber claims that traditional theology attempts to
turn God into an It. When man transitions from thinking about God to
addressing Him, then it is here than man is truly communicating with the
living God. This true communication is different than what the
philosophers merely do by intellectual assent alone.

For Buber, God is "Wholly other," but He is also "Wholly the same,"
nearer to me than I am to myself. God cannot even be sought, since there
is nowhere He is not to be found. In fact, God is not sought by man; man
meets God through grace as God moves to man. All who hallow this life
meet the living God as the unfathomable condition of being. To see
everything in God is not to renounce the world but to establish it on true
basis. We can sense God's presence but can never solve His
mysteriousness. God is experienced in and through the world.
Nonetheless, He must be met alone. In this union with God we are not
absorbed but remain an individual "I" (ontologically different).

Like Ploitnus, God is not the Good but the SuperGood. He must be
loved in His concealment. For Buber’s God does not name Himself (in
the "I am that I am"); He simply reveals Himself since this is not a
definition but a disclosure of Himself.

10.2. JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (A.D 1905 - 1980)

10.2.1. The life and Works of Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre was born in 1905 in Paris. He

was the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre, who
was an officer in the French navy, and Anne-
Marie Schweitzer. Jean-Paul parents were
nominal Christians (a Catholic-Protestant mix).
When the child was only one year of age, his
father died. This resulted in the child and his
mother moving back into the home of her
parents. He was then raised by his mother and
maternal grandfather who was a professor of German. Jean-Paul was
taught mathematics and was introduced to classical literature by this
grandfather. His mother remarried when he was twelve years of age. The
family then moved to La Rochelle.

When Jean-Paul was a teenager, he became interested in philosophy

after reading a work by Henri Bergson (1859—1941), an influential 20th
century French philosopher who promoted intuition over rationalism and
science for understanding reality. He studied at the Ecole Nomale
Superieure (ENS) from 1924 through 1928, earning a doctorate in
philosophy. After 1929, he taught several students between the ninth and
twelfth grades in Paris and elsewhere. From 1933 to 1935, he was a
research student at the Institut Francais in Berlin and at the University of
Freiburg. His first work of notoriety was La Nausea (Nausea). From
1936 on, he published a philosophical novel called La Nausee (1938)
and a collection of stories called The Wall (1939, English trans.), in
addition to several philosophical studies. Sartre was influenced by
several Western philosophers including Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard,
Husserl (where he learned the phenomenological method), Heidegger
(where he learned metaphysics), and Nietzsche (where he learned about
atheism). Moreover, Sartre does not seem to have any regards for

empiricism, positivism, or materialism. The primary focus that runs

through his work is his passionate interest in human beings—
understanding them and viewing the other Christian, Cartesian, and
Hegelian theories of human beings. Though he rejected these theories,
he did see a common thread of some sort of human aspiration that ran
through these ideas. Sartre’s philosophy can be seen as a focus on the
mode of being human, rejecting all forms of rationalism, theistic or
otherwise. It was through his writings and plays that he attempted to
show his philosophical views.

While at ENS, Sartre met Simone, de Beauvoir who later became a well-
known philosopher, writer, and feminist. The two formed a life-long
relationship. At the outbreak of the war in 1939, Sartre was called to
duty by the French army. He was later captured by the German
opposition. After his release, he returned to Paris to teach philosophy
until 1944. After the war effort, he wrote a number of novels and plays
which ultimately made him famous.

The early period of his career was dominated by phenomenological

psychology under the influence of Husserl. Here he produces
Transcendence of the Ego (1936 French, 1937 English), The Emotions:
Outline of a Theory (1939, 1948), and The Psychology of Imaginations
(1940, 1948). The middle period focused on ontology of human
existence with influence from Heidegger. It was during this time that he
produced Being and Nothingness (1943, 1956) and Existentialism and
Humanism (1946, 1948). In a latter period, his concerns turned toward
Marxism. He wrote Questions de methode (1960) and Critique de la
raison dialectique (1960).

10.2.2. Sartre’s Atheistic View of God and Man

Sartre believed God’s existence was impossible. God, by his very nature,
is a self-caused being. However, one would have to be ontologically
prior to himself in order to cause himself. This is impossible. In Sartre’s
terms, the “being-for-itself” can never become the “being-in-itself”
(Being and Nothingness, 755–68). In other words, the contingent cannot

become the necessary. Nothing cannot produce something. Therefore,

God, a self-caused being, cannot exist.

Sartre viewed humanity as an empty bubble on the sea of nothingness.

The basic plan for the human being is to become God. But it is
impossible for the contingent to become a necessary being, for the
subjective to become objective, or for freedom to become determined.
The human being is a conscious being, one who can ask questions and
one who can receive negative answers. This idea of negation is more
than just a logical function of some judgment. To Sartre, this opportunity
of negation through negative judgments requires some counter
ontological status considered nonbeing. Now, the question is, What is
the source of this nonbeing? Being, that is human consciousness, is in
contrast with everything else in the physical world. This nonmaterial
being (consciousness) is self-detaching and surrounds negation
(nonbeing). Consciousness projects being-in-itself against the
background of nonbeing. It also bridges the gap between the actual and
the possible to thus determine which of these two are to be realized. This
makes human consciousness free because it can think of itself other than
itself. According to Sartre, this is demonstrated by anguish.

Human beings then can adopt one of two fundamental attitudes:

responsible freedom or psychological determinism. Determinism,
justified by a variety of devises, is a way to conceal freedom from one’s
self. The antithesis is the acceptance of one’s personal freedom and that
they are responsible for their own acts. Though there may seem to be
some internal duality, it is this reasoning pointing towards determinism
that is certainly doomed for failure. Therefore, the individual person is a
free agent who defines the moral world. The individual is, in fact,
condemned to freedom. If one were to attempt to escape his destiny, he
would still be freely fleeing it. Even suicide is an act of freedom by
which one would vainly attempt to eliminate his freedom. So the human
“essence” is absolute freedom, but absolute freedom has no objective or
definable nature. The “I” (subject) always transcends the “me” or “it”
(object).

The World and Man’s Destiny

According to Sartre, the world is real but is contingent—it is simply

there. The world, like human life, is a given. Philosophically, the world
is uncaused and is the field where subjective choices are performed. The
world really has no objective meaning whereby each person creates
personal meaning. The fact that several people may choose the same
subjective projects (like Marxism for Sartre) makes no difference
whatsoever. Each person is still objectively the one who is making
personal choices.

Sartre’s View of Ethics

Sartre thought that there were no absolute or objective moral

prescriptions. He writes, “No sooner had you [Zeus] created me than I
ceased to be yours.” He continues, “I was like a man who’s lost his
shadow. And there was nothing left in heaven, no right or wrong, nor
anyone to give me orders. . . . For I, Zeus, am a man, and every man
must find out his own way” (No Exit, 121–123).

Not only are there no divine imperatives or moral prescriptions, but

there neither are objective values. In the last lines of Being and
Nothingness, Sartre wrote, “it amounts to the same thing whether one
gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.” For all human activities are
equivalent. We must, in fact, repudiate this “spirit of seriousness” which
assumes there are absolute or objective values and accept the basic
absurdity and subjectivity of life.

What then should one do? Literally, he should do “his own thing.” Since
there are no ultimate and objective values, man must create them. A
person can act for personal good or for the good of all humanity. But
there is no ethical obligation to think about others. In the final analysis,
each is responsible only for the use of personal, unavoidable freedom.

10.2.3. An Evaluation of Sartre

Rather than addressing the typical arguments posed by the atheist, there
is a part of Sartre’s atheism that is peculiar to him that should be
discussed. Critics have noted the following:

First of all, God is not a self-caused Being. Self-causation is impossible.

God is the only uncaused Being in existence. When Sartre concocted a
false meaning of God’s initiation (coming into being), he was able to
then dismiss the existence of God. Thus, he set up a trick—a wrong view
of God—to subsequently knock it down attempting to prove his point.

Second, Sartre proposes that God is a contradiction to human freedom

and creativity. But God is the Supreme Creator and man is the sub- or
co-creator of good and value. God is the Prime Cause and human
freedom is the secondary cause. In addition, human free will and
determinism are not logically contradictory since God can pre-determine
that human beings are to be free actors.

Third, Sartre makes an unjustified bifurcation between subjectivity and

objectivity, between fact and value. However, in the human being, this
disjunction is without a real difference. I (the subject) am me (the
object). An attack upon the body is an attack upon the person. Therefore,
a person’s subjectivity and objectivity are not separable.

Fourth, if there are no objective values and each person is fully

responsible only for themselves, then there is no meaningfully ethical
sense in which one ought to choose responsibly for others. This leads to
there being no moral obligation to do anything. Atheistic existentialists
do what they do only because they choose to do it, proclaiming a
complete independence from the laws.