The Knowledge of Man: Selected Essays

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Harper & Row, 1965 - Philosophy - 184 pages
"These essays represent an important and exciting new development in Buber's philosophy of dialogue; they stand as the culmination and crown of his epistemology, his philosophical anthropology, and his ontology. If we must characterize Buber at all, we can best call him a philosophical anthropologist. In doing so, we do not limit the significance of Buber's philosophy to the human, but we recognize that man's access to being, according to Buber, is not through Plato's ideal forms or Heidegger's being that shines forth in the existent, but through the between -- the dialogue between man and the existent over against him." -- Introduction.

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Contents

Introductory Essay
11
II
59
III
72
Copyright

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About the author (1965)

Martin Buber was born in Vienna, the son of Solomon Buber, a scholar of Midrashic and medieval literature. Martin Buber studied at the universities of Vienna, Leipzig, Zurich, and Berlin, under Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Simmel. As a young student, he joined the Zionist movement, advocating the renewal of Jewish culture as opposed to Theodor Herzl's political Zionism. At age 26 he became interested in Hasidic thought and translated the tales of Nahman of Bratslav. Hasidism had a profound impact on Buber's thought. He credited it as being the inspiration for his theories of spirituality, community, and dialogue. Buber is responsible for bringing Hasidism to the attention of young German intellectuals who previously had scorned it as the product of ignorant eastern European Jewish peasants. Buber also wrote about utopian socialism, education, Zionism, and respect for the Palestinian Arabs, and, with Franz Rosenzweig, he translated the Bible. He was appointed to a professorship at the University of Frankfurt in 1925, but, when the Nazis came to power, he received an appointment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Buber died in 1965.

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