Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation between Religion and Philosophy - Softcover

Buber, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691165300 ISBN 13: 9780691165301

Verlag: Princeton Univers. Press, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

First published in 1952, Eclipse of God is a collection of nine essays concerning the relationship between religion and philosophy. The book features Bubers critique of the thematically interconnected - yet diverse - perspectives of Soren Kierkegaard, Hermann Cohen, C.G. Jung, Martin Heidegger, and other prominent modern thinkers. Buber deconstructs their philosophical conceptions of God and explains why religion needs philosophy to interpret what is authentic in spiritual encounters. He elucidates the religious implications of the I-Thou, or dialogical relationship, and explains how the exclusive focus on scientific knowledge in the modern world blocks the possibility of a personal relationship with God

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Martin Buber (1878–1965) is known for many influential works in the fields of philosophy of religion and biblical interpretation. His ideas and intellect were globally esteemed, propelled interfaith alliances, and inspired luminaries such as Paul Tillich and Martin Luther King Jr. His books included I and Thou and The Legend of Baal-Shem (Princeton). Leora Batnitzky is the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She is the author of How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton).

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"[Buber] remains a philosopher for our times. As he writes in the prelude to this volume, 'Real listening has become rare.' In an age in which technology and the vitriol of partisan politics dominate in the United States and the world at large, Buber's words could not be more prophetic."--Leora Batnitzky, Princeton University

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Eclipse of God

Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy

By Martin Buber

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2016 Martin Buber Literary Estate
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-16530-1

Contents

Introduction to the 2016 Edition, vii, 
Foreword, xxiii, 
1 PRELUDE: REPORT ON TWO TALKS, 1, 
2 RELIGION AND REALITY, 8, 
3 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY, 20, 
4 THE LOVE OF GOD AND THE IDEA OF DEITY, 39, 
5 RELIGION AND MODERN THINKING, 53, 
6 RELIGION AND ETHICS, 83, 
7 ON THE SUSPENSION OF THE ETHICAL, 100, 
8 GOD AND THE SPIRIT OF MAN, 106, 
9 SUPPLEMENT: REPLY TO C. G. JUNG, 113, 

CHAPTER 1

PRELUDE: REPORT ON TWO TALKS

I shall tell about two talks. One apparently came to a conclusion, as only occasionally a talk can come, and yet in reality remained unconcluded; the other was apparently broken off and yet found a completion such as rarely falls to the lot of discussions.

Both times it was a dispute about God, about the concept and the name of God, but each time of a very different nature.

On three successive evenings I spoke at the adult folk-school of a German industrial city on the subject "Religion as Reality." What I meant by that was the simple thesis that "faith" is not a feeling in the soul of man but an entrance into reality, an entrance into the whole reality without reduction and curtailment. This thesis is simple but it contradicts the usual way of thinking. And so three evenings were necessary to make it clear, and not merely three lectures but also three discussions which followed the lectures. At these discussions I was struck by something which bothered me. A large part of the audience was evidently made up of workers but none of them spoke up. Those who spoke and raised questions, doubts, and reflections were for the most part students (for the city had a famous old university). But all kinds of other circles were also represented; the workers alone remained silent. Only at the conclusion of the third evening was this silence, which had by now become painful for me, explained. A young worker came up to me and said: "Do you know, we can't speak in there, but if you would meet with us to-morrow, we could talk together the whole time." Of course I agreed.

The next day was a Sunday. After dinner I came to the agreed place and now we talked together well into the evening. Among the workers was one, a man no longer young, whom I was drawn to look at again and again because he listened as one who really wished to hear. Real listening has become rare in our time. It is found most often among workers, who are not indeed concerned about the person speaking, as is so often the case with the bourgeois public, but about what he has to say. This man had a curious face. In an old Flemish altar picture representing the adoration of the shepherds one of them, who stretches out his arms toward the manger, has such a face. The man in front of me did not look as if he might have any desire to do the same; moreover, his face was not open like that in the picture. What was notable about him was that he heard and pondered, in a manner as slow as it was impressive. Finally, he opened his lips as well. "I have had the experience," he explained slowly and impressively, repeating a saying which the astronomer Laplace is supposed to have used in conversation with Napoleon, "that I do not need this hypothesis 'God' in order to be quite at home in the world." He pronounced the word "hypothesis" as if he had attended the lectures of the distinguished natural scientist who had taught in that industrial and university city and had died shortly before. Although he did not reject the designation "God" for his idea of nature, that naturalist spoke in a similar manner whether he pursued zoology or Weltanschauung.

The brief speech of the man struck me; I felt myself more deeply challenged than by the others. Up till then we had certainly debated very seriously, but in a somewhat relaxed way; now everything had suddenly become severe and hard. How should I reply to the man? I pondered awhile in the now severe atmosphere. It came to me that I must shatter the security of his Weltanschauung, through which he thought of a "world" in which one "felt at home." What sort of a world was it? What we were accustomed to call world was the "world of the senses," the world in which there exists vermilion and grass green, C major and B minor, the taste of apple and of wormwood. Was this world anything other than the meeting of our own senses with those unapproachable events about whose essential definition physics always troubles itself in vain? The red that we saw was neither there in the "things," nor here in the "soul." It at times flamed up and glowed just so long as a red-perceiving eye and a red-engendering "oscillation" found themselves over against each other. Where then was the world and its security? The unknown "objects" there, the apparently so well-known and yet not graspable "subjects" here, and the actual and still so evanescent meeting of both, the "phenomena" — was that not already three worlds which could no longer be comprehended from one alone? How could we in our thinking place together these worlds so divorced from one another? What was the being that gave this "world," which had become so questionable, its foundation?

When I was through a stern silence ruled in the now twilit room. Then the man with the shepherd's face raised his heavy lids, which had been lowered the whole time, and said slowly and impressively, "You are right."

I sat in front of him dismayed. What had I done? I had led the man to the threshold beyond which there sat enthroned the majestic image which the great physicist, the great man of faith, Pascal, called the God of the Philosophers. Had I wished for that? Had I not rather wished to lead him to the other, Him whom Pascal called the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Him to whom one can say Thou?

It grew dusk, it was late. On the next day I had to depart. I could not remain, as I now ought to do; I could not enter into the factory where the man worked, become his comrade, live with him, win his trust through real life-relationship, help him to walk with me the way of the creature who accepts the creation. I could only return his gaze.

Some time later I was the guest of a noble old thinker. I had once made his acquaintance at a conference where he gave a lecture on elementary folk-schools and I gave one on adult folk-schools. That brought us together, for we were united by the fact that the word "folk" has to be understood in both cases in the same all-embracing sense. At that time I was happily surprised at how the man with the steel-grey locks asked us at the beginning of his talk to forget all that we believed we knew about his philosophy from his books. In the last years, which had been war years, reality had been brought so close to him that he saw everything with new eyes and had to think in a new way. To be old is a glorious thing when one has not unlearned what it means to begin, this old man had even perhaps first learned it thoroughly in old age. He was not at all young, but he was old in a young way, knowing how to begin.

He lived in another university city situated in the west. When the theology students of that university invited me to speak about prophecy, I stayed with the old man. There was a good spirit in his house, the spirit that wills to enter life and does not prescribe to life where it shall let it in.

One morning I got up early...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton Univers. Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691165300
• ISBN 13: 9780691165301
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Princeton University Press; https://press.princeton.edu/books; ; 7th Floor, New South Building; PRINCETON; NJ; 8544; USA
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