Martin Buber
1878–1965 · Jewish Thought · Prominent
Buber was an Austrian Jewish philosopher who found two ways of meeting anything and set them out in his book I and Thou. You can treat what is in front of you as an It, an object to use and to know facts about, or you can address it as a Thou, speak to it and stand before it with nothing held back. Every real meeting of the second kind points past itself to God, the eternal Thou.
Signature
The position Buber is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Meaning
- leans Inherent
- Ethics Basis
- Relational
Positions on the 3 axes the sources answer
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (71 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- mildly between Vertical and Horizontal (60 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Opposition
- mildly leans Concurrence (63 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
17 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Buber refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Anarchy / Communal Order
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Love
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Eidetic Intuition / Embodied Perception
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Relational
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Kairotic
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Charismatic Authority / Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Speech Act
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Natural Law / Sacred Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Judgement / Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine / Friends
What is your primary bond and loyalty?