Page 21 - Eclipse of God

xx Introduction to the 2016 Edition

Buber writes: “God Himself demands . . . nothing more than
justice and love, and that he ‘walk humbly’ with Him, with
God (Micah 6:8)— in other words, not much more than the
fundamental ethical” (103). Once again, based on his own con-
ception of God, the grounds for Buber’s ethical reading are un-
clear. If, as Buber argues, revelation has no particular content
and it is up to the individual to respond to God, couldn’t the
individual, and certainly Abraham, then plausibly believe that
the ethical could be suspended in responding to God? Buber
was well aware of these criticisms. He acknowledged that his
philosophy could not determine “what is right and wrong in a
certain situation to be a decision valid in itself.” Nevertheless,
he insisted that people must understand that they are “stand-
ing every moment under the judgment of God.” 13
In a related vein, Buber’s Jewish contemporaries criticize
him for not recognizing Jewish law as a source of theologi-
cal, cultural, or normative authority. Rosenzweig famously ad-
monishes Buber on theological terms, arguing that revelation
14
requires law. Other Jewish critics of Buber, including Haim
Nahman Bialik, perhaps the greatest Hebrew poet of the mod-
ern era, and Emil Fackenheim, perhaps the most significant
Jewish thinker to respond philosophically to the Shoah, also
chastise his rejection of Jewish law. Bialik, who knew Buber
and taught at Buber’s Lehrhaus in Frankfurt before the Second
World War, criticizes Buber largely on cultural grounds, main-
taining that Buber’s philosophy denies the creative dialectic
between law and narrative (halachah and aggadah) in Jewish
15
thought and culture. Fackenheim, who considers himself a
13 Martin Buber, “Reply to My Critics,” in Paul A. Schilpp and Maurice S. Fried-
man, eds., The Philosophy of Martin Buber (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967), 719.
14 See especially Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning (New York: Schocken
Books), 116.
15 Haim Nahman Bialik, “Halachah and Aggadah,” in Revealment and Conceal-
ment: Five Essays (Jerusalem: Ibis Editions, 2000), 45– 87.