Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue , the first study in any language to provide a complete overview of Buber's thought, remains the definitive guide to the full range of his work and the starting point for all modern Buber scholarship. As well as summarizing Buber's early intellectual development and attitudes - his mysticism, his youthful existentialism, his philosophy of Judaism and religious socialism - it focuses on the two crucial issues of his mature thought: his dialogic or I-Thou philosophy, (...) and his probing of the nature and redemption of evil. As a sensitive, intuitive and perennially fascinating account of one of the twentieth century's great spiritual teachers, and as an influential classic in its own right, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue reveals the implications of Buber's thought for theory of knowledge, education, philosophy, myth, history and Judaic and Christian belief. This fully revised and expanded 4th edition includes a new preface from the author, an expanded bibliography incorporating new Buber scholarship, and two new appendices in the form of essays on Buber's influence on Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin. (shrink)

"The condition Buber calls the 'eclipse of God' is the reality that modern life and the teachings of many scholars have in many ways destroyed the opportunity for intimacy with an eternal, ever-present, Thou, or God. Based in part on a series of lectures he gave in the United States in 1951, this book examines Buber's interpretations of Western thinking and belief around this notion of lost intimacy or direct contact with the Divine, focusing particularly on the relationships between religion (...) and philosophy, ethics, and Jungian psychology." -Reference and Research Book News. (shrink)

"The condition Buber calls the 'eclipse of God' is the reality that modern life and the teachings of many scholars have in many ways destroyed the opportunity for intimacy with an eternal, ever-present, Thou, or God. Based in part on a series of lectures he gave in the United States in 1951, this book examines Buber's interpretations of Western thinking and belief around this notion of lost intimacy or direct contact with the Divine, focusing particularly on the relationships between religion (...) and philosophy, ethics, and Jungian psychology." --"Reference and Research Book News". (shrink)

As Harry Austryn Wolfson deftly isolates and analyzes some of the most vital and often the most enigmatic ideas developed by the religious philosophers of the West, a cumulative and thoughtful continuity emerges from his interpretations. Philo, for example, appears as a dominant force throughout the sixteen centuries that preceded Spinoza's critique of his basic principles. The ten essays which constitute the critical sequence of this penetrating book are derived from lectures, and from separate publications many of which are not (...) readily available now. They include discussions of Immortality and Resurrection in the Philosophy of the Church Fathers; St. Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy; Causality and Freedom in Descartes, Leibniz and Hume. Wolfson concludes with a perceptive distillation of his personal wisdom in an essay contrasting the professed atheist with the "verbal theist.". (shrink)

John Hick offers a summary account of William James's ‘The Will to Believe’ which is typical of the way that this essay has been understood by many in the one hundred years since it was first published. According to Hick, James argues -/- that the existence or nonexistence of God, of which there can be no conclusive evidence either way, is a matter of such momentous importance that anyone who so desires has the right to stake one's life upon the (...) God hypothesis. (shrink)

Science as Salvation discusses the high spiritual ambitions which tend to gather round the notion of science. Officially, science claims only the modest function of establishing facts. Yet people still hope for something much grander from it--namely, the myths by which to shape and support life in an increasingly confusing age. Our faith in science is abused by some scientists whose adolescent fantasies have spilled over into their professional lives. Salvation, immortality, mastery of the universe, humans without bodies, and intelligent (...) self-reproducing computers are just some of the notions and speculations that are now found--not on the pages of science fiction--but on the pages of science itself. The danger is that these concepts are given to a myth-hungry public who turn to science now that religion has lost its ability to create myth. Science as Salvation discusses the function and meaning of such fantasies. Midgley examines the need for and the use of myth in science, and how science and religion are related. She argues that we need to develop a realistic understanding of scientific imagination and its importance. Taking them seriously as symptoms of a genuine myth-hunger, it suggests that the proper function of science may need to include wider perspectives, which would make it plain that such desperate, compensatory dramas are unnecessary. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to improve the practical argument for beliefs in God. Some theists, most famously Kant and William James, called our attention to a particular set of beliefs, the Jamesian-type beliefs, which are justified by virtue of their practical significance, and these theists tried to justify theistic beliefs on the exact same ground. I argue, contra the Jamesian tradition, that theistic beliefs are different from the Jamesian-type beliefs and thus cannot be justified on the same ground. I (...) also argue that the practical argument, as it stands, faces a problem of self-defeat. I then construct a new practical argument that avoids both problems. According to this new argument, theistic beliefs are rational to accept because such beliefs best supply us with motivation strong enough to carry out demanding moral tasks. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher brings his own inclusive and liberatory purposes to bear in Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction of Philosophy, including in several chapters in which he criticizes William James’s defense of religious belief in “The Will to Believe” and Varieties of Religious Experience, while affirming John Dewey’s emphasis on a “religious” orientation toward community and nature in A Common Faith. These chapters in Kitcher’swide-ranging and beautifully written book contain many insights and imaginative proposals for advancing a “post-religion”secular humanism that (...) he hopes may be able to stabilize the evolution and widen the effective reach of a deep and enduring human impulse toward altruism that he.. (shrink)

‘The Will to Believe.’ The mere mention of this title cannot fail to elicit a reaction from philosophers. Written almost 100 years ago, it continues to intrigue, inspire, perplex and repel, often all in the selfsame reader. Few who make acquaintance with this robust and insightful lecture can remain neutral toward it. In 100 years there has been continuous debate about both the content of the argument and its merits. I will confess to being among those intrigued and inspired by (...) this lecture of James's – and, until recently, also much perplexed by it. The sources of my intrigue have been its guiding insights: that living is choosing in the midst of uncertainty; that in pressing cases, waiting for evidence is no escape from risk; and that believing can create certain truths. The sources of my inspiration have been its vibrant presence and its gallant call to courage. But the main source of my perplexity was the shape of the argument itself: Just what was James's case here? What was the conclusion? What were the premises? Off and on, I pondered the matter for years without resolution, and it was only after I abandoned the very frame of the question that I found a way out of my puzzlement. What I have come to see is that James is not pressing toward one key conclusion in ‘The Will to Believe’. There are two, the second far bolder, far more sweeping than the first. What makes this especially difficult to see is that James himself nowhere acknowledges it. Indeed, he expressly disavows the second conclusion, and this for good reason: The two conclusions are incompatible. In what follows, I want first to take you to the source of my problem in understanding James's classic lecture, then to explain to you why my two-argument theory seems its unavoidable if inelegant resolution. Finally, I want to turn to the properly philosophical task. I want to inquire into the truth of his more sweeping claim. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement among philosophers that William James's well-known attempt to justify religious faith in ‘The Will to Believe’ is a failure. But despite the fact that James wrote his essay as a reply to the ‘tough-minded’ ethics of belief represented by such thinkers as W. K. Clifford and T. H. Huxley, the reasons commonly given today for rejecting James's position seem to be mostly based on the same principle of intellectual ethics that motivated Clifford and Huxley. Clifford, it (...) may be recalled, maintained that ‘It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’. Although this is a rather rhetorical way of stating it, the principle is basically the same one adhered to by most scientists and philosophers who consider themselves rigorous and ‘objective’ thinkers. Even philosophers not associated with the hardheaded modern Anglo-American style of empiricism commonly pledge their allegiance to such a principle. For example, Brand Blanshard holds that the ‘main principle’ of the ethics of belief is that one should ‘equate one's assent to the evidence’ and he then goes on to criticize James, on the basis of this principle, for advocating self-deception and intellectual dishonesty. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss William J. Clifford's principle, "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence" and an objection to it based on William James's contention that "Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds." I argue that on one central way of understanding the key terms, there are no genuine options (...) that cannot be decided on intellectual grounds. I also argue that there is another way to understand the terms so that there are cases of the sort James describes, but then, as an objection to Clifford, the argument is needlessly complex, invoking concepts such as genuine options and intellectual undecidability, that play no crucial role. (shrink)

As a member of the Victorian-era Metaphysical Society, W. K. Clifford contributed to debate about the prospects for morality in the absence of religion. Clifford thought its chances good. He presented a paper offering a 'scientific' approach to moral theory. In my discussion, I explore his proposal, using it to gain interpretative leverage on a paper he delivered before the Society only a year later, 'The ethics of belief '. I set aside the quarrel with religion so prominent in this (...) influential essay and discount its evidentialist epistemology, the better to reveal it for what it is: a powerful exercise in moral suasion. (shrink)

If national education is, as Ilan Gur-Ze’ev thinks, inevitably a matter of agents for and victims of a national system, only a “counter-education” can correct it. Martin Buber shared many of Gur-Ze’ev’s concerns, but advocated a more positive view of national education. This essay examines Buber’s development of his pedagogical theory in its context, notes his influence on several educational models, investigates how his view of national education either continues or is ignored in the modern State of Israel, and shows (...) that his positive view draws not only on his “I-Thou” dialogical insight but also on his advocacy of a myth of Zion, a myth that provides an alternative not just to the dominant myths in Israel today but also to Gur-Ze’ev’s counter-education. (shrink)

Recognized as a landmark of twentieth century intellectual history, I and Thou is Buber's masterpiece.

_Explores how the thought of Leo Strauss amounts to a model for thinking about the connection between philosophy, Jewish thought, and history._.

The radical transformation of the Jews during the last century has not ceased to arouse curiosity. Once a widely scattered, mostly isolated and rather backward, and often despised minority-group, Jews have risen in the world. Today they are an advanced and outgoing sector of western society, which having established themselves as a sovereign nation in their ancient homeland. What is the difference between Jewry and Judaism? Are Jews an ethnic minority, a religious community, a political entity? This book faces such (...) issues by depicting their historical background and analyzing their intellectual underpinnings. Thus Zionism at the turn of the century is presented as a thorough-going renaissance movement that changed Jewish life from within, and transformed the relations between the Jews and the outside world. (shrink)

If, in content and in method, philosophy and religion conflict, can there be a Jewish philosophy? What makes a Jewish thinker a philosopher? Emil L. Fackenheim confronts these questions in a profound and insightful series of essays on the great Jewish thinkers from Maimonides through Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Leo Strauss. Fackenheim also contemplates the task of Jewish philosophy after the Holocaust. While providing access to key Jewish thinkers of the past, this volume highlights the exciting achievements (...) of one of today's most creative and most important Jewish philosophers. (shrink)