BUBER ON RESPONSIBILITY

• Authors: Bizoň Michal
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper deals with Martin Buber’s claim that responsibility “is the basic theme of my work in general.” As I show in the opening section of the article, his statement applies to the dialogical period of his work, but not the pre-dialogical. In the mystical phase of Buber’s thought there is no place for responsibility because the very nature of mysticism excludes that possibility. The incompatibility of mysticism and interpersonal responsibility is confirmed in the autobiographical fragment “conversion,” one of the two biographical moments I discuss in relation to the shift in his thinking on responsibility. The second is his relationship with his wife Paula Winkler, which profoundly influenced his thinking about the importance of love and marriage for an understanding of responsibility. I then explore his view of responsibility as a doctrine, which developed along with his dialogical philosophy. Finally, I examine his critical views on four basic ways of avoiding responsibility, which highlight the close connection between freedom and responsibility: belief in fate, individualism, collectivism, and religious acosmism.

Keywords

EN

MARTIN BUBER; DIALOGICAL PHILOSOPHY; RESPONSIBILITY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Filozofia (Philosophy)
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 78
• Issue: 7
• Pages: 548 – 563

Contributors

author

Bizoň Michal

• Faculty of Education, Comenius University in Bratislava, Račianska 59, 813 34 Bratislava, Slovak Republic

• https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6576-4245

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/filozofia.2023.78.7.3