Alan Saunders: The Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman, recorded in the year that he first visited Palestine: 1929. Seven years later he set up the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra, later to become the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Today we head to Europe and then to Israel to take in the life and ideas of Martin Buber. This program is part of our series on Jewish philosophy. I'm Alan Saunders, thanks for tuning in today.

Have you ever felt your relationship made up such a part of who you were that you found it hard to tell where you ended and the other person began? Well, you've had what the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber would have described as an 'I and Thou' encounter.

Buber was born in pre-Nazi Austria, and emigrated to Israel in 1938, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He grappled with Zionism, Jewish thought, secular philosophy and politics, and the result is a body of thought very much based on relationships.

Joining us from Jerusalem this week is Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor of Modern Jewish Thought at the University of Chicago. Professor Mendes-Flohr is in the midst of writing Buber's biography, and is co-editor of a 22-volume critical German edition of Buber's writings. Paul Mendes-Flohr, welcome.

Paul Mendes-Flohr: Thank you for having me.

Alan Saunders: We should talk first about Buber's life, because it was very much intertwined with modern Jewish history. He was born in 1878 in Vienna, and ended up many years later in Israel. But apparently quite early on he broke with Jewish customs to study secular philosophy. Can you tell us more about the spiritual and philosophical transitions, and about Buber as a person.

Paul Mendes-Flohr: Indeed. Buber, as you noted, was born in Vienna. At the age of three his parents divorced, and he describes that occasion as ultimately seminal in his own understanding of relationships. And his mother apparently left the home in a huff and puff, and as he rushed as a three-year-old to the balcony to bid her farewell, she never turned around to return his gestures. He always felt a deep sense of loss, and the failure of the response of one's gesture for relationship, or demand for a relationship.

At the age of three he was sent to live with his grandparents; and he was raised in a pious home, a learned home, learned in Jewish terms, but also learned in general culture. At the age of 18 he went to the university in Vienna, and there encountered secular culture, as you noted. Eventually he did a doctorate in Vienna on Medieval mysticism, and that eventually drew him to study Jewish mysticism, particularly Hasidism. At this point he was no longer a practising Jew, although very much involved in Jewish intellectual affairs, and ultimately political affairs represented by the Zionist movement. But he always found himself on the margins, so to speak.

Alan Saunders: Well, I mean... There are various things in his early life which point towards the later man. One is that he obviously didn't get from his parents, and certainly not from his mother, what he thought was most important in relationships. So you can see his later philosophy in a way as compensating for a lack in his own early life.

Paul Mendes-Flohr: Indeed, that's the way he presented it. He understood the fragility of relationships, the profound, existential and emotional need that we have for genuine relationships. But he also learned along the way the, I would say the dynamic of establishing relationship, and the difficulty of establishing a genuine relationship. One particular story he told is that when he was already a famous man, writing extensively on mysticism, not only Jewish mysticism, he was visited by a soldier during the First World War, distraught... came unannounced to his home in Germany, where he was living at the time. And despite the fact that it was not the custom to receive guests unannounced, Buber did receive this young man, and allowed him a half-hour early in the morning to present his questions. And Buber says he was very polite and cordial, and he responded to all the questions posed, and after a half-hour he indicated that unfortunately he doesn't have that much more time. And then he learned the following day that this man took his life.

And Buber drew from that the lesson that it's not sufficient to respond to questions that are verbalised, but also to questions that are etched on a person's forehead, and a person's eyes, the visceral questions. And that requires another type of listening than simply academic or even cordial listening. So the first point of departure towards this philosophy of dialogue was this type of listening: a truly attentive listening, which is not necessarily communicated by words, or facilitated by words. And in time he developed the notion that he calls the 'I-Thou' relationship - I'll explain that momentarily - or dialogue.

Alan Saunders: Well that's a very telling story, and we will of course go into the 'I-Thou' relationship shortly, but though we think of Buber as a philosopher, he at first called himself a 'philosophical anthropologist'. Would it be true to say that he wasn't interested in systematic explanations so much as interested in individual, specific, unique experiences of the world, embedded in specific cultures, specific histories?

Paul Mendes-Flohr: That's very well put indeed. He was not a systematic philosophy, and he actually had a certain ambivalence regarding that project. If this was an academic discourse, a purely academic discourse, that would indicate his criticism of academic philosophy or systematic philosophy. Philosophical anthropology takes into account the cultural reality of individuals, the specific social context in which we live our lives, as its point of departure. It's in some sense close to Existentialism, but not identical. But of course there are existential dimensions to Buber's philosophy.

One has to appreciate the title, or the philosophical presuppositions, or humanistic presuppositions, of Buber's philosophy. One has to note the German in which he wrote his book. He wrote at the age of 45, and is presented by himself as a correction of his own path in the world beforehand. It's a major self-correction. And that is to say that previously he was concerned with the intensity of individual experience. The world we live in is somehow fraught with contradictions and difficulties that somehow seem to vitiate the meaning of life, so he sought a more-or-less mystical path. But he realised that that led to violence towards oneself, and what is most important to oneself, one's relationship, and therefore of course to those with whom one has a relationship or seeks relationship. Emerging from this was his little book called, in German, Ich und Du. The 'du' in German means, of course, 'you'; but it's an intimate 'you', and Germans use that word very, very cautiously. Very, very... with great circumspection. Namely, it's reserved for relationship between parents and children, very close friendships, and ultimately with the Divine.

Alan Saunders: So it's like tu in French, is it...

Paul Mendes-Flohr: Precisely.

Alan Saunders: ...for which there is no real English equivalent.

Paul Mendes-Flohr: Right, thus they've... the translators refer back to Medieval English, so to speak, and we see the word 'Thou', which, of course, distorts the significance of Buber's argument. What is involved, to say it very, very quickly, is when one says 'du', this intimate word, one establishes a level, or assumes a level of trust. To give an example of how tender that experience was for Buber, and how difficult that he understood the achievement, attainment, of this type of trust: he was a very, very close friend of a man named Franz Rosenzweig, with whom he translated the Hebrew Bible into German, with whom he developed a program for a renaissance of Jewish learning, which would also speak to secular Jews as well as of course those who still had religious faith. But they still addressed one another with the more formal term 'Sie'. Only after eight years of friendship, Rosenzweig wrote a poem in which he asked permission to address Buber with the sentiment 'du', saying 'now we've perhaps reached a level of trust that we can address one another per "du", with this intimate word. And Buber says "yes, we've reached that level of trust", and then Rosenzweig responds, also in a poetic form: "Yes, I shall now address you as 'du, but in my heart I will continue to say 'Sie." Meaning: maintaining the respect, even a distance of reverence, denoted by the term 'Sie'.

In other words, to achieve 'du' -- that type of relationship, which is eventually called 'dialogue', or the 'I-Thou' relationship in English -- is a struggle of attaining trust, full trust. And so in one sense Buber's work is devoted to how we acquire this mutual trust. The Hebrew term for trust is also the same term for faith. So our relationship to the divine is not an intellectual one, a cognitive one, but one of trust, trust that, somehow, God will not fail us; although we often experience the world as harsh and brutal. But we maintain this trust. And that's what also in an analogous way we seek in an I-Thou relationship with other human beings.

Alan Saunders: Well, that exchange between Buber and Rosenzweig is extremely beautiful, and it's a beauty that is not available to English speakers. When he turned to the I-Thou relationship, Buber came up with three different types of I-Thou dialogues: dialogues with human beings, with nature and with spirit. So perhaps, I mena, it's fairly easy to see how you might have an equal relationship or an equal exchange with a human being, but how did Buber see these equal exchanges occurring between us and nature, or spirit?

Paul Mendes-Flohr: Yes... That's a bit tricky, but I think I can explain that to you, sir, and your audience. Buber suggested there are two fundamental ways of interacting with the world. One he called the 'I-it' relation, and that is objects. I am now presently holding a glass of water; I have a pen in my other hand. These are objects, and my relationship to them is one of I-it. Of course, we can relate to fellow human beings, and often do -- that's the great tragedy -- as objects. Even if we say 'you', our attitude towards our fellow human beings can be instrumental, can be one of reducing them to categories: Jew, Arab, Gentile, tall, young, woman, man. These are all categorisations of the human being which violates their uniqueness, the irreducible reality which comes under the term 'you', or 'Thou'. That is to say when we relate to another human being as a 'Thou' we are not categorising them, not placing them within this matrix of comparative categories.

The same is true of nature. We can encounter a tree and say, well, this belongs to a particular species, perhaps one day we'll chop it down' or we can actually be taken by the unique beauty and presence of a tree, so it's no longer an object but has its own unique reality. And that's also true of spirit. By spirit Buber means works that embody the human spirit: a novel, a work of art, a work of music. So no longer dissect it, and say 'this is a beautiful piece of work', or 'this belongs to the classical period', or this is funk, or whatever, but we relate to its own, unique terms without reducing it or categorising it. So that's precisely what Buber means by an I-Thou relationship with a fellow human being -- which is obviously much more understandable - with nature, and with works that embody the human spirit - works that have been created by the human spirit.

Alan Saunders: If we're going to address other people as ends in themselves, and not to have a merely instrumental relationship with them, we're more or less doing what the great 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant said we should do. Was Kant an influence on Buber's thought?

Paul Mendes-Flohr: Oh, very much so. You're a... I'm very impressed! Indeed... There is certainly a... in terms of genealogy, Buber's thought can be traced to, amongst others, back to Kant. Certainly, certainly. That another human being is never to be reduced to a means, but has an end in and of himself, or of herself. That's certainly a feature of Buber's thought.

Alan Saunder: On ABC Radio National, you're listening to The Philosopher's Zone, and I'm talking to Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor of Jewish Philosophy at the University of Chicago about the life and thought of the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber.

Paul Mendes-Flohr: Buber is often described as an Existentialist philosopher, but he rejected that label. Can you tell us why?

Alan Saunders: Well, he rejected it or he had reservations of reducing or categorising his thought in those terms. I already mentioned that he preferred to regard himself as a philosophical anthropologist; that is to say, he takes the specifics of a cultural context, a social context, into consideration. In that sense he is a precursor of what we may call 'multiculturalism'. We all live in a specific cultural realms, and the challenge is of course to somehow learn to live together in terms of our difference, not to negate our differences. In fact the title 'I and Thou', the 'and' is crucial; we don't surrender ourselves to the other, but we seek a bridge between ourselves and other human beings. A bridge that... There is mutual crossing, so to speak. That's similar in the cultural realm, and the political realm. And Buber was very deeply concerned with dialogue, for instance, between Jews and Palestinians, with the hope, the conviction, that a bridge is possible between Jewish needs, Jewish interests and Palestinian needs and interests. That we can live together, as we must learn how to live together. In that sense he goes beyond Existentialism, which is confined largely to the individual experience. So Buber sees human reality within a historic cultural context.

Alan Saunders: Well that's interesting, because he... I mean, he went to Israel in the early days of Israel as an independent nation, but he wanted to transform Zionism into what he called 'Hebraic humanism'. It was a very distinctive form of Zionism that he adopted.

Paul Mendes-Flohr: Yes indeed. He also called it 'Biblical humanism', drawing upon the biblical sources of Judaism. And that is to say that we are custodians of God's world, and with respect to the Holy Land we're only stewards of the land; we don't own it; it's owned, so to speak, by the divine. And our stewardship obliges us with the responsibilities to creating a world that is governed by justice and mercy, and the like. So in some fundamental respects Buber is extending the prophetic dimension of biblical faith. Indeed, he referred to Jews, all Jews, as 'children of Amos', the great prophet. We are to see ourselves as beholden to the prophetic sensibility, the prophetic ethos. And that's true of Zionism in particular: Zionism is not just a political movement for the restoration of Jewish sovereignty and dignity. But it's also a movement to re-quicken, to energise, to retrieve the prophetic ethos of biblical faith.

Alan Saunders: You're a professor of Modern Jewish Thought. Buber was very interested in Hasidic Judaism, which is a mystical movement dating back to the 18th century. But to what extent can Buber be called a Jewish philosopher?

Paul Mendes-Flohr: Yes. Well, as a philosopher... We indicated in our brief sketch of his philosophy of dialogue, of I and Thou, that's a general message. In fact, in the book I and Thou Buber only mentions one Jew, and that is Jesus; and he mentions far more extensively Buddha. So it's a universal statement and Judaism gives, as Buber understands it, biblical faith gives witness to a general human message, articulated of course with the cultural inflections and memories of the Jewish people. So he's a philosopher in a much more fundamental sense that draws upon the witness of the Jewish experience to illustrate, to illuminate, his fundamental teaching, which is a human teaching, if you wish, or a teaching that is addressed to all human beings. So he's a Jewish philosopher in this very specific sense.

Alan Saunders: You... When you speak of Buber, you speak of him almost tenderly, if that's an appropriate choice of words here. Has he influenced your thinking, or ,as Buber might want to say, has he affected you personally?

Paul Mendes-Flohr: Oh, I think so, certainly! I've lived with Buber for more than 50 years, so obviously he's affected my own understanding of myself, myself as a Jew, myself as a human being. Indeed. I would have to admit that I am some sort of disciple.

Alan Saunders: What about his view of Zionism? As I said, he wanted a sort of humanistic Zionism, rather than a militant Zionism. Is it possible to say what he would have thought about the forms that Zionism takes today in Israel and around the world?

Paul Mendes-Flohr: Oh yes, well, from the very beginning he was a critic of - as I indicated previously - of Herzl's emphasis on political Zionism, that Zionism always to be understood as a response to anti-Semitism; that he referred to as a negative, so to speak, impulse, although he didn't deny the ferocity that anti-Semitism sometimes takes, and the need to respond defensively. But if the emphasis is solely on this defensive response, then Zionism would be one-dimensional, would perhaps even endanger the spiritual heritage of Judaism. On the other hand, he was also opposed to what may be dubbed as, or characterised as, religious fanaticism. There is always a universal context to Jewish faith that Buber upheld, affirmed, and that we cannot lose sight of that dimension; what in more poetic terms is called the prophetic dimension of Judaism: to be attentive to the widow, to the stranger, to the disinherited members of one's own society, and to those who belong to other societies in which one has a relationship.

That's why Buber very unabashedly referred to Jesus - who was of course born and raised as a Jew - as his 'great brother'. Jesus in some respects captured the prophetic spirit that Buber upheld, and he was not embarrassed to say that. Of course he didn't endorse the Christian view that Jesus was also the Messiah, but simply as a... Jesus as an embodiment of the type of prophetic sensibility: to love one's neighbour, and to love one's enemy is clearly understood by Buber to be a Jewish message, a profoundly Jewish message, and he was true to that. And also within the context of Zionism. In fact, what was called the 'Arab question', or is called the 'Arab question', unfortunately still, is for him ultimately a Jewish question. Just as the 'Jewish question' in Europe was a test of Christian civilisation and its moral resolve and resources, the 'Arab question' is a test of Judaism, and its moral and spiritual resources.

Alan Saunders: Well that's encouraging news. I've been talking to Paul Mendes-Flohr, Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at the University of Chicago, and Emeritus Professor of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Paul Mendes-Flohr, thank you very much indeed for joining us.

Paul Mendes-Flohr: You're most welcome.

Alan Saunders: I hope you're enjoying our series on Jewish philosophy. Of course, we're just touching the tip of the iceberg; but if it sparks further interest on your part, we've got a few articles on our website that you might find interesting. Go to abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone. All the programs in our Jewish philosophy special will be available as they go to air and can be downloaded, or you can read the transcript. In fact, all our past shows are available online if you're keen. Thanks so much for joining me this week. The producer on this series is Kyla Slaven, with special thanks to Connie Tomagra for her excellent work on this program. Charlie McCune mixed the show; I'm Alan Saunders, bye for now.