Turning to the Other. Donovan D. Johnson

447, 889.

      122. Buber, “Afterword,” 213.

      123. Buber, “Afterword,” 213 (translation mine).

      124. Buber, “Afterword,” 214 (translation mine).

      125. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 689.

      126. Buber, “Afterword,” 215; see “Spirit and Body,” 122–23.

      127. Buber, “Nachwort,” 308: this statement was omitted in the English translation; see “Afterword,” 215.

      128. Buber, “Postscript,” 123 (translation mine).

      129. Buber, “My Way to Hasidism,” 59 (translation modified).

      130. Winokuer and Harris, Principles and Practice, 29–32.

      131. Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, 447–48.

      132. Winokuer and Harris, Principles and Practice, 36.

      133. Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, 889.

      134. Ellenberger, “Maladie Créatrice,” 330.

      135. Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, 448, 889.

      136. Buber, “Postscript,” 123.

      137. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 706.

      138. Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, 673; 450.

      139. Buber, “Afterword,” 209 (my translation).

      140. Buber, “Afterword,” 215–16 (my translation).

      141. Buber, “Afterword,” 216 (my translation).

      142. Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, 889–90.

      143. Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, 448–50, 673.

      144. Buber, “Postscript,” 123–24 (my translation).

      145. Ellenberger, Discovery of the Unconscious, 890.

      146. Buber, unpublished motto of Ich und Du, quoted in Horwitz, Buber’s Way, 55.

      147. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 689.

      148. Buber, “How and Why,” 211.

      149. Buber, “How and Why,” 211.

      150. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 689.

      151. Buber, “Replies to My Critics,” 689.

      152. Plato, Letters 341c (translation modified). Friedman points out that this passage was a repeated reference point for Buber, Martin Buber’s Life and Work, 1:311. See Buber, “Religion and Philosophy,” 41.

      153. Buber, “Postscript,” 128.

      154. Buber, “Spirit and Body,” 146.

      155. Buber, “Spirit and Body,” 147.

      156. Buber, “Spirit and Body,” 148.

      Chapter 3

      Buber’s Task Finds its Rhetoric

      1. Buber’s Task: The Imperative to Bear Witness

To bear witness is to testify regarding an experience one has had. In Buber’s case, to bear witness is to testify to the reality of spiritual encounter, of I-Thou encounter, as he first came to know it in his response to reading the testament of the Baal-Shem-Tov. Buber’s testimony to encounter takes written form as his own testament, his public declaration expressing his life stance, his relation with what he has found to be of ultimate importance. The major components of this testament are Buber’s “My Way to Hasidism” and his “History of the Dialogical Principle,” which we have examined above,157 and I and Thou.

Buber makes clear that bearing witness, not abstract thought or argument, is the relevant means of communicating what he is attempting to proclaim. The depths that have opened to him are rooted in the concreteness of his individual human existence.158 Such realities are accessible only by direct apperception, not through abstract concepts, as he himself has stated: “Everything else may be discussed purely speculatively, but not our own existence. . . . Here witness is made.”159 The immediacy of one’s own personal existence requires witness, not discursive reasoning. Accordingly, the reality of dialogical mutuality is not subject to proof but, rather, to bearing witness, and the witness one bears has its effect because it is dialogical, the expression of an I to a Thou. It calls the one to whom witness is borne to witness to it as his or her own immediate apperception: “The existence of mutuality between God and man cannot be proved, just as God’s existence cannot be proved. Yet the one who dares to speak of it bears witness, and calls forth the witness of the one to whom he speaks.”160 Thus, witness is dialogical, for the voice of the witness calls forth its interlocutor’s inner attestation to the reality of which it speaks.

As Grete Schaeder points out, “It was not Buber’s task to transmit a message like the prophets or to admonish and censure in God’s name, but rather to demonstrate that the experience he had and the path he took were accessible to others. He therefore had to find a conceptual language to convey the subtle texture of his nonconceptual experience to make it comprehensible to others.”161 This search became Buber’s rhetorical task.

Buber’s purpose is to bear witness to an experience so that others can know that