Turning to the Other: Martin Buber’s Call to Dialogue in I and Thou

by Donovan D. Johnson

Publisher:

Wipf and Stock

, 2020

Overview

I and Thou is a summons calling us to dialogue today. Like the call Buber himself received, the book invites us to encounter the Other, our counterparts both human and eternal. Buber’s spiritual awakening, his engagement with his people and his times, his wide reading, and his grief are contexts that open up this call to us to join with him in the fullness of a life of dialogue. If we follow Buber into his study, into the struggle of his inner life, into his achievement of dialogical existence--he opens up the wonders of I and Thou to us as his testament and his call to us to turn to dialogue, and he shows us the path to the fulfillment of that life. This book ushers us to that place.

Praise for Turning to the Other

“This is an authentic dialogue with Martin Buber’s philosophical and theological—perhaps prophetic—way in the world. Johnson offers a wise, learned, intimate, and reader-friendly exposition of Buber’s spiritual journey.”

—Dan Avnon, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem



“Donovan Johnson’s book demonstrates how Buber’s thinking emerged from, and developed in response to, his life experiences and relationships. . . . Readers will come away with a greater appreciation of Buber’s I and Thou, and for the man who wrote this classic work.”

—Bruce Kadden, Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Beth El, Tacoma, Washington



“Donovan Johnson, from his opening chapter, leads the reader into a rich encounter with one of the seminal books and noteworthy sages of our time. Besides providing numerous insights into how Martin Buber’s life-experience affected his Jewish religious philosophy, Johnson’s incisive dialogue with Buber will inspire hope in the hearts of all who turn and await expectantly the universal Presence.”

—Douglas E. Oakman, Pacific Lutheran University



“When people ask me, ‘What signs point to a deepening, healthy relationship?,’ we talk about the power of dialogue to develop trust, vulnerability, and intimacy. This book presents Martin Buber’s inner struggle as his path to just such a deepening, his breakthrough to the dialogical life as expressed in I and Thou. Turning to the Other shows how Buber’s life and his book together invite us to the path of wholeness in relating to the Other. As such, it is thoughtful, insightful, and inspiring!”

—Mary Ann Johnson, pastor, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America



“Too often Buber is presented simply as the man who held his transcendental relationship with God with unerring consistency. But to follow Johnson’s Buber is to see the attractiveness of the man who was generous in embracing human relationships and readily explored their range and complexity. This book makes clear that Buber’s engagement with ideas across the globe and his development of the ‘philosophy of dialogue’ were inseparable from his personal relations as a colleague, fervent husband, and bereaved friend.”

—Florence Sandler, University of Puget Sound

Product Details

• Title: Turning to the Other: Martin Buber’s Call to Dialogue in I and Thou
• Author: Donovan D. Johnson
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Print Publication Date: 2020
• Logos Release Date: 2020
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781532699153, 9781532699139, 9781532699146, 1532699158, 1532699131, 153269914X
• Resource ID: LLS:9781532699153
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T14:58:32Z

About the Author

Donovan Johnson has an MDiv from Trinity Divinity School and studied religion at the University of Tübingen. He received a PhD in literature at the University of California at Irvine and has taught world religions and global humanities in California and Washington State. Like Buber, he developed dialogue as his mode of instruction. He is an avid hiker, although, unlike Buber, his locale is the Cascades of the Western United States, not the Dolomites.