false 49409271 33152 551866 0684717255 9780684717258 85 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175729314m/551866.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175729314s/551866.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/551866.I_and_Thou 4.11 656 I & Thou, Martin Buber's classic philosophical work, is among the 20th century's foundational documents of religious ethics. "The close association of the relation to God with the relation to one's fellow-men...is my most essential concern," he explains in the Afterword. Before discussing that relationship, in the book's final chapter, he explains at length the range & ramifications of the ways people treat one another, & the ways they bear themselves in the natural world. "One should beware altogether of understanding the conversation with God...as something that occurs merely apart from or above the everyday," he explains. "God's address to man penetrates the events in all our lives & all the events in the world around us, everything biographical & everything historical, & turns it into instruction, into demands for you & me." Throughout I & Thou, he argues for an ethic that doesn't use other people (or books, or trees, or God), & doesn't consider them objects of one's own personal experience. Instead, he writes, we must learn to consider everything around us as "You" speaking to "me," & requiring a response. His dense arguments can be rough going at times, but Walter Kaufmann's definitive 1970 translation contains hundreds of helpful footnotes providing Buber's own explanations of the book's most difficult passages.--Michael Joseph Gross]]> 29357 4.11 1008 112 14824 4.07 6721 465 1958 0 0 false Sun Mar 15 21:50:12 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 15 21:50:25 -0700 2009