What Kind of God Does Buber’s “I-Thou” Offer to the World: An Introduction to Buber’s Religious Thought^†

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

        This is a very engaging and significant essay. Most importantly, it argues that the religious nuances of Buber's concept of the "I-Thou" are foundational for his use of that concept. This contention is designed to resist the notion that Buber's phrase mostly denoted nothing more than a mode of interpersonal and social engagement. As the author ably argues, the "I-Thou" relationship for Buber was a function of his understanding of the divine. The author also convincingly shows how this understanding was rooted in Buber's (critical) appropriation of the Hasidic tradition.

            The author's mastery of the secondary literature is thorough and the critiques of that literature are convincing.

             The argument is remarkably lucid, with each point clearly articulated, and the relationships among the sub-claims made transparent. 

             My only slight suggestion is that more attention could have been given to the older theological interpretations of Buber that were current in the last mid-century.

Author Response

Thanks for investing the time in reading this article and for the positive review.

The first anonymous reader's comment is not really a requirement to correct anything in the article. He/she only wrote at the end that he/she would have been happy to see in the article also a chapter dealing with scholars who dealt with Buber's theology in the past.

But in fact there are almost no such researchers, and of the few who dealt with it, they were mentioned in the article directly or indirectly.
In any case, such a review in my article would increase the volume of the article to the dimensions of an entire book - and therefore, although I understand what motivated the writer of the comment to say this, there is actually no place for it in this article.

With thanks,

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper based on a Hebrew vesion published as an appendix to the new Hebrew translation of I and Thou. I am sure that it is a very important contribution to the understanding of Buber's dialogical religiosity that so many readers during the last hundred years since the first publication of        I and Thou could not succeed to explain. The author who is well known with many of Buber's critics delved beyond the formalistic discussions concerning the religious meaning of the Buberian dialogue by using original daily examples together with  some of the most important examples that one can find among the various writings of Buber. By this way the author of this paper succeeds to give his readers better insights concerning Buber's dialogical religiosity that so many intellectuals did not perceive and could not accept. I think that from the later point of view this article is a kind of achievement among the numerous studies and articles on this topic.

I fully recommend to accept this article in present form.

Sincerely

Author Response

Many thanks for investing the time in reading this article - and for the the positive review.