The Interhuman and What is Common to All: Martin Buber and Sociology |
| |
Authors: | Maurice Friedman |
| |
Abstract: | Martin Buber was close to sociology and sociologists from his university years on and in 1938 was head of the new Department of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although influenced by Ferdinand Toennies, and George Simmel, he went beyond them in his philosophy of the interhuman from which standpoint he also criticized Max Scheler. Focal social concepts of Buber's are the interhuman_the dialogical relationship between persons that entails inclusion, or imagining the real, making present, and confirmation (compared here with the social psychology of George Herbert Mead); the essential We or common cosmos that each helps to build by speech-with-meaning from his or her unique stance; the distinction between the political principle of government and the social principle of fellowship and social spontaneity; and the philosophy of community that led Buber to a federalistic socialism and the vision of restructuring society into a community of communities. |
| |
Keywords: | |
|
|