Kim Gentes

“Good and Evil” is a short, but insightful philosophical work by Martin Buber.  The book is primarily involved with defining evil, exploring its origins and metaphors (across ancient scripture and myth) and understanding how it frames the struggle of man to become what God has called him to be. While the book is called Good and Evil, Buber spends very little time discussing good and, in fact, frames good only by giving a comprehensive understanding of its counterpart- evil.  From that perspective, Buber seeks to develop his main points of the two forces.

The book is broken in two sections. The first section examines five Psalms which deal mainly with the human plight of anguish and descending frustration in a world in which the wicked seem to prosper and righteous fail to win the day. The second section is a combination of both a dissection on the biblical account of the “fall” of man in the garden of Eden (and also the first active sin of Cain’s murder of his brother Abel) and an examination of the ancient Iranian/Zarathustrian myths that explore the origins of evil.

Buber’s contention builds through his exploration of evil at these various main points:

1. Evil is indecision to not act towards God and his desires. That is, good is decision made towards God’s desires, while evil is indecision, not polarized opposite good. Yet evil (as indecision) inevitably leads to a direction away from God.[1]
2. Evil action is dependent, first, on knowledge of evil. This acquisition of knowledge of evil happened as “pre-evil” in the garden (Adam and Eve), and once acquired manifests itself as evil actions since then (as in Cain’s murder of Abel).[2]
3. The core “sin” of evil is the lie.[3]
4. Evil is a denial of the true self and, in effect, is a pledge of the soul towards the lie.[4]
5. Evil is specific activity of mind towards one-self in which a person claims to be their own creator.[5]

During Buber’s exploration of evil he generates an outline, by circumspection, of what “good” is.  But his thoughts about good become a cogent synthesis in the final sections of the short book, where we encounter a combination of philosophical and theological thoughts that highlight Buber’s brilliance.

Buber infers, through negation, that good is staying focused and purposefully moving in the direction of God’s divine vision of your reality of who He created you to be, when he says

Phantasy... God pronounces evil because it distracts from His divinely given reality...[6]

All of Buber’s thoughts begin to rush like streams into one mighty river of thought in the last pages of his book, where his thoughts about human meaning and life surge off the pages. He concludes that man’s very life depends on God’s revelation to him, from which man can respond to move towards God by service which reflects and confirms that reason to which God created the man. God’s revelation, man’s service as authentication of that revelation, and the reiteration (via confirmation) back to the man is the perpetual cycle in which humans move in the right direction towards the creation God intended them to be.  This is summed up beautifully in these final two quotes from the last chapter.

Man as man is an audacity of life, undetermined and unfixed; he therefore requires confirmation, and he can naturally only receive this as individual man, in that others and he himself confirm him in his being-this-man. Again and again the Yes must be spoken to him, from the look of the confidant and from the stirrings of his own heart, to liberate him from the dread of abandonment, which is a foretaste of death.[7]

and

Every ethos has its original in a revelation, whether or not it is still aware of and obedient to it; and every revelation is revelation of human service to the goal of creation, in which service man authenticates himself. Without authentication, that is, without setting off upon and keeping to the One direction, as far as he is able, quantum satis, man certainly has what he calls life, even the life of the soul, even the life of the spirit, in all freedom and fruitfulness, all standing and status- existence there is none for him without it.[8]

This is a brilliant book by an obviously brilliant mind. It may require slower reading to drink the concepts in here, but it is well worth the time.

Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/ABnmuP

Review by Kim Gentes

[1] Buber, Martin (1952). Good and Evil (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall 1992), Page 134

[2] Ibid., Page 82

[3] Ibid., Page 7

[4] Ibid., Page 113

[5] Ibid., Page 110

[6] Ibid., Page 126

[7] Ibid., Page 136

[8] Ibid., Page 142