In the past, I would post only book reviews pertinent to worship, music in the local church, or general Christian leadership and discipleship. Recently, I've been studying many more general topics as well, such as history, economics and scientific thought, some of which end up as reviews here as well.
Monday, February 27, 2012 at 12:38PM 
“I and Thou” is a translated work, originally in German, written by author, scholar and professor Martin Buber. Explaining and exploring this book in a review would be very difficult as an exercise of structure, since the book is not, in any sense, a structured narrative. It is actually a kind of artful, linguistic treatise, the purpose of which seems to be to reveal the folly of language itself (and thought to some degree) to properly frame reality. Buber’s main contention is that our language and our modern world drive us from the childlike assumption of relationship (the I and Thou) to the “mature” and felonious way of life that objectifies myself (I), people (others) and the world into the frame of I and It. Changing the Thou to an It, according to Buber, is done through many ways- but all of them break the powerful reality that the true Thou (God) intended. According to the author, we are meant to see the world through relational connections, not simply as objects and experiences.
As experience, the world belongs to the primary word I-It. The primary word I-Thou establishes the world of relation.[1]
More than any other part of the book, these two sentences scope the understanding of the entire text. I/It is a way to think about the world as objects and components. I/Thou is a way to think about the world that is relational. One compartmentalizes and dehumanizes others (I/It), the other makes everything possible and valuable by relation and connection not assignment of value.
By way of example, history is one way in which Thou changes to It. Buber clarifies that when we objectify (even living things) to describe them as details in the past, we remove them as living beings from our relational language (and hence our responsibility of personal direct relationship) to them. I and Thou is about the differentiation we place in understanding things as "it" and real beings as "thou", both of which are outside of "I". Everything outside of "I" is a way of seeing the world and defining both the "thou" and "it" as well as the "I". The whole concept sounds silly as I write it here, but becomes clear about 40 pages in to his book. For me, the writing is prose/poetry that helps extract us from the trappings of language that we are blind to. Think of Buber's challenge to writing this book-- imagine trying to help people see something that causes assumptions from the use of language. But in order to communicate the fact that language is problematic (or perhaps assumptive) in how we see the world, Buber must use language (the book) to deconstruct how people see their world. Buber does this with language (long before postmodernism had stolen this trick from the rationalists, believe it or not)- he doesn't use argument to deconstruct our assumptions- he uses writing style itself. So in using language (style) to deconstruct language (understanding) he accomplishes a dual purpose of deconstructing and constructing his new (though, not new, but just always missed due to our worldview) clarity to the characters of "I", "thou" and "it". By the time you get into the book deep enough to see his core concepts flourish into fully developed "results" you get some of the most riveting statements, such as this four sentence deluge of brilliance--
Feelings are "entertained": love comes to pass. Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. That is no metaphor, but the actual truth. Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its “content,” its object; but love is between I and Thou.[2]
The problem is, you can't get to that statement until you pass through Buber’s prerequisite points made through the first 40 pages of his book. I am learning a ton just reading this book, but it is likely I will have to re-read it a few times to start to mine its treasures well.
Still, the book contains dozens of succinct and poignant truths, the chief among them may be:
Love is responsibility of an I for a Thou.[3]
Another particularly astute observation he makes about all humanity
(This “fancy” does not in the least involve, however, a “giving of life to the universe”: it is-the instinct to make everything into Thou, to give relation to the universe, the instinct which completes out of its own richness the living effective action when a mere copy or symbol of it is given in what is over against him.)[4]
Speaking of infants/unborn children in the womb, Buber brilliantly explores their psychological reality. Here we see the idea that people try to create I and Thou relationships out of everything in life from the earliest age, because our first connection in existence is the I/Thou with the womb and person of our mother. Perhaps a bit Freudian, but ultimately a brilliant perception.
But my favorite parts of the book are that you can actually find practical nuggets of help for real life. This seemed surprising in such a combination of poetic, philosophical meanderings. One of my favorite quotes of this type is on marriage where Buber says:
Marriage, for instance, will never be given new life except by that out of which true marriage always arises, the revealing by two people of the Thou to one another.[5]
My final quotation is in the very practical ground of community, where Buber seems to echo another great thinker in the last century.
It is not the periphery, the community, that comes first, but the radii, the common quality of relation with the Centre. This alone guarantees the authentic existence of the community.[6]
This sounds very much like Bonhoeffer's idea of a wish-dream in community. Here Buber is saying that true community exists only when the common quality of relation is defined in the Centre. That Centre (God) itself defines the arc of community. Community doesn't define God, He defines it and gives it reality.
Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/zDbBff
Review by Kim Gentes
[1] Buber, Martin (1934). I and Thou translated by Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958) Kindle Edition, Location 187
buber, i and thou, martin buber, philosophy, theology in Apologetics, Book Review, Mystic, Reconciliation, Theology Monday, February 27, 2012 at 10:42AM 
“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:
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
buber, christian, good and evil, martin buber, philosophy, poetry, theology, writer in Allegory, Book Review, Church, Mystic, Resource, Theology