"Martin Buber was ceaselessly driving throughout all his richly varied life and was never self-satisfied or complacement," Walter A. Kaufmann, professor of philosophy at Princeton University said yesterday in his keynote address at a symposium held in honor of Buber's hundredth birthday.
Buber, who was a religious existentialist and a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, until his death in 1965, considered "I and Thou" his most important book. Kaufmann, who recently translated the work, said it is "flawed."
Its style is "affected," Kaufmann continued, "rather than being ruthlessly honest."
The book's "central dichotomy of I-thou and I-it would not have stood up to Buber's scrutiny," if he had not "mistaken intense emotion for revelation," Kaufmann said.
Kaufmann, who was a graduate student at Harvard, has written widely on philosophy, religion, and poetry. His work includes the definitive translation of many of Nietzsche's works, original poetry and many philosophical essays.
The symposium, which drew an overflow crowd to Science Center D, was sponsored jointly by the Harvard and MIT Hillels with the assistance of the Harvard Center for the Study fo World Religion. It included discussion sessions on the impact and relevance of Buber's thought and work.
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