FILOZOFIA
Roc. 78, 2023, c. 7
DOI: https://doi.Org/10.31577/filozofia.2023.78.7.4
THROUGH COMMUNICATION TO THE COMMUNITY:
THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MARTIN BUBER'S
PHILOSOPHY OF ART
JAN MOTAL, Masaryk University, Faculty of Social Studies, Department of Media Studies and
Journalism, Brno, Czech Republic
M O T A L , J.: Through Communication to the Community: The Political
Implications of Martin Buber's Philosophy of Art
FILOZOFIA, 78, 2023, No 7, pp. 564 - 577
This article explores Buber's philosophy of art, correlating it with his early
emphasis on individual realization, as well as his dialogical philosophy as
articulated in / and Thou and in his fheopolitical perspectives. The study posits
that Buber perceives artistic creation as a conduit for communication with
noumenal reality, mirroring the structure of interpersonal dialogue.
Consequently, artistic creation is proposed as a blueprint for fostering an organic
community or building the divine kingdom on Earth. The article integrates Adir
Cohen's examination of Buber's aesthetics and Samuel Brody's theopolitical
analysis, aiming to interweave these perspectives in a comprehensive interpretation
of Buber's philosophy of art.
Keywords: Aesthetics - Philosophy of art - Communication - Dialogue - Politics -
Anthropology
I.
Martin Buber did not develop any comprehensive philosophy of art. This is quite
surprising as he was - especially during his youth - deeply interested in art. He wrote
extensively about art in his early essays, especially in Daniel (MBW I, 183 - 245) and
Events and Encounters {MBW I, 247 - 276).1
His special focus on drama brought him
to formulate some theoretical concepts in critical reviews and essays on dramaturgy and
scenography. In his texts on fine arts, he reflected on the interaction of colours and form.
He wrote several poems and dramatic fragments. With Emil Strauss, Jakob Hegner and
Paul Claudel, he founded Hellerau Dramatic Union for producing performances in
1
For the sake of simplicity, I include bibliographical references to the cited Buber texts directly in
the latest edition of Buber's Collected Writings published by Giitersloher Verlagshaus under the
abbreviation MBW, followed by the volume designation. I always give the reference where a
particular text is located at the first mention of it.
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Hellerau Playhouse; Buber was involved as a dramaturgist in the production of
Claudel's L 'Annoncefaite aMarie at the place (Friedman 1981,165). Furthermore, we
should hardly pass over the fact that in 1904 he received a doctoral degree not only in
philosophy but in Kunstgeschichte as well.
However, after the publication of / and Thou (MBWTV, 37 - 109) in 1923, his
theoretical interest in art ceased, or rather it was drowned out by his other projects dialogical
philosophy and biblical studies. The traditional explanation of this Kehre is
that his early mystical and more individualistic years were renounced after the crisis of
the First World War in favour of the communitarian, dialogical philosophy. In accord
with Israel Koren, I understand this post-war transformation not as a turn, but a shift in
emphasis (Koren 2002). There is a continuum between Daniel and / and Thou that
makes it possible to reconstruct Buber's philosophy of art without having to consider
his early work as "surpassed" by his later one.
I want to offer such a holistic reconstruction based on the assumption that Buber's
pre-war and post-war works are intrinsically related. This is, of course, an interpretive
attempt building on previous efforts to explore Buber's aesthetics. I especially drew on
Adir Cohen's research, in which he elaborated on the concept of the non-intentional
objectivity of form (Cohen 1980). I also build on Marcia Allentuck's study in which she
showed Buber's conception of productivity and creativity in art (Allentuck 1971). The
rather fragmentary literature on Buber's philosophy of art includes, of course, several
other contributions (Hammer 1967, Biswas 1996, Scott 2017, Atlas 2019), but none of
them presents an ontology of the artwork in its complexity. My approach aims to
reconstruct Buber's philosophy of art by reading his early texts with an understanding
of his later development.
As Samuel Hayim Brody has shown, Buber's work is hardly aimed merely towards
the problem of building community, but it involves a profound critique of power
coupled with a theopolitical ideal as well (Brody 2018). Therefore, I consider it
important to reconstruct Buber's philosophy of art not only in relation to his notion of
dialogue, but also to his political vision.
That is why I methodologically neglect the religious dimension of the work, e.g.,
Buber's notion of symbol. This is not because I don't consider this aspect important but
it would unduly burden my argument given the limited space I have for it. Let this
be a call to further develop Martin Buber's legacy in the philosophy of art.
II.
In his early period, Buber was strongly influenced by Lebensphilosophie, which he came
to primarily through Friedrich Nietzsche (Mendes-Flohr 2001). Although he later
downplayed this influence, it is evident in the structure and content of his seminal work
Filozofia 78, 7 565
of the pre-World War I period, Daniel (MBWI, 183 - 246). His early texts can be read
as elaborations of the theme of individuation (Verwirklichung) and the becoming
(Bildung) of the man-creator (Schöpfer), whose thoughts and actions form a unity in
necessity (Notwendigkeit).2
In Daniel, he presents this theory, reflected in his interest in
mysticism and art. In the latter, he locates the creative dimension of the sovereign,
integrated and individuated human ("The artist as the true realizing, self-forgetful man
is opposed by the self-conscious producer," Allentuck 1971, 3).
This can be well demonstrated in Buber's essay "Heroes" (MBW I, 257 - 261)
from his volume Events and Encounters, written immediately after Daniel was
published.3
He uses the work of writers Gerhart Hauptmann and Frank Wedekind to
show that "the acclaimed poets of the time have forgotten their vocation" because they
present heroes as "removed from the sphere of their irrational wholeness" and make
them too intelligible (by placing their actions in causal or psychological contexts) (MBW
I, 257 - 261). In the essay, Buber presents the hero as a type of human being who
combines diversity, corporeality, and unity of experience (Erlebnis). "The hero is a
revelation of wholeness," Buber writes. As a "central," i.e., coherent, united personality
acting out of necessity, the hero is a measure of the human, a testament to what is in
every human being. The poet is then to "reanimate the heroic miracle" or to show
heroism not as an exception but as a necessity that is meant to reach and move the viewer
or reader (MBWI, 260 - 261).4
The starting point of my reconstruction of Buber's philosophy of art, in line with
the existentialism of the early period, was, therefore, the creative act. However, it hardly
has to be merely a proof of genius but to reflect the integrity and unity of the human
2
The early texts I am referring to here are primarily the essays collected in the first volume of
collected writings (MBW I) and the pre-war texts on art (MBW VII), which were written roughly in
the period before I and Thou (i.e. 1900 - 1923).
3
Buber intended to write a sequel to Daniel, and in 1913 he even told Max Brod about his
preliminary work on this book. Events and Encounters is a kind of sketch of a book that was never
written - but it does show that Buber did not consider the theme of unification in Daniel to be
finished and intended to develop it further (MBW I, 321 - 327). The importance of the arts in this
case is considerable - in Daniel Buber focuses on drama, and in Events and Encounters on dance,
poetry, and fine art. In all cases, art is for him not only an illustration of his philosophical ideas, but
also to some extent a source.
4
In 1924, speaking about the German writer Hermann Stehr, Buber claimed that the good literature
narrates the timeless: "...the event, without losing its density and reliability, becomes translucent
and allows the other, the non-progressing, to be seen in its entire course....But the important thing
is that it also teaches us anew the power from which the glory shines forth: not from the astonishing
power of seclusion - it only leads to the magic of darkness - but from the far more astonishing power
of love for the world, which is wonderful beyond all comprehension. The kingdom is in our midst"
(MBW I, 300). This quotation vividly shows how Buber integrated mystical elements into his
philosophy not in order to Platonically remove man from the world, but on the contrary to integrate
them more deeply by art showing it hidden unity.
566
personality, including its corporality - as Buber writes in his essay on the dancer called
"Brother Body" (MBWI, 261 - 266). Sarah Scott explains:
Artists are necessary both to model creativity and to show the people their
own beauty so that they can recognize their potential. Exposure to art will
train people to see with an artist's eye, which in turn will enable them to create
their own selves as works of art (Scott 2017, 116).
Unity was a prominent theme for Buber throughout his life. It can be argued (and it is a
view that I am adapting in this essay) that it is unity as the acquisition of form (whether
of the individual, the community, or the work of art) that is the backbone of his
philosophical thought. This allows us to integrate his early work with the later. Even if
Buber was interested in religion, he was so because he sought the unity of life and
thought, as in the afterword of his book Speeches and Parables of Chuang-Tse (MBW
II, 3, 101 - 125).5
Buber develops his theory of the central man until / and Thou, in which he shifts
the centre of gravity of his interest to the "interpersonal." However, the theme of
centrality does not disappear, but rather it shifts from the human interior to the space
between humans, between human and the world, between human and God, and between
human and the work of art.
This "centre" should hardly be understood in an Aristotelian way; it is not an act
of "second nature" corresponding to the wisdom acquired for peace and precision of
action. For Buber, centrality is the concentration of all the elements of human life around
the axis of the personality, as he explains in Daniel (MBW I, 183 - 191). It is the
overcoming of mere "possibility" (voluntarism) to live in "necessity" where the personal
desires dissolve in the precise movement of a unified personality.
This hardly means that early Buber conceived art in a pure individual manner. As
he writes in Speeches and Parables of Chuang-Tse, the central person does not create
in the sense of "innovation"; her life is marked by eternal change and unity in spirit
(with others). By anchoring herself in a living tradition, she thus realizes a living
community (MBW II, 3, 107 - 108).
Even during the "mystical" period, Buber differs from those approaches that
understand the artwork as the self-expression of the artist. The process of formation has
an "objective" character - it hardly expresses the inner processes or experiences of the
creator because even experience (as Erlebnis) has its "objective" structure. It manifests
the universally human, the unity of multiplicity, the necessity of action, and the principle
of becoming.
5
Buber also published this text separately as The Teaching of the Tao.
Filozofia 78, 7 567
Therefore, it should be hardly surprising that Buber's first dialogical statement was
made during his student years, as Friedman remarks (Friedman, 333). In an essay on the
Jewish impressionist painter Lesser Ury, Buber wrote: "The thing is effect [Wirkung],
not substance. Define it, and you take away its life. The most personal rests in the
relationship to the other" (MBW VII, 492). Ury's colouristic condensation is important
for Buber because it organically integrates the depicted phenomena so they can keep
their relationships. The "extra-substantiality" (aufierinhaltlich) of art means the
wholeness and unity of the work, which "can be only seen and felt, hardly discussed"
(MBW VII, 494). Under the surface of youthful romanticism, Buber formulates the
fundamental principles of his philosophy of art: unity, objectivity, and relationality
(dialogue).
III.
After the First World War, Buber shifted the emphasis of his philosophy from the
individual unifying experience to the unifying relationship. However, from his early
years Buber distinguished between intuitive experience (Erlebnis) and the cumulative
experience of the phenomenal world (Erfahrung), even if the specific conceptions of
these concepts varied over time (Wolfson 1989). As Martina Urban remarks, this
difference mirrors the structuralist distinction between parole and langue, in Buber's
case, between (ecstatic) speech and (shared) language (Urban 2006, 539). The shift
from individual to interhuman was a shift from speech to language as an objective
form, as well.
To understand the nature of this "objectivity," we need to look at how the two
"basic words" I-Thou and I-It relate to reality. Buber's epistemology was similar to
Kant's in the sense that he distinguished noumenal and phenomenal truth, as Steven T.
Katz has shown.6
The twofold appearance of the world in I-Thou and I-It relation
resembles this structure of reality (Katz 1983, 1 - 51). But for Buber, this twofoldness
"is a way of relating and not an act of judgment in consciousness, as in Kant" (Perlman
1990,98). As Lawrence Perlman argues in his critique of Katz's essay, Buber and Kant
differ. Buber rejects the idea "that relation is a form of knowledge via self-appropriation
and therefore of construction" because "[fjhere are no laws of understanding which
provide objective connections in consciousness" (ibidem). Yet, as Katz explains in his
reply to Perlman, the structural difference between noumenal and phenomenal reality
correlates with two basic words I-Thou and I-It and their respective epistemology.
This neo-Kantian structure is evident in Buber's early theatre criticism. In The
Three Novelli's Roles (MBW VII, 418 - 424), he presents an idea that acting can be done
6
Sarah Scott, among others, emphasises the fruitfulness of employing the Kantian point of view for
interpreting Buber (Scott 2017, 113).
568
in a twofold manner: the expressionist (Ausdruck) acting is based on skilful observation,
recording and imitation of the movements; acting as a statement (Äußerung) is based on
the inner character and the corresponding system of its necessary manifestations (MBW
VII, 418 - 424). This dichotomy corresponds exactly to the anthropology presented in
the essay Daniel - the noumenal can only be achieved through a unified personality or
an inner transformation leading to the full development of the personality. Everything
"accidental" is eliminated; man acts in accordance with being.
Buber conceives of the epistemology of the noumenal differently in his mature
philosophy. In his text "On Man and His Image-Work" (MBW XII, 449 - 463) written
in 1955, he employs a small letter "x" to denote noumenal reality, which can be reached
via a kind of "dialogical epoche." The principle is as follows.
Sensual perception transforms phenomena into categories - objects. Therefore,
when the person tries to grasp the subject of perception in its independence, the object
is transformed into a non-object. Buber explains that it becomes a communication
partner (we have no knowledge about it, we must ask it). This non-object - x - liberated
from all the sensual attributes which the person perceives (Kantian "an sich") is
impossible to imagine. However, this x is precisely what makes any sensual encounter
possible: "[f]or in all the world of the senses there is not a single trait that does not stem
from encounters, that does not derive from the participation of the x in the encounter"
(MBWXII, 456).
In the following story about an encounter with a linden tree he presents how the
process of this "dialogical epoche" works:
the linden waited for me to green itself, so nature, the unperceived, the xnature,
formerly waited for living beings to arise, through whose encountering
perception the green, the soft, the warm, the sense-conditioned qualities come
into the world (MBW XII, 457).7
Buber claims that the artist has just such an encounter with x, based on which he forms
the work. Although the necessity of the unity of the artist's personality as a condition of
creation is not denied here, the key is the dialogue with x. The artist has access to
noumenal reality because he leaves the world as objects and approaches it as a partner.
Buber shifts the emphasis - from the individual to what emerges in communication.
As Urban implies, this can be understood as the shift from an ecstatic speech
overriding the social context towards language as the collective instrument of
communication. In this, the position of the ecstatic artist is different from the person
7
It is noteworthy how extensively Buber uses natural phenomena to explain his dialogical principles
- this emphasises that the dialogical partner can be any part of the world we inhabit.
Filozofia 78, 7 569
who shapes her work based on a dialogue with the object of her interest rather than
relying on immediate intuition. After his Kehre, Buber abandons the quite solipsist
Nietzschean conception of the artist as a sovereign author and replaces it with more
dialogical and communal point of view. At the same time, this shift corresponds to a
shift in emphasis from immediate experience (Erlebnis) to the long-term groping and
shaping of form (Erfahrung).
IV.
If art is hardly a self-expression, a record of sensual perception or a mere imitation, what
is it? As Adir Cohen explains, Buber conceives art from a twofold point of view: a) it is
the result of the artist's encounter with a form, and b) the artist realizes the latent form
(Cohen 1980). In both cases the artist dwells in solitude, although she is not carrying
out her own unity in her acts, but she is an active relation to some object - the noumenal
reality is grasped as a partner in communication, as Buber explains ml and Thou:
That is the eternal origin of art, that a human being is confronted with form
which desires to become a work through him. It is not an outgrowth of his
soul, but an apparition that approaches it and demands the active power from
it. It depends on an act of being on the part of the human being: if he performs
it, if he speaks the basic word with his being to the appearing form then the
active power flows, the work comes into being (MBWTV, 43).
An artistic creation is hardly creation ex nihilo or copying reality; it is an outcome of
the experience (Erfahrung) with "the other." The noumenal reality is presented in a
latent form which is "delivered" by the artist, not as it is in Plato's Ion from gods or in
an ecstatic act as in early Buber's years: "The structure does not stand in a world of
gods, but in this great world of human beings. It is indeed 'there,' even if no human eye
visits it; but it sleeps" (MBW TV, 61). This is why it is a distinctly Gestalt conception,
rather than an existential one (which would correspond to Buber's pre-war thinking).
But the dialogical character of art hardly involves only an artist; the perception of
the artwork by a spectator is dialogical as well. In Zwiesprache (MBW TV, 112 - 150)
Buber writes:
all art is essentially dialogical from its origin: .. .all music calls to an ear that
is not the musician's own, all painting to an eye that is not the painter's own,
architecture also to a step that modifies the building, and...they all tell the
recipient something that can only be said in this one language (not a "feeling,"
but a perceived secret)... (MBW TV, 136).
570
The artwork itself can therefore be understood as an event rather than an artefact; an
event of form, which is, on the one hand, an event of the artist's encounter with form,
on the other hand an encounter of the viewer with the form modelled by the artist; it
follows, among other things, that in Buber's conception the artwork is not an event of
the viewer's encounter with the artist.
Adir Cohen proposes to conceive of this as a non-intentional objectivity ofform
that is not personal - the creative act requires a) partnership, and b) a relationship of
reciprocity (Cohen 1980, 60). In this, the artist repeats the creative act, or allows
noumenal reality to become phenomenal - and she is reflected in her work (as I will
show below), but only to the extent that the pre-arranged form allows.
At first sight, this objectivity of form may remind us of Plato's discussion of artistic
inspiration in Ion. But there is a fundamental - ontological - difference between Plato
and Buber. For the latter, there is no universally valid space of ideas or "ideal objects,"
only particular experience (Erfahrung) in a relation.
As Evyatar Varman explains, Buber hardly shares Plato's concept of an
independent mind, but rather he conceives the human being as a bodily being connected
to this primal reality via the relationship between child (I) and mother (Thou) (Varman
2023). Hammer writes: "Art, in Buber's view, rather than being a matter merely of the
symbolic function, is a basic capacity for meeting the world" (Hammer 1967, 6).
In his speech on Helmar Lerski (see "Rede zur Eröffnung der Ausstellung im
'Bezalel,'" MBW VII, 505 - 507), a pioneer of modern photography known for his
significant work with light and shadow contrasts, Buber underscores that the
photographer does not create the object through light manipulation. Rather, the
photographer serves as a witness to the phenomenon's emergence, using light to help us
"see" things, not "produce" them (MBW VII, 505).
To illustrate this point, Lerski's Metamorphosis serves as an enlightening example.
This photographic series, depicting the same face in various lights, demonstrates how
light can reveal different aspects of a single object. As Buber points out, the play of light
unearths a myriad of "secret possibilities that rest behind the factuality of the face"
(ibidem). Here, the artist does not unveil the object's essence but unravels connections
to diverse human forms, arguably even archetypes.
The absence of an "object to imitate" is of crucial importance. The objectivity of
the artwork lies in the intricate network of connections and the wholeness of facets tied
to the experience of other humans. This complexity forms the essence of the artist's
"birth-giving" to the object; it allows the object to resonate with humanity in its entirety
through its distinctiveness and presence.
Filozofia 78, 7 571
For Buber, the objectivity of the dialogical partner is based on the unavoidable
material - the sensual relation between I and You. In "On Man and His Image-Work"
he writes:
Even when I walk in the desert and nowhere does a form present itself to my
eye, even when a striking noise hits my ear, binding and limiting, linking and
rhythmising, the becoming of a shaped unity still takes place in my perception.
The truer, the more existentially reliable it is, the more the observation is
transformed into a viewpoint in all areas of the senses. Looking is figurative
fidelity to the unknown, which does its work in cooperation with it. It is
fidelity not to the appearance, but to being - the inaccessible with which we
deal (MBWXII, 457).
That is how the form is dependent both on the perceiver and the x-object so that both
impress themselves on the object - the perceived partner. This is the mechanism of the
"between" (das Zwischenmenschliche), which is for Buber the fundament of both
interpersonal dialogue and community (MBW IV, 212 - 228). In every true creation of
a form (e.g. in art) humans reiterate the dialogical process of interpersonal
communication and the constitutive principle of community. That is what Buber
understands as the encounter.
V.
The artwork is not merely an encounter with form but also an interaction with the world,
brought to life by the form. It further extends to the act of recreation and the communal
character of form engaging other individuals. Despite the solitary nature of the artistic
process, the artist does not create "of herself." As Buber's analysis of the photographic
series indicates, the very presence of an archetypal level implies that the artist creates
within a particular culture, and she draw the archetypal structure from the unity of spirit
and life (Cohen 1980).
Buber replicates the traditional German distinction between civilization and
culture, wherein he defines culture as the national or social "spirit" that is manifested as
a life system. He articulates this idea in the statement, "[t]he common shaping of a
society that comes from the pairing of the communal spirit and the communal life of the
same society, this is culture" (MBW XI, 2, 52). Thus, his perspective underscores that
the artist creates from within the intricate matrix of this communal spirit and life.
In the essay "On the Nature of Culture" (MBWXI, 2, 42 - 58), Buber suggests that
in "disjointed" historical eras like the Renaissance, artwork was removed from the
"spiritual" context of the culture, transforming it into an early capitalist enterprise's
technical problem (MBWXI, 2,46).
572
Although discussing the Renaissance, he alludes to an issue he later regrettably
does not explore further - the dilemma of artistic creation in modern times and under
capitalism. According to Buber, our socio-economical system disrupts the dialogical
relationship by mechanization and commodification of the artistic creation, dissolving
social and interpersonal relations and reshaping reality based on rationalization and
economic efficiency.
Furthermore, Buber does not suggest how art can overcome these conditions, for
instance, by employing the strategies of cooperative artistic communities over highly
bureaucratized institutions such as art colleges or large theatres.
As Buber explains, artistic creation is a cultural activity, a manifestation of the
artist's life system. Under the disjointed conditions, artistic creation is void; the
creative instinct alone does not fulfil the creator's authentic existence (Cohen 1980,
60 - 61). As Cohen states, an individual artist may not create culture, but her work
embodies a non-intentional objectivity of form that encapsulates the spirit of culture
as a life system. Is this kind of artwork possible under conditions of highly rationalized
capitalist production?
The authentic artists embody a dual community - by adopting a social stance
towards the world and by embedding themselves and their culture, as a life system, into
their work. As Allentuck remarks, Buber considers "aesthetic understanding" a
prerequisite for any true human relation (Allentuck 1971, 4). Hence, the artist creates
the potential for individuals to connect through the work, because the culture that
facilitated its creation unites them. Regardless of the conditions under which this is
possible, for Buber, artistic creation itself represents the possibility of overcoming the
social crisis. That is why art was a crucial component of Buber's cultural Zionism
(Schmidt 2003). Consequently, we arrive at the pivotal query - the political significance
of artistic creation.
VI.
In my introduction I mentioned the fact that despite Buber's intense interest in art, both
theoretically and practically, this interest is rather neglected. The situation is similar with
his political thought, as Brody has shown (Brody 2017, 2). I suggest that part of the
suppression of the political dimension of Buber's work was due to the advent of
neoliberalism and its incorporation of dialogical thought, which depoliticized a
potentially subversive (socialist) theory into one that would fit the liberal ethos of
laissez-faire capitalism (Brody 2017, 4). At this point, we have no definitive theory of
Buber's conception of art or his politics, as Brody admits.
For Buber, of course, the most important project was that of the community
(Gemeinschaft), which differs from society (Gesellschaft) in its emphasis on organic
Filozofia 78, 7 573
ordering as opposed to mechanical ordering (mass society). This idea combines with the
concept of the kingdom of God to form a specific complex, theopolitics. This is why
Brody can bluntly claim, "The telos of Buber's scholarship was theopolitics." After all,
land Thou was intended as the first volume of a series of comparative studies on religion
culminating in a political essay (Brody 2017, 8).
Theopolitics is of course related to Buber's cultural Zionism. In "The Holy Way"
(MBW XI, 1, 125 - 156), which is probably the most "anarchistic" political writing
(Brody 2017, 41), he sets out the goal for the Jewish people: to realize the divine in
man in creating a "real community" (der wahren Gemeinschaft). Buber emphasizes
that this is an all-human ideal, and the political concept is not intended for Jews alone
(MBWXI, 1, 127).
Here Buber clearly presents his key idea of the unity of spirit and life and criticizes
the Jews for embracing "European dualism" - thus depriving themselves of the
authentic heritage of Judaism, which Buber considers to be "the tendency toward
realization" (die Tendenz der Verwirklichung) (MBW XI, 1, 129). Verwirklichung
appears frequently in Daniel and signifies, among other things, the realization of
personality, but also the realization of a form. In the article "Revolution and Us" (MBW
XI, 1, 108 - 110), published in 1918 in Der Jude, Buber commented on the Russian
Bolshevik Revolution, arguing that without the Jewish element, social change could not
happen. For him, Jews are the authentic bearers of the "organic creative instinct," or the
desire to express the absolute empirically (MBW XI, 1, 108). From this point of view,
realization (Verwirklichung) must be understood as both a political and a national ideal.
It allowed Buber to graft his own cultural Zionist politics onto a broader humanist
project, while at the same time connecting it to his anthropology and applying it to
thinking about art.
In "The Holy Way," Buber presents the idea of an organic political order in the
following way - the realization of the person manifests the divinity in her, but it only
reaches its fullness if people open to each other and actively communicate (here the
dialogical principle is evident).
In communication, "in-between" people the "eternal substance arises," or the
divine is realized in the community between human beings (MBWXI, 1, 130). Buber's
emphasis is on deeds, not on theology or religious dogma. He directly draws an analogy
between the realization of the idea, the work of art and the polis, thus showing that the
process of formation or creation is only one - here again the idea of the human-creator
(Schöpfer) appears, who fulfils her divinity in a coherent action (MBWXI, 1, 134).
This dialogical process of "searching for the form of community" is of course
analogous to what I have described as a work of art. Buber's political vision is "artistic"
in the sense that a cooperating humanity, through the "interpersonal" that emerges in
574
dialogue, moves closer to the pre-arranged form - the divine intention, which is the
kingdom of God. There is an analogy in the divine act of creation, whereby if the artist
creates out of the fullness of her personality rooted in a given community, then she lives
out of culture and participates in its creation (Cohen 1980, 61 - 63).
I understand Buber's philosophy of art to have an implicit telos, a purposefulness
toward which artistic creation must strive in order to fulfil its potential: it is the
unification of spirit with life. The work of art "desires" to be completed by the spectator
because the form that the artist arrives at has, as I have explained, the nature of a nonintentional
objectivity (Cohen 1980, 66). Under the hands of the artist, an "objective"
form is created that can become a "partner" in dialogue with anyone who shares the
culture in question. Therefore, the artist who dialogically shapes her work in the unity
of spirit and life (i.e., the artist who transcends her individuality with a communal
focus) is directly involved in the construction of an ideal society that is possible only
as a Lebenssystem.
In "Man and His Image-Work," Buber explains in a Kantian manner that the work
of art, by its structure, expresses man's adequate attitude towards the world. In order to
create a form, the artist must find the right relationship between spirit and world,
between the substantia humana and the substantia rerum (MBW XII, 463). Thus, an
artist does not have to be politically engaged and yet can create works that are
exclusively political; on the contrary, engagement in the sense of partisanship or
propaganda would, in Buber's conception, devalue the work. For Buber, the artwork is
political as it is isomorphic both to the ideal communication and creative deed.
VII.
I have tried to show how Buber's philosophy of art can be reconstructed and at the same
time demonstrate the internal unity of his work despite the "shift of emphasis" in his
thought after the First World War.8
If I were to summarize this philosophy as a certain
model of thought (which of course is inadequate to Buber's philosophical project, which
does not aspire to a "system"), I would sketch the outlines of such a philosophy of art
as follows.
Art-making is a process of realizing a form that exists in its latency as a partner
for the dialogical relationship of the artist. The resulting shape includes both the
noumenal reality with which the artist must enter into dialogue and the imprint of her
own personality and, consequently, the culture she carries within herself. The work is
thus not a self-expression of the artist, although this latent form cannot be realized
except through concrete human experience (Erfahrung), that is, a long-term search for
the unity of form, which has the nature of non-intentional objectivity.
8
"Levinas is correct that Buber never leaves behind his basic aesthetic orientation" (Scott 2017,112).
Filozofia 78, 7 575
Art is communication, and the work of art can thus be understood as an event of
encounter in several senses - firstly, as a dialogue between the artist and the form;
secondly, as a dialogue between the viewer and the work of art; and thirdly, as the union
of spirit and life in culture as a life system. The last point is made possible by the fact
that, in its objectivity and non-intentionality, the work of art unites the spiritual and the
material spheres and is accessible to all; like a "magnet" it thus binds the people who
experience it to itself and penetrates them both as a model of the creative act and as an
expression of the cultural life into which the authentic work enters. This is why artistic
creation, when it is realized according to this ideal, has political significance.
In a free society of equal individuals, who create an organic society by
communicating with each other, art is a structural model of the unity of form and the
articulation of the dialogical culture of that society. In all these moments, a human's
divinity is realized. Therefore, the artistic creation is a kind of a religious activity as
well. If the form of a work of art has an "objective" nature, it is not because it is supposed
to "depict" the world, but to give space for man to live in unity with the world and God.
This is the remarkable legacy of Buber's philosophy of art.
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Jan Motal
Department of Media Studies and Journalism
Faculty of Social Studies
Masaryk University
Jostova 10
602 00 Brno
Czech Republic
e-mail: jmotal@mail.muni.cz
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6124-6686
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