freedom – Dolan Cummings

2023 marked the hundredth anniversary of the original publication in German of philosopher Martin Buber’s hugely influential and very peculiar book, Ich und Du. Born in Vienna in 1878, the author was part of the Jewish intellectual cohort that was devastated by the Holocaust. He became both a prominent Zionist and a leading advocate of Arab-Israeli coexistence, until his death in Jerusalem in 1965. One of the peculiarities of his seminal book, however, is that while it addresses a particular historical moment, it is in no sense a political book. It has a pre-political, even pre-philosophical quality, and that’s what makes it just as relevant a century on.

In his introduction to the new centennial edition, Buber scholar Paul Mendes-Flohr helpfully makes a connection between Buber’s concerns in 1923 and the current moment: ‘an age in which human worth is ever-increasingly measured by economic utility, vocational skills, and professional and social status’. Then and now, such tendencies reduce individuals to useful objects rather than ‘fellow human beings in the singularity of their existential uniqueness’. It is the non-instrumental encounter between such unique beings that Buber explores in the book, and that he felt was increasingly difficult in modern society.

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Earlier this year, historian Mary Beard got involved in a Twitter spat after she suggested that it was not all that shocking that Oxfam workers had used prostitutes, while on a disaster relief mission in Haiti. She noted that people often behave badly in extreme situations and suggested that it might be a mistake to judge them too harshly. There was a predictable outraged backlash. Writing about the controversy afterwards, Beard reflected that people often have unrealistically high moral standards, even of themselves. She gave the example of a discussion she’d had with a group of students, about Nazi-occupied France. She’d asked what they thought they would have done in those circumstances. “They all said they would have joined the Resistance,” she recalled, before noting, “The truth is to judge by any statistics you can get that most of them would have been collaborators or keeping their heads down.”

It’s a salutary point, and I don’t dispute it, but, at the same time, there would have to be something seriously wrong with anyone who answered the question by saying, “Well, statistically speaking, I’d probably have helped the Nazis.” Continue reading “What is existential freedom?” →

Tag: freedom

The Unicorn and the Donkey… or, human connection in an age of identity politics

What is existential freedom?