Abstract
This chapter explores Etty Hillesum's spiritual journey in the light of Mordechai Martin Buber's Ich und Du. There is, as Hilary Putnam points out, a view abroad that he was a philosophical 'lightweight', someone not as profound or original as Levinas or Rosenzweig. Emmanuel Levinas himself, however, describes Buber as one of the rare Jewish thinkers and writers who, through a work almost totally devoted to Jewish themes, belonged with an extraordinary naturalness, spontaneity and, as actors say, 'presence', to universal literature. Buber's philosophy makes us aware of the role that Hillesum's language plays in her writings. Hillesum's personal history, her struggle for freedom and her need to bear witness, show that the appropriate alternation between Ik-Het (I-It) and Ik-Jij (I-You) in her writings, in Buber's terminology, was disturbed by a progressive augmentation of the Nazi-world of It.Keywords: Buber's philosophy; Emmanuel Levinas; Etty Hillesum's spiritual journey; Hilary Putnam; Jewish; Mordechai Martin Buber's Ich und Du
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