The Implicit Secularism of Martin Buber's Thought

Abstract

In this article it is claimed that secular humanists in Israel identified with Buber especially because the implicit secularity he combined with religiosity formed what may be termed Buber's religiosity can be understood fully only in terms of his secular roots, which continued to nourish his intellect to the final decades of his life. The article discusses Buber's thought as a meaningful residue of modern secularist ideas from Kant, Feuerbach, and Nietzsche, and the most important ideas of Humanism and its notion of culture in Buber's selective reading in the Bible. It is proved in the article that for Buber, the highest values of religion must be humanly intelligible. It is not claimed that Buber's attitude was completely atheistic. Yet the tendencies at work in his religious thought, the emphasis on Immanentism, the reliance on human understanding of the concept of God and the glorification of man's uniqueness in his commitment to values-these are inseparable from secularism.