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Good And Evil Two Interpretations I Right And Wrong II Images Of Good And Evil - Scholar's Choice Edition by Martin Buber
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
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First published January 1, 1950
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About the author
Martin Buber
411 books468 followersMartin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship.
Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. In 1902, Buber became the editor of the weekly Die Welt, the central organ of the Zionist movement, although he later withdrew from organizational work in Zionism. In 1923 Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du (later translated into English as I and Thou), and in 1925 he began translating the Hebrew Bible into the German language.
In 1930 Buber became an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main, and resigned in protest from his professorship immediately after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. He then founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education, which became an increasingly important body as the German government forbade Jews to attend public education. In 1938, Buber left Germany and settled in Jerusalem, in the British Mandate of Palestine, receiving a professorship at Hebrew University and lecturing in anthropology and introductory sociology.
Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. In 1902, Buber became the editor of the weekly Die Welt, the central organ of the Zionist movement, although he later withdrew from organizational work in Zionism. In 1923 Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du (later translated into English as I and Thou), and in 1925 he began translating the Hebrew Bible into the German language.
In 1930 Buber became an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main, and resigned in protest from his professorship immediately after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. He then founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education, which became an increasingly important body as the German government forbade Jews to attend public education. In 1938, Buber left Germany and settled in Jerusalem, in the British Mandate of Palestine, receiving a professorship at Hebrew University and lecturing in anthropology and introductory sociology.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 28, 2021
Extraordinarily good readings of selected stories and poems from the Hebrew Bible that are always fresh, always original, and always characterized by wide appreciation, non-literalism, faith, and deep learning in Judaism. Of especial note is the interpretation of the story of the Garden of Eden. Here, Buber argues, Adam and Eve were in a dreamy, trance-like state, unable to distinguish good from evil (which they had never experienced as contrastive opposites) and that their departure from the garden was as inevitable as it was preferable. The human world is the world of the road, of destinations, and of things left behind. No less distinguished are his marvelous readings of King David's Psalms, and the tale of Cain and Abel where, he notes, evil first came into the world as deliberate sinfulness and wrongdoing.
December 28, 2007
I read this book back in college and haven't been able to forget about it since. Buber's explanation of being, that life is chaos, a myriad of decisions and non-decisions...that only when we choose God, or Being, are we really making a decision that draws us from chaos toward truth...that, in death, the soul dies...it reunites with its original being. I'm still thinking about it. Also, his correlation between origin stories of christianity and other religions peaked my interest in learning more.
October 19, 2016
For me this book informed me on the most important passage in the Hebrew Bible regarding the notion of morality, which is not actually morality at all, in the 'way of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.' Good and evil are seemingly fused, mirror images of one another, not polar opposites as the terms imply. Good and evil must be done to get to god according to Buber. The direction of Torah must embody both of these qualities to serve god and to please god. The Christian interpretation is clearly off the mark in its treatment of the Hebrew scripture for obvious reasons, the misinterpretation of sin and who the text was written by, and for, the Hebrews. Christians know nothing of the curse which is one of the greatest ironies given the curse is embedded in the story of Adam and Eve, who both are 'Adam', they are the cherubim who protect and guard the way of the tree of knowledge with the sword that revolveth, which is the way of Torah. Torah is the sword, the flame, the direction to god. Torah is a literary weapon and a very real weapon hiding in plain sight.
February 20, 2010
Could not understand this book.
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July 31, 2016Brilliant narrative on the basis of evil in the Torah. Will blow your mind.
May 28, 2024
THE JEWISH PHILOSOPHER PRESENTS TWO “INTERPRETATIONS”
Martin Buber (1878-1965) was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher and scholar of the Hasidic movement. He taught philosophy from 1938-1951 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. This book was first published in 1951.
He wrote in the Foreword to this 1953 book, “The two ‘interpretations’ which are united in this volume differ from one another in method and purpose, but they supplement each other to such an extent that I have willingly accepted the suggestion to unite them here in an external way as well. Both are concerned with good and evil, but ‘Right and Wrong’ is concerned with its place in man’s observation of the human world, ‘Images’ with its place in the personal development of the individual man. The first deals with the apparent contradiction which holds sway in destiny, the second above all with the factual conflict which holds sway in the soul. Here an answer is sought to the question, ‘Why is evil so powerful?’, there to the question, ‘What is the origin of evil?’ Thus one can describe ‘Images of Good and Evil’ as an interpretation because it proceeds from several Old Israelitic and Old Persian myths. These myths… enable the modern thinker to point out what corresponds to this twofoldness in that biographical reality of present-day man which is known to us. ‘Right and Wrong’ is interpretation in another sense. Here several Psalms are examined to discover how the gradually arising and growing insight into the relation between wrongdoing and true existence is expressed in them. Taken together, these two books are to be regarded as a contribution to the foundation of an ontological ethics.”
RIGHT AND WRONG:
About Psalm 14, he comments, “There have certainly been not a few among the Jews who thought that this Psalm… gives, in its crude generalization, a picture of the historical human world and of the place which the Jewish people had and have in it, which, though unjust, nevertheless contains truth. In our time, especially, nothing is more understandable than this view, and nothing is more wrong-headed. Nowhere in the Psalms or in any place in Scripture is such a general expression as the one used here, ‘the shameless,’ intended of the heathen in distinction from the Jew. Nowhere do the words ‘the children of men’ indicate foreign nations in contrast to Israel. It is always MEN who are spoken of, simply men in the world, or men in the little land which is the home of the biblical speaker.” (Pg. 16)
He notes, “The tellers of the legends had described the translation of the living Enoch and the living Elijah to heaven as ‘a being taken,’ a being taken away to heaven by God Himself. The Psalmists transferred the description from the realm of miracle to that of personal piety and its most personal expression. In a Psalm [49] which is related our Psalm [73]…. There is nothing left here of the mythical idea of a translation. But not only that---there is nothing left of heaven either. There is nothing here about being able to go after death into heaven. And, so far as I see, there is nowhere in the ‘Old Testament’ anything about this.” (Pg. 44)
Of Psalm 1, he observes, “the Psalmist has obviously another purpose then the philosopher, who tells us that virtue is its own reward. It is true that the two sayings have something in common. But what they have in common is not the thing that matters, and if the philosopher’s saying were to be brought to the Psalmist’s notice and explained to him he would be speechless and could only shake his head. For what he really means is completely untouched by what the philosopher could say to him about the ‘self-enjoyment’ of the moral man. What he means about the life of the man of whom he speaks cannot be grasped by means of moral values; and what he means about his happiness has its home in another sphere from that of a man’s self-satisfaction. Both the conduct of the man’s life and his happiness in their nature transcend the realm of ethics as well as that of self-consciousness. Both are to be understood only from a man’s intercourse with God, which is the basic theme of the Book of Psalms.” (Pg. 54-55)
IMAGES OF GOOD AND EVIL:
After Adam and Eve are ordered out of the Garden of Eden, Buber observes, “This stern benefaction is preceded by the passing of sentence. It announces no radical alteration of that which already exists; it is only that all things are drawn into the atmosphere of oppositeness. When she gives birth, for which she was prepared at the time of her creation, woman shall suffer pains such as no other creature suffers—henceforth a price must be paid for being human; and the desire to become once more one body with the man (2:24) shall render her dependent upon him. To the man work, which was already planned for him before he was set in the garden, shall become an affliction. But the curse conceals a blessing. From the SEAT, which had been made ready for him, man is sent out upon a PATH, his own, the human path. That this is the path into the world’s history, that only through it does the world have a history---and an historical goal---must, in his own way, have been felt by the narrator.” (Pg. 79-80)
He notes, “for fear is the gateway to love. This important doctrine cannot be understood as long as good and evil are conceived, as they usually are, as two diametrically opposite forces or directions. Its meaning is not revealed to us until we recognize them as similar in nature, the evil ‘urge’ as passion, that is, the power peculiar to man, without which he can neither beget nor bring forth, but which, left to itself, remains without direction and leads astray, and the ‘good urge’ as pure direction, in other words, as an unconditional direction, that towards God. To unite the two urges implies: to equip the absolute potency of passion with the one direction that renders it capable of great love and of great service. Thus and not otherwise can man become whole.” (Pg. 97)
He states, “Evil cannot be done with the whole soul; good can only be done with the whole soul. It is done when the soul’s rapture, proceeding from its highest forces, seizes upon all the forces and plunges them into the purging and transmuting fire, as into the mightiness of decision. Evil is lack of direction and that which is done in compelling, seducing, exploiting, humiliating, torturing and destroying of what offers itself. Good is direction and what is done in it; that which is done in it is done with the whole soul, so that in fact all the vigor and passion with which evil might have been done is included in it.” (Pg. 130-131)
This book will be of great interest to those studying Buber, or contemporary theology.
Martin Buber (1878-1965) was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher and scholar of the Hasidic movement. He taught philosophy from 1938-1951 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. This book was first published in 1951.
He wrote in the Foreword to this 1953 book, “The two ‘interpretations’ which are united in this volume differ from one another in method and purpose, but they supplement each other to such an extent that I have willingly accepted the suggestion to unite them here in an external way as well. Both are concerned with good and evil, but ‘Right and Wrong’ is concerned with its place in man’s observation of the human world, ‘Images’ with its place in the personal development of the individual man. The first deals with the apparent contradiction which holds sway in destiny, the second above all with the factual conflict which holds sway in the soul. Here an answer is sought to the question, ‘Why is evil so powerful?’, there to the question, ‘What is the origin of evil?’ Thus one can describe ‘Images of Good and Evil’ as an interpretation because it proceeds from several Old Israelitic and Old Persian myths. These myths… enable the modern thinker to point out what corresponds to this twofoldness in that biographical reality of present-day man which is known to us. ‘Right and Wrong’ is interpretation in another sense. Here several Psalms are examined to discover how the gradually arising and growing insight into the relation between wrongdoing and true existence is expressed in them. Taken together, these two books are to be regarded as a contribution to the foundation of an ontological ethics.”
RIGHT AND WRONG:
About Psalm 14, he comments, “There have certainly been not a few among the Jews who thought that this Psalm… gives, in its crude generalization, a picture of the historical human world and of the place which the Jewish people had and have in it, which, though unjust, nevertheless contains truth. In our time, especially, nothing is more understandable than this view, and nothing is more wrong-headed. Nowhere in the Psalms or in any place in Scripture is such a general expression as the one used here, ‘the shameless,’ intended of the heathen in distinction from the Jew. Nowhere do the words ‘the children of men’ indicate foreign nations in contrast to Israel. It is always MEN who are spoken of, simply men in the world, or men in the little land which is the home of the biblical speaker.” (Pg. 16)
He notes, “The tellers of the legends had described the translation of the living Enoch and the living Elijah to heaven as ‘a being taken,’ a being taken away to heaven by God Himself. The Psalmists transferred the description from the realm of miracle to that of personal piety and its most personal expression. In a Psalm [49] which is related our Psalm [73]…. There is nothing left here of the mythical idea of a translation. But not only that---there is nothing left of heaven either. There is nothing here about being able to go after death into heaven. And, so far as I see, there is nowhere in the ‘Old Testament’ anything about this.” (Pg. 44)
Of Psalm 1, he observes, “the Psalmist has obviously another purpose then the philosopher, who tells us that virtue is its own reward. It is true that the two sayings have something in common. But what they have in common is not the thing that matters, and if the philosopher’s saying were to be brought to the Psalmist’s notice and explained to him he would be speechless and could only shake his head. For what he really means is completely untouched by what the philosopher could say to him about the ‘self-enjoyment’ of the moral man. What he means about the life of the man of whom he speaks cannot be grasped by means of moral values; and what he means about his happiness has its home in another sphere from that of a man’s self-satisfaction. Both the conduct of the man’s life and his happiness in their nature transcend the realm of ethics as well as that of self-consciousness. Both are to be understood only from a man’s intercourse with God, which is the basic theme of the Book of Psalms.” (Pg. 54-55)
IMAGES OF GOOD AND EVIL:
After Adam and Eve are ordered out of the Garden of Eden, Buber observes, “This stern benefaction is preceded by the passing of sentence. It announces no radical alteration of that which already exists; it is only that all things are drawn into the atmosphere of oppositeness. When she gives birth, for which she was prepared at the time of her creation, woman shall suffer pains such as no other creature suffers—henceforth a price must be paid for being human; and the desire to become once more one body with the man (2:24) shall render her dependent upon him. To the man work, which was already planned for him before he was set in the garden, shall become an affliction. But the curse conceals a blessing. From the SEAT, which had been made ready for him, man is sent out upon a PATH, his own, the human path. That this is the path into the world’s history, that only through it does the world have a history---and an historical goal---must, in his own way, have been felt by the narrator.” (Pg. 79-80)
He notes, “for fear is the gateway to love. This important doctrine cannot be understood as long as good and evil are conceived, as they usually are, as two diametrically opposite forces or directions. Its meaning is not revealed to us until we recognize them as similar in nature, the evil ‘urge’ as passion, that is, the power peculiar to man, without which he can neither beget nor bring forth, but which, left to itself, remains without direction and leads astray, and the ‘good urge’ as pure direction, in other words, as an unconditional direction, that towards God. To unite the two urges implies: to equip the absolute potency of passion with the one direction that renders it capable of great love and of great service. Thus and not otherwise can man become whole.” (Pg. 97)
He states, “Evil cannot be done with the whole soul; good can only be done with the whole soul. It is done when the soul’s rapture, proceeding from its highest forces, seizes upon all the forces and plunges them into the purging and transmuting fire, as into the mightiness of decision. Evil is lack of direction and that which is done in compelling, seducing, exploiting, humiliating, torturing and destroying of what offers itself. Good is direction and what is done in it; that which is done in it is done with the whole soul, so that in fact all the vigor and passion with which evil might have been done is included in it.” (Pg. 130-131)
This book will be of great interest to those studying Buber, or contemporary theology.
May 7, 2017
Good and Evil, by Martin Buber, 1952. This is a great book, from a great scholar, Jewish theologian, and philosopher, written just a few years after the end of the Holocaust. Entering into this book, that is one of the things that struck me – this book, Good and Evil, has such weight.
I cannot convey, in these few sentences, all the wisdom imparted by Professor Buber in this slim volume. Several things struck me:
• A relationship with God (see pg 43) that rests on the a person’s perception of God’s Presence and making decisions and taking action in that light – “He (sic) who is aware of this Presence acts in the changing situations of his life differently from he who does not perceive this Presence. The Presence acts as counsel: God counsels by making known that God is present. He has led his son out of darkness and into the light, and now he can walk in the light. He is not relieved of taking and directing his own steps.”
• The idea of kabod in the Hebrew language. It is sometimes translated as glory, but its meaning is “weight.” To die in kabod means the radiation of the inner weight of a person, and the fulfillment of a person’s earthly existence. Much different than glory. (pg 46)
• The idea/importance of a purposed life (or the words I use -- calling, or vocation) in which “the soul has given up undirected plenitude (possibilities, infinite choices) in favor of the one taut string, the one stretched beam of direction.” (see pp 126-132) I have been reading other things over the past few years that also lift up this choice between a path, a calling, and a busy life full of things and activities but without direction, in which “the substantial threatens to be submerged in the potential.” I think of this sometimes in terms of integrity, wholeness, identity, and freedom. As Buber writes, “it can assume as many shapes as there are individuals, and nonetheless is never relativized.”
Incredibly to me, in this book, coming so soon after Hitler’s dictatorship and the killing of 5 million Jews and a million others in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, Buber defines good and evil thus (pp 95-97): “Man’s (sic) task, therefore, is not to extirpate the evil urge, but to reunite it with the good…This important doctrine cannot be understood as long as good and evil are conceived as two diametrically opposite forces or directions. Its meaning is not revealed to us until we recognize them as similar in nature, the evil “urge” as passion, that is, the power peculiar to man, without which he can neither beget nor bring forth, but which, left to itself, remains without direction and leads astray, the “good urge” as pure direction, in other words, as an unconditional direction, that towards God. To unite the two urges implies: to equip the absolute potency of passion with the one direction that renders it capable of great love and great service. Thus and not otherwise can the human being become whole.”
I cannot convey, in these few sentences, all the wisdom imparted by Professor Buber in this slim volume. Several things struck me:
• A relationship with God (see pg 43) that rests on the a person’s perception of God’s Presence and making decisions and taking action in that light – “He (sic) who is aware of this Presence acts in the changing situations of his life differently from he who does not perceive this Presence. The Presence acts as counsel: God counsels by making known that God is present. He has led his son out of darkness and into the light, and now he can walk in the light. He is not relieved of taking and directing his own steps.”
• The idea of kabod in the Hebrew language. It is sometimes translated as glory, but its meaning is “weight.” To die in kabod means the radiation of the inner weight of a person, and the fulfillment of a person’s earthly existence. Much different than glory. (pg 46)
• The idea/importance of a purposed life (or the words I use -- calling, or vocation) in which “the soul has given up undirected plenitude (possibilities, infinite choices) in favor of the one taut string, the one stretched beam of direction.” (see pp 126-132) I have been reading other things over the past few years that also lift up this choice between a path, a calling, and a busy life full of things and activities but without direction, in which “the substantial threatens to be submerged in the potential.” I think of this sometimes in terms of integrity, wholeness, identity, and freedom. As Buber writes, “it can assume as many shapes as there are individuals, and nonetheless is never relativized.”
Incredibly to me, in this book, coming so soon after Hitler’s dictatorship and the killing of 5 million Jews and a million others in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, Buber defines good and evil thus (pp 95-97): “Man’s (sic) task, therefore, is not to extirpate the evil urge, but to reunite it with the good…This important doctrine cannot be understood as long as good and evil are conceived as two diametrically opposite forces or directions. Its meaning is not revealed to us until we recognize them as similar in nature, the evil “urge” as passion, that is, the power peculiar to man, without which he can neither beget nor bring forth, but which, left to itself, remains without direction and leads astray, the “good urge” as pure direction, in other words, as an unconditional direction, that towards God. To unite the two urges implies: to equip the absolute potency of passion with the one direction that renders it capable of great love and great service. Thus and not otherwise can the human being become whole.”
February 20, 2018
So, initially, I was "underwhelmed" with this work because I'd been led to such high expectations based on others' view of Buber (which are likely more based on "I and Thou") but looking back at my notes, there's more I took away than I'd first considered.
Meditating on Psalm 73, "The Heart Determines," Buber states that "he who draws near with a pure heart to the divine mystery, learns that he is continually with God." Had a read this a couple of years previously, it may well have meant nothing. But this resonated with me (the general notion, not the "continual" part) because I'd undertaken Centering Prayer and had deepened my spiritual exercise with other tools.
Later in this essay on the same Psalm, Buber holds, "a man is a 'beast' and purifies his heart, and behold, God holds him by the hand. This is not a kind of man. Purity of heart is a state of being." This was helpful to reify how I'd come to see "holy men/women" or "saintly" folk (canonized or not)--not in a simple categorization of them:holy vs. us:not holy (how I'd imagined it in early life, as if these folks were different from the mass of humanity in their very essence). No, saintly people or "holy" ones had be-come that way by __________ (whatever their practices were) with often much work, over, usually, quite a span of time.
As "existential exegesis," which he proposes as a category for this work, I quite liked it. But it took reflection upon what he'd said, for me, to glean profit from this work.
Meditating on Psalm 73, "The Heart Determines," Buber states that "he who draws near with a pure heart to the divine mystery, learns that he is continually with God." Had a read this a couple of years previously, it may well have meant nothing. But this resonated with me (the general notion, not the "continual" part) because I'd undertaken Centering Prayer and had deepened my spiritual exercise with other tools.
Later in this essay on the same Psalm, Buber holds, "a man is a 'beast' and purifies his heart, and behold, God holds him by the hand. This is not a kind of man. Purity of heart is a state of being." This was helpful to reify how I'd come to see "holy men/women" or "saintly" folk (canonized or not)--not in a simple categorization of them:holy vs. us:not holy (how I'd imagined it in early life, as if these folks were different from the mass of humanity in their very essence). No, saintly people or "holy" ones had be-come that way by __________ (whatever their practices were) with often much work, over, usually, quite a span of time.
As "existential exegesis," which he proposes as a category for this work, I quite liked it. But it took reflection upon what he'd said, for me, to glean profit from this work.
November 30, 2019
A compact diptych that examines Jewish understandings of good and evil from the vantage point of the Psalms and from a comparison with Persian mythology. The readings of the Psalms will only interest specialists or those who are already inclined to find Buber's approach satisfying. The readings of mythology struck me as far more interesting, containing insights about different ways of framing good and evil in a narrative frame. For my money, the best section contains Buber's analysis of yetzer hara as an imaginative faculty. This offers an excellent gloss on the Talmud's suggestion that without the evil inclination no one would ever build a house or get married. The section that carefully classified the subtle differences between "sinners" and "the wicked" was illuminating. The discussion of different stages of a dialectic of good and evil is strange and idiosyncratic at best, but it usefully points out the ways that people can talk past each other when they are coming from these different mythic problematics.
March 6, 2022
I just reread this for the third time and each time it feels like a better read. I have some friends and colleagues who sometimes seem ready to fight to the death (pens, computers, papers in peer-reviewed journals -- we're talking nerds, not bodybuilders) over their assertion that I and Thou is Buber's masterpiece, but I've just never bought that. It really never resonated with me. Buber is far from my favorite, but if I'm forced to choose from among his works, Good and Evil would be my choice. Recommended.
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November 21, 2009None
March 3, 2014
Buber makes some interesting points but I'm underwhelmed by him as a thinker.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews