Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 85 No. 4, 2015.
Original scientific paper
The Phenomenology of Presence. The Absolute, Religion, and Philosophy in Martin Buber’s Thought
Ante Akrap
orcid.org/0000-0001-6682-2507
; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Split, Split, Croatia
Abstract
Martin Buber’s reflection on the relationship between philosophy and religion has been significantly influenced by Cabala and Hassidism. By putting into the centre of his reflection the concept of shekinah (the presence of God), he wants to confirm, through a phenomenological approach, one of his basis theses on complete immanency of God in the cosmos and in the human being. By identifying religion with the Presence and by distancing every Thou from the area of object, Buber establishes the relation of presence in which religiosity (that he distinguishes from religion), expressed in the human being’s activity, crosses a journey from being an »exception«, as an experience of otherness that does not find its place in the regular dimension of the human beings’ existence, all the way to the presence that becomes the basis and the bearer of the human being’s existence, because all our relations find their fulfilment and meaning in the eternal Thou. The dialogue, meeting, and relation are not decorative categories of our religiosity, but the way that leads us to put the whole reality in the relation. Buber’s intention is to confirm the insight that the essence of religiosity is the human being’s activity that reflects in life the original dialogue between God and the human being. In this way, Buber opens a way for dialogical religiosity through the traditional thought of his people and his own philosophy.
Keywords
Buber; Presence; tradition; mysticism; Cabala; Hassidism; God; philosophy; religion; religiosity; faith
Hrčak ID:
151385
URI
Publication date:
18.1.2016.
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