10/28/2019
Philosophy Colloquium Series presents Jonathan Herman from Georgia State University
Friday, November 15, 2019
2:30 - 4:30 in the Tanner Library
“Martin Buber, Daoism, and Cultural Appropriation”
One virtually unknown tidbit of modern intellectual history is that the existentialist philosopher and Jewish icon Martin Buber actually studied Chinese philosophy and literature throughout his career. At one end, more than a decade before he composed his best known work, I and Thou, Buber published a German translation of and commentary on the Daoist classic, the Zhuangzi. At the other end forty years later, he assembled ancient Chinese texts to support his unpopular advocacy of a collaborative Jewish-Arab state in Palestine. But the most significant of Buber’s Chinese studies is almost certainly the least well known: a series of lectures he delivered in Ascona, Switzerland on Laozi’s Daodejing in 1924, one short year after the publication of I and Thou. This talk explores Buber’s encounters with Daoism, focusing on the metaphysical, socio-ethical, and mystical dimensions of Buber’s interpretations.
Jonathan Herman is the Director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Georgia State University. He is the author of Taoism for Dummies (Wiley 2013), and several articles on Chinese religion, mysticism, and theory and method in the study of religion. He is currently working on a new book, From Dao to Dialogue: Martin Buber’s Encounter with Laozi.
