Martin Buber

Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher whose short work I and Thou became one of the most influential philosophical texts of the twentieth century. He distinguished two fundamental modes of relation: the I–Thou relation, which encounters the other as a whole person in genuine meeting, and the I–It relation, which reduces the other to an object of use or analysis. All genuine life, he held, is meeting.

Buber was deeply engaged with Hasidic Judaism and helped revive interest in it through his retellings of Hasidic tales. As a Zionist, he controversially advocated for a binational Jewish-Arab state in Palestine. His dialogical philosophy influenced Christian theology, psychotherapy, education, and social theory far beyond Jewish thought. The category of the "encounter" he described has shaped how generations of thinkers understand the basis of moral life.