Martin Buber (1878-1965) and Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) are two of the most creative and influential Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. Both were interested in the dynamics of human encounters, and were centrally concerned with the relation to otherness. Both also dedicated their philosophical thinking to explore the ethical responsibility that begins with the experiences of the other (Atterton, Calarco & Friedman, 2004).

While Buber’s philosophy of dialogue is associated with a symmetrical and reciprocal I-Thou-relationship, Levinas emphasised a face-to-face-encounter characterised by an asymmetrical distance. This difference has been object to a critical exchange of ideas between the two philosophers. Levinas strongly objected to Buber’s I-Thou, claiming that Buber’s encounter is insufficiently ethical as it violates the other in favour of an egocentric formation process. Buber on the other side responded to this critique by claiming that Levinas had misunderstood his approach to alterity. Analysing the critical dialogue between Buber and Levinas on this issue, the proposed paper elaborates on how the interrelation between distance and closeness in Buber’s philosophy of dialogue forms an answer to Levinas’ objection. The paper argues that Buber allows for a greater dynamic between distance and closeness than Levinas’ critique indicates, and that distance plays a constitutive part in the I-Thou-relationship, an issue that often has been overlooked in comparisons of the two philosophers.

In Buber and Levinas’ thinking, alterity is always relational. Whereas Buber emphasised the distinction and interrelation between what he called the I-It and I-Thou relationship, Levinas was concerned with how the face evokes and installs a fundamental responsibility for the other in the subject. Thus, for both the philosophers, encountering the other is about the transformation of the self, which is precisely the meaning of “Bildung”, the German word for education or formation. Accordingly, a useful theoretical background for the discussion would be to look at the interrelation between encounter and the acknowledgement of the other in the classical Bildung-tradition (Dobson & Steinsholt, 2011; Korsgaard & Løvlie, 2003).

In the study, I restrict my analysis to the two texts where Buber and Levinas were exchanging thoughts by responding and commenting directly on each other ideas. This communication comprises two sets of questions and answers included in The Philosophy of Martin Buber (Schilpp & Friedman, 1967) and Philosophical Interrogations (Rome & Rome, 1970), the first published in 1967 and the second published in 1964. These texts are of particular interest as they are the only correspondence to be found where the two philosophers engage in a written dialogue with each other. More specifically, I analyse the passages where Levinas raises questions regarding the place of the other in Buber’s thinking, and the paragraphs where Buber responds directly on Levinas critical interrogations on this issue. This involves Levinas’ text “Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge” (Levinas, 1967), and Buber’s response in the “Replies to My Critics” section (Buber, 1967), as well as the six-page conversation of questions and answers between Buber and Levinas in Philosophical Interrogations (Rome & Rome, 1970). Applying a philosophical-hermeneutical methodology in the tradition of Martin Heidegger (1996) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (2003), I read and interpret the selected paragraphs in light of what I see as an overall understanding of Buber and Levinas’ thinking. By comparing the single statements from their communication with each other to an assumed whole, I successively aim to explore how and where there is a lack of understanding, misunderstandings or even an unwillingness to understand between the two philosophers. For example, to more fully understand Buber’s rather short answer to Levinas’ critique, the paper looks deeper into Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, drawing on what I see as an overall understanding of the interrelation between closeness and distance in Buber’s thinking. In this way, the single elements from the critical dialogues in the selection of texts are read in light of the whole in a hermeneutical circle of understanding.

In the paper, I elaborate on how the interrelation between closeness and distance in Buber’s philosophy of dialogue forms an answer to Levinas’ critic of Buber. The findings indicate that the concept of distance plays a more important role than what often is communicated in interpretations of Buber, included Levinas’ reading of Buber. By analyzing examples form Buber’s writing, the paper proposes an interpretation of Buber which corresponds with the classical notion of Bildung. In this interpretation of Buber, the encounter with otherness may lead to self-awareness and self-insight as well as bring new perspectives that extend the horizon of interpretation. The distance between the self and the other causes a fascination of differences, which in turn may be transformed into clarity and understanding, but also to miscomprehension and misunderstandings. In Buber’s sense, interpretations of the other thus takes place in an oscillation between distance and closeness. Despite Levinas’ critique, in Buber’s thinking, encountering the other does not imply that the other is knowable and are made into an object of the self. The paper thus indicates a greater nuance in Buber’s philosophy which often is overlooked when the two philosophers are compared. In this way, the paper provides a foundation for discussing not only the correspondence and contributions from Buber and Levinas, but also the conceptualization of cultural encounters.

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