Martin Buber - The Dialogical Challenge (1923)
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The New Dimension: The Thou as Origin
Martin Buber’s I and Thou (1923) introduces a dimension into philosophy that Hegel - so the critique goes - systematically fails to grasp: the originariness of encounter. This is not a mere supplement or correction, but a different foundation altogether.
The thesis can be formulated in one sentence: The Thou cannot be derived from the I. Only in the encounter with the Thou do I become an I. The relation is primary, the relata secondary.
This sounds at first like a variant of the philosophy of recognition - did not Hegel himself show in the Phenomenology of Spirit that self-consciousness is possible only through recognition by another self-consciousness? The master-slave dialectic seems to develop precisely this.
But Buber sees a decisive difference: in Hegel, recognition is a moment of self-mediation. Self-consciousness goes outside itself in order to return to itself. The Other is a station on the way to itself. At the end stands absolute Spirit, which recognizes itself in everything - a gigantic self-relation in which the Other becomes a moment of the Same.
Buber insists: this misses the encounter. The Thou is not a means to my own self-becoming. It is not a mirror in which I recognize myself. It is Thou - underivable, unavailable, not to be instrumentalized.
The Basic Words: I-Thou and I-It
Buber’s analysis distinguishes two “basic words” - not two words, but two ways of being-in-the-world:
I-It: The world of experience and use. The It is an object - I observe it, analyze it, use it. The It has properties I can ascertain. It is locatable in space and time. I can compare it to other Its, classify it, explain it. Science moves within the I-It relation. Human beings, too, can become an It - when I treat them as objects, as cases, as means.
I-Thou: The world of relation. The Thou has no properties - it is. I stand facing it, not as an observer, but as one addressed. The Thou is not in space and time; rather, space and time are in the relation. I cannot experience the Thou, only encounter it. The encounter is reciprocal - only in the Thou do I become an I.
The decisive point: the I-Thou relation is not a variant of the I-It relation. It is categorially different. I cannot pass from It to Thou by ascertaining more properties or analyzing more deeply. The transition is a leap, not a continuum.
The Critique of Hegel: Monologism Instead of Dialogue
Buber’s implicit critique of Hegel - he rarely names Hegel, but the direction is clear - runs as follows: Hegel’s system is monological. Everything becomes the self-relation of Spirit. The Other appears, but only in order to be sublated. Difference is posited, but only in order to be overcome. In the end, everything is One - absolute Spirit with itself.
For Buber, this is not fulfillment but failure. The encounter is degraded to a mere passage-stage. The Thou becomes a moment of the I. The otherness of the Other is not taken seriously - it is “sublated” in the double sense: preserved and negated at once.
Buber writes: “The basic word I-Thou establishes the world of relation.” This world cannot be derived from the world of It, cannot be constructed from concepts, cannot be deduced from a system. It is originary - not in the temporal sense (the child says “Thou” before “I”), but ontologically: relation precedes the relata.
The Systematic Question: Is the Critique Justified?
Does Buber’s critique hit Hegel, or a caricature of him?
In Buber’s favor:
Hegel’s system is a theory of self-mediation. Absolute Spirit recognizes itself in everything. The Logic develops the self-movement of the concept. Nature is “the Idea in the form of otherness” - but of the Idea, not of a truly Other. Spirit returns from Nature to itself. The structure is circular: departure from itself, externalization, return to itself.
In this structure, the Other has no lasting status. It is a moment, not a result. It is sublated, not recognized in its otherness. The master-slave dialectic shows indeed that recognition fails when it remains one-sided - but the goal is mutual recognition, in which both recognize themselves in the Other. For Buber, this is still self-relation - doubled, but not transcended.
Against Buber:
Hegel’s concept of recognition is more differentiated than Buber suggests. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel develops structures of recognition - property, contract, family, civil society, state - that are not mere self-relation. The Other has rights that I must recognize. The ethical institutions are structures of mediation in which individuals recognize one another as equal and free.
Moreover: Hegel’s “self-relation” is not that of an isolated subject. Spirit is not “my” spirit that recognizes itself in “your” spirit. It is the common element that realizes itself in individuals. The return to itself is not a return into inwardness, but a realization in institutions, culture, history.
The Productive Tension: What Buber Sees and What He Overlooks
Buber’s strength lies in his phenomenological precision. He describes the encounter in a way that one recognizes it. The Thou really is underivable. The experience of being addressed - of being spoken to, of being meant - cannot be constructed from I-It relations. Buber rescues a phenomenon that is easily lost in systematic philosophies.
Buber’s weakness lies in the lack of mediation. I-Thou and I-It stand unmediated side by side. The Thou cannot remain Thou - it inevitably becomes an It as soon as I reflect on it, describe it, place it in relation to something else. The encounter is fleeting. What remains are institutions, structures, concepts - that is, the world of I-It.
Buber knows this. He writes that the Thou becomes an It again and again. But he sees this as decline, not necessity. He cannot explain how lasting relationships arise from fleeting encounters, how institutions emerge from I-Thou moments, how the world of relation stabilizes without hardening into a world of things.
Here Hegel would have something to say. The ethical institutions - family, civil society, state - are congealed recognition. They preserve the encounter by translating it into structures. Marriage is not only feeling, but law. Friendship is not only a moment, but a history. Community is not only encounter, but institution.
The Connection to Rosenzweig: “The Star of Redemption”
Buber does not stand alone. His close friend Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) had published The Star of Redemption (1921) two years earlier - a work explicitly directed against Hegel.
Rosenzweig’s critique: Hegel thinks “the All-ness” - the system that encompasses everything. But All-ness misses the individual. Death - my death, not death in general - cannot be integrated into the system. It is the absolutely singular, which resists universality.
Rosenzweig’s alternative: three irreducible elements - God, world, human being - which are not reducible to one another, but stand in relation: creation (God-world), revelation (God-human), redemption (human-world). The relations are primary, not the elements.
The parallel to Buber is obvious: here too the relation is more original than the relata. Here too Hegel’s “sublation” is criticized as a failure to grasp otherness. Here too, it is a matter of dialogue rather than monologue.
Rosenzweig and Buber worked together - on the famous Bible translation that aimed to render the Hebrew into German as literally as possible. For both, the biblical tradition - the addressed “Thou” of God, the covenant as relation - was the alternative to the Greek-idealist tradition of self-relation.
The Jewish Dimension: A Different Tradition
Buber and Rosenzweig stand for a Jewish critique of Hegel that differs from the Christian one.
The Christian reception of Hegel - from the Right Hegelians to theological critics like Kierkegaard - operated within the scheme of incarnation and reconciliation. God becomes man, Spirit externalizes itself and returns to itself. Hegel’s system was read as a secularization of Christian salvation history - positively (Hegel as philosophical theologian) or negatively (Hegel as heretic), but within the same framework.
The Jewish tradition has a different emphasis: the covenant between God and human being is relation, not identity. God does not become human - he remains the Other, the Holy, the Hidden. Revelation is address, not incarnation. The “Hear, O Israel” presupposes a Thou that can be addressed without becoming identical with the one speaking.
Buber makes this tradition philosophically fruitful. The “eternal Thou” - his term for God - is not the absolute Spirit that recognizes itself in everything. It is the Thou that shines through in every encounter without ever becoming an It. It is what makes the I-Thou relation possible without itself becoming an object.
This is not theology in the confessional sense - Buber was criticized by Orthodox Jews for emphasizing experience too much and law too little. But it is a religious philosophy that differs from Hegel’s philosophical religion.
The History of Influence: From Dialogical Philosophy to Communication Theory
Buber’s influence extends far beyond Jewish philosophy:
Dialogical philosophy: Ferdinand Ebner, Gabriel Marcel, and Emmanuel Levinas each developed their own versions of dialogical thinking. Levinas radicalized Buber’s approach: the face of the Other is an ethical claim that shatters every totalization. Responsibility for the Other precedes my freedom.
Psychotherapy: Carl Rogers’s client-centered therapy, Gestalt therapy (Perls knew Buber personally), and humanistic psychology as a whole were influenced by Buber. The therapeutic relationship as an I-Thou encounter, not an I-It treatment.
Pedagogy: Buber’s writings on education (Reden über Erziehung, 1953) emphasized the relationship between teacher and student as a dialogical encounter. Education is not the shaping of an object, but an encounter with a becoming subject.
Communication theory: Habermas’s theory of communicative action, Apel’s discourse ethics take up - mediated through philosophy of language - dialogical motifs. The orientation of language toward mutual understanding presupposes intersubjectivity that cannot be derived from subjectivity.
Social reflection in Johannes Heinrichs: Volume II will show how Heinrichs’s distinction of four stages of reflection - factual, social, self-reflexive, transcendental - systematically integrates the dialogical dimension. “Social reflection” is not reducible to factual reflection. The relation to other subjects is categorially different from the relation to objects.
The Systematic Balance: What Remains as a Challenge?
Buber’s critique of Hegel is partly justified, partly overstated.
Justified is the insistence on the originariness of encounter. The Thou is phenomenologically underivable. The experience of being addressed is irreducible. Any philosophy that overlooks this misses something essential.
Overstated is the thesis that Hegel misses this entirely. The structures of recognition in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right are not mere self-relation. The ethical institutions mediate individuality and community without dissolving one into the other. Buber reads Hegel too one-sidedly as a philosopher of identity.
The productive tension: What would a philosophy look like that integrates both - the originariness of encounter and the necessity of mediation? One that takes the Thou seriously without despising institution? That acknowledges the fleetingness of encounter without renouncing duration?
This is the task Buber leaves behind. He did not solve it - his thinking remains stuck in the polarity of I-Thou and I-It, without mediating them. But he posed the question that every interpretation of Hegel must answer: how can the system preserve the Other as Other, instead of making it a moment of the Same?
Conclusion: The Enduring Question
Buber died in 1965 in Jerusalem - after a life that led from Germany through Frankfurt (where he taught until 1933) to Palestine/Israel. He had survived the catastrophe of European Jewry and tried to advocate for dialogue in the Arab-Jewish conflict - without great success, but consistently with his philosophy.
His question remains: is Hegel’s system truly open to the Other, or does it close into a circle? Can dialectic think encounter, or only mediation? Is recognition self-relation in the Other, or relation to a truly Other?
These questions are not settled. They will recur in Volume II - in Levinas, in Habermas, in Heinrichs. Buber did not invent them, but he posed them with a sharpness that still has an effect today.