Saying You to the Wreckage of History: Martin Buber and Walter Benjamin in Dialogue

Martin Buber (1878 – 1965) and Walter Benjamin (1892 – 1940) stand among the most prominent figures in Twentieth-Century German-Jewish Thought. Although Buber and Benjamin met multiple times, corresponded on philosophical as well as political matters, and even engaged in scholarly collaboration, with Buber publishing Benjamin's essay “Moskau” in 1927, this doctoral research constitutes the first major study that considers Buber and Benjamin together. This dissertation examines both the historical relationship between these two figures, as well as the promising philosophical resonance between Buber's philosophy of dialogue and Benjamin's philosophy of history. As to the former, in the realm of intellectual history, this study reconstructs Buber and Benjamin's personal relationship, devoting particular attention to their interactions in the pivotal year of 1916. This research shows that Benjamin's correspondence with Buber deserves a more prominent place in considering Buber's shift toward dialogue in 1916 than has hitherto been acknowledged, and also illuminates the precise origin of Benjamin's ultimate disdain for Buber, which was rooted in Benjamin's initially sincere—but ultimately frustrated—desire to engage with Buber on questions surrounding the nature of language. In the latter, more philosophical register, this dissertation applies Buber's philosophy of dialogue as a way of opening up and operationalizing Benjamin's famous, final text, “On the Concept of History.” This reading develops a hybrid Buberian-Benjaminian philosophy of history that both avoids overdetermining the role of the “angel of history” in Benjamin's text on the one hand, and on the other, also expands Buber's dialogical philosophy to encompass relations with the past, with history, as a new, fourth sphere of dialogical relation.