4 - Dwelling Prophetically: Martin Buber’s Response to Heidegger

Summary

Martin Buber’s critique of Heidegger is centered on what he takes to be the latter’s neglect of the dialogical principle in human existence. This critique is one instance of a reading of Sein und Zeit that interprets Dasein as a solipsistic entity impervious to intersubjective relations. We have encountered this interpretation in Chapter 2, in Cassirer’s criticism against the individualistic theological traditions Heidegger draws on, and in Löwith’s claim that Heidegger cannot account for the “second person” in the context of his analysis of Rosenzweig and Heidegger. This was not an uncommon reading of Heidegger: Ernst Simon voiced a similar view, as did Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, who recalled that the editors of the Die Kreature journal “were aware that Martin Heidegger’s ‘thrown man’ certainly exists, but it is dumb.