ABSTRACT
Martin Buber’s (1878–1965) philosophical theology, as expressed in his most important work, I and Thou, is in total contradiction to Nietzsche’s philosophy as formulated in The Will to Power and his other works.
Would it be correct to confirm once again the common assumption that Nietzsche was an atheist and Buber a believer? Nietzsche gave centrality to the “I” sovereign in its world, who created himself, who was self-sufficient, while Buber gave centrality to the relationship between man and his fellow, and man and his Maker; Nietzsche revealed the manipulative structure of all ideologies and religions, while Buber was a Zionist in heart and soul, and a religious person through and through. For Nietzsche, nationalism, socialism, and democracy were modern expressions of “slave morality”, while Buber saw Hebrew humanism, the morality of the prophets, and the utopia of the kibbutz as objectives for which it was worth leaving the landscape of the European homeland. Yet, despite all these differences, the two thinkers were, each in his way and in his own sphere, “religious heretics”: anarchistic thinkers outside the schematic conceptual frameworks of “religion” and “secularism”.
