ABSTRACT
The basic dynamics of Martin Buber’s relation to Kierkegaard appear to be quite simple at first glance: an ambiguous relation in which criticism markedly outweighs appreciation. Such a quantitative view would not, however, do justice to a reception that experienced different phases and, despite its clear-cut structure, comprises a variety of facets and nuances that deserve attention on their own. Kierkegaard represented for Buber a crucial voice in nineteenth-century philosophy, a voice that was simultaneously an essential corrective to contemporary philosophical trends and a source of new misconceptions. Although Kierkegaard in a certain sense prepared the ground for dialogical philosophy, he also yielded inspiration to what Buber considered monological streams of twentieth-century philosophical anthropology. Thus, in Buber’s view, Kierkegaard remained a deeply controversial figure, an ambivalent thinker, whom he in 1936 concisely characterized with the statement that “[n]o-one can so refute Kierkegaard as Kierkegaard himself.”1
