China and the West

Buber, Martin. Besprechungen mit Martin Buber in Ascona.
Quelle : Lao-tse. Tao te king von Victor von Strauss [ID D4587].
Im Nachlass von Martin Buber befindet sich das Manuskript Besprechungen mit Martin Buber in Ascona über Laozis Dao de jing ; sowie Taoismus-Materialien unter dem Titel Die Lehre.
Irene Eber : The talks consisted in a chapter by chapter exposition of the Dao de jing, and he discussed altogether thrity-three chapters of the book. Broader religious and philosophical issues were also raised in conjunction with the text either or the participants. Buber's lectures are not preserved among his manuscripts, but their contents was recorded by one (or several) participant(s). The lectures reveal a new understanding of the concepts of the Dao de jing. They also established a wider philosophical context for the text comparing its ideas with Jewish, Christian, and Confucian thought. In these talks, Buber created for the Dao de jing a place in his philosophical and religious discoursce, and his explanations of the various chapters, now far less mystically interpreted, can be considered an attempt at a commentary on the Dao de jing. Non-acting was no longer accorded a central position, and he was also not overly oncerned with the role of the sage. On the other hand, issues related to society and the political state received more attention, and the Tao in the world (not as mystic oneness) was exhaustively discussed.
The talks indicates that Buber accepted most of von Strauss's notions, building his interpretations in many parts on these. Buber too, viewed the Dao de jing as a religious text which, he apparently believed, must be interpreted in a religious spirit. Although he never explicitly described Tao as synonymous with God, he attributed to Tao the quality of the divine (das Göttliche).
Buber's comments on chapters one and nineteen ascribe an ontology to the Dao de jing. By stipulating both an eternal Tao and one that is manifested in the world, Laozi established an ontological fact. Tao, therefore, is not a law of nature, not abstraction, but being or substance. Two indivisible parts of the divine exist ; one transcendent and unknowable, the other immanent and personal. Because the human being interacts with the immanent part, it can be termed the personal aspect of the divine. Buber argued that the ineffable, the transcendent Tao, is not the beginning of existence, stipulating a difference between origin (Ursprung) and cause (Ursache). The origin which makes possible creation is the transcendent Tao and the cause that sets the process in motion is the immanent Tao. Buber's comments to chapter seven stress two additional points : First, Laozi was not interested in otherworldliness, his ideals deal with reality itself, and second, Tao manifests itself in multiplicity. But the idea of Tao must not be taken to mean that the One is real and the many an illusion.
In spite of stipulating transcendence and immanence, Buber did not want to suggest a dichotomizing of Tao. Hence his comments to chapter ten and twenty-two reiterated once more the Tao's oneness. But oneness that had been so important to him more than a decade earlier now had somewhat different implications. It was no longer only a mystic and difficult to explain concept. Oneness now signified to Buber completeness and he related it to the person who participates in the divine, who stands in proximity to God, who exists in a higher sphere of undividedness, or who has sought the divine and been united with it. When such a person acts, the difference between acting in the name of man or in the name of God disappears. It is one and the same. Man is a religious being, he asserted in his comments fo chapters fifty-five and sixty-two. He possesses creative powers, spontaneously, without willing. He creates. Such a person is holy when he enters the sphere of completeness. Holiness is, therfore, not primarily and attribute of God alone, but of the human being as well. For this reason, Buber apparently did not hesitate using von Strauss’s the 'holy one' for sage, to describe such a person's wholeness and godliness.
Perhaps, because Buber now interpreted the Dao de jing as a this-worldly rather than a mystic text, he devoted considerable attention to those portions (chapters 29, 30, 57, 61, 78, 53) which deal with society and the state. The state to him meant community (Gemeinschaft). But not community as the sum total of individuals, rather community as a spiritual joining and acting together. Such a community resists domination by anyone person, for it is constituted by the relationship its members have to the person in the center. Buber argued that Laozi considered the political state both a state of human beings and a state of God. "To Laozi the state consists of the community and legitimate authority", by which he meant the lawful, religious rule of the person who is central to the community. Buber, however, did not develop the ideas of the political state and authority, or to what extent the sage was the ruler. He pointed to messianism in chapter forty-nine, stating that the Dao de jing's messianism concerns the sage, but that all messianisms are, in the final analysis, the yearning for a king. His definition of the sage or the holy one in chapter seventy-eight is more in keeping with his own views than the Dao de jing's, when he assigns to him the position of intermediary between God and the world who assumes responsibilities as well as guilt, who steps into the gap that has been created between God and the world.