Caught in the Here and in need of the Beyond, he leads, in the literal sense of the expression, a double existence. However, this duality cannot be split into two positions that could be occupied one after the other, because, when it is understood as man's participation ( aroused by an inner tension) in both realms, it defies dissection. He suffers tragedy because he strives to realize the absolute in the Here; he experiences reconciliation because he has the vision of perfection. He is always simultaneously within space and at the threshold of a supra-spatial endlessness, simultaneously within the flow of time and in the reflection of eternity; and this duality of his existence is simple, since his being is precisely the tension from out of the Here into the There. Even if he were to travel or to dance, for him travel and dance would never be events whose meaning is self-contained. Like all endeavors, they receive their content and their form from that other realm toward which he is oriented.
The success of a particular book cannot be explained by the qualities of the work itself -- or if so, only to the extent that they satisfy those needs. And should these qualities perchance contain real traces of substance, they secure the book its fame not in their capacity as contents but rather as responses to widespread social tendencies. The success of a book as a commodity ultimately depends upon the book's ability to satisfy the demands of a broad social stratum of consumers. These demands are much too general and constant for their direction to be determined by private inclinations or mere suggestion. They must be based on the social conditions of the consumers.
They prefer to lie in the bosom of nature, where they can renounce language and defend themselves against reason, whose aim is the eradication of mythological institutions and surviving forms of consciousness.
distract attention from the spiritual/ intellectual ones.
Spirits/ intellects of this sort willingly embrace a skepticism that can no longer be easily surpassed; they exhaust themselves demonstrating all imaginable determinations and relations, without ever prophetically touching upon meaning, and with only sporadic depatures from the realm of valuefree observation. Yet the insights they have attained in the domain of the humanities and anthropology ---- which are dubious and even superficial in certain respects precisely because they claim to be pure insights -- are rooted in renunciation. Indeed, perhaps it is only the undertone of sacrifice reverberating through them that gives them ultimate significance and lends them the luster of depth.
It is totally unimportant and at most of psychological interest whether the stream of consciousness in which the idea bobs up is already given, or whether it is the initially given content of the should-being that first compels one to start off on a far-reaching path. In any case, the group member always draws out all of the possibilities deposited in embryonic form in the idea, and develops the idea into the totality already implied within it.
Once individual devotees of the idea have realized that, besides the logic of the idea, there is something like a logic of reality, then the group's homogeneous indivuduality will eventually dissolve and the relationship to reality will become the subject of a discussion decisive for the reconstitution of the group entity.
The behavior of the sibling groups differs, moreover, in a characteristic manner. The radical group, which scorns all compromise with reality, considers itself the actual bearer of the unadulterated idea and stigmatizes the moderate group as the disloyal member of the original group individuality. Since it rejects reconciliation with the extant, it can continue straight as an arrow along the path dictated by the idea, and, in the knowledge of it's own purity, can with a semblance of justice brand as traitors those who have obviously strayed from this path. For its part the (moderate) group, imbued with the power of reality, in some respects has a harder time defending its standpoint against the radicals. It tends to slip into a defensive position and has to appeal to common sense, to insight, whereas the other group needs only to call upon a belief that soars above reality. It sees in this other, radical group almost something like its better self, which has been led astray and which it wants to convince and bring back from utopian daydreams to the attainment of what is possible. Its strength and good conscience are grounded in the knowledge that it is championing something within reach and that it is driving the wedge of the idea into reality. It renders the idea finite and in the process allows it to become partially stunted, whereas the utopian group wants to realize the idea to the full extent of its infinity split in the mother group has taken place, both of the resulting sibling groups are in a very profound sense indispensable for the process in which the merely-extant becomes an idea; only together, and as a result of their bilaterial friction, do they help the idea achieve the form of which it is capable.
And whereas the congregation invokes the name and dedicates itself to the service in order to fulfill the relation, the people dispersed in the lobby accept their host's incognito without question. Lacking any and all relation, they drip down into the vacuum with the same necessity that compels those striving in and for reality to lift themselves out of the nowhere toward their destination.
Rather, it must be understood here as designating a form of existence whose intention is to situate the entire person in reality. "Religious" here means a practice of life that flourishes on the basis of a real connection to essential truth contents -- in this case, those conveyed by the documents of Jewish scripture -- and not a theoretical orientation of consciousness or a purely internal religious undertaking like that of the liturgical movement.
Buber’s concept of realityimmediately takes on an ideological character when, for instance, a realitythat no longer exists in substance wants to claim superiority over a theorythat despite its abstraction is the locus of actuality today.
But people of this type, whomake use of such back alleys of weakness (even if it is a very understandableweakness) are certainly not the best, since they prematurely desire fulfillmentof their short-winded longing instead of bravely holding out in the vacuum and …waiting.
For it is a compromise to take value standards and cultural syntheses that are removed from history and embedded in history and touch them up after the fact with the cosmetics of an absolute meaning, just for the sake of a more dignified appearance.
All expressions ofspiritual/intellectual life are interrelated in countless ways. No single onecan be extricated from this web of relations, since each is enmeshed in the webwith all other such expressions.
Analogy & Metaphor
Assuming the philosopher has the discover's gaze needed to understand the former and the imagination and creative gifts necessary to envision the latter, he will turn to analogies when it is simply a matter of working out the relations between things and will prefer metaphors when he wants to present his insight into the core content of things.