| Summary: | <p>Martin Buber was a source of inspiration for a generation of young German Jews at the beginning of the twentieth century; throughout his career, however, he was also criticised by scholars of Jewish history and mysticism. In response, Buber and contemporary scholars alike have tended to split the development of his thought into two main phases: the earlier mystical phase, which sought to realise the divine, and the more mature dialogic phase, which overturns mysticism and instead attempts to encounter God.</p>
<p>This thesis contributes to the growing scholarship that argues for the continuities in Buber’s career by examining his reception of Friedrich Nietzsche. Buber’s transition from mysticism to dialogue is inextricable from Nietzsche, who exerted a powerful influence on the young Buber but was later dismissed as a ‘mystic of the Enlightenment’. With reference to Harold Bloom’s theories on the anxiety of influence, the thesis suggests that Buber developed his dialogic thought on the basis of his aesthetic encounter with Nietzsche: Buber subconsciously misreads his literary precursor, as well as his own controversial mysticism, in order to maintain his artistic authenticity. Crucially, Buber does so through two specific ratios: tessera, which reads Nietzsche as overly idealistic and abstract; and daemonization, which reads him as all too human. The result is that the precursor is distanced in two diametrically opposed directions, yet encountered as another artist in between. The thesis locates the embodiment of Buber’s mysticism and dialogue in his description of the Bacchant, a figure who recurs throughout his oeuvre and functions as a mise en abyme of anxiety: as he or she is being observed on stage, the Bacchant, directed towards Dionysus as the ultimate precursor, simultaneously performs a mythical role yet remains a distinct physical presence.</p>
<p>In chapters that cover Buber’s aesthetics, mysticism, myth, history and philosophical anthropology, the thesis discovers that Buber returns time and again to Nietzsche and the figure of the Bacchant, demonstrating not only a synchronic anxiety of influence at any given moment, but also a diachronic anxiety across Buber’s thought; it hopes to offer a new organic development in our understanding of Buber’s career, to highlight the religiosity of Nietzsche’s thought, and to emphasise the importance of German romanticism in Buber and the generation of young Jews whom he influenced in turn.</p>
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