It is usual to think of good and evil as two poles, two opposite directions, the antithesis of one another...We must begin by doing away with this convention.
Interpretation
The quote challenges the conventional dichotomy of good and evil, suggesting a need to rethink this binary perspective.
Martin Buber's quote invites us to reconsider our traditional understanding of good and evil as fixed opposites. He argues that viewing them merely as antithetical forces limits our understanding of moral complexity and the human experience, urging us to explore a more nuanced perspective that transcends simplistic categorizations.
In practice
In a discussion about ethical dilemmas, this quote can remind participants to consider gray areas rather than strictly good vs. evil.
When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.
Play is the exultation of the possible.
There is no room for God in him who is full of himself.
Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.
God dwells wherever man lets Him in.
Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. That is no metaphor, but the actual truth. Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its " content," its object; but love is between I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses.
Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?
They tell him that there is no why, since the moment simply is and since all of them are trapped in the moment, like bugs in amber.
The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words.
One does one's thinking before one knows what one is to think about.
Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization.
I was born into the world as the king of truth for the salvation of the world.
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