Difficult Wisdom: Buber and Levinas on Hebrew Humanism

Abstract

The most efficient way to deal comparatively with the Confucian and the Jewish traditions is through an analysis of their ethical, rather than metaphysical approaches and principles. In this paper, I study the ideas about Jewish and Hebrew humanism
develop ed by two of the leading Jewish thinkers in the twentieth century, Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, both before and after the deep crisis created by the Shoah (the Nazi genocide of the Jews).