A Study of Our Knowledge of Persons with Special Reference to the Work of Dr. Martin Buber

The field of philosophy is wide and varied, and often appears to be remote from the common life of men. Yet this remoteness is only superficial for the problems with which philosophy deals arise in the first instance from questions which occur to the man in the street, though he may not pursue them systematically. He cannot avoid meeting them, though he may avoid trying to answer them. What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of the universe? Is the ordering of nature, of society of the individual organism quite fortuitous or according to some unwritten law? How do we know other people and objects? What is the nature of God? That these questions are dependent upon human reflection is not hard to see. They arise out of reflection, and they depend to a greater or less degree upon reflection for their answer. But we may go further and question reflection itself: What is the nature of reflection? What is its subject matter? Is reflection reliable? In other words, “How do we know?” The examination of this question constitutes that aspect of philosophy known as “Epistemology”, and upon the answer to that question the fate of philosophy depends to a great extent.