Conclusion | 293the state retains its monopoly on violence in this picture, both for the purposes
of police and for the national defense. Liberal thinkers, however, prefer to focus
on freedom of discourse and on reason giving, with the underlying framework of
violence postulated as a necessary condition of this freedom insofar as it protects
the rights of minorities. From such a perspective, Buberian theopolitics may seem
to lack a realistic account of how disagreements are mediated, leaping straight to
an imagined communal oneness that seems neither possible nor desirable.
There is a rich recent literature on religion and democracy. The students of
liberals of the previous generation, such as John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, and
Richard Rorty, have drawn on the philosophies of their teachers and responded to
religionist and communitarian critiques of liberalism (from Charles Taylor, Stan-
ley Hauerwas, and others), making the case that contemporary liberalism can al-
low a wider latitude for public arguments based in religion than was previously
thought.^2 It is therefore not the religiosity of Buber’s theopolitical ideas per se that
would primarily concern these thinkers, or even his anarchism (although anar-
chism is subject to a line of liberal criticism), but rather his emphasis on prophecy
and charisma, his apparent Judeo-centrism, and his seeming lack of interest in
rational argumentation. As Randi Rashkover has argued, Buber’s account of the
prophetic is “insufficiently reflective.”^3 If true, this charge has implications that are
not merely a matter of philosophical taste—existentialism versus neo- pragmatism
as flavors of contemporary thought. A theopolitics that is insufficiently reflective
must also necessarily lack the ability to respond to suffering and protect the weak.
It therefore holds little promise for contributing usefully to ordinary democratic
life, let alone for healing the world-historical wound in Palestine.
It would take a whole article, or perhaps even a book, to respond fully to this
concern, and at any rate (as I hope my discussion of his Zionism has shown) I
am not interested in assuming the role of Buber advocate, defending him against
all comers. Nonetheless, I emphasize two points as an initial reflection on what
Buber might have said about this question, had he discussed it with liberals. First
I would stress Buber’s claim, made in Der Gesalbte, that “the gift of the spirit
is not separated from human categories.”^4 Although primarily concerned in his
biblical writings to bring out what he sees as the faith of the biblical writers and
editors, he frequently offers notes on how this faith might manifest in contem-
porary times. The category of the prophetic is frequently used today to designate
religiously inspired social critique, and biblical charisma is not necessarily far
from the authority earned by gifted individuals in activist settings.^5 Second, one
might focus, as Cathleen Kaveny has recently done, on the place of prophetic
indictment as a rhetoric existing alongside deliberative reason-exchange in our
societies. Even as we note the potential dangers of this rhetoric, we can draw les-
sons from the paradigms of excellence in its performance, from Isaiah to Martin
Luther King, to guide and inform its contemporary practice.^6