Usage and community: the continuity of tradition in Juan de Valdés and Martin Buber

Abstract

Since Latin Middle Ages, rational-natured philosophical trends have confronted its fidelity to tradition. The Spain of the medieval and Renaissance periods maintained a tendency that was close to a communal understanding of the traditions, thanks to the preservation of specific exegetical rabbinic practices of the medieval that influenced the concept of language in use. Similarly, in the central Europe of the beginning of the twentieth century, one can observe a return to biblical exegesis as a needed rescue of the occult tradition of the West. The comparative study of both figures, a Hispanic and an Austrian one – Juan de Valdes (1504-1541) and Martin Buber (1878-1965) – illustrates the link between language and community. The same way Valdés considers language an experience of usage responsible for the formulation of meanings, Buber asserts that the reference of the meaning is not the word, but the community.