  The analytic philosopher Steven T. Katz, author of an important essay about the particularism of mystical language, articulated a range of criticisms directed against Buber’s writings (Katz, 1985). More recently, Katz revisited and mitigated some of these earlier criticisms that included the charge of antinomianism, the lack of an account for the enduring character of the I-Thou relation, and the misrepresentation of Hasidic thought (Katz in Zank, 2006). What remains most objectionable in Buber is the tendency toward an aestheticization of reality and the problem of Buber’s often slippery poetic rhetoric. Walter Kaufmann, who produced a second English translation of I and Thou, articulated his displeasure with Buber most strongly. While he did not regard the lack of deep impact of Buber’s contributions to biblical studies, Hasidism, and Zionist politics as an indication of failure, Kaufmann considered I and Thou a shameful performance in both style and content. In style the book invoked “the oracular tone of false prophets” and it was “more affected than honest.” Writing in a state of “irresistible enthusiasm,” Buber lacked the critical distance needed to critique and revise his own formulations. His conception of the I-It was a “Manichean insult” while his conception of the I-Thou was “rashly romantic and ecstatic,” and Buber “mistook deep emotional stirrings for revelation.” (Kaufmann [1983] pp. 28–33). The preponderance in Buber’s writings of rhetorical figures, such as “experience,” “realization,” “revelation,” “presence” and “encounter,” and his predilection for utopian political programs such as anarchism, socialism, and a bi-national solution to the intractable national conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, are in line with a vagueness in his philosophical writing that often renders Buber’s thought suggestive, but elusive. Similar criticisms apply to Buber’s claim that language has the power to reveal divine presence or uncover Being.