Martin Buber, widely recognized as a philosopher and theologian, frequently lauded as a prophet, said at a celebration of his 80th birthday, "I am no philosopher, prophet, or theologian. I am simply a man who has seen something and who goes to a window and points to what he has seen." In this article, Spencer Dew calls that statement a rhetorical masterstroke, providing at once a humbly aggrandizing self-conception of identity, a metaphoric analogue for the work itself in both content and form, and, ultimately, an image of pedagogy. Dew writes his reflections on some of the pedagogical function to be drawn from Martin Buber's work, a way to think about texts and their workings, the abilities and limits of language, and a way to relate this thinking to the issue of ethics, and of human relations.