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"Taubes, Jacob"
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To Carl Schmitt
A philosopher, rabbi, religious historian, and Gnostic, Jacob Taubes was for many years a correspondent and interlocutor of Carl Schmitt (1888--1985), a German jurist, philosopher, political theorist, law professor -- and self-professed Nazi. Despite their unlikely association, Taubes and Schmitt shared an abiding interest in the fundamental problems of political theology, believing the great challenges of modern political theory were ancient in pedigree and, in many cases, anticipated the works of Judeo-Christian eschatologists.
In this collection of Taubes's writings on Schmitt, which includes decades of letters exchanged between them, the two intellectuals explore ideas of the apocalypse and other central concepts of political theology. Taubes acknowledges Schmitt's reservations about the weakness of liberal democracy yet distances himself from his prescription to rectify it, arguing the apocalyptic worldview requires less of a rigid hierarchical social ordering than a community committed to the importance of decision making. In these writings, a sharper and more nuanced portrait of Schmitt's thought emerges, as well as a more complicated understanding of Taubes, who has shaped the work of Giorgio Agamben, Peter Sloterdijk, and other major twentieth-century theorists.
eBook
Seminar Notes on Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History”
The following text is the first English translation of seminar notes taken in a seminar on Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” given by Jacob Taubes in 1984 at the Freie Universität Berlin, where Taubes held the Chair for Jewish Studies and Hermeneutics.¹
The notes were initially published in the German edition of Elettra Stimilli’s documentation of Taubes’s critical confrontation with Gershom Scholem’s work on the phenomenon of Messianism and its history.² They cover the first seven sessions of Taubes’s course on Benjamin, which took place from October 18 to December 6, 1984, before Taubes had to discontinue
Book Chapter
Walter Benjamin—A Modern Marcionite?
“The Devil is in the details.” Thisaperçuof Aby Warburg applies not only to philology and history, but to philosophical and theological reflection as well. Gershom Scholem, a highly speculative mind, invoked Aby Warburg’s words when he made his bold, imposing descent into the deep strata of Jewish history of religion, where he brought dark, dialectically fascinating, albeit profoundly demonic, forms of the Jewish spirit to light. A student once proposed that Scholem’s “historical-rational” apparatus could be the bridge over which searching secular students could enter onto the path to the “nonrational” content of Jewish mysticism and its demonic
Book Chapter
To Carl Schmitt
A philosopher, rabbi, religious historian, and Gnostic, Jacob Taubes was for many years a correspondent and interlocutor of Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), a German jurist, philosopher, political theorist, law professor—and self-professed Nazi. Despite their unlikely association, Taubes and Schmitt shared an abiding interest in the fundamental problems of political theology, believing the great challenges of modern political theory were ancient in pedigree and, in many cases, anticipated the works of Judeo-Christian eschatologists. In this collection of Taubes's writings on Schmitt, the two intellectuals work through ideas of the apocalypse and other central concepts of political theology. Taubes acknowledges Schmitt's reservations about the weakness of liberal democracy yet distances himself from his prescription to rectify it, arguing the apocalyptic worldview requires less of a rigid hierarchical social ordering than a community committed to the importance of decision making. In these writings, a sharper and more nuanced portrait of Schmitt's thought emerges, as well as a more complicated understanding of Taubes, who has shaped the work of Giorgio Agamben, Peter Sloterdijk, and other major twentieth-century theorists.
eBook
1948–1978
The history of Jacob Taubes and Carl Schmitt goes back to 1948; I will not recount it here, but tell you how it began. In 1948 I was a young upstart, I got a special grant from the Hebrew University, the Warburg Prize. I was in Jerusalem, that was after the division of the city, when the university library was in an enclave and out of bounds. I was ordered—professors were very much in charge, and if you want today to see an intact German university, then go to Jerusalem!—I was expected to study, or I was honored
Book Chapter
APPENDIX
The letter from Jacob Taubes that I have had copied is quite astonishing, a major document. I have shown it to a few acquaintances of good judgment; all of them were very moved by it. An old, very cultured, and experienced journalist from the time of the old monarchy (Rudolf Fischer) said after reading it: Bring that Jew here! I could tell you a great deal more of the effect of this letter. But I am sure that he has not readNomos der Erde, for otherwise he would have gone into the quote from St. John on p. 33.
Book Chapter
CARL SCHMITT
I would like to testify to my respect for Carl Schmitt, still a restless spirit in old age—although as a conscious Jew I belong among those whom he has marked as “enemy.”
I have never overlooked this axiom of Carl Schmitt. However, what he means by “enemy” is not to be found in his major, clamorous, texts, but rather in his broken confessions, published in 1950 asEx Captivitate Salus.
Carl Schmitt was a jurist, not a theologian; but a legal theorist who entered the scorched earth that theologians had vacated.
Theologians are inclined to define the enemy as
Book Chapter
Religion and the Future of Psychoanalysis
Freud insisted time and again that psychoanalysis is not a philosophy but a therapeutic method. Nevertheless, this method, which developed out of the study of some cases of hysteria, drew into its orbit the arts and the humanities, philosophy and religion. For psychoanalysis as a therapeutic method carried far-reaching implications for the understanding of man.¹
A revolutionary doctrine such as psychoanalysis could make its way into the general public only against the powerful resistance of current ideologies and established institutions. The resistance to the psychoanalytic method should not surprise the historian. What should astonish us is the rapid success that
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