This highly original interpretation of Paul by the Jewish philosopher of religion Jacob Taubes was presented in a number of lectures held in Heidelberg toward the end of his life, and was regarded by him as his “spiritual testament.” ...

One of the great Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century, Taubes published only this one book during his life, and here the English translation finally becomes available.

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.

The book is the English edition of a collection of essays by Jacob Taubes, one of the most creative and idiosyncratic philosophers of religion in Germany of the second half of the twentieth century.

From all this activity, it would seem that we know what the term "theology" means. It is, after all, the label of an academic discipline operating within a well circumscribed field of cognition. Yet if we look more closely, we are ever more embarrassed to define exactly the subject-matter of theology. The self-evidence which theology attributes to the definition of its subject-matter is a dubious advantage. For it is exactly the seemingly self-evident which has to be subjected to the questio (...) iuris. (shrink)

From all this activity, it would seem that we know what the term "theology" means. It is, after all, the label of an academic discipline operating within a well circumscribed field of cognition. Yet if we look more closely, we are ever more embarrassed to define exactly the subject-matter of theology. The self-evidence which theology attributes to the definition of its subject-matter is a dubious advantage. For it is exactly the seemingly self-evident which has to be subjected to the questio (...) iuris. (shrink)

Aristotle's thesis concerning the primacy of the ontological question did not, however, remain uncontested. For the concept of being becomes meaningless if only the being of the particular is admitted. The nominalistic repudiation of ontology, whereby the concept of being is reduced to a mere flatus vocis, runs through the history of philosophy since the medieval controversies around the problem of universals. But Aristotle's thesis could be questioned without adhering to the nominalistic definition of reality as a mere summation of (...) particulars. Thus transcendental idealism did not oppose Aristotle's ontological starting point on nominalistic grounds but for its inherent dogmatism, and it put the "critical question" in the place of the "ontological question." This shift was particularly important in the development of German Philosophy in the twentieth century. The critical question plays the role of the first philosophy and yields two major disciplines: methodology and epistemology. Critical philosophy did not mean one dedicated to the criticism of existing philosophical doctrines but was envisaged instead as the foundation for a possible system of philosophy. The preparatory function of the critical question was explicitly recognized by Kant, who identified the systematic part of philosophy with the traditional contents of metaphysics, purified, however, of all dogmatic assertions. The critical question did not embrace the entire scope of his philosophical work, and Kant labored to build the system to the end of his life, as the fragments of his Opus Postumum testify. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's "absolute paradox" was born in his critique of Hegel's absolute reconciliation between faith and knowledge and bears the scars of his desperate struggle between atheism and the belief in the God of Abraham. In Kierkegaard's critique of Hegel's reconciliation it became evident that there are two basic possibilities in interpreting religious experience: gnosticism and pisticism. Paul, Augustine, Luther, Kant, Kierkegaard and Karl Barth represent the pistic interpretation of religion. They are "pistics" who protest against man's gnostic hubris and try (...) to expose his illusion about a cognitive way of archetypal knowledge. The paradox of faith implies a sola fide which can never be turned into a general and universal method. But theology is stronger than faith! It turns even the paradox of faith into a method relating the way of paradox to the classical ways of theology, the method of negation and analogy. The paradox of faith is thereby taken out of its context, its energy diffused and its motif turned into a general argument for apologetic theology. (shrink)

Richard Faber, the author of learned studies of Novalis, Vergil, Brecht, and Carl Schmitt, is aware that this is not the first book he has published with the same title. ad Jacob Taubes, the title...

이 글은 야콥 타우베스의 보편주의적 바울 해석이 지향하는 정치신학적 테제를 밝히고 그 의미를 생각해보는 데 그 목적이 있다. 타우베스가 지향하는 ‘보편주의’는 예외상태를 결정하는 주권자의 정의에 근거하고 있다. 그러나 적과 동지로 구분하는 슈미트와는 타우베스는 사랑으로 적과 하나가 되는 공동체를 지향한다. 타우베스는 프로이트의 유일신교에 대한 독해를 통하여 정치신학자로서 바울의 면모를 발굴한다. 프로이트는 바울이 유대교의 ‘파괴자’인 동시에 ‘계승자’라는 측면을 중시하여, 자신의 ‘아버지 종교’ 이론을 정당화하는 데 적극 활용한다. 프로이트는 바울이 아버지(하느님)의 살해에 대한 죄책감(원죄)을 강조한 데서 그의 천재성을 발견하였다.BR 타우베스는 바울이 유대인 그리스도교인들의 권력 (...) 주장을 해체하여 바울 자신의 사도직에 대한 정당성을 확립했을 뿐만 아니라, 로마제국의 법적 질서를 폐기하는 선언을 한 것으로 평가하였다. 이런 사실에서 타우베스는 프로이트의 역할 모델이 모세가 아닌 바울이었다고 주장한다. 타우베스는 이러한 자기주장을 정당화하기 위하여 바울에서 자기 자신에까지 이르는 정치신학자들을 연결하는 선線을 구상하였는데 마르치온, 스피노자, 루터, 니체, 프로이트, 벤야민, 슈미트, 타우베스, 아스만까지를 그려 놓았다. 여기에서 매우 중요한 사실은 벤야민과 슈미트가 개념화한 ‘정치신학’인데, 타우베스가 이해하는 바울의 ‘보편성’은 바로 정치신학적 맥락에서만 생각할 수 있는 것이다. 그것은 ‘주권자’, 즉 ‘예외상태를 결정하는 자’만이 ‘법 파괴적 폭력’과 ‘법 정초적 폭력’을 동시에 작동시킬 수 있기 때문이다.BR 타우베스는 모세가 하느님의 진노로부터 유대백성들을 구하기 위해 스스로 자신의 죄를 청하는 기도 의식이었던 욤-키푸르Jom-Kippur 전례의 의미를, 이방인 선교를 위해서 유대인들의 율법 체계를 넘어서야 하는 바울의 상황에 똑같이 적용하였다. 바울은 ‘하느님의 분노’를 지양하기 위하여 ‘하느님의 영’를 제시하고, 이를 바탕으로 ‘하느님의 나라’를 세울 수 있는 ‘범 이스라엘’의 구원을 가능하게 하였다. 타우베스의 해석은 바울이 ‘교회의 적’으로 선언한 이스라엘인들이 왜, 그리고 어떻게 다시 돌아와서 하느님의 나라에 참여하는가를 설득력 있게 보여주고 있다. (shrink)

Philosopher, rabbi, religious historian, Gnostic: who was Jacob Taubes and what is at stake in his works? To begin answering this question, it is useful to consider his writings in conjunction with those of Carl Schmitt, with whom he shared an interest in the theological background of modern politics. Although Taubes made the acquaintance of such thinkers as Gershom Scholem, T. W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Jacques Derrida, this complex history with Schmitt has been the best known (...) and most notorious of his relationships. Though never blind to the legal theorist's political past, Taubes acknowledged his intellectual debt to Schmitt…. (shrink)

Through a close reading of the opening pages of Occidental Eschatology, this paper analyzes how Jacob Taubes relied on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy to understand the nature of eschatology. Taubes implemented Heidegger’s notions of truth, error, and history from his seminal essay “On the Essence of Truth,” (mis)interpreting the essay by ascribing an eschatological meaning to it. This surprisingly allowed him to find in Heidegger a model to come to terms with the Jewish experience of history. In order (...) to fully understand this untimely use of Heidegger’s work, the paper turns its attention to the correspondence of Jacob Taubes with his first wife, Susan Taubes. The conclusion asks to what extent Jacob Taubes’s uncritical use of Heidegger’s thinking plays into the latter’s notorious antisemitism. (shrink)