Jacob Taubes

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jacob Taubes (born February 25, 1923 in Vienna ; died March 21, 1987 in Berlin ) was a religious sociologist , philosopher and Judaist .

Life

Jacob Taubes came from a rabbinical family of scholars. He and his family moved to Zurich in 1936 , where his father, Zwi Taubes, was appointed Chief Rabbi of the ICZ . His mother was Fanny Taubes, née Blind (1899–1957). In 1943 Taubes completed his training as a rabbi with his Semicha . He then studied philosophy and history at the universities in Basel and Zurich . During his studies he had contacts with the Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Protestant theologian Karl Barth . In Zurich, Taubes received his doctorate in 1947 with a dissertation on Western eschatology . At the same time he was friends with Armin Mohler , who later became Ernst Jünger's private secretary . Taubes characterized himself and Mohler in the following words: "He was, so to speak, the right-wing extremist and I the left-wing extremist".

From 1949 Taubes taught as a lecturer in religious philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York . Here he received private lessons from the philosopher Leo Strauss , and he was also known to Hannah Arendt and Paul Tillich .

At the invitation of Gershom Scholem , Taubes worked from 1951 to 1953 as an assistant professor and lecturer in the sociology of religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . After a conflict between himself and his academic teacher Scholem, Taubes returned to the United States, where he taught for two years as a Rockefeller Fellow at Harvard University and as a visiting professor at Princeton University . During this time he made friends with Herbert Marcuse . In 1956 Taubes was appointed professor of the history and philosophy of religion at Columbia University in New York, where he taught for ten years. From 1966 he was full professor for Jewish studies and hermeneutics at the Free University of Berlin . At the end of the 1970s, he was also a permanent guest professor at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris .

Jacob Taubes was married to Susan Taubes (1928–1969) for the first time; she had received her doctorate from Paul Tillich . The marriage resulted in the son Ethan (born 1953, now a lawyer in New York) and the daughter Tanaquil (* 1956). Susan Taubes wrote the novel Divorcing , which was published in the USA in the fall of 1969 in English. A week after the publication of the novel she committed in 1969 on November 6 suicide . The work was translated into German and published in 1995 under the title Scheiden tut weh . It is about marriage with the deaf and the life of the author. Your extensive written estate has been archived and researched by the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin since 2003.

Jacob Taubes was married to Margherita von Brentano in his second marriage . A letter from 1981 published posthumously in 2005 claims a long love affair with the writer Ingeborg Bachmann .

Taubes suffered from a manic-depressive illness that made frequent hospital stays necessary.

philosophy

Taubes referred to himself as "Arch Jew" and " Pauliner " at the same time or also "Jewish Christian". Thinking in polemical tension, in antinomies, is characteristic of him . He met Carl Schmitt in the apocalyptic conviction that the eschatological end of history opened up the possibility of a new political practice. For him, Israel stands as a “place of revolution”, as a “restless element in world history”, which actually only created a concept of history. Like Nietzsche and Max Weber , he emphasizes the importance of Israel in world history as the “axiological” beginning of Western eschatology. Against Carl Schmitt, Taubes wants to maintain the perspective of a release from the bondage to this world; Without the necessary distinction between the worldly and the spiritual , human beings are at the mercy of rulers and powers who “ would no longer know the hereafter in a monistic cosmos ”.

Edition of the correspondence

From 2008 to 2012 the Center for Literary Research in Berlin ran a project for the edition of Taubes' correspondence under the direction of Martin Treml . In January 2012, a volume with the correspondence between Taubes and Carl Schmitt was published.

literature

Own writings

  • Studies on the history and system of occidental eschatology. Verlag Rösch, Bern (Switzerland) 1947. 62 pages. Philosophical dissertation at the University of Zurich in 1947.
  • Occidental eschatology. 1st edition 1947. In the book series: Contributions to sociology and social philosophy : Volume 3. Francke, Bern 1947.
    • Occidental eschatology. With an appendix. 2nd edition 1991. In the book series batteries : Volume 45. Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1991.
    • Occidental eschatology. With an appendix. 3rd edition 2007. With an afterword by Martin Treml. In the book series batteries : Volume 45. Matthes & Seitz, ISBN 3-88221-256-X , (Italian edition 1997, Hungarian 2004, Croatian 2009, French 2009, English 2009, Spanish 2010).
  • Ad Carl Schmitt . Opposing coincidence. Merve Verlag , Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88396-054-3 (English edition: To Carl Schmitt, Letters and Reflections , Columbia University Press 2013).
  • The political theology of Paul. Lectures, held at the research facility of the Evangelical Study Community in Heidelberg, February 23-27, 1987, edited by Aleida Assmann based on tape recordings . Edited by Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann in conjunction with Horst Folkers , Wolf-Daniel Hartwich and Christoph Schulte. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 1993, 2nd edition 1995. 3rd, improved edition 2003, ISBN 3-7705-2844-1 (English edition: Stanford 2004 ISBN 0-8047-3344-9 ).
  • From cult to culture. Building blocks for a critique of historical reason. Collected essays on religious and intellectual history. Edited by Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann, Wolf-Daniel Hartwich and Winfried Menninghaus . Wilhelm Fink, Munich 1996, 2nd edition 2007, ISBN 3-7705-3027-6 .
  • Apocalypse and Politics: Articles, reviews and smaller writings , edited by Herbert Kopp-Oberstebrink and Martin Treml with the collaboration of Theresia Heuer and Anja Schipke, Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-7705-6056-1 .

As editor

  • Theory of Religion and Political Theology ; 3 vols., Fink, Munich and Schöningh, Paderborn:
    • I The prince of this world. Carl Schmitt and the Consequences , 1983
    • II Gnosis and Politics , 1984
    • III Theocracy , 1987

Correspondence

  • Jacob Taubes to Aharon Agus, Berlin, November 11, 1981 . From a non-lieux of the archive. Edited by Sigrid Weigel . In: Trajectories. Journal of the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin, No. 10 / April 2005
  • The price of messianism . Letters from Jacob Taubes to Gerschom Scholem and other materials. Edited by Elettra Stimilli. Translated from Italian by Astrida Ment. Editorial collaboration on the German edition Astrida Ment. With a text by Elettra Stimilli: Messianism as a political problem . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006
  • "Creation is always violent" . Susan Taubes to Jacob Taubes, Zurich, April 4, 1952. Edited by Christina Pareigis. In: Trajectories. Journal of the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin, No. 15 / October 2007
  • Susan Taubes . The correspondence with Jacob Taubes 1950–1951 . Edited and commented by Christina Pareigis. Fink, Paderborn 2011, ISBN 3-7705-5181-8
  • Correspondence between Carl Schmitt and Jacob Taubes . Edited by Thorsten Palzhoff and Martin Treml. Wilhelm Fink. Munich 2012
  • Hans Blumenberg - Jacob Taubes. Correspondence 1961-1981 . Edited by Herbert Kopp-Oberstebrink and Martin Treml. Suhrkamp. Berlin 2013
  • Susan Taubes . Correspondence with Jacob Taubes in 1952 . Edited and commented by Christina Pareigis. Fink, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-7705-5597-0

interview

  • Taubes in conversation with Florian Rötzer . In: Florian Rötzer (Ed.): Thinking that is time . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1987

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rabbi in Zurich
  2. ↑ Helen Thein: The riddle about Susan Taubes. A search for traces , in: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 59 (2007), pp. 371–380, note 26
  3. ↑ a b c Henning Ritter : The man who knew too much . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung No. 16 v. January 19, 2008, p. Z 1.
  4. ^ Jacob Taubes: Ad Carl Schmitt: Gegenstrebige Fügung , Berlin, Merve 1987, page 67
  5. ^ In: Trajekte (magazine of the Center for Literary Research Berlin). No. 10, 5th year, April 2005; see also the press review in the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Forum [1]
  6. ↑ Richard Faber, Eveline Goodman-Thau, Thomas Macho (ed.): Occidental eschatology. Ad Jacob Taubes . Würzburg 2001, p. 24
  7. ↑ cf. Art. “Jacob Taubes”, in: Metzler Lexicon of Jewish Philosophers, Stuttgart 2003, pp. 445–447
  8. ^ Jacob Taubes: Ad Carl Schmitt. Opposing coincidence. Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88396-054-3
  9. ↑ see the project homepage at http://www.zfl-berlin.org/jacob-taubes.html
  10. ↑ see data in Jstor http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/taub15412
  11. ^ A longer review by Wolfgang Palaver : The political theology of Paulus. Lectures held at the research facility of the Protestant Study Community in Heidelberg 23. – 27. February 1987. (...) , in: Journal for Catholic Theology , Vol. 118, No. 2 (1996), pp. 249-252
personal data
SURNAME Taubes, Jacob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-German Judaist, sociologist of religion, philosopher and rabbi
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 1987
Place of death Berlin