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LIBERALISM AND HISTORY AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR: THE CASE OF JACOB TAUBES*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2015

JAMIE MARTIN
JAMIE MARTIN*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Harvard University E-mail: jrmartin@fas.harvard.edu
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Abstract

Before his death in 1987, Jacob Taubes played an important role in postwar German academic philosophy and religious thought. Best known for his leftist political theology and scholarship on the history of Western eschatology, Taubes's thought was influential on mid-twentieth-century debates in Germany about secularization and modern political theology. Outside his relationship with Carl Schmitt, however, Taubes has received little attention in histories of postwar European thought, and few attempts have been made to understand his idiosyncratic work on its own terms. This essay presents new contexts for understanding Taubes and his political-theological critique of the ideological dominance of liberalism in postwar Germany. By analyzing Taubes's thought through the lens of his intellectual quarrel with Hans Blumenberg over secularization, it reassesses his contributions to postwar debates about the political temporality appropriate to a secular and non-utopian social theory, and the consequences of these debates for broader critiques of political liberalism.

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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , April 2017 , pp. 131 - 152
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank James Chappel, Katrina Forrester, Peter E. Gordon, Udi Greenberg, Samuel Moyn, Adam Stern, Noah Strote, and the anonymous referees of Modern Intellectual History for their helpful comments and advice on earlier drafts of this article.

References

1 Müller, Jan-Werner, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-war European Thought (New Haven, 2003), 169–80Google Scholar.

2 On Taubes's life see Treml, Martin, “Reinventing the Canonical: The Radical Thinking of Jacob Taubes,” in Goebel, Eckart and Weigel, Sigrid, eds., “Escape to Life”: German Intellectuals in New York: A Compendium on Exile after 1933 (Berlin, 2012), 457–78Google Scholar.

3 Perhaps the best-known thinker to recently take serious interest in Taubes is Giorgio Agamben. See e.g. Agamben, Giorgio, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, trans. Dailey, Patricia (Stanford, 2005)Google Scholar; and Agamben, , The Kingdom and the Glory: For A Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government, trans. Chiesa, Lorenzo and Mandarini, Matteo (Stanford, 2011)Google Scholar.

4 Terpstra, Marin and de Wit, Theo, “‘No Spiritual Investment in the World as It Is:’ Jacob Taubes's Negative Political Theology,” in Bulhof, Ilse N. and ten Kate, Laurens, eds., Flight of the Gods: Philosophical Perspectives on Negative Theology (New York, 2000), 320–53Google Scholar.

5 Taubes, Jacob, The Political Theology of Paul, trans. Hollander, Dana (Stanford, 2004), 103 Google Scholar. For all quotations I rely on the recent English translations of Taubes's major works, occasionally modifying these translations in accordance with the original German texts.

6 Taubes, Jacob, Ad Carl Schmitt: Gegenstrebige Fügung (Berlin, 1987), 16 Google Scholar.

7 See e.g. Gold, J. Robert, “Jacob Taubes: ‘Apocalypse from Below’,” Telos, 134 (2006), 140–56Google Scholar; Terpstra and de Wit, “No Spiritual Investment in the World as It Is”; Terpstra, M. J., “‘God's Love for His Enemies’: Jacob Taubes’ Conversation with Carl Schmitt on Paul,” Bijdragen: International Journal in Philosophy and Theology, 7 (2009), 185–206 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hell, Julia, “Katechon: Carl Schmitt's Imperial Theology and the Ruins of the Future,” Germanic Review, 84/4 (2009), 283–326 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mehring, Reinhard, “Karl Löwith, Carl Schmitt, Jacob Taubes und das ‘Ende der Geschichte’,” Zeitschrift fur Religions-und Geistesgeschichte, 48/3 (1996), 231–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meier, Heinrich, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts: Vier Kapitel zur Unterscheidung Politischer Theologie und Politischer Philosophie (Stuttgart, 1994), 239 n. 92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hollerich, Michael, “Carl Schmitt,” in Scott, P. and Cavanaugh, W. T., eds., The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology (Oxford, 2004), 107–22Google Scholar; Gross, Raphael, Carl Schmitt and the Jews (Madison, WI, 2007)Google Scholar; de Vries, Hent, Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida (Baltimore, 2002), 236–51Google Scholar. For alternative contexts to Taubes's thought and career see Faber, Richard et al., eds., Abendländische Eschatologie: Ad Jacob Taubes (Würzburg, 2001)Google Scholar.

8 One notable exception is an essay from 1955 in which Taubes critiqued Schmitt for neglecting to reflect upon the Christian roots of democratic and nonhierarchical forms of political organization. See Taubes, Jacob, “On the Symbolic Order of Modern Democracy,” Confluence: An International Forum, 4/1 (1955), 57–71 Google Scholar.

9 In 1977, Blumenberg convinced Taubes to contact Schmitt in writing. See Blumenberg, Hans to Taubes, Jacob, 24 May 1977, in Kopp-Oberstebrink, Herbert und Treml, Martin, eds., Hans Blumenberg Jacob Taubes Briefwechsel 1961–1981 (Berlin, 2013), 171–175 Google Scholar, at 171. For Taubes's recollection of Blumenberg's letter and his decision to write to Schmitt see Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, 101.

10 Wolf-Daniel Hartwich et al., “Afterword,” in Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, 139.

11 For an excellent discussion of the relationship of Taubes and his students with Blumenberg, which has been mostly overlooked in the secondary literature, see Joe Paul Kroll, “A Human End to History? Hans Blumenberg, Karl Löwith, and Carl Schmitt on Secularization and Modernity” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 2010), 286–96. See also Kroll's review of Herbert Kopp-Oberstebrink and Martin Treml's edition of the Blumenberg–Taubes correspondence in the Times Literary Supplement, 2 May 2014, 26.

12 Moyn, Samuel, “Amos Funkenstein on the Theological Origins of Historicism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 64/4 (2003), 639–57, at 644–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Taubes, Jacob, Occidental Eschatology, trans. Ratmoko, David (Stanford, 2009), 11 Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., 58.

15 Ibid., 16.

16 Ibid., 12.

17 Taubes, Jacob, “The Dogmatic Myth of Gnosticism,” in Taubes, From Cult to Culture, ed. Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva and Engel, Amir (Stanford, 2010), 61–75, at 66Google Scholar.

18 Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, 36. Unlike some scholars of late antique religion, Taubes was anxious throughout his career to establish a fundamental affinity between Gnosticism and apocalypticism. In an essay from 1971 he argued that Gnosticism is best understood as a reaction to the “deferral of parousia,” when the expectant believer turned from outward signs of the Eschaton towards inward spiritual purification. See Taubes, “The Dogmatic Myth of Gnosticism,” 73.

19 Taubes dedicated a 1984 collection of essays on Gnosticism he edited to Jonas, whose Gnosis und spätantiker Geist, Taubes wrote, inspired an entire generation of thinkers that dealt with Gnosticism as a theme in intellectual history. See Taubes, Jacob, “Vorwort,” in Taubes, ed., Gnosis und Politik (Munich, 1984), n.pGoogle Scholar.

20 Jonas, Hans, The Gnostic Religion (Boston, 2001), xxvi Google Scholar. For more on Jonas and his context see Lazier, Benjamin, God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination between the World Wars (Princeton, 2008)Google Scholar.

21 Jonas, a former student of Heidegger's at Marburg, would later compare Gnosticism with modern existentialism—an affinity sufficient to discredit both: “existentialist depreciation of the concept of nature . . . has something in common with the gnostic contempt for nature. No philosophy has ever been less concerned about nature than Existentialism, for which it has no dignity left.” Hans Jonas, “Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,” in Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 326–40, at 337.

22 Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, 45, original emphasis.

23 Ibid., 65.

24 See Taubes's interview with Rötzer, Florian, “Jacob Taubes,” in Rötzer, Florian, ed., Denken das an der Zeit ist (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 305–19, at 317Google Scholar.

25 As Odo Marquard pointed out, the so-called “secularization thesis” challenged by Blumenberg in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age originated not just from Löwith, but also from Taubes. See Marquard, Odo, Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie (Frankfurt am Main, 1992), 15 Google Scholar.

26 On the relationship of their views see Gordon, Peter E., “Jacob Taubes, Karl Löwith, and the Interpretation of Jewish History,” in Wiese, Christian and Urban, Martina, eds., German-Jewish Thought between Religion and Politics: Festschrift in Honor of Paul Mendes-Flohr on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (Berlin, 2012), 349–70Google Scholar.

27 Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, 85.

28 Ibid., 98.

29 Taubes, Ad Carl Schmitt, 8.

30 Jonas, Memoirs, 168.

31 See Löwith, Karl, Meaning in History (Chicago, 1949), 248 n. 19 and 255–6 n. 4Google Scholar.

32 Rötzer, “Jacob Taubes,” 316.

33 Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, 166.

34 Ibid., 168.

35 Ibid., 186.

36 Ibid., 188.

37 Ibid., 191.

38 Ibid., 193.

39 Ibid., 194.

40 Mehring, “Karl Löwith, Carl Schmitt, Jacob Taubes und das ‘Ende der Geschichte’,” 242.

41 Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, 16, original emphasis. Interestingly, Taubes saw twentieth-century fascist movements as having found support from the mythic, and not the eschatological, frame of mind. He did regard communist movements, however, as having drawn upon the apocalyptic tradition. See Jacob Taubes, “Theology and Political Theory,” in Taubes, From Cult to Culture, 222–32, at 231; Taubes, “Four Ages of Reason,” in ibid., 268–81, at 276; and Taubes, , “Community: After the Apocalypse,” in Friedrich, Carl J., ed., Nomos II: Community (New York, 1959), 101–13, at 105Google Scholar.

42 Jacob Taubes, “Religion and the Future of Psychoanalysis,” in Taubes, From Cult to Culture, at 334.

43 Ibid., 335.

44 Ibid., 335.

45 Ibid., 339.

46 Ibid., 340–41.

47 Jacob Taubes, “Culture and Ideology,” in Taubes, From Cult to Culture, 248–67, at 258.

48 Ibid., 252. As has been well documented, Taubes was drawn to the theological Marxism of Benjamin and Ernst Bloch, although he would declare later in life that he had, from a relatively young age, been “free from the illusions of those messianic Marxists like Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin.” See Taubes, Ad Carl Schmitt, 20. For more on Taubes's intellectual affinity with Benjamin see Mehring, “Karl Löwith, Carl Schmitt, Jacob Taubes und das ‘Ende der Geschichte’”; and Taubes's notes from the seminars he taught on Benjamin in Berlin in the 1980s in Stimilli, Elettra, ed., Der Preis des Messianismus: Briefe von Jacob Taubes an Gershom Scholem und andere Materielen (Würzburg, 2006), 67–92 Google Scholar.

49 Letter from Jacob Taubes to Hans Blumenberg of 1 Aug. 1961 in Kopp-Oberstebrink and Treml, Hans Blumenberg Jacob Taubes Briefwechsel 1961–1981, 19.

50 For more on the group's founding see e.g. Wagner, Julia, “Anfangen: Zur Konstitutionsphase der Forschungsgruppe ‘Poetik und Hermeneutik,’” Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, 35/1 (2010), 53–76 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Jacob Taubes to Eric Voegelin, 17 Jan. 1967, Hoover Institution Archives, Eric Voegelin Papers, Box 10, Folder 37. See also Voegelin's letters to Taubes from 12 Jan. 1967 and 23 Jan. 1967 in Eric Voegelin, Collected Works, vol. 30 (Columbia, MO, 2007), 518–20. The relationship of Taubes and Voegelin was complicated. They remained correspondents for over twenty-five years, and Voegelin cited Taubes as an important influence in his New Science of Politics. But the two kept each other at philosophical arm's length: while Taubes seemed to have been anxious that Voegelin had stolen his ideas about modern Gnosticism, he insisted that Voegelin's views on this topic had noxious conservative implications. And Voegelin was put off by Taubes's eager embrace of Gnosticism, apparently remarking in shock upon meeting Taubes, “Today I met a Gnostic in the flesh!” See Taubes, “Community: After the Apocalypse,” 102; and Aleida Assmann et al., “Introduction,” in Taubes, From Cult to Culture, xviii–l, at xxiv.

52 Letter from Hans Blumenberg to Jacob Taubes of 9 Jan. 1967 in Kopp-Oberstebrink and Treml, Hans Blumenberg Jacob Taubes Briefwechsel 1961–1981, 120.

53 See Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, 69; and Rötzer, “Jacob Taubes,” 315.

54 Blumenberg, Hans, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Wallace, Robert M. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 130 Google Scholar.

55 Ibid., 137.

56 Ibid., 154.

57 Ibid., 184.

58 Ibid., 138.

59 Ibid., 138.

60 Jacob Taubes, “Notes on Surrealism,” in Taubes, From Cult to Culture, 98–123, at 103.

61 Ibid., 111.

62 Ibid., 119.

63 Ibid., 116.

64 Ibid., 118.

65 Blumenberg's celebration of the scientific mastery of reality seems to have been, in Taubes's view, one of the primary weaknesses of The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Taubes, like his Frankfurt school colleagues, was intensely critical of modern instrumental reason. See Taubes, “Four Ages of Reason,” 281.

66 Ibid., 123.

67 Jacob Taubes, “The Iron Cage and the Exodus from It, or the Dispute over Marcion, Then and Now,” in Taubes, From Cult to Culture, 137–46, at 138.

68 R. M. Wallace, “Translator's Introduction,” in Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, xi–xxxi, at xvi.

69 Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 16.

70 Ibid., 65. See also Brient, Elizabeth, “Hans Blumenberg and Hannah Arendt on the ‘Unwordly Worldliness’ of the Modern Age,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 61/3 (2000), 513–30, at 517CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 65.

72 Ibid. For lucid explanations of Blumenberg's thesis see Jay, Martin, “Review of Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age ,” History and Theory, 24/2 (1985), 183–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pippin, Robert, “Blumenberg and the Modernity Problem,” Review of Metaphysics, 40/3 (1987), 535–57Google Scholar.

73 Taubes was an outspoken critic of all forms of theocratic governance. In the introduction to his 1987 edited volume Theokratie, for example, Taubes took full stock of the return of old-fashioned political religion in Jewish, Islamic, and Christian fundamentalist movements—a development he regarded with considerable dismay. See Taubes, Jacob, “Vorwort,” in Taubes, ed., Theokratie (Munich, 1987), 5–7Google Scholar.

74 “Erste Diskussion,” in Fuhrmann, Manfred, ed., Terror und Spiel: Probleme der Mythenrezeption (Munich, 1971), 527–47, at 539Google Scholar. On Taubes's quarrel with Blumenberg at the 1968 meeting of the Poetik und Hermeneutik group see Kopp-Oberstebrink, Herbert, “Between Terror and Play: The Intellectual Encounter of Hans Blumenberg and Jacob Taubes,” Telos, 158 (2012), 119–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 See e.g. Jacob Taubes, “On the Current State of Polytheism,” in Taubes, From Cult to Culture, 302–14, at 307.

76 Ibid., 304. Taubes would frequently return to this characterization of the postwar era as a “Biedermeier period.” See, e.g., Taubes, Ad Carl Schmitt, 54; and Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, 82.

77 Niethammer, Lutz, Posthistoire: Has History Come to an End?, trans. Camiller, P. (London, 1992), 20 n. 15Google Scholar.

78 Indeed, Blumenberg's assertion that “messianism is foreign to him” was among the highest compliments that he could have paid his friend Hans Jonas. Quoted in Lazier, Benjamin, “Overcoming Gnosticism: Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg, and the Legitimacy of the Natural World,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 64/4 (2003), 619–37, at 637CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Taubes, “On the Current State of Polytheism” for more on Taubes's critique of Marquard and Blumenberg and, in particular, his critiques of Blumenberg's 1979 Arbeit am Mythos.

79 Taubes, “On the Current State of Polytheism,” 314. For more on Taubes and his relation to the student movement see Peter Glotz's recollections of Taubes at the Free University in the 1960s. Glotz, Peter, “About Jacob Taubes, Who Crossed Frontiers,” in Baumgarten, A.I. et al., eds., Self, Soul, and Body in Religious Experience (Leiden, 1998), 4–9 Google Scholar.

80 Rötzer, “Jacob Taubes,” 317.

81 Taubes, “On the Current State of Polytheism,” 306.

82 Taubes evidently regarded the liberal mindset as one that was transhistorical: “I have yet to be taken in by a liberal,” he wrote, “whether in antiquity or in the Middle Ages or in modern times.” Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, 24.

83 See Grimshaw, Mike, “Introduction: ‘A Very Rare Thing’,” to Taubes, To Carl Schmitt: Letters and Reflections, trans. Tribe, Keith (New York, 2013), ix–xliii, at xviii–xix Google Scholar.

84 As quoted in Treml, “Reinventing the Canonical,” 464.

85 Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, 1.

86 Taubes, , “Ästhetisierung der Wahrheit im Posthistoire,” in Althaus, Gabriele and Staeuble, Irmingard, eds., Streitbare Philosophie: Margherita von Brentano zum 65. Geburtstag (Berlin, 1988), 41–51, at 46Google Scholar.

87 See Taubes, “Community: After the Apocalypse,” 108. See also Terpstra and de Wit, “No Spiritual Investment in the World As It Is,” 350–51.

88 Löwith, Meaning in History, 159.

89 Voegelin, New Science, 112, 121.

90 Rötzer, “Jacob Taubes,” 319.

91 Taubes, “Community: After the Apocalypse,” 110.

92 See Barash, J. Andrew, “The Sense of History: On the Political Implications of Karl Löwith's Concept of Secularization,” History and Theory, 37/1 (1998), 69–82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wallace, R. M., “Secularization and Modernity: The Löwith–Blumenberg Debate,” New German Critique, 22 (1981), 63–79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.