Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Au format public
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Muller, Jerry Z. (1954-....)
Titre(s) : Professor of apocalypse [Texte imprimé] : the many lives of Jacob Taubes / Jerry Z. Muller
Publication : Princeton (N.J.) : Princeton University press, copyright 2022
Description matérielle : 1 vol. (viii-637 p.) : illustrations ; 25 cm
Note(s) : Notes bibliogr. et bibliogr. p. [533]-617. Index
"Scion of a distinguished prewar Viennese Jewish family and son of the chief rabbi
of Zurich, Jacob Taubes (1923-1987) was a philosopher of religion and scholar of Judaism
and the New Testament whose career and public life intersected with that of many of
the luminaries of postwar continental European and American intellectual life in the
humanities. In a life that took him to teaching posts in Jerusalem, New York, Paris,
and Berlin, he became a repository of knowledge about the high culture of the West,
both religious and secular. Yet his scholarly output during his lifetime was minimal.
At the time of his death in 1987, Taubes had not published a book since his doctoral
dissertation in 1947 (a work that, by then, was long out of print and barely read).
Jerry Z. Muller argues, nonetheless, that this man's troubled and troubling life merits
scrutiny-not because he was a world-class, original thinker, but because he was such
an inescapable and significant presence in the lives of intellectuals and academics
on three continents. In this book, Muller tells the story of a man who exerted influence
on postwar intellectual life in Europe and America less through his written work than
through personal contact and conversation. Taubes had enormous vitality and appetite
for life. A charismatic speaker and gifted polemicist, he was an inveterate social
networker who seemed to know everybody and loved to make connections between people.
He acted as a merchant of ideas, finding ideas in one national, religious, or disciplinary
context and retailing them in another. And as a person, he left no one indifferent.
Taubes brought joy and mirth into the lives of some, but he thrived on disorder and
created disorder around him, sometimes at great personal cost to those in his circle.
His erotic activities mirrored his championing of doctrines and movements that transgressed
normative boundaries. Some revered him as a genius; others dismissed him as a charlatan.
Muller does not take sides, finding plausible grounds in the historical record for
all of these judgments. In recounting Taubes's life, Muller illuminates much about
postwar intellectual life in America, Germany, and Israel" ; "The controversial Jewish
thinker whose tortured path led him into the heart of twentieth-century intellectual
life scion of a distinguished line of Talmudic scholars, Jacob Taubes (1923-1987)
was an intellectual impresario whose inner restlessness led him from prewar Vienna
to Zurich, Israel, and Cold War Berlin. Regarded by some as a genius, by others as
a charlatan, Taubes moved among yeshivas, monasteries, and leading academic institutions
on three continents. He wandered between Judaism and Christianity, left and right,
piety and transgression. Along the way, he interacted with many of the leading minds
of the age, from Leo Strauss and Gershom Scholem to Herbert Marcuse, Susan Sontag,
and Carl Schmitt. Professor of Apocalypse is the definitive biography of this enigmatic
figure and a vibrant mosaic of twentieth-century intellectual life.Jerry Muller shows
how Taubes's personal tensions mirrored broader conflicts between religious belief
and scholarship, allegiance to Jewish origins and the urge to escape them, tradition
and radicalism, and religion and politics. He traces Taubes's emergence as a prominent
interpreter of the Apostle Paul, influencing generations of scholars, and how his
journey led him from crisis theology to the Frankfurt School, and from a radical Hasidic
sect in Jerusalem to the center of academic debates over Gnosticism, secularization,
and the revolutionary potential of apocalypticism.Professor of Apocalypse offers an
unforgettable account of an electrifying world of ideas, focused on a charismatic
personality who thrived on controversy and conflict"
Sujet(s) : Taubes, Jacob (1923-1987)
Taubes, Jacob (1923-1987) -- Influence
Vie intellectuelle
Philosophie juive -- 20e siècle
Philosophie et religion -- 20e siècle
Genre ou forme : Biographie
Indice(s) Dewey : 181.060 92 (23e éd.) = Philosophie juive - Biographie
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 9780691170596. - ISBN 0691170592. - ISBN 9780691231600 (erroné)
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb46903850b
Notice n° :
FRBNF46903850
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
Table des matières : Introduction: Why Taubes? ; Yichus : Vienna, 1923-36 ; Coming of age in Switzerland, 1936-47 ; Intellectual roots, grand themes, 1941-46 ; Occidental eschatology and beyond, 1946-47 ; New York and the Jewish Theological Seminary, 1947-49 ; Jerusalem, 1949-52 ; Making it? 1952-56 ; Columbia years, 1956-66 : the merchant of ideas and the invention of religious studies ; Between New York and Berlin, 1961-66 ; Berlin : impresario of theory ; The apocalyptic moment ; Deradicalization and crisis, 1969-75 ; A wandering Jew : Berlin-Jerusalem-Paris, 1976-81 ; "Ach, ja, Taubes ..." : a character sketch ; Schmitt and political theology revisited, 1982-86 ; Final act, 1986-87 ; The afterlives of Jacob Taubes ; Conclusion.