Está en la página 1de 17

from cult to culture

Cultural Memory
in
the
Present
Mieke Bal and Hent de Vries, Editors

FROM CULT TO CULTURE


Fragments Toward a Critique of Historical Reason

Jacob Taubes
Edited by Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert
and Amir Engel, with an Introduction
by Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann,
and Wolf-Daniel Hartwich

stanford university press


stanford, california

Stanford University Press


Stanford, California
English translation 2010 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
From Cult to Culture was originally published in German in 1996 under the title
Vom Kult zur Kultur: Bausteine zu einer Kritik der historischen Vernunft 1996,
Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
Preface 2010 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of
Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taubes, Jacob.
[Vom Kult zur Kultur. English]
From cult to culture : fragments toward a critique of historical reason / Jacob
Taubes ; edited by Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Amir Engel ; with an introduction by Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, and Wolf-Daniel Hartwich.
p. cm. (Cultural memory in the present)
From Cult to Culture was originally published in German in 1996 under the
title Vom Kult zur Kultur.
A collection of essays from 19531983.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8047-3983-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8047-3984-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Philosophical theology. I. Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva II. Engel, Amir.
III. Title. IV. Series: Cultural memory in the present.
BT40.T2813 2010
210dc22
2009013192

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Preface to the English Edition


Amir Engel and Charlotte Fonrobert

xi

Introduction to the German Edition


Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann,
and Wolf-Daniel Hartwich

xviii

part i. law, history, messianism


1 The Price of Messianism (1983)

2 Martin Buber and the Philosophy of History (1963)

10

3 Nachman Krochmal and Modern Historicism (1963)

28

4 The Issue Between Judaism and Christianity:


Facing Up to the Unresolvable Difference (1953)

45

part ii. world alienation: gnosticism


and its consequences
5 The Dogmatic Myth of Gnosticism (1971)

61

6 The Justification of Ugliness in Early Christian


Tradition (1968)

76

7 Notes on Surrealism (1966)

98

8 From the Adverb Nothing to the Substantive


Nothing: Deliberations on Heideggers
Question Concerning Nothing (1975)

124

viii Contents
9 The Iron Cage and the Exodus from It, or the
Dispute over Marcion, Then and Now (1984)

137

10 The Demystification of Theology: Toward a


Portrait of Overbeck (1966)

147

part iii. theology after the copernican turn


11 Dialectic and Analogy (1954)

165

12 Theodicy and Theology: A Philosophical Analysis


of Karl Barths Dialectical Theology (1954)

177

13 On the Nature of the Theological Method:


Some Reflections on the Methodological
Principles of Tillichs Theology (1954)

195

14 Notes on an Ontological Interpretation


of Theology (1949)

214

15 Theology and Political Theory (1955)

222

part iv. religion and culture


16 From Cult to Culture (1954)

235

17 Culture and Ideology (1969)

248

18 Four Ages of Reason (1956)

268

19 The Intellectuals and the University (1963)

282

20 On the Current State of Polytheism (1983)

302

21 Psychoanalysis and Philosophy: Notes on a


Philosophical Interpretation of the
Psychoanalytic Method (1963)

315

22 Religion and the Future of Psychoanalysis (1957)

334

Notes

343

Index

000

Acknowledgments

This volume has been many years in the making. It began a few
years ago with the previous editor of the humanities at Stanford University Press, Helen Tartar, with whom we acquired the rights to the English
edition from Wilhelm Fink Verlag, the German publisher of Vom Kult
zur Kultur. I came to participate in the project when Dana Hollander
was preparing the translation of Taubess lectures on Paul for the Cultural
Memory in the Present series at Stanford University Press, based on Jan
and Aleida Assmanns posthumous edition of those lectures.1 Dana had
solicited my advice for the rabbinic material that Taubes draws on in his
Paul lectures. But, as it so often happens, life took a few detours before
we returned to the project. I therefore wish to thank first and foremost
Emily-Jane Cohen, the current editor of the humanities at Stanford University Press for her relentless encouragement to finish this English edition of Taubess essays. Her expertise in French also helped us to parse out
some of the French texts that Taubes quotes freely and extensively.
We also thank Hent de Vries for enabling the English trilogy of
Taubess books to appear with Stanford University Press in his and Mieke
Bals series on Cultural Memory in the Present.2
In the process of reinvolving myself with the project, I was fortunate to be able to enlist the participation of Amir Engel. Without Amirs
dedication, this work would not have come to be. He has been a great
chevruta for mastering this challenge. I have also had many discussions
with my friend and colleague Eugene Sheppard at Brandeis University
whose deep interest in Taubess work convinced me of the importance of
this English edition. During the course of the preparation of this volume I
have also been fortunate to know Jerry Z. Muller, who is currently work-

x Acknowledgments
ing on an intellectual biography of Taubes. I owe Jerry thanks for his
encouragement.
We are particularly grateful to the two translators who helped us
prepare this manuscript, Mara H. Benjamin and William Rauscher.
While many of the essays in this volume did appear in English originally
or in print after their German publication, there were ten that remained
to be translated.
Finally, I would like to thank my colleague and friend Vered Shemtov, whose unending support in every respect made this work possible.
This volume is truly the fruit of collaborative effort.
ch.f.
I have been fascinated by Jacob Taubess work for many years. However, it is one thing to read his works and quite another to edit and prepare them for publication in English. I was humbled by the experience. I
am delighted to thank the people who allowed me to be in this position. I
thank Amir Eshel for his support and trust, Assaf Sharon for his attentiveness and critical mind, and Bill Prinzmetal for helping me to escape when
that was necessary. I thank Ayelet Landau, without whom this project and
many other (also more mundane) projects would be worthless. Finally I
would like to thank Charlotte Fonrobert, who shared with me her knowledge, passion, and friendship. Without her dedication and trust this project would have been unimaginable.
a.e.

Preface to the English Edition

1. Jacob Taubess Work


The English edition of the edited collection of essays Vom Kult zur
Kultur: Bausteine zu einer Kritik der historischen Vernunft (ed. Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann, and Wolf-Daniel Hartwich and Winfried Menninghaus [Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag], 1996) is first and foremost an
opportunity to acquaint oneself with the work of Jacob Taubes. Taubes
was an outstanding intellectual figure of the kind that is rare to meet in
the Anglophone intellectual world. He did not publish much during his
lifetime, other than in essay form, and much of his intellectual influence
was due to his charismatic teaching and interdisciplinary initiatives. It
is quite possible that these very characteristics made him what he was: a
leading intellectual figure in Germany.
The essays collected in this volume might seem simultaneously familiar and foreign. They are familiar because in them Taubes discusses
issues and thinkers at the core of many endeavors in the humanities that
inform the way we now think and assign meaning. Paul, Marx, Heidegger,
philosophy of history, Gnosticism, and politics are just a sampling of topics taken up in these essays. Yet as erudite and observant as Taubes was
and as familiar as his topics are, these essays differ dramatically from the
kind of essays we are accustomed to anticipate from scholars of his stature.
Taubes makes bold and sweeping claims about topics that most would
not even venture to comment on. He rarely refers to secondary material,
and his referencing is sporadic and somewhat careless, but his engagement
with the primary texts is personal and demanding. Thus, many of his
observations are not precise in a scholarly way, at least not in the narrow
sense of the word. Most importantly, Taubes does not ever blunt his cri-

xii Preface to the English Edition


tique or mask his attacks, which are always personal and poignant. To be
sure, his is a very unusual form of scholarly discussion.
Thus, even if the questions Taubes raises are familiar and widely
debated, his style of argumentation is foreign, especially in the American
academic context. It is the uniqueness of Taubess rhetorical style that we
would like to comment on in this preface to the English edition of the
collection of his essays, as the introduction to the German edition (translated for this volume) takes on the task of providing a commentary on his
thoughts.Taubess style is not only a matter of personal disposition but also
essential for understanding his project.
Taubes does not think in isolation. Even if all the essays gathered in
this volume are overtly penned by him, one could argue that all his literary production is a result of a collective effort of some sort. Practically all
the essays present an attempt to answer, critique, or question an already
existing position or idea. Many times, he writes a direct attack on another
intellectual and his ideas. Of course, this is not an entirely unique approach. Most scholars respond to and argue with other thinkers. Writing
is always an argument and an attempt to join an existing conversation of
living and dead thinkers who already made their point. But in Taubess
work discussion has a particular prominence. For Taubes the discussion
itself does not merely serve heuristic purposes; rather, it is the fundamental form of social interaction and intellectual production. This is true in
the most rudimentary as well as in the most profound sense.
Practically all of Taubess publications are the product of conferences, interdisciplinary research groups or workshops, and edited volumes
of collected essays, which he organized, to which he was invited, and for
which he produced his contributions. As rich and suggestive as it might
be, Taubess legacy is therefore mostly a series of responses, rebuttals, and
deliberate provocations. Many of the essays collected here, as the editors
of the original German language volume indicate,1 are the product of two
research groups that met more or less regularly during the 1970s and early
1980s.2 One obvious example is the essay Notes on Surrealism, which
consists of some introductory remarks by Taubes and an edited protocol
of the subsequent discussion. The editors of Vom Kult zur Kultur chose to
publish that protocol along with Taubess brief essay,3 so we integrated it
here as well. Other examples are not as obvious and essentially resemble

Preface to the English Edition xiii


most other scholarly essays. But these are the exceptions. It ought to be
mentioned, therefore, that the context of the framing debate is a helpful
tool in the attempt to grapple with Taubess essays. Much of the introduction to the German edition is devoted to describing the discussions;
therefore, we will not attempt to do the same in this preface. The reader
is, in any case, advised to keep in mind that Taubes is, more often than
not, addressing a specific audience with specific positions on the debated
questions. Thus the discussion that informs Taubess essays is indeed a
discussion in the most literal and rudimentary sense.
But the discussion in which Taubes takes part kata sarka only mirrors the more abstract discussion that informs the structure of Taubess
essays and his argumentation. Discussion is not only a physical reality but
also an idea about the essence of the intellectual project. In the foremost
sense it is this approach that propels Taubess method. That is, for Taubes
discussion is a form of thought, and it is foregrounded also in the content
of the essays and not only in the circumstances of their production. The
editors of the German edition write in their introduction:
The form of hermeneutics he cultivated drew from authors such as Nietzsche,
Freud, Benjamin, and above all Carl Schmitt. The rule of thumb of this hermeneutic reads: Against whom is this text written? or What key sentence was this
text written to conceal?4

Taubes reads the sources, therefore, not as finite texts with finite ideas.
They are for him palimpsests, which can barely conceal already existing
conversations, debates, and discussions. The texts that Taubes discusses
themselves also try to make a point on the background of an already given argument and in an already given historical moment. Taubes considers
these texts primarily as an axis. For himin true Talmudic fashioneach
primary source is, first and foremost, a moment in time and a position
in a debate. This might help explain the footnotes, or the lack thereof. It
also explains why Taubess claims move between and encompass far-flung
historical circumstances, ideas, thinkers, and approaches. In this environment, where every text is an axis around which events, ideas, ideal, other
texts, and foreign circumstances turn, it is difficult to do close reading and
to insist on philological finitudes.
If this indeed describes Taubess method, it must also bear some

xiv Preface to the English Edition


significance on the outcome, on Taubess written text. If indeed Taubes
understands texts as axes, then it should be significant not only to the texts
Taubes reads but also to the texts he writes. Taubes is not only debating
with his contemporaries. With these essays, he inserts himself into the
argument and becomes, himself, part of the ongoing discussions, which,
at least to a certain degree and again in good Talmudic fashion, transcend
time and space. It would seem, therefore, that understanding Taubes requires familiarity with the themes and problems he debates. While this is
obviously helpful, more crucial still is a familiarity with this way of thinking. The debate is not simply the engine of the discussion, nor is it merely
an opportunity to talk, nor just the motivation that structures the method. The debate is, more importantly, the essence of the intellectual work
in the first place. For Taubes, the discussion is the reason to undertake a
study and is its real end. Thereby the dead letter comes alive again.
It is perhaps for this reason that Taubess polemic is so sharp and
poignant. Surely, being polemical as he was is also a matter of personality.
But there is more to it than idiosyncratic character. Taubess tone and style
leave no one untouched. They demand an answer and a strong one, if possible. This brings us back to the point: more than anything else, Taubess
approach is a battle against complacency and indifference. His attacks
compel and force a reply. A discussion thus ensues, topics are debated, and
questions that seem to be buried in the past become important, meaningful, and alive. Of course, scholarship in whichever disciplinary guise is the
prerequisite. But it is called upon only insofar as it is important; that is,
insofar as people are willing to argue about it.
Criticism and negation are the building blocks of Jacob Taubess
work. He aims to refute commonly asserted ideas, argue with them, and
quite literally reverse their directionality. Taubess work attempts to think
critically and anew about even the most well-established truths and questions, including their institutional setting. It proves that such an undertaking is possible and that the great texts, those that connect to important
conversations and dramatic moments in history, still require rereading
and attention. It demonstrates, furthermore, that such a rereading can
reveal the drama of the texts conception and shows that the tension that
brought them into being still desires resolution. Indeed, Taubess essays
demonstrate that the revolutionary power of ideas does not entirely dissipate and that it still abides in revolutionary texts.

Preface to the English Edition xv


The intellectual endeavor is, for Taubes, not merely a professional or
even primarily a scholarly endeavor, but rather something very personal.
It should be so. For, if ideas matter, if texts still contain the energy of their
inception, and history really brings about change, then the debate about
them is not merely a matter of erudition and publication is not only a
matter of formality.
It should come as no surprise that Taubess name is tied to a number
of intellectual and political controversies. As Mark Lilla recently noted,
Frequent the intellectual circles of any of these cities [intellectual centers
in Europe and the United States...] and you will discover that everyone
of a certain age has a Taubes story.5 No one has yet collected these stories
or written Jacob Taubess biography.6 As intriguing as his biographical
stories are, we leave them to the biographers. Here, it should suffice to
say that the biographical stories can be read as bearing more than strictly
personal significance. At the same time, the style of work, its method,
reason, and motivation should not be understood merely as professional.
So, it is not only Taubess ideas and positions on different issues that matter, nor even his labor of putting art in a religious context, religion in a
historical context, and ideas in a social context, as has now again become
so fashionable in the era of interdisciplinarity in the humanities. It is also
the brilliant effort to mesh the personal and the professional, the historical
and textual, the heuristic and the scholarly.

2. The Genealogy of the English Edition


of Vom Kult zur Kultur
By now the German volume Vom Kult zur Kultur has attained somewhat of a canonical status in the oeuvre produced by Jacob Taubes. The
credit goes to Aleida and Jan Assmann as well as Wolf-Daniel Hartwich,
all of them Taubess students, and to Winfried Menninghaus who assembled and selected the widely scattered essays that were to serve as a testament to Taubess intellectual work. Without that volume, the impact
Taubes has had on the intellectual life specifically in West Germany, but
more broadly on the humanities, would hardly have become as visible as
it has in recent years.
True, the broader reception of Taubess work in recent years is due

xvi Preface to the English Edition


primarily to his lectures on Paul and to his creative and critical engagement with Carl Schmitt. It was perhaps Taubess insistence that Paul
needed to be taken seriously as an intellectual figure that helped spark
the interest in Paul in the current intellectual scene, such as that exhibited
by Giorgio Agamben7 and Alain Badiou.8 However, in Germany there
has been a much broader recognition of the influence of Taubes on shaping not only the academic scene and the minds of many of his students
but also on public intellectual life as well.9 In addition, Agamben helped
spread the gospel of Taubes to Italy,10 where some of his work has been
translated and discussed.
It seems therefore that an English edition of Taubess essays is long
overdue, not only to complete the trilogy of Taubess books in English,
The Political Theology of Paul, Occidental Eschatology, and now From Cult
to Culture, and not only for reasons of intellectual history. Rather, Taubes
himselfafter having completed his doctoral degree and dissertation,
which was the Abendlndische Eschatologie, in Switzerlandstarted his
academic career in the United States, at some of the major universities on
the East Coast: Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton. Indeed, many of the
essays assembled here, especially the early ones, were published originally
in English in American journals and anthologies. For instance, the entire
third section of Vom Kult zur Kultur, that is, all five essays on theology assembled there (Chapters 1115), were published in English during Taubess
sojourn at American universities in the 1950s, as were a few essays in the
fourth section. In addition, the essays on Jewish thought in the first section (Chapters 14) were also published originally in English, not only
the early ones, butwe may surmisebecause much of contemporary
intellectual Jewish discussion is carried out in English.11 The fact that
the majority of the essays were originally published in English therefore
allows us to consider this volume an English edition rather than merely a
translation of Vom Kult zur Kultur, even as we follow the German volume.
It goes without saying that where an English original existed we
adapted that version for our purposes rather than translating back from
the German translations in Vom Kult zur Kultur. At times, therefore,
the English versions that appear here are not entirely identical to their
German translation in Vom Kult zur Kultur. As to the essays that appeared originally in German we translated them for this volume, and we

Preface to the English Edition xvii


are grateful to our translators Mara H. Benjamin and William Rauscher.
We list their names at the end of the essays for which they prepared the
initial translations. Translating Taubes is a difficult and at times impossible task, especially when trying to preserve the tone of the original. The
difficulty is increased by the fact that the essays cover an incredibly broad
range of subjects and intellectuals, many of whom have not been translated themselves, such as some of the work by Hans Blumenberg and Odo
Marquard, to name only the most prominent. This means that often we
faced the difficulty of translating the creative philosophical German of
these writers into intelligible English, as Taubes quotes liberally from his
interlocutors.
We discuss the provenance of each of the essays in our endnotes,
in order to supplement the more general discussion in the introduction
to the German volume. Further, we decided to leave Taubess essays intact in their original form, that is, with the endnotes that he supplied (or
not), in order to preserve his style. For the purposes of this volume, we
sought to supply more detailed bibliographical information, and in some
cases clarifications, recorded in the endnotes for each of the essays. This
labor presented us with problems that at times seemed insurmountable.
Often, Taubes supplies no reference to the source. Or, the endnotes lack
some information that made tracing Taubess reference very difficult, let
alone those cases where Taubes quotes his sources inaccurately. Wherever
possible we render Taubess quotations directly from the existing English
translations, with the corresponding reference. Where texts are not translated into English or where the source could not be traced, we translated
the quotations ourselves and kept Taubess reference in place.
All of this is to say that as much as we tried to achieve precision, this
volume is not a critical edition of Taubess essays. Alas, that aspect of the
endeavor of scholarship was of only minor importance to Taubes himself.
With that said, we hope that this volume will allow Taubes to continue to
ignite discussion and debate on the very stage where he commenced his
intellectual path.
charlotte fonrobert and amir engel
stanford, kislev 5769

También podría gustarte