To Carl Schmitt : : Letters and Reflections / / Jacob Taubes.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Taubes, Jacob,
• MitwirkendeR: Gente, Peter,; Grimshaw, Mike,; Schmitt, Carl,
• TeilnehmendeR: Grimshaw, Mike.; Tribe, Keith.
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2013]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (120 p.)

A philosopher, rabbi, religious historian, and Gnostic, Jacob Taubes was for many years a correspondent and interlocutor of Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), a German jurist, philosopher, political theorist, law professor-and self-professed Nazi. Despite their unlikely association, Taubes and Schmitt shared an abiding interest in the fundamental problems of political theology, believing the great challenges of modern political theory were ancient in pedigree and, in many cases, anticipated the works of Judeo-Christian eschatologists. 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. Taubes acknowledges Schmitt's reservations about the weakness of liberal democracy yet distances himself from his prescription to rectify it, arguing the apocalyptic worldview requires less of a rigid hierarchical social ordering than a community committed to the importance of decision making. In these writings, a sharper and more nuanced portrait of Schmitt's thought emerges, as well as a more complicated understanding of Taubes, who has shaped the work of Giorgio Agamben, Peter Sloterdijk, and other major twentieth-century theorists.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: "A Very Rare Thing" -- Apocalyptic Prophet of the Counterrevolution -- Letter to Armin Mohler -- Appendix. Four Passages from Letters of Carl Schmitt to Armin Mohler -- Letter to Carl Schmitt -- Extract from a Dispute About Carl Schmitt -- 1948-1978. Thirty Years of Refusal -- Editorial Note -- Notes