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To Carl Schmitt: Letters and Reflections
Contributor(s): Taubes, Jacob (Author), Tribe, Keith (Translator), Grimshaw, Mike (Introduction by)
ISBN: 0231154127     ISBN-13: 9780231154123
Publisher: Columbia University Press
OUR PRICE:   $25.74  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: May 2013
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Political Science | History & Theory - General
- Philosophy | Political
- Religion | Religion, Politics & State
Dewey: 320.533
LCCN: 2012035759
Series: Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture
Physical Information: 0.7" H x 5.8" W x 8.3" (0.65 lbs) 120 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
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.