A cautionary tale: Jacob Taubes, a man who really believed that Dostoevesky and Nietzsche were right , that without a god everything is permitted... and finally "a man who was the sum total of his performances, of which he too was a spectator." He was the sort of philosopher who gives philosophy a bad name. The wrong sort.
The Man Who Made Thinking Erotic
Jerry Z. Muller's "Professor of Apocalypse" tells the story of Jacob Taubes, who is largely forgotten today but was at the center of intellectual life after the war.
...Taubes was a conventional believer until his encounter with the German Jewish political philosopher Leo Strauss, who was then in exile at the New School. Though today Strauss is thought of as a conservative, in fact he was a deeply radical thinker. He taught Taubes the works of Maimonides and drew from the medieval sage the lesson that unconstrained philosophical inquiry ultimately poses a threat to the faith of ordinary people and to the authority of society's laws, which enforce justice and decency. If the philosopher is to remain radically free in his thinking he must learn to dissemble publicly, speaking carefully to avoid prosecution and observing social norms. Muller believes this teaching had a profound effect on Taubes, shaking his faith and convincing him that he faced a choice: between a private reflective life constrained by respect for law (Strauss's choice) or an unconstrained transgressive life now that God was dead. He chose the latter... nyt
The Man Who Made Thinking Erotic
Jerry Z. Muller's "Professor of Apocalypse" tells the story of Jacob Taubes, who is largely forgotten today but was at the center of intellectual life after the war.
...Taubes was a conventional believer until his encounter with the German Jewish political philosopher Leo Strauss, who was then in exile at the New School. Though today Strauss is thought of as a conservative, in fact he was a deeply radical thinker. He taught Taubes the works of Maimonides and drew from the medieval sage the lesson that unconstrained philosophical inquiry ultimately poses a threat to the faith of ordinary people and to the authority of society's laws, which enforce justice and decency. If the philosopher is to remain radically free in his thinking he must learn to dissemble publicly, speaking carefully to avoid prosecution and observing social norms. Muller believes this teaching had a profound effect on Taubes, shaking his faith and convincing him that he faced a choice: between a private reflective life constrained by respect for law (Strauss's choice) or an unconstrained transgressive life now that God was dead. He chose the latter... nyt
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