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JacobTaubes, Hermann Cohen, and the
Return to German-Jewish Liberalism*

BY ELIAS SACKS

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University of Colorado, Boulder

In recent years, a growing body of literature has emerged examining the thought of
Jacob Taubes, the rabbi, philosopher, and historian best known for his writings on
eschatology and politics. Since his death in 1987, Taubes has been the subject of
numerous studies, ranging from explorations of his historical scholarship to essays
on his political theory,1 while new editions of his works have appeared in various
languages, including English translations of his 1947 dissertation Abendla«ndische
Eschatologie and 1987 lectures on the Apostle Paul.2 Taubes has, moreover, exerted a
profound in£uence on philosophers including Giorgio Agamben, who opens his
own commentary on Paul with a dedication in memoriam toTaubes.3

* I would like to thank Leora Batnitzky, Eric Gregory, Paul Nahme, Elizabeth Sacks, Kevin Wolfe,
participants in Princeton University’s Religion and Critical Thought Workshop, and two
anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. This essay is
based on a paper delivered at a conference on ‘‘The German Rabbinate Abroad: Transferring
German-Jewish Modernity into the World?’’ held at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universita«t Munich
and the Akademie fu«r Politische Bildung Tutzing in October 2009. I would like to thank Cornelia
Wilhelm and Tobias Grill for organizing this conference.
1
For some recent studies, see Richard Farber, Eveline Goodman-Thau and Thomas Macho (eds.),
Abendla«ndische Eschatologie: Ad JacobTaubes, Wu«rzburg 2001.
2
See Josef R. Lawitschka, ‘Eine neu-alte Bibliographie der Texte von JACOB TAUBES, zecher le-
veracha (dem seligen Angedenken)’, in Farber, et al., p. 570. For Taubes’s dissertation, see Jacob
Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, transl. by David Ratmoko, Stanford 2009, orig. published as
Abendla«ndische Eschatologie, Berne 1947 (hereafter referred to as Occidental). For his Paul lectures, see
The Political Theology of Paul, ed. by Aleida and Jan Assmann, et al., transl. by Dana Hollander,
Stanford 2004, orig. published as Die politische Theologie des Paulus, Munich 1993 (hereafter PTP). For
a selection of his essays, see From Cult to Culture: Fragments Toward a Critique of Historical Reason, ed. by
Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Amir Engel, Stanford 2010, orig. published as Vom Kult zur Kultur:
Bausteine zu einer Kritik der historischen Vernunft, ed. by Aleida and Jan Assmann, et al., Munich 1996
(hereafter From Cult). For letters to Armin Mohler (14 February 1952) and Carl Schmitt (18
September 1979), see PTP, orig. published in Ad Carl Schmitt: Gegenstrebige Fu«gung, Berlin 1987
(hereafter ‘Taubes to Mohler’/ ‘Taubes to Schmitt’). Other translations are my own unless otherwise
stated.
3
See Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, transl. by
Patricia Dailey, Stanford 2005, p. 3.

ß The Author (2012). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Leo Baeck Institute.
All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected]
188 Elias Sacks
My article explores the return to German-speaking Europe by this controversial
Jewish thinker, who was born inVienna in 1923, completed rabbinical and doctoral
studies in Switzerland in the 1940s, and taught for more than a decade in Israel and
America before accepting a chair at the Freie Universita«t Berlin in 1966.4 More
speci¢cally, I aim to deepen our understanding of the content and emergence of
Taubes’s ¢nal and most widely discussed work: the 1987 lectures posthumously
published as Die politischeTheologie des Paulus (PTP), which claim to reconstruct and
defend an approach to politics outlined in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. I will
argue that Taubes is both a critic of and an heir to German-Jewish liberalismçthat
the PTP is, in part, a critique of the liberal German-Jewish thinker Hermann
Cohen, but neverthetheless exhibits striking a⁄nities with Cohen’s writings on

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Judaism.5 In particular, I will show that Taubes understands his embrace of
Pauline thought as, in part, a rejection of Cohen’s politics, yet nonetheless re-enacts
key moves associated with his German-Jewish opponent. I will then suggest that
Taubes’s engagement with German-Jewish thought may have been shaped by his
time in the United States and Israel, for the histories of these nationsças well as
his experience as an outsiderçmay have played a role in forming the PTP’s
claims. Taubes’s return to German-speaking Europe, I will conclude, culminates in
an engagement with German-Jewish liberalism, mediated by his experience of life
in the United States and Israel.
Two preliminary remarks are in order. The ¢rst concerns my title’s reference to a
‘‘return to German-Jewish liberalism’’. By invoking such a ‘return’, I mean to
highlight the importance of a liberal German-Jewish thinker to the concluding
work of a career that involves a return to German-speaking Europe, and to suggest
that this return can therefore be understood as, in part, a return to German-Jewish
liberalism. My claim, in other words, is not that Taubes embraces allçor even
mostçcommitments of thinkers such as Cohen; after all, like Taubes’s other
writings, the PTP harshly attacks positions it describes as ‘‘liberal’’.6 Rather,
I am suggesting that while Taubes’s ¢nal work engages with diverse Jewish and
non-Jewish authors, one such interlocutor is also one of German Jewry’s most
prominent liberal thinkers.
My second point concerns the term ‘law’. As we will see, Taubes distinguishes
between ‘law’ (Gesetz, Recht, and nomos) on the one hand,7 and ‘commandments’

4
After completing his doctorate in 1947, Taubes received a fellowship at New York’s Jewish Theological
Seminary; another fellowship took him to the Hebrew University, where he remained until
returning to America in the early 1950s. He would go on to hold posts at Harvard, Princeton, and
Columbia before moving to Berlin. See Christoph Schulte, ‘PAULUS’, in Farber, et al., pp. 101-103;
Ratmoko, preface to Occidental, pp. xii-xiii.
5
On Cohen’s links to thinkers and ideasçpolitical and religiousçtypically termed ‘liberal’, see David
N. Myers, ‘Hermann Cohen and the Quest for Protestant Judaism’, in LBI Year Book, vol. 46 (2001),
pp. 195-214.
6
See PTP, pp. 24, 61-62, 65-66 and passim. OnTaubes’s ‘‘antiliberalism’’, see Assmann et al., in From Cult,
p. xxiii.
7
Taubes seems to use these three terms interchangeably: see Taubes to Mohler, pp. 108-110; PTP,
pp. 23-26, 105; ‘Aus einem Streitgespra«ch um Carl Schmitt’, in Ad Carl Schmitt, p. 57.
 JacobTaubes, Hermann Cohen, and the Return to German-Jewish Liberalism 189
(Gebote) on the other.8 While I know of no text in whichTaubes explicitly clari¢es this
distinction, he repeatedly applies the former terms to norms that impose coercive
punishments, stating that Jesus was ‘‘condemned according to the law [Gesetz]’’9
and ‘‘nailed to the cross by nomos’’.10 Moreover, Taubes links the category of ‘law’ to
the existence of regulatory detail, grounding the ‘‘juridical’’character of Jewish law
in this system’s concern with ‘‘minutiae’’,11 and stating that Jewish Gesetz ‘‘leaves
nothing, not even a tri£e, to the fancy of the individual’’.12 I will use the term ‘law’,
then, to denote norms that impose coercive punishments and issue detailed
guidelines.
The 1987 lectures published as the PTP were delivered at Heidelberg’s
Forschungssta«tte der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft shortly before Taubes’s death, and

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explore the content and in£uence of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.13 Taubes begins
by highlighting the political dimensions of this letter, arguing that Paul means to
challenge the legitimacy of the Roman Empire, secure his authority among the
followers of Jesus, and establish ‘‘a new people of God’’.14 The PTP then draws on
this analysis to argue that Paul is an authentically ‘‘Jewish’’ thinker in that his views
have analogues in Jewish sources,15 and to show that Pauline ideas appear in works
by ¢gures such as Marcion and Sigmund Freud.16
Beyond this historical analysis, however, the PTP presents Taubes’s own
commitments as ‘‘a Paulinist, not a Christian’’, a Jew who agrees with Paul on a
variety of issues.17 An initial point of agreement involves the state. For the PTP,
Paul issues ‘‘a political declaration of war on the Caesar,’’ performing an
‘‘enthronement’’ of Christ and describing him as ‘‘designated to rule’’, thereby
attacking the ‘‘emperor religion’’ that provided Rome’s ruler with ‘‘legitimation’’.18
8
See PTP, pp. 52-53. Here Taubes takes Paul to endorse a Gebot despite rejecting Gesetz and nomos.
9
Ibid., p. 37.
10
Ibid., p. 24. See also ‘Aus einem Streitgespra«ch’, p. 59.
11
Taubes, ‘The Issue Between Judaism and Christianity: Facing Up to the Unresolvable Di¡erence’, in
Commentary, vol. XVI, no. 6 (1953), p. 532.
12
Occidental, p. 60.
13
See Assmann, preface to PTP, p. xiii. While the opaque nature of the PTP necessitates recourse to
earlier works, shifts in Taubes’s views over time mean we should not rely too heavily on early texts.
Compare, for example, his views on Paul and law in Occidental, p. 68; Taubes to Mohler, pp. 109-110;
‘The Issue’, pp. 530-533; ‘The Price of Messianism’, in Journal of Jewish Studies, vol. XXXIII, nos. 1-2
(1982), pp. 596-597; ‘Walter Benjaminçein moderner Marcionit? Scholems Benjamin-Interpretation
religionsgeschichtlich u«berpru«ft’, in Norbert W. Bolz and Richard Farber (eds.), Antike und Moderne:
zu Walter Benjamins ‘‘Passagen’’, Wu«rzburg 1986, pp. 144-147; PTP, pp. 23-26. See also Schulte, pp. 93-
103. I will therefore focus on the PTP, including Taubes’s 1979 letter to Schmittça letter that Taubes
distributed among and discussed with the PTP’s audience, and that can therefore be treated as part
of his lectures (see PTP, pp. 2, 103).
14
PTP, pp. 13-28.
15
Ibid., pp. 28-54. See also pp. 7-11.
16
Ibid., pp. 55-95.
17
Ibid., p. 88. On Taubes’s stance, see Marin Terpstra and Theo de Wit,‘‘‘No Spiritual Investment in the
World As It Is’’: Jacob Taubes’s Negative Political Theology’, in Ilse N. Bulhof and Laurens ten Kate
(eds.), Flight of the Gods: Philosophical Perspectives on Negative Theology, New York 2000, pp. 320-353;
Assmann et al., afterword to PTP, pp. 115-142; Joshua Robert Gold, ‘Jacob Taubes: ‘‘Apocalypse from
Below’’’, in Telos, 134 (2006), pp. 140-156.
18
PTP, pp. 14-16.
190 Elias Sacks
On this reading, Paul insists that if the Messiah is designated to rule, then Caesar is
therefore not designated to rule, and Rome has lost its legitimacyçits status as a
political entity that we have an obligation to obey. Taubes claims to endorse a
similar view:

Hobbes is dead serious when he speaks of the ‘great Leviathan,’ that ‘mortal God’ to
whom we oweçand this is the decisive pointç‘peace and defense’ ‘under the immortal
God.’ This is also why ‘that Jesus in the Christ’ is not an empty phrase, but an ever-
returning principle. This is why the machine of the state is not a perpetuum mobile, a
thousand-year Reich, sine ¢ne, but thus mortally a fragile balance between inside and
outside, thus mortally also always defeated . . . Paul (also highly ‘valued’ by the ‘¢rst
liberal Jew’), to whom I turn at the turn of the ages, distinguished inside and outside,
also for ‘the political’. Without this distinction we are exposed to the thrones and powers

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that in a ‘monistic’ cosmos no longer know any Beyond. The boundary between
spiritual and worldly may be controversial and is always to be drawn anew.19

Taubes claims to follow Paul in insisting that God leaves the state ‘‘always
defeated’’çthat the absolute sovereignty of God deprives the state of its authority.
Taubes’s Paulinism, then, involves a theological delegitimation of the state. For
Taubes and the PTP’s Paul, belief in God and the Messiah should lead us to reject,
rather than accept, states’claims on our loyalty.
A second point of agreement involves the status of ‘law’. The PTP’s Paul claims
that ‘‘it isn’t nomos but rather the one who was nailed to the cross by nomos who is the
imperator’’,20 and that if the Messiah is ‘‘condemned according to the law . . . so
much the worse for law’’.21 On this reading, Paul believes that we owe no obedience
to a type of norm which permits Jesus’ executionçthat we may obey laws for
reasons of expediency, but have no obligation to do so. Moreover, while it is
unclear whether Taubes himself goes so far as to reject all legal systems, he follows
his Pauline model by limiting the authority of such norms, refusing to treat
adherence to law as the fundamental principle governing our behaviour, objecting
that while a ‘‘jurist’’ must preserve ‘‘juridical form, by whatever hair-splitting
ingenuity . . . this isn’t my worldview, this isn’t my experience’’.22 Indeed, Taubes
explicitly links this move to Paul in a letter from 1952:

Judaism ‘is’ pol. theology . . . because law is ¢nally not the ¢rst and the last after all,
because there are ‘even’ between man and man relationships that ‘exceed’, ‘transcend’
lawçlove, mercy, forgiveness (not at all ‘sentimentally’, but ‘in reality’). I wouldn’t
know how to take a single step further . . . without holding fast to ‘these three’, and this
leads me again and againçagainst my ‘will’çtoçPaul.23

On this view, a move to limit law’s authorityçto privilege extra-legal ideals as ‘‘¢rst
and last’’ principlesçnecessarily ‘‘leads’’ to Paul. Taubes’s Paulinism, then, insists
19
Taubes to Schmitt, p. 112; see also PTP, p. 103. The ‘‘¢rst liberal Jew’’ is how Schmitt describes Spinoza
(Taubes to Schmitt, p. 153n).
20
Taubes, PTP, p. 24.
21
Ibid., p. 37.
22
Ibid., p. 103.
23
Taubes to Mohler, p. 110.
 JacobTaubes, Hermann Cohen, and the Return to German-Jewish Liberalism 191
that a commitment to meeting legal standards should not be the fundamental
principle governing our behaviour.
A third point of agreement involves the form of communal existence that would
replace law and the state. According to the PTP, Paul proposes a ‘‘new kind of
union’’ which is grounded in a ‘‘commandment [Gebot]’’ to ‘‘love your neighbour’’,
and which insists that ‘‘there’s no point in any revolution’’ because ‘‘the entire
swindle [is] going to be over’’.24 The PTP claims, ¢rst, that while Paul a⁄rms a
communal norm requiring love, this norm is not a law but a Gebotça norm that
neither imposes coercive punishments nor articulates detailed guidelines. Second,
while Paul denies legitimacy to Rome, he envisions a community that expects the
imminent arrival of the eschaton, and that therefore refrains from actively

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interfering with an empire already doomed to destruction. Moreover, regardless of
whether Taubes himself expects the eschaton’s imminent arrival,25 he endorses Paul’s
communal model, privileging ‘‘love’’ over ‘‘law’’ in his 1952 letter, and in the PTP
o¡ering the following praise for Paul’s eschewal of revolution: ‘‘That’s absolutely
right, I would give the same advice. Demonstrate obedience to state authority, pay
taxes, don’t do anything bad, don’t get involved in con£icts’’.26 Like his version of
Paul, then, Taubes calls for a ‘‘new kind of union’’ requiring us to love others and
refrain from actively interfering with the state. The PTP follows Paul not only by
calling for the theological delegitimation of the state and limiting the authority of
legal norms, but also by endorsing a communal model that emphasizes love and
avoids revolution.
My concern lies with the content and emergence of these lectures.Throughout his
writings, Taubes endorses a hermeneutical approach concerned with texts’
‘‘polemical’’ dimensions, revealing the targets of the authors he reads and
uncovering a⁄nities between such foes.27 For example, the PTP insists that
‘‘formulas aren’t neutral, but polemical’’,28 identi¢es the ¢gures attacked by ancient
and modern writers,29 and calls attention to moments when texts stand in
‘‘proximity’’ to an ‘‘opponent’’.30 While the PTP takes aim at diverse non-Jewish
thinkers such as Carl Schmitt and liberal Protestants,31 Taubes suggests that his
lectures should also be seen as an attempt to engage Jewish interlocutors, for he
claims to prefer Pauline teachings to the views of ‘‘any Reform rabbi, or any
Liberal rabbi’’,32 insisting that Romans is ‘‘the most signi¢cant Jewish as well as
Christian political theology’’çthat he reads the Epistle against the backdrop
of Christian and Jewish intellectual history, adopting a Pauline posture over
24
Taubes, PTP, pp. 52-54. This community may also be governed by a commandment to love the
enemy: see Assmann et al., afterword to PTP, pp. 129-131.
25
Taubes does not fear such a result: see PTP, p. 103.
26
Ibid., p. 54.
27
On Taubes’s hermeneutics, see Assmann et al., in From Cult pp. xviii-xix; Schulte, pp. 95-96.
28
PTP, p. 31.
29
See PTP, pp. 21-25, 31, 43, 52-53, 64-65.
30
The reference is to Friedrich Nietzsche (PTP, pp. 79-80). See also pp. 28-47 on Paul.
31
On Schmitt, see PTP, p. 103; on liberal Protestantism, pp. 60-62.
32
PTP, p. 11.
192 Elias Sacks
competing approaches to politics drawn from both traditions.33 I therefore seek to
illuminate the content and emergence of Taubes’s ¢nal text by attending to the
issues Taubes urges us to considerçthe ‘‘polemical’’ aspects of his work and, more
speci¢cally, his engagement with Jewish thinkers. I will identify one speci¢c Jewish
target whose politics Taubes sees himself as rejecting, assess the degree to which
Taubes breaks with this opponent’s thought, and draw on this analysis to explore
his return to German-speaking Europe.

TAUBES AS A CRITIC OF COHEN

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Taubes’s belief that authors often fail to specify the central ¢gures against whom
texts are directed is well known. For instance, the PTP argues that Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit engages Paul ‘‘in a consciously polemical fashion’’ despite
never mentioning the Apostle by name.34 More generally, as Christoph Schulte
argues, Taubes insists that our ‘‘attention should be directed to . . . the opponents
and admired models below and behind a text’s surface’’.35 Signi¢cantly, Taubes
himself similarly refrainsçon certain occasions at leastçfrom clearly identifying
the targets of his own works: for example, readers have suggested that one of the
¢gures ‘‘against’’ whom Taubes composes Abendla«ndische Eschatologie is the Catholic
thinker Hans Urs von Balthasar, even though this theologian is never mentioned
in the body of Taubes’s dissertation and is cited only in scattered notes.36 If Taubes
neither expects authors to specify their targets nor sees himself as required to do so,
there is little reason to expect him to identify clearly the central instances of
‘‘Jewish . . . political theology’’ he rejects.37 In order to identify one such target, I
will therefore proceed cautiously, assembling evidence from various sources which
provides grounds for suspecting a critical engagement with the same German-
Jewish thinker, before arguing not only that we can, but indeed that we should,
identify this thinker as one of the PTP’sJewish targets.
The ¢gure in question is Hermann Cohen, a founder of Marburg neo-
Kantianism, and one of German Jewry’s most prominent liberal thinkers in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taubes and Cohen di¡er sharply
insofar as the PTP argues that belief in God undermines the legitimacy of the state,
whereas Cohen insists that religious concepts lend support to some states’claims on
our loyalty. For Cohen, ‘‘ethical life’’ requires the existence of certain types of
33
Taubes to Schmitt, p. 112.
34
PTP, 43. See also Taubes’s treatment of Paul (PTP, p. 16), the Bible (p. 31), and Schmitt (p. 64).
35
‘‘Die Aufmerksamkeit sollte auf . . . die Gegner und die verehrten Vorbilder unter und hinter der Text-Ober£a«che
gelenkt werden.’’ Schulte, 96. See also Assmann et al., in From Cult, pp. xviii-xix.
36
See Ursula Baatz,‘Ein Ansto zur Abendla«ndischen Eschatologie: Hans Urs von Balthasars Apokalypse der
deutschen Seele’, in Farber, et al., pp. 321-329; Ratmoko, preface to Occidental, p. xii. Von Balthasar is
quoted in Occidental, pp. 195, 203-204.
37
Moreover, insofar as these lectures were presented to prospective participants as ‘‘a four-day
course . . . on the Epistle to the Romans’’ (Assmann, preface to PTP, p. xiii), Taubes perhaps
concluded that he should frame his lectures as a study of Pauline writings, rather than a critique of
modern Jewish targets.
 JacobTaubes, Hermann Cohen, and the Return to German-Jewish Liberalism 193
states, since participation in a state allows the human being to overcome the
‘‘individuality’’ of her ‘‘natural’’ existence, since the concept of a stateçproperly
understoodçpoints to the task of forming a federation united under international
law, and since this union of states would begin to instantiate the ideal of a
humanity united by ethical norms.38 Moreover, Cohen claims, Judaism views the
unity that such a federation would begin to instantiate as a central feature of the
messianic age, thereby a⁄rming the legitimacy of at least those states that play a
role in achieving this unity. So, while existing states are necessarily imperfect, they
merit some degree of loyalty as vehicles for actualizing our messianic future. In
Cohen’s words, a ‘‘federation of states of humanity is the messianic future of men’’,39 and
since ‘‘every state has its particular world-historical task for the messianic ideal,’’ it

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is therefore ‘‘our messianic religion itself that . . . makes it possible for us to learn to know and
love our state as our fatherland’’.40 I would argue, however, that Cohen is more than
simply a thinker who di¡ers sharply from Taubes. Although mentioned only twice
in the PTP, and rarely in Taubes’s other works,41 and neglected by scholars as an
in£uence on Taubes’s thought,42 Cohen is, as I will show, one of the PTP’s Jewish
targetsçindeed, Taubes understands his embrace of Pauline thought as, in part, a
rejection of Cohen’s politics.
The ¢rst piece of evidence emerges from the passage in these lectures that cites
Cohen by name. Relating to cultural Protestantism, a movement among liberal
German Protestants,43 it refers to Cohen’s famous 1915 Deutschtum und Judentum.
Deutschtum begins by positing an a⁄nity between the German and Jewish ‘‘spirits’’,
claiming that shared ideas, as well as patterns of in£uence, link German culture to
theJewish tradition. Cohen then portrays loyalty to the German state as a religious
38
For Cohen’s view of the state, see Hermann Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, in Werke, Hildesheim 2002,
vol. VII, pp. 80-82, 237-257, 433-435; ‘Die religio«sen Bewegungen der Gegenwart’, in Hermann Cohens
ju«dische Schriften, ed. by Bruno Strauss, vol. I, Berlin 1924, pp. 58-59 (hereafter JS); ‘Antwort auf das
o¡ene Schreiben des Herrn Dr. Martin Buber an Hermann Cohen’, in JS, vol. II, pp. 331-332;
Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, transl. by Simon Kaplan, Atlanta 1995, pp. 13-14, 178,
360-362 (hereafter Religion). See also Steven S. Schwarzschild, ‘‘‘Germanism and Judaism’’ç
Hermann Cohen’s Normative Paradigm of the German-Jewish Symbiosis’, in David Bronsen (ed.),
Jews and Germans from 1860 to 1933: The Problematic Symbiosis, Heidelberg 1979, pp. 142-149. For Cohen’s
ethics more broadly, see Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, transl. by John
Denton, Albany 1997, pp. 103-130.
39
‘‘Staatenbund der Menschheit ist die messianische Zukunft der Menschen.’’ Cohen, ‘Die religio«sen
Bewegungen’, p. 59.
40
‘‘Jeder Staat hat fu«r das messianische Ideal seine besondere weltgeschichtliche Aufgabe . . . Unsere messianische
Religion selbst ist es, welche . . . es mo«glich macht, da wir unsern Staat als unser Vaterland
erkennen und lieben lernen.’’ Cohen, ‘Religio«se Postulate’, in JS, vol. I, pp. 9-10. See also Ethik, pp.
495-497; ‘Antwort’, pp. 328-340. For Cohen on messianism, see Poma, pp. 235-261.
41
See Occidental, p. 143; ‘The Dogmatic Myth of Gnosticism’, in From Cult, p. 66; ‘On the Current State of
Polytheism’, in From Cult, pp. 307, 314.
42
Two exceptions are Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky,‘Das Gesetz und die Suspension des Ethischen: Jacob
Taubes und Hermann Cohen’, in Gesine Palmer, et al. (eds.), Torah-Nomos-Ius: Abendla«ndischer
Antinomismus und der Traum vom herrschaftsfreien Raum, Berlin 1999, pp. 243-262; Martin Treml, ‘Die
Figur des Paulus in Jacob Taubes’ Religionsphilosophie’, in Palmer, et al., pp. 165-168. See also
Palmer, ‘Pra«skription und Deskription: Autonomie bei Sigmund Freud und Hermann Cohen’, in
Palmer, et al., pp. 225-227.
43
On Cohen and cultural Protestantism, see Myers, pp. 195-214.
194 Elias Sacks
imperative, stating that ‘‘as adherents of the Jewish religion, we love our German
fatherland and sacri¢ce all our possessions and blood . . . for its continued
existence’’,44 for the German state could potentially play a role in the emergence of
a federation of states, and so help promote the ‘‘messianic idea of Israelite prophetism’’.45
Taubes begins with the following observation:

The way I see it is that with the FirstWorldWar the synthesis of cultural Protestantism, in
which the German Jews participated just as much, broke down. This was, so to speak, a
joint ¢rm (or rather wanted to beçjust think of Hermann Cohen’s shameful tract on
Germanism and Judaism [Deutschtum und Judentum]; one can only avert one’s face before
this equation). But this ¢rm had its major partner and a minor partner who took
himself to be a partner while the other one didn’t take him to be a partner at all.46

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The PTP takes aim at Cohen’s ‘‘equation’’ of the German and Jewish ‘‘spirits,’’
suggesting that his desire for a Christian-Jewish ‘‘joint ¢rm’’ went unreciprocated
by non-Jewish thinkers. Taubes then re£ects on the cultural Protestantism with
which Cohen exhibits a⁄nities, noting that one reason for the movement’s collapse
was the indefensibility of such tenets as a belief in progress, since the belief that
‘‘everything was of course becoming bigger and better . . . came to an abrupt end in
the trenches of France, Macedonia, and Russia’’.47 The PTP concludes by
considering Cohen’s claims regarding Judaism and the state, noting his a⁄nity
with Christian thinkers who portrayed support for Germany as a religious
imperative:

The great professors, who of course at the time were like gods, Martin Rade and Adolf
von Harnack, lost their in£uence; the whole thing collapsed like a house of cards.
(Reference to a letter from Rade to Barth, who doesn’t countersign it.) It became
apparent that they were nothing more than Prussian civil servants. The same goes for
Hermann Cohen, lest you think that the minor partner was any better.48

Rade and Harnack were seen by many of their contemporaries as o¡ering Christian
defenses of German policy;49 indeed, Taubes had previously described one of these
‘‘civil servants’’, Harnack, as ‘‘a hairdresser for the theological wig of the Kaiser’’.50
By comparing Cohen to such ¢gures, then, the PTP claims that he should be

44
‘‘. . .wir als Gla«ubige der ju«dischen Religion unser deutschesVaterland lieben und fu«r seinen Fortbestand all unser Gut
und Blut . . . opfern.’’ Cohen,‘Deutschtum und Judentum’, in JS, vol. II, pp. 237-301 (p. 293).
45
‘‘. . .die messianische Idee des israelitischen Prophetismus.’’ Ibid., p. 290. See also Schwarzschild,
‘Germanism’, pp. 129-172; Myers, pp. 210-212.
46
PTP, p. 62.
47
Ibid.
48
Ibid.
49
See Klaus Schwabe, Wissenschaft und Kriegsmoral: Die deutschen Hochschullehrer und die politischen
Grundfragen des Ersten Weltkrieges, Go«ttingen 1969, pp. 21-45; Anne Christine Nagel, Martin Radeç
Theologe und Politiker des Sozialen Liberalismus: eine politische Biographie, Gu«tersloh 1996, pp. 134-149;
Kurt Flasch, Die geistige Mobilmachung: Die deutschen Intellektuellen und der Erste Weltkrieg, Berlin 2000,
pp. 96-99.
50
Taubes, ‘The Demysti¢cation of Theology: Toward a Portrait of Overbeck’, in From Cult, p. 156
(quoting Franz Overbeck). Taubes repeats this accusation in PTP, p. 60.
 JacobTaubes, Hermann Cohen, and the Return to German-Jewish Liberalism 195
condemned for his theological legitimation of the stateçfor arguing that religious
concepts provide grounds for a⁄rming a state’s claims on our loyalty. Taubes’s
commitment to opposing the theologically-grounded state leads him to attack
Cohen’s politics.51
This characterization of Cohen as a‘‘civil servant’’closely linked to his Christian
contemporaries is perhaps unjust.52 My concern, however, lies not with whether
Cohen merits Taubes’s criticism, but rather with what this criticism reveals about
the PTP. Taubes associates Cohen with a moveçthe theological legitimation of
the stateçrejected by the PTP, citing Cohen as an example to show that this
move occurs among Jewsçto guard against thinking that Jewish thought was ‘‘any
better’’ than its Christian counterpart. Moreover, if we read this passage against

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the backdrop of the PTP as a whole, we discover that Cohen is the only post-
Pauline theorist of Judaism whom these lectures criticize for making this move:
other such theorists cited in the PTP are neither accused of drawing on religious
concepts to ground states’ claims on our loyalty, nor compared to Christian ¢gures
known for advancing such arguments. So, if the PTP is concerned with ‘‘Jewish as
well as Christian political theology,’’and if Cohen is both cited as evidence that Jews
have o¡ered theological legitimations of the state, and is the only post-Pauline
theorist of Judaism explicitly associated with this move, we can suspect him of
being one of the PTP’s Jewish targets. Indeed, in these lectures which claim to
engage Jewish interlocutors, he is the only medieval or modern philosopher of
Judaism whose political posture is speci¢cally attacked.
A second piece of evidence regarding Cohen emerges from the PTP’s account of
Paul’s intellectual context. Taubes o¡ers the following description of ancient
Mediterranean politics:

There was an aura, a general Hellenistic aura, an apotheosis of nomos [sic]. One could
sing it to a Gentile tune, this apotheosisçI mean, to a Greek-Hellenistic tuneçone
could sing it in Roman, and one could sing it in a Jewish way. Everyone understood law
as they wanted. See Philo, see Josephus: law as hypostasis. So there was an extensively
liberal Judaism, Alexandrian Judaism with its surrounding villages. It comprised a
missionary philosophy in the form of this nomos [sic] theology . . .This sort of thing
brings law and order into the Roman Empire . . . [Paul] clambers out of the consensus
between Greek-Jewish-Hellenistic mission-theology . . . He is totally illiberal; of that I
am certain. I have yet to be taken in by a liberal, whether in antiquity or in the Middle
Ages or in modern times . . . It isn’t nomos but rather the one who was nailed to the cross
by nomos who is the imperator!53

51
The argument that Taubes is objecting only to Cohen’s defence of the German state strikes me as too
narrow. Indeed, the text Taubes criticizesçCohen’s Deutschtumço¡ers a defence of the state per se,
not just of Germany (see Cohen,‘Deutschtum’, pp. 286-291).
52
After all, Cohen acknowledges that the German state is £awed and challenges aspects of liberal
Protestantism. See Schwarzschild, ‘Germanism’, pp. 129-172 and ‘The Theologico-Political Basis of
Liberal Christian-Jewish Relations in Modernity’, in Das deutsche Judentum und der Liberalismus,
London 1986, pp. 70-95.
53
PTP, pp. 23-24.
196 Elias Sacks
According to Taubes, ‘‘nomos theology’’ preserved political stability by demanding
respect for the ‘‘law’’ while allowing groups their own understandings of this term.
Initially, Taubes suggests, this theology gave rise to a ‘‘liberal Judaism’’ that utilized
the ‘‘apotheosis of nomos’’ to launch ‘‘missionary’’ activities, seeking to attract
Gentile adherents by identifying Jewish law with the nomos valued by the
Hellenistic world. For the ‘‘illiberal’’ Paul, however, this emphasis on law lost all
credibility once the Messiah was ‘‘nailed to the cross by nomos’’çonce nomos was
experienced as a mode of governance that sanctioned the execution of God’s
anointed.54
Of course, Taubes may intend his presentation of nomos theology as an attack on
diverse ‘‘liberal’’ thinkers.55 More important here, however, is the relationship

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between this portrayal of Paul’s opponents and the PTP’s account of Cohen. Taubes
consistently likens modern Jews to ancient Jewish predecessors,56 suggesting, for
example, that the modern Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland shares the ‘‘same’’
worries as Jews in the ancient Diaspora,57 that the ‘‘type of zealot diaspora Jew’’ we
see among ‘‘American college boys’’ is ‘‘the type he [Paul] was’’,58 and that ‘‘just as
the Essenes broke with Jerusalem in the ¢rst century, so the orthodox . . . have
broken with the State of Israel’’.59 Read against this backdrop, the PTP’s account
of Cohen seems to be making a similar move, implicitly presenting him as a
modern defender of views associated with Paul’s Jewish opponentsçthe Jewish
representatives of nomos theology. Just as Taubes links Cohen to a ‘‘liberal
consensus’’ and a cultural Protestantism involving Jews and non-Jews, so he links
Paul’s opponents to a ‘‘liberal Judaism’’ and a ‘‘Greek-Jewish-Hellenistic mission-
theology’’.60 Similarly, just as Taubes accuses Cohen of providing theological
support to the German state, so Taubes claims that nomos theology ‘‘brings law and
order into the Roman Empire.’’ Moreover, just as Taubes takes Cohen to posit an
‘‘equation’’ between the Jewish and German spirits, so Taubes describes Paul’s
opponents as con£ating Jewish and Hellenistic ‘‘laws’’.61 Finally, claims Taubes, the
cultural Protestantism linked to Cohen became untenable after the violence of the

54
I leave aside the question of whether the PTP accurately presents the commitments of Paul’s
opponents. Taubes claims to be drawing on the work of Moriz Friedla«nder (PTP, p. 24).
55
He may also have liberal Protestant thinkers in mind.
56
See also Taubes,‘Notes on Surrealism’, in From Cult, pp. 104-109.
57
PTP, pp. 17-18.
58
Ibid., pp. 25-26.
59
Ibid., p. 29.
60
Ibid., p. 104. Although Cohen is not cited explicitly, the PTP refers to a ‘‘Protestant-Jewish liberal
consensus’’ and has identi¢ed Cohen with just such a ‘‘joint ¢rm’’ (p. 62); moreover, Taubes invokes a
‘‘liberal synthesis’’ existing before the First World War (p. 104) and associates Cohen with just such a
‘‘synthesis’’ (p. 62). Indeed, Taubes links one of Cohen’s studentsçErnst Cassirerçto this ‘‘liberal
consensus’’ (p. 104).
61
Indeed, just as nomos theology takes ‘law’ to be a category with respect to which Hellenism and
Judaism converge, so too does Cohen treat ‘law’ as a category with respect to which Germanism
and Judaism take similar approaches: see Cohen, ‘Innere Beziehungen der Kantischen Philosophie
zum Judentum’, in JS, vol. I, pp. 291-293.
 JacobTaubes, Hermann Cohen, and the Return to German-Jewish Liberalism 197
trenches, just as the theology of Paul’s opponents lost credibility after the violence of
Jesus’ cruci¢xion. Implicitly, then, the PTP presents Cohen as a modern defender
of views held by Paul’sJewish foes.We have thus discovered a second clue regarding
Taubes’s Jewish targets. We have reason to suspect that in lectures concerned with
‘‘Jewish . . . political theology,’’ one key interlocutor might be the Jewish thinker
whose politics and predecessors mark him as worthy of oppositionçwhose views
on the state are condemned as a Jewish instance of theological legitimation, and
whose thought is presented as echoing the ancient opponents of the PTP’s hero.62
A third piece of evidence emerges from the PTP’s historical context. Belonging to
a generation of Jews for whom Cohen was an important in£uence,63 Taubes
published an essay in 1983 in which he claims to have ‘‘returned’’ to Cohen while

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exploring ‘‘subjectivity’’:64

Ezekiel 18 marks a turning point in the history of religion . . .‘It is a mistake’, Hermann
Cohen says, in his late work Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism . . . to consider
Ezekiel’s examination as ‘long-winded’ . . . These verses give testimony of the highest
order to the ur-history of subjectivity . . . ‘Make for yourselves a new heart and a new
spirit’ (Ezekiel 18:31). Hermann Cohen comments, ‘In the recognition of his own sin,
man became an individual. Through the power to create for himself a new heart and a
new spirit, however, he becomes the I’.65

Quoting Chapter 11 of Cohen’s Religion, Taubes seems to accept some aspects of its
argument that the prophet Ezekiel and Cohen’s philosophy of religion, rather than
earlier prophets and Cohen’s conception of ethics, provide a conception of ‘‘the
individual as I’’çof the human being as a particular individual who freely
‘‘creates’’ her selfhood.66 Signi¢cantly, though, Cohen launches the argument in
this chapter by recapitulating his own politics:

All the prophets up to Ezekiel made social morality the main point . . .The I is in the ¢rst
place the individual . . .The individual constitutes a problem in which the speci¢c
character of religion, in distinction from ethics, comes to the fore . . .The free individual
of ethics, if he . . . is directed and projected to totality in accordance with his ideal
completion, is thereby dissolved in totality. This dissolution of the individual is the
highest triumph of ethics. The ethical individual, as an isolated single being having the
basis of his life in metabolism, disappears, to be resurrected in the I of the state and, by
62
Admittedly, while Taubes explicitly links the Zentralrat, ‘‘college boys,’’ and the ‘‘orthodox’’ to ancient
predecessors, he only implicitly links Cohen to Paul’s opponents. Nevertheless, given the similarities
between Cohen’s thought and nomos theology, the comparison made by Taubes is clear.
63
See Treml, p. 166. For Cohen and other thinkers with whomTaubes engages, see Deuber-Mankowsky,
‘The Ties Between Walter Benjamin and Hermann Cohen: A Generally Neglected Chapter in the
History of the Impact of Cohen’s Philosophy’, transl. by Joel Golb, in Robert Gibbs (ed.), Hermann
Cohen’s Ethics, Leiden 2006, pp. 127-145; Peter Eli Gordon, ‘Science, Finitude, and In¢nity: Neo-
Kantianism and the Birth of Existentialism’, in Jewish Social Studies, vol. VI, no. 1 (1999), pp. 30-53;
see also Myers, p. 195. On Taubes and generations of intellectuals who rebelled against German-
Jewish liberalism, see Goodman-Thau, ‘Prophet und Priester im Kampf um die Geschichte Israels
mit Gott: Die politische Theologie von Martin Buber und Jacob Taubes’, in Farber, et al., pp. 432-446.
64
Taubes,‘On the Current State’, p. 314.
65
Ibid., pp. 306-307.
66
See Cohen, Religion, pp. 178-215. See also Poma, pp. 211-233.
198 Elias Sacks
means of the federation of states, in humanity. This is the range of ethics for the human
individual. The prophets of social morality, in their messianic monotheism, join in this
move. In the prophets’ view of humanity the individual, as single man, vanishes.67

Cohen summarizes his theory, outlined earlier, that states allow us to overcome our
natural individuality grounded ‘‘in metabolism’’, should create a ‘‘federation’’ that
begins to actualize the ideal of a united ‘‘humanity’’, and thus contribute to a vision
shared by Judaism’s ‘‘messianic monotheism’’.68 This summary plays an important
role in Cohen’s argument, allowing him to introduce his claim regarding possible
sources for a theory of subjectivity. For Cohen, if ethics envisions the ‘‘dissolution’’of
individuality through participation in the state and prophets prior to Ezekiel ‘‘join
in this move’’, we can only generate a notion of the ‘‘individual as I’’ by turning to

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other sources: to‘‘religion, in distinction from ethics’’, and to Ezekiel.69
Cohen’s signi¢cance now comes into sharper relief. His political views are
attacked in the PTP. Moreover, this attack occurs shortly after Taubes explores
Chapter 11 of Religion, which outlines a theory of subjectivity that he seems to
accept, but which launches this argument by summarizing the very politics that
the PTP will invoke and attack. We thus possess a third clue regarding Taubes’s
Jewish targets. If in turning to Religion for a theory of subjectivity Taubes would
have encountered a presentation of Cohenian politics, he might have had this same
position in mind a few years later as a key ‘‘Jewish . . . political theology’’ that
should be rejected.
A more con¢dent account of Taubes’s ‘polemical’ aim is now possible. Although
his hermeneutics and style suggest that the PTP might fail to clearly specify its
targets, Taubes claims to explore Paul against the backdrop of ‘‘Jewish as well as
Christian’’ interlocutors. Several clues point to Cohen being one such ¢gure, for
he is cited as evidence that Jews have o¡ered theological legitimations of the state,
is the only post-Pauline theorist of Judaism explicitly linked to this move, and is
presented as echoing the ancient opponents of the PTP’s hero; indeed, Taubes
encounters a presentation of Cohen’s views shortly before delivering the PTP.
Taken individually, perhaps, each point proves little. Taken together, however,
these factors yield the conclusion that Cohen is one of the PTP’s Jewish targets. We
should conclude, in other words, that the PTP is, in part, a critique of Cohen, and

67
Cohen, Religion, pp. 178-179. I have slightly altered Kaplan’s translation.
68
Cohen’s reference to the ‘‘dissolution of the individual’’ is not a rejection of the state, for he describes
the state in similar terms in texts that defend such polities (see Cohen, Ethik, p. 433), and presents
this overcoming of individuality as part of his own ethics (see Religion, pp. 11-20). Rather, Cohen is
suggesting that we overcome our ‘‘natural’’ individuality as members of the state, and that this
account of the stateçwhile validçcannot generate an account of the ‘‘individual as I.’’ See also
Poma, pp. 199-202, 211-214. The question of whether this concern with the individual re£ects a break
with Cohen’s earlier thought lies beyond the scope of the present article.
69
This argument is also relevant to Taubes’s essay, which cautions against embracing ‘‘polytheism’’ and
‘‘mythology,’’ and presents the alternative to these approaches as being a ‘‘monotheism of reason’’ and
an ‘‘‘enlightened’ philosophy of revelation’’ (Taubes, ‘On the Current State’, pp. 302-310). Taubes thus
echoes the claim emerging from the summary of Cohen’s politics that we should turn to a
philosophy of religion (understood as a philosophical monotheism) as a source of crucial notions.
 JacobTaubes, Hermann Cohen, and the Return to German-Jewish Liberalism 199
that Taubes understands his embrace of Pauline thought as, in part, a rejection of
Cohen’s politics.
Taubes’s return to German-speaking Europe, then, culminates in an engagement
with German-Jewish liberalism. What I now wish to show, however, is that the
PTP’s relationship with Cohen’s work is not merely antagonistic. Knowingly or
unknowingly, Taubes re-enacts a variety of moves associated with his German-
Jewish opponent.70

TAUBES AS COHEN’S HEIR

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The ¢rst hints of this a⁄nity emerge whenTaubes claims that Paul should be read as
an authentically ‘‘Jewish’’ ¢gure. Taubes suggests that ‘‘the crux’’ of this attempt to
bring the Apostle ‘‘back into the fold’’ involves showing that ‘‘Paul faced the same
problem as Moses,’’and that there exists a‘‘connection between . . .Yom Kippur and
the problem of Paul’’.71 In other words, Paul counts as a Jewish thinker because of
the dilemma he facesçbecause Paul, Moses, and Yom Kippur all address a
common ‘‘problem’’. What exactly is this dilemma, then, and how does it establish
Paul’sJewish authenticity?
According to the PTP, Paul ‘‘speaks of nothing other than reconciliation
[Verso« hnung]’’,72 insisting that it ‘‘can’t be’’ the case that God has ‘‘repudiated his
people’’ after their rejection of Christ.73 Similarly, the PTP takes Moses and the
Yom Kippur liturgy to address similar issues, the former engaging in a
‘‘controversy’’ with God over whether the deity can ‘‘pardo[n]’’ Israel, and the
latter responding to our ‘‘sins’’ by claiming that ‘‘the day itself . . . has the power
of reconciliation [Verso« hnung]’’: Moses asks whether communal apostasy permits
reconciliation or requires annihilation, andYom Kippur (theVerso« hnungstag) a⁄rms
that we can overcome the alienation from God caused by sin.74 For the PTP, then,
the ‘‘problem’’ linking Paul, Moses, and Yom Kippur is this question of Verso« hnung ç
of whether or not we can be reconciled with God in the aftermath of sin.
How does this shared focus secure Paul’s Jewish status? Taubes describes the
Verso« hnungstag as a window into an ‘‘experience’’ shared by ‘‘every Jew’’and links this
fact to Paul’s status as ‘‘an apostle from the Jews’’, implying that reconciliation is a
key focus of Jewish liturgy, and that Paul’s concern with this theme thus establishes
70
The question of whether Taubes recognizes these a⁄nities is beyond the scope of the present article
(see note 117, below).
71
PTP, p. 37; the reference to bringing Paul ‘‘back into the fold’’ appears on p. 11.
72
Ibid., p. 32. Throughout this article I render Verso« hnung as ‘reconciliation’, rather than ‘atonement’,
alteringçwhen necessaryçthe translations by Hollander and Kaplan. My goal is to capture the
emphasis in the PTP and Cohen’s writings on the overcoming of alienation.
73
Ibid., p. 50; see also pp. 37-38. The PTP also describes Paul as being concerned with whether ‘‘the
word of God could mis¢re’’çwhether God must destroy Israel, thereby failing to deliver the
eschatological glory He promised to His people (p. 47). It seems to me, however, that to ask whether
God must annihilate Israel is to ask whether reconciliation is possibleçwhether God and Israel
can continue, or must end, their relationship.
74
Ibid., pp. 28-32; see also pp. 34-37. Taubes focuses on Moses, God, and the Golden Calf.
200 Elias Sacks
his place in the Jewish tradition.75 Similarly, after claiming that Moses’s concern
with reconciliation ‘‘is played out over and over’’ in Jewish history, the PTP repeats
its description of Paul as ‘‘an apostle of the Jews,’’again linking his status as a Jewish
thinker to his concern with Verso« hnung.76 The PTP thus argues that insofar as the
pursuit of Verso« hnung plays a central role in Jewish life, Paul’s concern with this
theme reveals him to be an authentically Jewish thinker. For the PTP, then, we
might say that theJewishness of Verso« hnung establishes theJewishness of Paul.77
The crucial point for us is that Cohen establishes Jewish authenticity in a
strikingly similar manner. As is well known, he argues that Judaism revolves
around the idea of a unique God, that a conception of Verso« hnung follows from this
idea, and that the theme of reconciliation therefore stands at the heart of Jewish

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religiosity; in his words,‘‘reconciliation [Verso« hnung] therefore becomes the cardinal
point of monotheism’’ and ‘‘becomes the centre of the entire worship’’.78 More
precisely, Cohen claims that the ‘correlation’, or logical connection, between the
idea of a unique God and the idea of a human being points to our enduring
capacity for moral action, to the possibility of such action in the wake of sin, and
thus to the possibility of Verso« hnung with ourselves and with God, of overcoming the
guilt that seems to separate us from our own moral capacities and God’s moral
law.79 This view of Verso« hnung, in turn, enables Cohen to o¡er the following
argument about the Pharisees:

Reconciliation of man with God [Verso« hnung des Menschen mit Gott] is the entire problem of
religion . . . And if we still require a historical proof that the Pharisees are genuine,
albeit one-sided, successors of the prophets, Yom Kippur [der Tag der Verso« hnung] has
provided this proof. For the Pharisees, the sages of the Talmud, really created it from
the biblical day of the sacri¢ce of the high priest with the marvelous consistency of
monotheism’s basic thought.80

Cohen cites the Pharisees’ emphasis on Verso« hnung as a mark of their Jewish
authenticity, arguing that insofar as a concern for reconciliation follows logically
from Jewish ‘‘monotheism’’, ¢gures who place an emphasis on the former count as
‘‘genuine’’ representatives of the latter.
Taubes and Cohen thus display a considerable degree of a⁄nity in their
identi¢cation of Verso« hnung as a concern that proves the Jewishness of Paul and the
75
Ibid., pp. 37-38. Lest we miss the emphasis on Paul’s Jewishness, the PTP pointedly notes that his ‘‘task
is not that of an apostle to the Gentiles, but that of an apostle from the Jews to the Gentiles.’’ See
also p. 48.
76
Ibid., p. 47.
77
For another line of reasoning regarding Paul’s Jewishness, see PTP, pp. 7-11 on ‘‘messianic logic’’.
78
Cohen, Religion, p. 215.
79
Ibid., pp. 165-215. See also Poma, pp. 211-228; Michael Zank, The Idea of Atonement in the Philosophy of
Hermann Cohen, Providence 2000.
80
‘‘Verso« hnung des Menschen mit Gott, das ist das ganze Problem der Religion . . . Und wenn es noch eines
geschichtlichen Beweises bedurfte, da die Pharisa«er echte, wenngleich einseitige Fortsetzer der Propheten sind, so
hat der Tag der Verso« hnung diesen Beweis erbracht; denn die Pharisa«er, die Weisen des Talmud haben aus dem
biblischen Opfertage des Hohenpriesters mit der wunderbaren Konsequenz des monotheistischen Grundgedankens
ihn geradezu gescha¡en.’’ Cohen,‘Der Tag der Verso«hnung’, in JS, vol. I, pp. 140-141.
 JacobTaubes, Hermann Cohen, and the Return to German-Jewish Liberalism 201
Pharisees, respectively. Moreover, while other Jewish thinkers also emphasize
Verso« hnung,81 the move whichTaubes echoes seems to be distinctively Cohenian, for I
know of no other ¢gure who advances the argument that a thinker’s concern with
Verso« hnung is capable of securing her Jewish authenticity.82 By establishing Paul’s
Jewishness through this reasoning, Taubes thus re-enacts an argumentative
strategy speci¢c to Cohen.
Moreover, we can identify a second a⁄nity between Taubes and Cohen if we
consider the PTP’s account of the history of Paul’s reception. Tracing the role of
Pauline propositions in Western thought, Taubes argues that such ideas serve as
presuppositions on which later ¢gures dependçthat premises on which the
arguments of various post-Pauline thinkers rely coincide with claims advanced

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by Paul.83 In some cases, the PTP is concerned with historical derivation,
highlighting the ways in which Paul’s successors borrow from his work. For
example, Paul’s letters are posited as the source from which the Gnostic Marcion
derives a crucial premise:

The question is where [Marcion] does capture an intentionçand he does take himself to
be Paul’s true disciple . . . Look at the jubilation we discussed, Romans 8: separated
from the love of God through Christ. God’s love, which Paul presumes, is very, very, far
away . . .The thread that links creation and redemption is a very thin one. A very, very
thin one. And it can snap. And that is Marcion. There the thread has snapped. He
readsçand he knows how to read!çthe father of Jesus Christ is not the creator of
heaven and earth.84

For Taubes, Marcion is best understood as a ¢gure who ‘‘reads’’ and develops Paul,
deriving from the apostle a belief in the fragility of ‘‘the thread that links creation
and redemption,’’ and developing from this separation a more radical distinction
between the God of ‘‘creation’’and the God of ‘‘redemption’’. In other cases, Taubes
is concerned less with historical derivation than with conceptual resemblance,
calling attention to thinkers who do not draw on the Apostle’s premises, but
nevertheless rely on ideas echoing Paul’s statements. For example, Taubes o¡ers the
following account of why Walter Benjamin considers worldly states to be ‘‘passing
away’’:

The world decays . . . Benjaminçthis is the astonishing parallelçhas a Pauline notion

of creation; he sees the labor pains of creation, the futility of creation. All of this is of
course to be found in Romans 8: the groaning of the creature. Open this text and read
81
Thinkers in£uenced by Cohençsuch as Franz Rosenzweig and Joseph Soloveitchikçare
particularly concerned with this theme. See Rivka Horwitz, ‘Two Models of Atonement in Cohen’s
‘‘Religion of Reason’’’, in Helmut Holzhey, et al. (eds.), ‘‘Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des
Judentums’’: Tradition und Ursprungsdenken in Hermann Cohens Spa«twerk, Hildesheim 2000, pp. 175-177.
82
See, for instance, Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, transl. by Barbara E. Galli, Wisconsin
2005, pp. 343-347; Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, transl. by Lawrence Kaplan, Philadelphia
1983, pp. 110-117.
83
While I will focus on Marcion and Benjamin, the PTP advances similar claims regarding Schmitt
and Karl Barth (pp. 62-70), Nietzsche (pp. 76-88), and Freud (pp. 88-95).
84
Ibid., pp. 57-60. While the PTP distances Paul from many aspects of Marcion’s thought, Taubes insists
that Marcion is an authentic expositor of some key Pauline ideas: see pp. 56-62.
202 Elias Sacks
it out loud, and then read Benjamin:You’re going to be amazed. Romans 8:18.That’s what
Benjamin is talking about. That is the idea of creation as decay.85

ForTaubes, Benjamin’s argument rests on the‘‘Pauline notion’’that the existing order

in which the state is embedded is undergoing a process of ‘‘decay’’. The PTP
continues:

Of course I don’t want to say that it’s identical with Paul in a strictly exegetical sense. I
want to say: This is said out of the same experience, and there are hints in the text that
con¢rm this. These are experiences that shake Paul through and through and that
shake Benjamin through and through after 1918, after the war. That’s what I’m talking
about. This is not a matter of the ABCs of exegesis, but a question of optics.86

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The claim here is that Benjamin relies on a ‘‘Pauline notion’’ even if he does not
derive this idea from an ‘‘exegesis’’ of Romans, but is led by ‘‘experience’’ to a
similar conclusion. Taubes thus argues that what he presents as a set of ancient
Jewish textsçthe letters of the authentically ‘‘Jewish’’ ¢gure Paulçturn out to
supply directly, or at least echo through conceptual resemblance, premises on
which later thinkers rely.
Now, it is well known that Cohen posits two types of connections between ancient
Jewish writings and subsequent thinkers. In some cases, he argues, we can
recognize ancient Jewish texts as the historical sources of the premises on which
later thinkers rely:

Ethical theory’s ethical life comes together with religion at this point, as in the end
nothing is left for it except to set up the idea of God . . . as surety for the future actualization of
ethical life on earth. This and nothing else is the clear meaning of the messianic idea of the
prophets . . . Cultured humanity has adopted this messianic idea; even philosophical
ethics has to adopt it. With it, however, the prophetic concept of God enters into the
theoretical content of philosophical ethics.87

For Cohen, then,‘‘philosophical ethics’’depends on a premise ‘‘adopted’’ fromJewish

texts, a⁄rming the ‘‘actualization of ethical life on earth’’ by relying on the
‘‘prophetic’’ notion of a God who secures the possibility of this result; to quote
Steven Schwarzschild, Cohen insists that ‘‘biblical religion produced the very
notions’’ which ‘‘Enlightenment rationalism’’ brought to ‘‘exfoliation’’.88 In other
cases, Cohen leaves aside issues of historical derivation, linking ‘‘the sources of

85
Ibid., p. 72.
86
Ibid., p. 74.
87
‘‘Die ethische Sittlichkeit vereinigt sich an diesem Punkte mit der Religion, indem auch ihr nichts anderes am letzten
Ende u«brig bleibt, als die Idee Gottes aufzurichten . . . als Bu«rgschaft fu«r die einstige Verwirklichung der
Sittlicheit auf Erden. Dies und nichts anderes ist der klare Sinn der messianischen Idee der Propheten . . . Diese
messianische Idee hat die gebildete Menschheit angenommen. Auch die philosophische Ethik hat sie anzunehmen.
Damit aber tritt der prophetische Gottesbegri¡ in den Lehrgehalt der philosophischen Ethik ein.’’ Cohen, ‘Die
Bedeutung des Judentums fu«r den religio«sen Fortschritt der Menschheit’, in JS, vol. I, pp. 32-33.
88
Schwarzschild,‘The Title of Hermann Cohen’s ‘‘Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism’’’, in
Religion, p. 9.
 JacobTaubes, Hermann Cohen, and the Return to German-Jewish Liberalism 203
Judaism’’to the property of ‘‘being an origin [Urspru«nglichkeit]’’89 which, he suggests,
should be understood as follows:

Religion certainly is not permitted to do without the lawfulness of its origin, as well as its
development . . . Reason is the organ of laws. The religion of reason, therefore, comes under
the light of lawfulness . . . Being an origin, which we have considered up till now to be
merely historical, appears now to be founded beyond the limits of all history:
lawfulness becomes the foundation of being an origin.90

Cohen thus sees Jewish texts as providing the ‘‘origin’’ of a system of ideas not by
meeting some ‘‘historical’’condition, but rather by being capable of ‘‘development’’
in a conceptual process characterized by ‘‘lawfulness’’çby articulating claims that

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coincide with presuppositions from which we can generate a set of concepts. For
example, Judaism provides the ‘‘origin’’of a‘‘religion of reason’’ not by serving as an
historical source for the ideas of modern philosophers, but rather by a⁄rming the
very idea from which such thinkers would generate concepts such as creation and
revelation; to quote Schwarzschild, ‘‘‘origin’ does not primarily mean historical
beginning’’, but rather refers to ‘‘rational presuppositions’’.91 In order to identify
such an Ursprung within Judaism, then, Cohen examines cases where the claims of
Jewish texts coincide with, or come close to approximating, the presuppositions of
a subsequent conceptual system. Cohen thus argues that ideas presented by ancient
Jewish texts serve as premises on which later thinkers rely, and presents this
connection in terms of both historical derivation and conceptual resemblance.
Yet it is this very move that leads Cohen to a conclusion that the PTP singles out
for vehement critique, namely his insistence on an a⁄nity between Judaism and
German culture, an ‘‘equation’’ before which, in the PTP’s words, ‘‘one can only
avert one’s face’’.92 In some cases, Cohen’s point is that Jewish sources provide
premises that later German thinkers borrow and develop. Consider his treatment
of Kant:

Humanity is the fundamental concept of his ethics. With the idea of humanity, he uprooted all
sensualism, all eudaemonism . . . Everyone should now again feel, in this main point, the
inner community between Germanism and Judaism . . .The biblical spirit has even
been active, as the deepest cause, in German humanism. Messianism is the fundamental
pillar of Judaism: it is its crown and root. It forms the creative fundamental theme of
monotheism, which Herder already emphasizes: ‘If Jehovah was the One, the creator of the
world, then He was also the God of all men, all races’.93

89
Cohen, Religion, p. 8; see also p. 34. I have altered Kaplan’s translation.
90
Cohen, Religion, p. 10. I have altered Kaplan’s translation.
91
Schwarzschild,‘The Title’, p. 9 and pp. 8-17. See also Poma, pp. 83-97, 171-233.
92
PTP, p. 62.
93
‘‘Die Menschheit ist der Grundbegri¡ seiner Ethik. Mit der Idee der Menschheit entwurzelt er allen
Sensualismus, allen Euda«monismus . . . An diesem Hauptpunkte sollte nun wiederum jedermann die innere
Gemeinschaft zwischen Deutschtum und Judentum fu«hlen . . . [D]er biblische Geist auch im deutschen
Humanismus als tiefste Ursache gewirkt hat. Der Messianismus aber ist der Grundpfeiler des Judentums;
er ist seine Krone und Wurzel. Er bildet das scho« pferische Grundmotiv des Monotheismus, das Herder schon
hervorhebt: ‘War Jehova der Einige, der Scho« pfer der Welt: so war er auch der Gott aller Menschen, aller
204 Elias Sacks
Cohen claims here that the Bible, through its image of ‘‘all men’’, supplies German
culture with a notion of humanity, that the great thinkers of ‘‘German humanism’’,
such as Kant, treat this ‘‘fundamental concept’’ as a building-block for their
arguments, and that this biblical notion’s underpinning role thus re£ects a
‘‘community’’ between Judaism and German culture. In other cases, however,
Cohen is concerned less with historical derivation than with conceptual
resemblance:

The distinction between the certainty of human cognition in the exact sciences, and the
certainty of human cognition in all questions of faith, became vivid for modern
man . . .That is the contrast that the German Enlightenment forms compared to the
age of Voltaire and the Encylopedists . . .Through the distinction between two types of certainty,

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the idea of Protestantism for the ¢rst time gave the secure foundation to the
scienti¢c conscience of modern peoples. And every development of religion, and no less
every development of ethics, is conditioned through this exposition of the idealism of
culture.94

For Cohen, this ‘‘distinction’’ between scienti¢c and religious ‘‘certainty’’, rooted
in philosophical ‘‘idealism’’,95 serves as a premise or ‘‘foundation’’ for movements
such as ‘‘the German Enlightenment’’, since this distinction allows such thinkers to
pursue diverse modes of inquiry without making claims that would violate
intellectual ‘‘conscience’’. In particular, by positing multiple types of ‘‘certainty,’’
modern thinkers provide a ‘‘foundation’’ for accepting answers to theoretical and
religious questions without disingenuously presenting these answers as
epistemologically equalçfor treating these answers as ‘‘certain’’ without
disingenuously insisting that the same ‘‘certainty’’ inheres in both types of claims.
Cohen continues:

Suddenly, we have come into contact here with the Bible, and thus also with
Judaism . . . Idealism is not scienti¢cally prepared here, but the movement towards
philosophical speculation is unmistakable . . .This thought of God is not the thought of
science, but rather the thought of love. Cognition of God is love. Love is the genuine biblical
word for the reformational-biblical word faith.96

Geschlechter.’’’ Cohen,‘Deutschtum’, pp. 263-264. While Cohen uses the term Ursprung in passing, his
focus lies with historical derivation.
94
‘‘. . .ist dem modernen Menschen die Unterscheidung lebendig geworden zwischen der Gewiheit der
menschlichen Erkenntnis in den exakten Wissenschaften und der in allen Glaubensfragen . . . Das ist der
Unterschied, den die deutsche Aufkla«rung gegen das Zeitalter Voltaires und der Enzyklopa«disten
bildet . . . Durch die Unterscheidung der beiden Arten von Gewiheit hat die Idee des Protestantismus
dem wissenschaftlichen Kulturgewissen der modernen Vo« lker erst das sichere Fundament gegeben. Und alle
Entwicklung der Religion, wie nicht minder auch alle Entwicklung der Ethik ist bedingt durch diese Ausfu«hrung
des Idealismus der Kultur.’’ Ibid., pp. 242-243.
95
On Cohen’s use of this term, see ibid., pp. 239-243.
96
‘‘Unversehens sind wir hier schon auf die Beru«hrung mit der Bibel, also mit dem Judentum gekommen . . . Der
Idealismus ist hier nicht wissenschaftlich vorbereitet, aber die Richtung auf die philosophische Spekulation ist
unverkennbar . . . Dieses Denken Gottes ist nicht das Denken der Wissenschaft, sondern das Denken der Liebe.
Die Erkenntnis Gottes ist Liebe. Lieben ist das echte biblische Wort fu«r das reformatorisch-biblische Wort des
Glaubens.’’ Ibid., pp. 243-244.
 JacobTaubes, Hermann Cohen, and the Return to German-Jewish Liberalism 205
Here, Cohen insists that it is through his argumentative strategy that German
culture is brought ‘‘into contact . . . with Judaism’’, since this strategy reveals that
Judaism’s Bible echoes ^ but is not the historical source for ^ the distinction on
which modern thinkers rely. In other words, even though the Bible is not the source
that laid the ground for the idealist distinction between scienti¢c and religious
certainty,97 it nonetheless proposes a similar distinction between scienti¢c and
religious knowledge by presenting the ‘‘thought of God’’ not as a ‘‘thought of
science,’’ but rather as ‘‘cognition’’ involving ‘‘love’’ and ‘‘faith’’.98 The Cohenian
‘‘equation’’ attacked by Taubes, then, is based on identifying premises relied on by
German thinkers which are supplied by or echoed in ancientJewish texts.
In the passages surveyed above, then, both Taubes and Cohen connect ideas

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present in Jewish texts to the premises of subsequent thinkers, and present this link
in terms of historical derivation and conceptual resemblance. Yet while Cohen’s
arguments are hardly the only modern Jewish attempts to link ancient sources
to later thinkers, his arguments are integral to a move that is particularly troubling
to the PTP, for these arguments ground his insistence on Judaism’s a⁄nity
with German culture. Taubes thus re-enacts not only an argument (about
reconciliation) that is recognizably speci¢c to Cohenian thought, but also this
second argument that underpins what he condemns as a particularly egregious
Cohenian conclusion.
A third a⁄nity emerges when we explore Taubes’s critique of Cohen’s politics.
Insofar as the PTP accuses Cohen of theologically legitimating a state, it also holds
him responsible for the consequences that follow from such a move. Taubes outlines
these consequences during a 1981 address:

When in our generation Zionists set out on ‘the utopian retreat to Zion’, Rabbinic
authorities looked askance at the enterprise on the whole, and were frightened by the
‘overtones of Messianism’ . . . The Messianic claim ‘has virtually been conjured up’ out
of the horror and destruction of European Jewry and has allowed wild apocalyptic
fantasy to take over political reality in the state of Israel. If the Messianic idea in
Judaism is not interiorized, it can turn the ‘landscape of redemption’ into a blazing
apocalypse.99

Taubes, then, worries that a state which grounds its legitimacy in a messianic task
might cast aside all restraint, seeing itself as entitled to employ even the most
violent means (a ‘‘blazing apocalypse’’) to pursue its divinely-sanctioned aims.
Taubes elaborates on this point elsewhere in his writings, arguing that a state
which denies the existence of God might force us to ‘‘su¡ocate in blood’’,100 that
such a state would lack ‘‘protective fences’’ restraining our ‘‘ingenerate’’ and
‘‘destructive’’ drives,101 but also that a theologically-grounded state would behave
97
Cohen presents the Greeks as sources for this idealism: see Cohen,‘Deutschtum’, pp. 237-241.
98
See Cohen,‘Das soziale Ideal bei Platon und den Propheten’, in JS, vol. I, pp. 306-312.
99
Taubes,‘The Price’, p. 600. The quotation marks indicate Taubes’s citations of Gershom Scholem’s The
Messianic Idea inJudaism.
100
Taubes to Mohler, p. 109.
101
Taubes,‘Theology and Political Theory’, in Social Research, 22 (1955), p. 68.
206 Elias Sacks
similarly to this atheistic polityçthat living in a state which fails to draw a
‘‘boundary between spiritual and worldly’’ (i.e. a state that draws on religious
concepts for legitimacy) would be like being ‘‘exposed to the thrones and powers
that in a ‘monistic’ cosmos no longer know any Beyond’’ (i.e. a state that does not
recognize God’s existence).102 That is, just as a state that denies the existence of
God might recognize no constraints on its behaviour, so too might a state that
claims divine sanction; after all, if the individuals who guide a state con£ate their
authority with God’s sovereignty, they might behave as if they were not subject to
any external power and fail to restrain their violent tendencies. Taubes worries,
then, that the theological legitimation of a state leaves us exposed to violence.
A third a⁄nity now becomes clear. If Taubes accuses Cohen of theologically

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legitimating a state, and if Taubes takes such legitimation to leave us ‘‘exposed’’ to
our ‘‘ingenerate’’ tendency towards destruction, then Taubes is accusing Cohen of
leaving us unprotected against humanity’s ‘‘ingenerate’’ violent drives. However, if
Taubes endorses Paul’s ‘‘new kind of union’’ which renounces law and revolution in
favour of a love-commandment, we can ask whether Taubes is vulnerable to a
charge similar to the one he levels at Cohen. Can a ‘‘union’’ governed by a
commandment to love really check the innate destructive tendencies of human
beings? Can a community really provide ‘‘protective fences’’ if it renounces the
threat of punishment associated with Gesetz? Moreover, can a community that
refrains from active resistance provide adequate protection when states behave
violently? Can we avoid being exposed to horrors unleashed by states if we must
eschew revolutionary action? If Taubes cannot show that commanded loveç
without law and revolutionçis capable of protecting us from violence, then he
would be open to a charge similar to the one he levels at Cohen: just as Cohen
would, Taubes argues, leave us unprotected against violence by theologically
legitimating a state, so too would Taubes leave us unprotected against violence by
privileging love over law and revolution. Ironically, then,Taubes not only re-enacts
argumentative moves associated with Cohenian thought, but may also su¡er from
a weakness similar to the one he ascribes to Cohenian politics.
Of course, I mean to deny neitherTaubes’s a⁄nities with other thinkers,103 nor his
divergences from Cohen: for example, whereas Taubes explores a Pauline view of
history that emphasizes apocalyptic change, Cohen presents a historical model
that revolves around gradual progress.104 My point, rather, is that the PTP exhibits
striking a⁄nities with one of its Jewish targets. Whether unknowingly echoing or
knowingly re-enacting moves associated with Cohen, Taubes emerges in his ¢nal
work as both a critic of and an heir to German-Jewish liberalism.
102
Taubes to Schmitt, p. 112. On the ¢rst phrase, see PTP, p. 103, where it refers to Schmitt’s concept of a
state that invokes theology to ground legitimacy. On the second phrase, referring to an atheistic
polity, see p. 84: a ‘‘monistic’’ Nietzschean cosmos in which we acknowledge no God and by
extension in which states (‘‘thrones and powers’’) would necessarily be atheistic.
103
We could, for instance explore the similarities between the PTP’s claims and Rosenzweig’s thought,
in particular regarding Verso« hnung and the state.
104
Similarly, Cohen’s Verso« hnung involves the individual, while Taubes’s involves the Jewish people.
 JacobTaubes, Hermann Cohen, and the Return to German-Jewish Liberalism 207
TAUBES, ISRAEL, AND THE UNITED STATES

While my analysis has illuminated the PTP’s content, it also raises questions about
this work’s emergence. First, while we have seen that the PTP’s critique of Cohen is
shaped by Taubes’s opposition to the theologically-grounded state, it is less clear
why this particular preoccupation drives the PTP. Why does Taubes focus on the
theologically-grounded state when he believes that other modelsçsuch as an
atheistic polityçalso leave us exposed to violence? Second, while we have seen
that Taubes ascribes destructive consequences to the political posture he associates
with Cohen, it is less clear why the PTP identi¢es Pauline thought as the
alternative to this type of view. Why does Taubes endorse a posture that rejects

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claims of loyalty arising from states but cautions against actively resisting those
entities?
While numerous factors shapeTaubes’s views, a reading of his works suggests that
his time in Israel and the United States may have played a key role in this
respect.105 Tellingly, in the works composed immediately prior to the PTP, Taubes
uses Israeli and American history to illustrate attempts to erect political structures
on theological foundations. The 1981 address cited above, for example, notes the
role of messianism in these nations, worrying that ‘‘apocalyptic fantasy’’ and ‘‘the
Messianic idea’’ might ‘‘take over political reality in the state of Israel,’’ and
highlighting ‘‘the millenarian expectations of the Puritan community’’ that arrived
in ‘‘Massachusetts to create a New Zion’’ and ‘‘founded . . . the United States’’.106
Similarly, a 1986 text sees hints of a‘‘theocratic state’’ in Puritan New England:107

I did not invent the comparison between the Calvinist Puritans’ theocracy and the
Pharisees’ theocracy . . .The comparison forms the axis around which the o⁄cialJewish
scholarly analysis of the Pharisees turns: the analysis that Louis Finkelstein, the
chancellor of the JewishTheological Seminary in New York, one of the most signi¢cant
rabbinical institutions today, produced unchanged in three editions . . .We hold to the
comparison between Pharisees and Puritans, even if today it no longer sounds as stylish
and honourable. Certainly the Pharisees’ theocracy did not have a solely and purely
religious meaning, but rather was intended in an earthly, concrete,‘political’ way.108

Taubes argues that the American Puritans, like the Pharisees, provided a theological
grounding for their ‘‘earthly’’ political structures. Insofar as Taubes emphasizes

105
For example, a broader essay might discuss debates in Continental political theory, as well as the
impact of the Holocaust: see Assmann et al. afterword to PTP, pp. 138-142; Schulte, pp. 100-102.
106
Taubes,‘The Price’, p. 600.
107
He suggests that a ‘‘theocratic state’’ [theokratischen Staat] in Israel would constitute a ‘‘ghost’’
[Gespenst] of ‘‘Puritan New England’’ [puritanischen Neu-Englands]. Taubes,‘Walter Benjamin’, p. 143.
108
‘‘Den Vergleich zwischen Theokratie der calvinistischen Puritaner und der Theokratie der Pharisa«er . . . habe nicht
ich erfunden. Er bildet die Achse, um die o⁄zielle ju«dische gelehrte Analyse der Pharisa«er sich dreht, die Louis
Finkelstein, der Kanzler des Ju«disch-Theologischen Seminars in New York, einer der bedeutendsten rabbinischen
Institutionen der Gegenwart, in drei Au£agen unvera«ndert vorlegte . . . Halten wir am Vergleich zwischen
Pharisa«er und Puritaner fest, auch wenn er heute nicht mehr so schick und ehrenvoll klingt. Die Theokratie der
Pharisa«er hat wahrlich nicht nur einen allein rein religio« sen Sinn, sondern ist irdisch konkret ‘politisch’gemeint.’’
Ibid., p. 144.
208 Elias Sacks
these modern instances of theological legitimation shortly before composing the
PTP, then, it seems reasonable to treat a concern with these episodes as paving the
way for the PTP’s claims. That is, one of Taubes’s reasons for attacking the
theological legitimation of the state, rather than another target, seems to be a
belief that some modern nations appeal to religious concepts for authority, and
that theological legitimation thus constitutes a threat worthy of attention. So, in
attacking the politics he links to Cohen, Taubes is in part drawing what he sees as a
lesson from American and Israeli history, a lesson which teaches us that the
theological legitimation of the state remains a real danger in modernity, and that
this move should therefore be challenged when recommended by a thinker.
Of course, Taubes might have focused on America and Israel even if he had not

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lived in these countries. It is striking, however, that the nations which, for Taubes,
yield examples of theologically-based states are the very nations in which he lived
during his early career.109 Moreover, it was precisely during Taubes’s time in the
United States that he ¢rst devoted serious attention to America’s founders: while
the dissertation that he wrote in Switzerland mentions America only in passing,110
his essays written in the United States explore American politics in greater
detail.111 This evidence, then, suggests that the experience of living in America,
and perhaps also in Israel, encouraged his engagement with these nations’ histories.
So, if part of what shapesTaubes’s attack on Cohen is a commitment to criticizing
thinkers who theologically legitimate the state, and if we take this commitment to
rejecting theological legitimation to itself re£ect historical studies motivated by
living in America and Israel, then we might suggest that Taubes’s time living
abroad signi¢cantly shaped his encounter with German-Jewish thought. His time
abroad may have fostered historical studies which shape his engagement with
Cohen, insofar as they suggest that theological legitimation remains a threat, lead
Taubes to challenge thinkers who make such a move, and motivate him to attack
this posture when he discovers it in Cohen.
A similar picture emerges if we ask why the PTP privileges Paul over Cohen’s
politics. Taubes often insists that ‘experiences’ shape our receptiveness to ideasç
that the degree to which we ¢nd a belief plausible is in£uenced by the events and
communities in which we participate. For example, we have seen that he takes
Christ’s cruci¢xion and the experience of war to shape reactions to key ideas, with
the former generating Paul’s hostility to law and the latter inspiring Benjamin’s
view of creation.112 Similarly, in a 1955 essay on democracy, Taubes speculates that

109
While some texts also brie£y invoke France, Geneva, and England, it is primarily America and
Israel that are cited as models of such states; indeed, the allusions to Geneva and England focus on
the American successors of Swiss Calvinists and English Puritans. See Taubes, ‘Theology’, pp. 64-68;
‘On the Symbolic Order of Modern Democracy’, in Con£uence, vol. IV, no. 1 (1955), pp. 57-71; ‘Walter
Benjamin’, pp. 143-144.
110
See Occidental, p. 119; the Puritans also appear on p. 19.
111
See Taubes,‘Theology’, pp. 64-68; ‘On the Symbolic Order’, pp. 57-71.
112
See also PTP, p. 44.
 JacobTaubes, Hermann Cohen, and the Return to German-Jewish Liberalism 209
the experience of living without a human king undermines belief in a divine
sovereign:

What is a king in the perspective of our age? . . . Is the royal symbol not reduced in a
democratic society to a mere petri¢ed allegory that has no root in the consciousness of
the community? . . . Can the religious symbols £ourish if they are not rooted in man’s
concrete political experience?113

This emphasis on ‘experience’, then, suggests that if we wish to explain Taubes’s

attraction to Pauline politics, we should seek out experiences that render such
politics plausible.
Fortunately, the PTPexplicitly addresses this issue when summarizing Romans13:

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13çwell, we’re living in the evil Roman Empire, so how are we living there? What,
should we still be rising up against something that’s going down anyway? . . . Quietistic,
but out of what depths? That’s what I think . . . Sure it’s evil, butçwhat are you going to
do. I know this sort of mentality. It’s not at all strange [fremd] to me. I have a passport.
But what do I have do with my country beyond my passport? My president’s name is
Reagan. Do you ¢nd me veryAmerican [Finden Sie mich sehr amerikanisch]?114

Invoking Paul’s ‘‘quietistic’’ approach, Taubes claims to ¢nd this posture ‘‘not at all
strange’’ in the light of his life in America. That is, he claims to be attracted to this
posture because Pauline detachment from Rome echoes his own detachment from
the United States: just as Paul avoids interfering with the empire’s operations while
rejecting the empire’s calls for loyalty, so too does Taubes accept the operations of
the American state while remaining a politico-cultural outsider, receiving an
American passport without considering himself ‘‘very American’’. And while it
may be tempting to dismiss this remark, it was precisely after living in America
and Israel that Taubes began to describe Paul as worthy of endorsement: while
Taubes’s dissertation, written in Switzerland, devotes no more attention to the
Apostle than to a variety of other ¢gures,115 a letter written after several years
abroad claims that life ‘‘leads’’ to Paul.116 When Taubes declares that his time in
America disposes him favorably towards Romans, then, both his emphasis on
‘experience’, and the history of his Paulinism, indicate that we should take him
seriously. Taubes’s experience as a not ‘‘very American’’American may have shaped
his embrace of Pauline politics, of a vision which becomes plausible in part because
it coheres with his own sense of detachmentçwith his experience as a politico-
cultural outsider.
To conclude, then,Taubes understands his embrace of Paul as, in part, a rejection
of Cohen’s politics. Taubes’s attraction to this Pauline alternative, in turn, may have
113
Taubes,‘On the Symbolic Order’, p. 58.
114
PTP, pp. 40-41. I have slightly altered Hollander’s translation.
115
Although he presents Paul as a ‘‘turning point,’’ Taubes neither o¡ers the endorsement of Paul that
we ¢nd in later works, nor devotes more attention to the apostle than to other thinkers, such as
Thomas Mu«ntzer, Kant, and Hegel. See Occidental, pp. 58-69, 106-118, and 137-163. See also Schulte,
pp. 94-100.
116
Taubes to Mohler, p. 110. By this point, Taubes had lived in both Israel and the United States.
210 Elias Sacks
been shaped by his experience living outside of Europe, for he ¢nds in the Epistle a
political ‘‘mentality’’ that coheres with his own experience as an outsider. When
privileging Pauline detachment from empire over Cohenian loyalty to the state,
then, Taubes embraces a political vision rendered more plausible, perhaps, by his
time in foreign nations: just as the historical study undertaken during his time
abroad grounds a commitment that shapes his critique of Cohen, so too may a
sense of detachment related to that experience ground the selection of Paul as the
alternative to Cohen. A close reading of Taubes’s work thus suggests that the
histories of the nations in which he lived, as well as his experience as a politico-
cultural outsider, may have shaped his engagement with German-Jewish thought.
Taubes’s return to German-speaking Europe, then, culminates in an engagement

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with German-Jewish liberalism, mediated by life in the United States and Israel.
Of course, my analysis raises a variety of questions for future research, such as
whether Taubes is aware of the PTP’s a⁄nities with Cohen’s thought,117 whether
Taubes exhibits a⁄nities with other thinkers he opposes,118 and whether the
weakness that the PTP may share with Cohençor, at least, with its version of
Cohençpoints to deeper tensions in Taubes’s thought.119 My goal in this article,
however, was not to o¡er a comprehensive account of Taubes’s writings, but rather
to explore the content and emergence of his ¢nal work. I hope, then, that I have
begun to illuminate the life and thought of this rabbi, philosopher, and historian.

117
For example, given that the chapter of Religion he examines in 1983 is concerned with Verso« hnung, did
he perceive the similarities between his exploration of Verso« hnung and Cohen’s treatment of this
theme?
118
We might, in particular, explore similarities between Taubes and Schmitt (for possible sources, see
note 17, above).
119
We could, for instance, question whether Taubes’s politics coheres with his anthropology; for at the
same time as calling for a community governed by love, he presents human beings as violent
creatures driven by ‘‘ingenerate’’ and ‘‘destructive’’ impulses.