// Workers AI · dad joke modeWho's Jacob Taubes? A tube of knowledge.

Jacob Taubes
Born	(1923-02-25)25 February 1923 Vienna, Austria
Died	21 March 1987(1987-03-21) (aged 64) Berlin, Germany
Philosophical work
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy

Jacob Taubes (25 February 1923 – 21 March 1987) was a sociologist of religion, philosopher, and scholar of Judaism.

Taubes was born into an old rabbinical family. He was married to the writer Susan Taubes. He obtained his doctorate in 1947 for a thesis on "Occidental Eschatology" and initially taught religious studies and Jewish studies in the United States at Harvard, Columbia and Princeton University.

From 1965 he was professor of Jewish studies and hermeneutics at the Free University of Berlin. He has influenced many contemporary thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Susan Sontag, Avital Ronell, Marshall Berman, Babette Babich, Aleida and Jan Assmann, Amos Funkenstein and Peter Sloterdijk.

Works

• Abendländische Eschatologie, A. Francke, 1947.
• The Political Theology of Paul: Lectures, Held at the Protestant Institute for Interdisciplinary Research (FEST) in Heidelberg, February 23–27, 1987, Stanford University Press, 2004.
• From Cult to Culture: Fragments Toward a Critique of Historical Reason, Stanford University Press, 2010.
• To Carl Schmitt: Letters and Reflections, Columbia University Press, 2013.
• Apokalypse und Politik: Aufsätze, Kritiken und kleinere Schriften, Brill Deutschland, 2017.

References

• Babette Babich, "Ad Jacob Taubes", Debra B. Bergoffen, Babich, and David B. Allison, eds., New Nietzsche Studies: Nietzsche and the Jews. 7, 3 & 4, (Fall 2007/Winter 2008): v-x.
• Joshua Robert Gold, "Jacob Taubes: 'Apocalypse From Below'", Telos 134 (Spring 2006): 140–56.
• Herbert Kopp-Oberstebrink, Hartmut von Sass (eds.): Depeche Mode. Jacob Taubes between Politics, Philosophy, and Religion. Brill, Leiden 2022, ISBN 978-90- 04-50509-4.
• Lilla, Mark (17 April 2022), "The Man Who Made Thinking Erotic" (a review of Professor of Acocalypse: The Many Lives of Jacob Taubes by Jerry Z. Muller), The New York Times . Retrieved 11 June 2022.
• Nitzan Lebovic, "Jacob Taubes: Looking into the Beauty of the Night", H-Judaic (Spring, 2011): www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=29694
• Muller, Jerry Z. (2022). Professor of apocalypse : the many lives of Jacob Taubes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691170596. Retrieved 23 October 2025.