Západní eschatologie

Western Eschatology (1947), the only book that J. Taubes published during his lifetime, provides a historical synthesis of the Western spiritual heritage in terms of religious apocalyptic, tracing its origins from Hebrew prophecy through antiquity and early Christianity, tracing its medieval revival in Jachym of Fiore, and revealing its late secularized forms in Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Kierkegaard. Taubes builds on the analyses of Jonas and Löwith in terms of content, but he presents his discussion in the form of an appeal essay, which in our setting invites a confrontation with the Heretical Essays of Jan Patočka. According to Taubes, accepting the idea that time will one day come to an end has profound implications for political thought. If natural time is experienced as an eternal cycle of events, then "history" is a temporal domain in which people can alter the course of events through active choices. While universal history is written by the victors, the messianic or apocalyptic event enters history and gives voice to the oppressed.

Czech edition