In the Mirror Obscure and Vague. Alternative Quasi-Biographies of St. Paul Reflected in Philosophy (Jacob Taubes, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Žižek, Emmanuel Carrère)

Abstract

The topic of the article is the transition of the cultural picture of a historical figure in relation to the ideological influence of the dominant trends in culture and ideologies of the cusp of 20th and 21st centuries. An important point is the illustrative example which shows the determinations of such degrading-recreating tales: the inevitability of distortions, clouding of the root image. The example is Paul of Tarsus as a symbol of european culture and Western civilization on par with Homer, Plato, Octavian or Augustus. We're interested with the way Paul was perceived and depicted at the brink of modernity, at the beginning of the 20th century. Later we focus on the picture of Paul in late modernity and postmodernism. At first it is going to be a picture of philosophy which determines the intellectual and ideological trends of modernism. Not until we cover this ideological matrix can we go further to the only –  but very distinctive – literary picture, derivative of philosophy but enriched with personal contexts.