Ernst Bloch
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (December 2021) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
Ernst Bloch | |
---|---|
Notable ideas | The principle of hope, non-simultaneity |
Ernst Simon Bloch (German:
Life
Bloch was born in
In 1948, Bloch was offered the chair of philosophy at the
However, the Hungarian uprising in 1956 led Bloch to revise his view of the SED (Socialist Unity Party) regime, whilst retaining his Marxist orientation. Because he advocated humanistic ideas of freedom, he was obliged to retire in 1957 for political reasons – not because of his age, 72 years. A number of scientists and students spoke publicly against this forced retirement, among them the renowned professor and colleague Emil Fuchs and his students as well as Fuchs's grandson Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski.[citation needed]
When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, he did not return to the GDR, but went to Tübingen in West Germany, where he received an honorary chair in Philosophy. He died in Tübingen.[citation needed]
Thought
Bloch was a highly original and eccentric thinker. Much of his writing—in particular, his magnum opus The Principle of Hope—is written in a poetic, aphoristic style.[6] The Principle of Hope tries to provide an encyclopedic account of mankind's and nature's orientation towards a socially and technologically improved future. This orientation is part of Bloch's overarching philosophy. Bloch believed the universe is undergoing a transition from its primordial cause (Urgrund) toward its final goal (Endziel).[7] He believed this transition is effected through a subject-object dialectic, and he saw evidence for this process in all aspects of human history and culture.
Influence
Bloch's work became influential in the course of the student protest movements in 1968 and in liberation theology.[citation needed] It is cited as a key influence by Jürgen Moltmann in his Theology of Hope (1967, Harper and Row, New York), by Dorothee Sölle, and by Ernesto Balducci. Psychoanalyst Joel Kovel has praised Bloch as, "the greatest of modern utopian thinkers".[8] Robert S. Corrington has been influenced by Bloch, though he has tried to adapt Bloch's ideas to serve a liberal rather than a Marxist politics.[9] Bloch's concept of concrete utopias found in The Principle of Hope was used by José Esteban Muñoz to shift the field of performance studies. This shift allowed for the emergence of utopian performativity and a new wave of performance theorizing as Bloch's formulation of utopia shifted how scholars conceptualize the ontology and the staging of performances as imbued with an enduring indeterminacy,[10] as opposed to dominant performance theories found in the work of Peggy Phelan, who view performance as a life event without reproduction.
Bibliography
Books
- Geist der Utopie (1918) (The Spirit of Utopia, Stanford, 2000)
- Thomas Müntzer als Theologe der Revolution (1921) (Thomas Müntzer as Theologian of Revolution)
- Spuren (1930) (Traces, Stanford University Press, 2006)
- Erbschaft dieser Zeit (1935) (Heritage of Our Times, Polity, 1991)
- Freiheit und Ordnung (1947) (Freedom and Order)
- Subjekt-Objekt (1949)
- Christian Thomasius (1949)
- Avicenna und die aristotelische Linke (1949) (Avicenna and the aristotelian Left)
- Das Prinzip Hoffnung (3 vols.: 1938–1947) (The Principle of Hope, MIT Press, 1986)
- Naturrecht und menschliche Würde (1961) (Natural Law and Human Dignity, MIT Press 1986)
- Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie (1963) (The Tübingen Introduction in Philosophy)
- Religion im Erbe (1959–66) (trans.: Man on His Own, Herder and Herder, 1970)
- On Karl Marx (1968) Herder and Herder, 1971.
- Atheismus im Christentum (1968) (trans.: Atheism in Christianity, 1972)
- Politische Messungen, Pestzeit, Vormärz (1970) (Political Measurements, the Plague, Pre-March)
- Das Materialismusproblem, seine Geschichte und Substanz (1972) (The Problem of Materialism, Its History and Substance)
- Experimentum Mundi. Frage, Kategorien des Herausbringens, Praxis (1975) (Experimentum Mundi. Question, Categories of Realization, Praxis)
Articles
- “Causality and Finality as Active, Objectifying Categories: Categories of Transmission”. Telos 21 (Fall 1974). New York: Telos Press
See also
References
- ISBN 978-0-691-63084-7.
- ^ Erasmus: Speculum Scientarium, 25, p. 162: "the different versions of Marxist hermeneutics by the examples of Walter Benjamin's Origins of the German Tragedy [sic], ... and also by Ernst Bloch's Hope the Principle [sic]."
- ISBN 0-86091-439-9.
- OCLC 27568512.
- ^ "Professoren der Uni Leipzig 1945 -1993". Archived from the original on 2019-11-21.
- ^ ISBN 0-19-285109-8.
- JSTOR 20718997.
- ISBN 0-8070-2916-5.
- ISBN 0-8232-1363-3.
- ISBN 978-0-8147-5727-7.
Further reading
- Werner Raupp: Ernst Bloch, in: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL), Vol. 14, Herzberg: Bautz 1998 (ISBN 3-88309-073-5), Col. 783–810 (with detailed bibliography).
- Adorno, Theodor W. (1991). "Ernst Bloch's Spuren," Notes to Literature, Volume One, New York, Columbia University Press
- ISBN 9783110256710. Retrieved 2018-08-01.
- Thompson, Peter and Slavoj Žižek (eds.) (2013) "The Privatization of Hope: Ernst Bloch and the Future of Utopia". Durham, NC: Duke University Press
- Boldyrev, Ivan (2014), Ernst Bloch and His Contemporaries: Locating Utopian Messianism. London and New York: Bloomsbury.
- Geoghegan, Vincent (1996). Ernst Bloch, London, Routledge
- Hudson, Wayne (1982). The Marxist philosophy of Ernst Bloch, New York, St. Martin's Press
- Schmidt, Burghard. (1985) Ernst Bloch, Stuttgart, Metzler
- Münster, Arno (1989). Ernst Bloch: messianisme et utopie, PUF, Paris
- Jones, John Miller (1995). Assembling (Post)modernism: The Utopian Philosophy of Ernst Bloch, New York, P Lang. (Studies in European thought, volume 11)
- Korstvedt, Benjamin M. (2010). Listening for utopia in Ernst Bloch’s musical philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
- West, Thomas H. (1991). Ultimate hope without God : the atheistic eschatology of Ernst Bloch, New York, P. Lang (American university studies series 7 Theology religion; volume 97)
External links
- "Ernst Bloch" entry by Ivan Boldyrev in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Illuminations: Ernst Bloch, Utopia and Ideology Critique By Douglas Kellner
- Centre for Ernst Bloch Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London
- Ernst-Bloch-Zentrum
- Ernst Bloch Assoziation