Ernst Bloch

For the composer, see Ernest Bloch.

Ernst Bloch
Ernst Bloch (1954)
Born	July 8, 1885 Ludwigshafen, Germany
Died	August 4, 1977(1977-08-04) (aged 92) Tübingen, Germany
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Marxism
Main interests	Humanism, history, nature, subjectivity, ideology, utopia, religion, theology

Ernst Bloch (German pronunciation: [ˈɛʁnst ˈblɔx], July 8, 1885 – August 4, 1977) was a German Marxist philosopher.

Bloch was influenced by Hegel, Marx, and novelist Karl May. Counted also among his influences are apocalyptic and religious thinkers as diverse as gnostics like Valentinus (see "Spirit of Utopia") and Thomas Muntzer (see "Thomas Muntzer als Theologe der Revolution"). He established friendships with Georg Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno. Bloch's work focuses on the concept that in a humanistic world where oppression and exploitation have been eliminated there will always be a truly revolutionary force.

Life

Bloch was born in Ludwigshafen, the son of an assimilated Jewish railway-employee. After studying philosophy, he married Else von Stritzky, daughter of a Baltic brewer in 1913, who died in 1921. His second marriage with Linda Oppenheimer lasted only a few years. His third wife was Karola Piotrowska, a Polish architect, whom he married in 1934 in Vienna. When the Nazis came to power, they had to flee, first into Switzerland, then to Austria, France, Czechoslovakia, and finally the USA. Bloch returned to the GDR in 1949 and obtained a chair in philosophy at Leipzig. 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.

Work

Endlose Treppe by Max Bill, which is dedicated to the Principle of Hope by Bloch.

Bloch's work became very influential in the course of the student protest movements in 1968 and in liberation theology. 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.

Bloch's Principle of Hope was written during his emigration in the USA, where he lived briefly in New Hampshire before settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He wrote the lengthy three volume work in the reading room of Harvard's Widener Library. Bloch originally planned to publish it there under the title Dreams of a Better Life. The Principle of Hope tries to provide an encyclopedic account of mankind's and nature's orientation towards a socially and technologically improved future.

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) (Bequest of This Time)
• 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)
• 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

Further reading

• Adorno, Theodor W. (1991). "Ernst Bloch's Spuren," Notes to Literature, Volume One, New York, Columbia University Press
• 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 (c1995). Assembling (post)modernism : the utopian philosophy of Ernst Bloch, New York, P Lang. (Studies in European thought, v.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 ; vol 97)

See also

• Exilliteratur

External links

• Illuminations: Ernst Bloch, Utopia and Ideology Critique By Douglas Kellner
• Ernst-Bloch-Zentrum
• Ernst Bloch Assoziation
• Centre for Ernst Bloch Studies, University of Sheffield