Ernst Bloch and His Contemporaries: Locating Utopian Messianism (Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy)

Ernst Bloch and His Contemporaries is a much needed concise yet comprehensive overview of Ernst Bloch's early and later thought. It fills an important gap in research on the history of German thought in the 20th century by reconstructing the contexts of Bloch's philosophy, while focusing on his contemporaries - Georg Lukács, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno. Ernst Bloch's influential ideas include his theory of utopian consciousness, his resolute inclination to merge aesthetics and politics, rehabilitation of hope, and atheistic conception of Christianity. Although Bloch's major early texts, Spirit of Utopia and Traces, have recently been translated into English, and there has been renewed interest in Bloch over the last 15 years, he is still relatively unknown compared to other left German-Jewish intellectuals. Ivan Boldyrev places Bloch's often enigmatic prose within contexts more familiar to English-speaking readers, and outlines the most important messages in Bloch's legacy still relevant today to European intellectual discourse, in particular aesthetics and philosophy of history.-- Provided by Publisher Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Ernst Bloch’s Philosophical Prose A brief intellectual biography Utopia as concept and form of life Metaphysics of the instant Philosophy of subjectivity and the shape of the inconstruable question Not, Not-yet/being/conscious Re-energizing Marx: Bloch’s social philosophy A brief excursus: Bloch and Heidegger On the (im)possibilities of utopian philosophy Notes 2 Heidelberg’s Apostles: Bloch Reading Lukács Reading Bloch Episode One: Metaphysics of Tragedy Episode Two: Th eory of the Novel Episode Th ree: Grappling with Totality Episode Four: The Instant (Faust and The Phenomenology of Spirit) Notes 3 Eschatology and Messianism: Bloch with Buber, Landauer and Rosenzweig Being gnostic: Bloch’s shibboleth Eschatology and apocalyptics Judaic filiations Christian heretics Hesitant conclusions: Tensions within messianic thought Notes 4 The Form of the Messianic: Bloch and Benjamin Traces of biographies Messianic subtexts of history A digression: Bloch and Kant Excursus: Redemption Temporalities Inconspicuous blemishes of metaphysics Bloch and Benjamin as secular mystics Recapitulation: Tensions of messianism and the ways through them Finale: Penultimately Notes 5 The Void of Utopia and the Violence of the System: Bloch contra Adorno Notes Conclusion: Drawing the Utopian Line Bibliography Index "Ernst Bloch and His Contemporaries is a much needed concise yet comprehensive overview of Ernst Bloch's early and later thought. It fills an important gap in research on the history of German thought in the 20th century by reconstructing the contexts of Bloch's philosophy, while focusing on his contemporaries - Georg Luk cs, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno. Ernst Bloch's influential ideas include his theory of utopian consciousness, his resolute inclination to merge aesthetics and politics, rehabilitation of hope, and atheistic conception of Christianity. Although Bloch's major early texts, Spirit of Utopia and Traces, have recently been translated into English, and there has been renewed interest in Bloch over the last 15 years, he is still relatively unknown compared to other left German-Jewish intellectuals. Ivan Boldyrev places Bloch's often enigmatic prose within contexts more familiar to English-speaking readers, and outlines the most important messages in Bloch's legacy still relevant today to European intellectual discourse, in particular aesthetics and philosophy of history."--Bloomsbury Publishing. This book is a much needed concise yet comprehensive overview of Ernst Bloch's early and later thought. It fills an important gap in research on the history of German thought in the 20th century by reconstructing the contexts of Bloch's philosophy, while focusing on his contemporaries - Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno. Ernst Bloch's influential ideas include his theory of utopian consciousness, his resolute inclination to merge aesthetics and politics, rehabilitation of hope, and atheistic conception of Christianity. Although Bloch's major early texts, Spirit of Utopia and Traces, have recently been translated into English, and there has been renewed interest in Bloch over the last 15 years, he is still relatively unknown compared to other left German-Jewish intellectuals. Ivan Boldyrev places Bloch's often enigmatic prose within contexts more familiar to English-speaking readers, and outlines the most important messages in Bloch's legacy still relevant today to European intellectual discourse, in particular aesthetics and philosophy of history