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Incipit vita nova

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The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch

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Abstract

Ernst Bloch: political philosopher of the irrational, hermetic Marxist, utopian, encyclopaedist, process philosopher of our immanence in an unfinished world; a densely timed man who cannot be sifted quickly. This study attempts to introduce Bloch at a time when his thought is little known in the English speaking world and when there is no satisfactory account of his Marxism as a whole in any language. Hitherto, Bloch has often suffered at the hands of his interpreters. In Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union he has been labelled ‘an idealist’, ‘a religious mystic’, ‘a pantheist’, while in the West a large and rapidly growing literature has only recently shown signs of emergence from misrepresentation and caricature.1 Even thoughtful readers have concluded that Bloch is (1) a notoriously unsystematic poetic thinker, best understood through his literary works; (2) a Marxist philosopher of man, who restores an anthropological, voluntaristic perspective to Marxism; (3) a Marxist philosopher of hope, of utopia, of the future; (4) a Marxist mystic; (5) a Marxist Messianist, Thomas Münzer redivivus: an atheist theologian who unites the moral fervour of an Old Testament prophet with the utopian eschatology of chiliasm; (6) a Marxist Schelling, an anachronistic neo-Romantic who combines a form of identity metaphysics with a materialist world soul.2 These characterisations are not entirely mistaken, but they fail to do justice to Bloch’s achievement or to the significance of his work in the context of Marxism.

I am. But I do not possess myself. That is why we are only beginning to become.

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Notes

  1. See J. H. Horn (ed.), Ernst Blochs Revision des Marxismus (East Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1957) especially pp. 25–33, 52;

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  2. for a Soviet view, see M. Iovchuk, Philosophical Traditions Today (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973) pp. 235, 269, 293

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  3. and for more recent works on Bloch see D. Horster, Bloch zur Einführung (Hannover: SOAK-Verlag, 1977);

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  4. H. H. Holz, Logos spermatikos Ernst Blochs Philosophie der unfertigen Welt (Darmstadt und Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1975);

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  5. H. L. Reinicke, Materie und Revolution. Eine materialistisch-erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchung zur Philosophie von Ernst Bloch (Kronberg: Scriptor-Verlag, 1974);

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  6. P. Widmer, Die Anthropologie Ernst Blochs (Frankfurt a. M.: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1974).

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  7. See, for example, Jürgen Moltmann’s perceptive introduction to Man On His Own, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970) pp. 19–29, an English translation of an anthology of selections from Bloch;

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  8. Jürgen Moltmann, Religion im Erbe. Eine Auswahl aus seinen religionsphilosophischen Schriften (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1959);

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  9. I. Frenzel, ‘Philosophie zwischen Traum und Apokalypse’, in Über Ernst Bloch, 3rd ed. (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1971) pp. 17–41, especially pp. 36–7;

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  10. J. Rühle, ‘The Philosopher of Hope: Ernst Bloch’ in L. Labedz (ed.), Revisionism. Essays on the History of Marxist Ideas (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962) pp. 166–78, especially p. 172;

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  11. M. Solomon, ‘Marx and Bloch: Reflections on Utopia and Art’, Telos, no. 13, Fall (1972) pp. 68–85;

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  12. W. A. Johnson, The Search for Transcendence (New York: Harper and Row,1974) ch. 4: ‘Transcendence as “Future” — Ernst Bloch’, especially p. 106 ff; J. Moltmann, ‘Messianismus und Marxismus’, in Über Ernst Bloch, op. cit., pp. 42–60;

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  13. H. Kimmerle, Die Zukunftsbedeutung der Hoffnung (Bonn: Bouvier, 1966);

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  14. A. Jäger, Reich ohne Gott. Zur Eschatologie Ernst Blochs (Zurich: EVZ-Verlag, 1969);

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  15. E. Roeder von Diersburg, Zur Ontologie und Logik offener Systeme (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1967);

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  16. R. Damus, Ernst Bloch: Hoffnung als Prinzip-Prinzip ohne Hoffnung (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1971);

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  17. Karl Kränzle, Utopie und Ideologie. Gesellschaftskritik und politisches Engagement im Werk Ernst Blochs (Bern: Verlag H. Lang und CIE, 1970);

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  18. F. Jameson, Marxism and Form Dialectical Theories of Literature (Princeton University Press, 1971) p. 117;

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  19. H. G. Bütow, Philosophie und Gesellschaft im Denken Ernst Blochs (Berlin: Ost-Europa Institut, 1963);

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  20. C. H. Ratschow, A theismus im Christentum? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Ernst Bloch, 2nd ed. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1971);

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  21. J. Habermas, ‘Ein marxistischer Schelling’, in Über Ernst Bloch, op. cit., pp. 61–8, originally published in Merkur, no. 11 (1960).

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  22. For Bloch’s style, see T. W. Adorno, ‘Grosse Blochmusik’, in Neue deutsche Hefte, no. 69, April (1960) pp. 14 ff;

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  23. G. Steiner, ‘The Pythagorean Genre’, in S. Unseld (ed.), Ernst Bloch zu ehren (sic) (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1965) pp. 327–43

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  24. and H. H. Holz, ‘Das Wesen metaphorischen Sprechens’, in Festschrift, Ernst Bloch zum 70. Geburtstag (East Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1955) pp. 101–20.

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  25. Ehrhard Bahr, Ernst Bloch (Berlin: Colloquium, 1974) p. 17, in the Köpfe des XX. Jahrhunderts series. This volume contains useful, though highly selective, biographical material, much of it supplied by Karola Bloch. For Bloch’s life generally

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  26. see Silvia Markun, Ernst Bloch (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1977)

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  27. and A. Münster (ed.), Tagträume vom aufrechten Gang. Sechs Interviews mit Ernst Bloch (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1977) pp. 20–118.

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  28. Spuren (Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1930) p. 91; cf. Ernst Bloch, Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1959–77) in sixteen volumes (hereafter GA) vol. I, p. 67.

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  29. R. Traub and H. Wieser (ed.), Gespräche mit Ernst Bloch (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1975) p. 300.

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  30. See ‘Weisen des “Vielleicht” bei Simmel’, (1958), in Philosophische Aufsätze, GA vol 10. pp. 57–60, and G. Simmel, Fragmente und Aufsätze, Gertrud Kantorowicz (ed.), (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1923), and Brücke und Tür (Stuttgart: Koehler, 1957) pp. 1–16, 2958, 141–52.

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  31. G. Scholem, Walter Benjamin — die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1975) pp. 102–3, 109, 113, 139.

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  32. For a useful preliminary discussion of the Benjamin-Bloch relationship, see Philippe Ivernel, ‘Soupçons–D’Ernst Bloch à Walter Benjamin’, in Utopie–Marxisme selon Ernst Bloch, G. Raulet (ed.), (Paris: Payot, 1967) pp. 265–77.

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  33. For Benjamin’s and Bloch’s hashish experiments, see W. Benjamin, Über Haschisch: Novellistisches, Berichte, Materialen, ed. T. Rexroth (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1972) pp. 69 ff.

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  34. W. Benjamin, Briefe, ed. G. Scholem and T. W. Adorno (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1966) vol. II, p. 603, cf. p. 424.

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  35. See, for example, the conversation between Bloch and Adorno ‘Etwas fehlt… Über die Widersprüche der utopischen Sehnsucht’ (1964), in R. Traub and H. Wieser (ed.), op. cit., pp. 58–77.

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  36. See Hans Günther’s review in Internationale Literatur, no. 3 Moscow (1936), and Bloch’s reply ‘Bemerkungen zur “Erbschaft dieser Zeit”’, Philosophische Aufsätze, GA, vol. 10, pp. 31–53.

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  37. For the National Bolsheviks, see K. von Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism (Princeton University Press, 1968), ch. 4

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  38. and more generally A. Mähler, Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918–32 (sic) (Stuttgart: Friedrich Vorwerk Verlag, 1950)

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  39. F. R. Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair. A Study in the Rise of German Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961)

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  40. and G. L. Mosse, Germans and Jews (New York: Howard Fertig, 1970) chs 4 and 7.

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  41. See, for example, W. Schubardt, ‘Kritische Bemerkungen zu dem Buch “Subjekt-Objekt” von Ernst Bloch’, Einheit, 7, (1952) 6, p. 600ff;

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  42. G. Mende, ‘Klassisches Erbe der Philosophie’, Aufbau, no. 10 (1954) p. 277 ff;

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  43. R. O. Gropp, ‘Die marxistische dialektische Methode und ihr Gegensatz zur idealistischen Dialektik Hegels’, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 2 (1954) 1, pp. 69–112.

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  1. Wayne Hudson
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© 1982 Wayne Hudson

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Hudson, W. (1982). Incipit vita nova. In: The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04290-6_1

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