European University Institute Library

Ernst Bloch and his contemporaries, locating utopian messianism, Ivan Boldyrev

eng

Includes bibliographical references

no index present

non fiction

Ernst Bloch and his contemporaries

bibliography

881382787

Ivan Boldyrev

Bloomsbury studies in continental philosophy

locating utopian messianism

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

Introduction 1. Ernst Bloch's Philosophical Prose 2. Heidelberg's Apostles: Bloch Reading Lukács Reading Bloch 3. Eschatology and Messianism: Bloch with Buber, Landauer, and Rosenzweig 4. The Form of the Messianic: Bloch and Benjamin 5. The Void of Utopia and the Violence of the System: Bloch contra Adorno Conclusion: Drawing the Utopian Line Bibliography Index