Ernst Bloch
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- See also Ernest Bloch the composer.
Ernst Simon Bloch (IPA: ɛrnst zɪmɔn blɔx) (July 8, 1885 – August 4, 1977) was a German Marxist philosopher and atheist theologian. He 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. His second wife was Karola Bloch, whom he married 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 got a chair for philosophy in 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.
Bloch was deeply influenced by art (Mahler and expressionism), by his friendship with Lukacs and Brecht, by marxism and nazism (from which he had to flee in 1933). Bloch's work focuses on the concept that in a utopic human world where oppression and exploitation is banned will always be a truly ideological revolutionary force.
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), and by Ernesto Balducci.
[edit] Works
- Geist der Utopie (1918) The Spirit of Utopia, Stanford, 2000.
- Spuren (Berlin 1930)
- Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Zürich 1935)
- Das Prinzip Hoffnung (Frankfurt 1959) The Principle of Hope, MIT Press, 1986.
- Naturrecht und menschliche Würde (Frankfurt 1961) Natural Law and Human Dignity, MIT Press 1986
- Tübinger Einleitung in die Philosophie (1963)
- Atheismus im Christentum (1968) Atheism in Christianity, 1972.
- Experimentum Mundi (1975)
- Subjekt-Objekt, Erläuterungen zu Hegel
- Thomas Münzer als Theologe der Revolution
[edit] Further reading
- Hudson, Wayne, (1982) The Marxist philosophy of Ernst Bloch, New York, St. Martin's Press
- Münster, Arno. Ernst Bloch, (1989) messianisme et utopie, PUF, Paris
- Münster, Arno, (2001) L'utopie concrète d'Ernst Bloch, Kimé, Paris
- Geoghegan, Vincent (1996), Ernst Bloch, Routledge
