This article is about the German philosopher. For the American composer, seeErnest Bloch. For the American spy in Germany, seeErnie Blake.
You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in German. (December 2021)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
Machine translation, likeDeepL orGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
Youmust providecopyright attribution in theedit summary accompanying your translation by providing aninterlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary isContent in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Ernst Bloch]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template{{Translated|de|Ernst Bloch}} to thetalk page.
Bloch was born inLudwigshafen, the son of aJewish 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 wasKarola Piotrowska, a Polisharchitect, whom he married in 1934 inVienna. When theNazis came to power, the couple had to flee, first into Switzerland, then to Austria, France, Czechoslovakia, and finally the United States. He lived briefly inNew Hampshire before settling inCambridge, Massachusetts. It was there, in the reading room of Harvard'sWidener Library, that Bloch wrote the lengthy three-volume workThe Principle of Hope. He originally planned to publish it there under the titleDreams of a Better Life.
In 1948, Bloch was offered the chair of philosophy at theUniversity of Leipzig, and he returned toEast Germany to take up the position. In 1955 he was awarded the National Prize of theGDR. In addition, he became a member of theGerman Academy of Sciences at Berlin (AdW). He had more or less become thepolitical philosopher of the GDR. Among his many academic students from this period was his assistantManfred Buhr, who earned his doctorate with him in 1957, and was later a professor inGreifswald, then director of the Central Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences (ADC) in Berlin and who became a critic of Bloch.[citation needed]
However, theHungarian uprising in 1956 led Bloch to revise his view of the SED (Socialist Unity Party) regime, whilst retaining his Marxist orientation. Because he advocatedhumanistic ideas of freedom, he was obliged to retire in 1957 for political reasons – not because of his age, 72 years. A number of scientists and students spoke publicly against this forced retirement, among them the renowned professor and colleagueEmil Fuchs and his students as well as Fuchs's grandsonKlaus Fuchs-Kittowski.[citation needed]
When theBerlin Wall was built in 1961, he did not return to the GDR, but went toTübingen inWest Germany, where he received an honorary chair in Philosophy. He engaged with a Christian-Marxistintellectual dialogue group organized byMilan Machovec and others in 1960s Czechoslovakia.[7] He died in Tübingen.[citation needed]
Bloch was a highly original and eccentric thinker. Much of his writing—in particular, his magnum opusThe Principle of Hope—is written in a poetic,aphoristic style.[6]The Principle of Hope tries to provide an encyclopedic account of mankind's and nature's orientation towards a socially and technologically improved future. This orientation is part of Bloch's overarching philosophy. Bloch believed the universe is undergoing a transition from its primordial cause (Urgrund) toward its final goal (Endziel).[8] He believed this transition is effected through a subject-objectdialectic, and he saw evidence for this process in all aspects ofhuman history and culture.
Bloch's concept of concreteutopias found inThe Principle of Hope was used byJosé Esteban Muñoz to shift the field ofperformance studies. This shift allowed for the emergence of utopian performativity and a new wave of performance theorizing as Bloch's formulation of utopia shifted how scholarsconceptualize theontology and the staging of performances as imbued with an enduring indeterminacy,[12] as opposed to dominant performance theories found in the work ofPeggy Phelan, who view performance as a life event without reproduction.
^His thesis title wasKritische Erörterungen über Rickert und das Problem der modernen Erkenntnistheorie [Critical discussions onRickert and the problem of modern epistemology] (Thesis).OCLC27568512.
^Amacher, Richard E.; Lange, Victor (2015).New Perspectives in German Literary Criticism: A Collection of Essays. Princeton University Press. p. 11.ISBN978-0-691-63084-7.
^Kaufmann, David (1997). "Thanks for the Memory: Bloch, Benjamin and the Philosophy of History". In Daniel, Jamie Owen; Moylan, Tom (eds.).Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch. London and New York: Verson. p. 33.ISBN0-86091-439-9.
^McKnight, Heather (2017). "Ernst Bloch's Theories Concerning Religion".Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Berlin; Heidelberg: Springer.However, Bloch' s greatest influence was on liberation theology where there was a struggle to overcome severe poverty, suffering, and political struggle, in areas such as Latin America, South Africa, South Korea, and the Philippines.doi:10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_200130-1
Münster, Arno [de] (1989).Ernst Bloch: messianisme et utopie, PUF, Paris
Jones, John Miller (1995).Assembling (Post)modernism: The Utopian Philosophy of Ernst Bloch, New York, P Lang. (Studies in European thought, volume 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; volume 97)
