Ernst Bloch

Ruth Starkman (University of San Francisco)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.1: German-language Writing and Culture: Germany, 500-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Dates

Born 8 Jul 1885
Died 4 Aug 1977
Activity 1905-1977

Places

Born in Germany
Active in France; Switzerland; United States; Czech Republic; Germany

Cultural Identities

Jewish European

Activities

Primary

Literary Critic/ Historian
Philosopher

Other

Lecturer

Resources

Bloch's Works

Save to Bookshelf

[...] but the essence of the world is cheerful spirit and the urge to creative shaping: the Thing In Itself is objective imagination.(Ernst Bloch,

The Principle of Hope

)Utopia [...] is

not yet

in the sense of a possibility;

that

it could be there if we could only do something for it.(Ernst Bloch in conversation with Theodor W. Adorno, “Something’s Missing”.)

Ernst Bloch was a highly original and equally controversial social thinker who during his lifetime ranked among the prominent philosophers of Europe. A pre-Frankfurt School, non-dogmatic Marxist theorist, Bloch took inspiration from a wide array of sources: fin-de-siècle Nietzschean “New Dawn”, the visionary communitarian socialism of Gustav Landauer, Christian and Jewish mysticism, psychoanalysis and neo-Kantian sociology.

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2656 words

Citation: Starkman, Ruth. "Ernst Bloch". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 April 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=448, accessed 23 November 2024.]