The Principle of Hope, Vol. 1

The Principle of Hope #1

by Ernst Bloch, Neville Plaice (Translator), Stephen Plaice (Translator)

The Principle of Hope is one of the great works of the human spirit. It is a critical history of the utopian vision and a profound exploration of the possible reality of utopia. Even as the world has rejected the doctrine on which Bloch sought to base his utopia, his work still challenges us to think more insightfully about our own visions of a better world.

The Principle of Hope is published in three volumes:

Volume 1 lays the foundations of the philosophy of process and introduces the idea of the Not-Yet-Conscious - the anticipatory element that Bloch sees as central to human thought. It also contains a remarkable account of the aesthetic interpretations of utopian "wishful images" in fairy tales, popular fiction, travel, theater, dance, and the cinema.

Volume 2 presents "the outlines of a better world." It examines the utopian systems that progressive thinkers have developed in the fields of medicine, painting, opera, poetry, and ultimately, philosophy. It is nothing less than an encyclopedic account of utopian thought from the Greeks to the present.

Volume 3 offers a prescription for ways in which humans can reach their proper "homeland," where social justice is coupled with an openness to change and to the future.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Theory, Utopia, Religion, History

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Ernst Bloch was one of the great philosophers and political intellectuals of twentieth-century Germany. Among his works to have appeared in English are The Spirit of Utopia (Stanford University Press, 2000), Literary Essays (Stanford University Press, 1998), The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays (1987), and The Principle of Hope (1986).

Reviews

[Anna Carina]

Das schmerzt jetzt sehr.
Ich lese das Buch seit neun Monaten, immer wieder in kleinen Etappen. Und ich kann keinen einzigen Fitzel davon wiedergeben. Nichts.
Ich sitze heute Morgen vor einem Absatz über Urteile, der Logik und Mathematik einbindet, zum Neukantianismus springt – und da reißt etwas endgültig auseinander.
Ich muss das Buch abbrechen, da es mich maßlos überfordert. Und das ist bitter, da Bloch in seiner Art zu erklären ein Wohnzimmer für mich ist. Alles bei ihm ist in Bewegung und offen.
Nur wirft er in diesem Werk alles Denkbare aus Kulturgeschichte, Psychoanalyse, Ontologie, Materialismus, Philosophie, Logik, Mathematik, Theologie, Utopie, Kunst … zusammen und serviert ein hochkomplexes Gebräu, dem ich nicht gewachsen bin.

Das Positive: Wenn ich irgendwann soweit bin, mehr davon zu verstehen, muss ich es nicht linear lesen. Das Prinzip Hoffnung scheint ein Lebenswerk zu sein, das einzelne Landschaften eines Denkraums bietet, die frei innerhalb ihrer Unterkapitel als geschlossene Gedankengänge funktionieren.

Bloch, für mich bist du auch ein Noch-Nicht – ein Zuhause, von dem mich ein langer Weg der Wanderschaft trennt.

[Peiman E iran · Rating 1 out of 5]

‎دوستانِ گرانقدر، این کتاب تقریباً خسته کننده بود، نویسنده <ارنست بلوخ> در کتابِ <اصل امید> در ابتدا اصرار دارد که پیامبران و مسیح را امید بخش و امید دهنده جلوه دهد و به نوعی، اصلی به نامِ اصلِ پیامبرانهٔ امید را تعریف میکند و در مرحلهٔ بعد میخواهد ثابت کند که اصلِ پیامبرانهٔ امید را در عقایدِ مارکسیستی بازیافته است
‎امروزه در جناح رادیکالِ کلیسایِ کاتولیکِ رومی، و همچنین فرقه هایِ مسیحی غیر کاتولیک، نشانه هایِ بازگشت به اصلِ پیامبرانه و چاره جوئیهایِ پیامبرانه به چشم میخورد و اعتقاد بر این است که مفاهیمِ معنوی باید با فراگردهایِ سیاسی و اجتماعی پیوستگی پیدا کند.... در سالهایِ گذشته عنصرِ مسیحایی در مارکسیسم، زمینهٔ خود را میانِ بسیاری از سوسیالیست های اومانیست، بخصوص در یوگوسلاوی سابق، لهستان، چک و مجارستان، بازیافته است
‎برخی از جامعه شناس ها معتقدند که خارج از کلیسا، سوسیالیسمِ مارکسیستی واقعی، بارزترین تبیینِ بینشِ مسیحایی به زبانِ این جهان و به زبانِ دنیوی بود که آنهم البته به وسیلهٔ کمونیست ها با تحریفی که از مارکس به عمل آوردند، فاسد و نابود گردید
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‎امیدوارم این توضیحات مفید و کافی بوده باشه
‎<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

"[...]even to the nothingness of despair, is of such determined power that it can be said: hope drowns anxiety" (112)

A bit too literary for my taste, but boy do we need more stuff like this. Bloch's ability to remain hopeful during WWII should really make us reflect on our own current situation a lot more humbly.

[Jay Sandover · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wide-ranging and deep understanding of the Utopian impulse in culture and civilization. This book is excellent. If you're a theory reader who also reads science fiction or speculative fiction, you'd probably enjoy this book a lot.

[Zoe Tuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to write a thank you note to José Muñoz who introduced me to Ernst Bloch's work in Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. This author is exactly what I've been looking for - a philosopher of the Not-Yet-Conscious, an esoteric Marxist theologian and more. I started with his defense of Expressionism in Aesthetics and Politics, then proceeded to this volume. In the span of a month, I've also acquired Traces, Man On His Own and Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom. The latter is especially enticing because in my Bay Area poetry scene, Giorgio Agamben rules everything around me, which is fine, I guess, but he never really lit my fire. Now I have my own go to person for atheist eschatology.

Plus, Bloch really set 'em up and knocks 'em down. Freud's bourgeois system of psychology, Heidegger's assertion of anxiety as the basic state-of-mind. Although Bloch focuses heavily on dreams, especially day dreams and seems to be delving into literary analysis (and from flipping ahead - film, too), this theoretical work far exceeds the ambitions and scope of my softy, Romantic boyfriend, Gaston Bachelard. I've known in my gut for years that reverie was not just aesthetically but also politically important.

If you cut your teeth on Hakim Bey's TAZ and Bachelard's Poetics of Space and have since pulled your hair out trying to read Being and Time, Bloch may be for you.

Nota bene:

[Charles Grimm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not giving it five stars for its ease of access, because the style can be cumbersome at times, but the overall mode of thinking and the worldview presented is staggering. A clearly Marxist worldview that defies the stereotypes imposed on Marxism by Western Capitalists by looking not at a dull existence where everything is a homogeneous grey, but at a world full of possibility where the intersection of Past and Future is the obscured Now.
While I have read this as an attempt to craft a particulare view of ethnic American literature, Bloch shows the multiple facets of life that can be interpreted through this Principle of Hope by discussing psychoanalysis, history, fairy tales, art, theater, magazine stories, and many other cultural artifacts. Each is viewed through a lens of future potential, and future potential is narrowed to those which lead to an inclusive socialism that allows human worth and dignity rather than the alienating process of human commoditization embraced by the Western Capitalist world. This book is one to which I hope to turn many times in the future to try to understand the depth of Bloch's thinking.

[Jordan Sheldon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written prose and sharp philosophical insight, Bloch manages to lay the foundations for a Dialectic amenable to networks in process while simultaneously defending the possibility of the realization of Utopia mediated through a strong emphasis on a materialist analysis that takes uncertainty and chance seriously.
Amor Fortuni.

[Özgün Barış · Rating 5 out of 5]

Benim için hayli uzun, zor ve yorucu bir macera oldu. Çeviriden mi değil mi bilemem, kullandığı-ürettiği kavramlar ve fikrini aktarmak için tenkit ettiği konular ve tezler yabancısı olduğum şeylerdi. Fakat ikinci cildi de okuyacağım çünkü zor olmasına rağmen anlayabildiğim kadarıyla bile muazzam ve etkileyiciydi. Özellikle dini metinleri ütopik metinler olarak kabul edip o bakış ile yorumlaması, bence onları gerçeğe en yakın yerine koymak demek oldu. Gerçekten zihin açıcıydı.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wacky! Very likable, slightly mad - full of capitalized oddities like Front and Novum, and re-writings of Freud, and Marx as the Good News. And the details of his razor for separating "concrete utopias" from "abstract utopias" are often somewhat unclear (I'm undecided whether Adorno is stronger in this respect; he's definitely fiercer, but Bloch goes into more details and a really exhaustive array of examples, and his writing is - mostly - a little more accessible). I'm glad I made the detour.

[Ed Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult but foundational.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this to be a very difficult book, so difficult I'm not sure how meaningful it is for me to give it a rating. There were occasional sections where I entered the flow of Bloch's writing, and every now and then a very illuminating passage or phrase, coupled with swathes beyond my understanding. I think this is partly due to the huge variety of subjects Bloch covers - psychology, travel, literature, drama, politics - and his dense, sometime impenetrable style. I read this book because of Bloch's influence on other writers, and I don't regret reading it (in fact finishing it feels like an achievement) but it's certainly not a book I can fully appreciate on one reading alone. It's also not a book I would read in full again, but could see myself returning to specific sections. This is a book that would benefit hugely from a readable summary.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 4.5. Will read again.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The psychology of expecting things (and how capitalism and fascism are pathetic parodies) being discussed in the midst of a synthesis of Christianity and Communism that gets distracted at various points with German literature and the occult.

[Phoebe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I particularly enjoyed his musings on fairytales, technological utopia, and traveling. :) I'll definitely come back to this when I have time.

[Rebekah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful theories on Utopia - two more volumes to go