Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> In it I reconstruct the contexts of Bloch’s philosophy and show how various implicit and explicit debates with Georg Luk?cs Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno made a profound impact on Bloch’s utopian messianism. In particular these controversies shed light on the contradictions and paradoxes of a utopian philosophy of history. What is the time (and timing) of utopia? Should we intentionally keep its coming vague and push away the utopian horizon? Or is utopia as Bloch seems to suggest a part of our imperceptible experience here and now? These questions were important both for Benjamin’s vision of history and for Adorno’s critical theory. Bloch was certainly among their most important interlocutors and these polemic exchanges were landmarks that determined the direction of the utopian thought. His literary experiences and his engagement in aesthetic debates were also fundamental for this intellectual edifice. Bloch’s relevance in many respects is due to his unprecedented philosophical style that self-consciously asserts itself as a way of reshaping social reality while resolving certain problems of messianic doctrine and redeeming his precarious ‘open system’ philosophy. Aesthetic dimension therefore provides both substance and justification for the utopian. (LL)