German Philosophy Seminars: Seminar 1
Audio Version (to download right-click and 'Save link as...')
- Speaker(s):
- Johan Siebers (IGRS, London)
- Event date:
- Monday 01 October 2012
Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies
- Description
-
German Philosophy Seminars: Seminar 1 - The Romantic-Revolutionary Gnosis of Geist der Utopie
As global culture is once again pregnant with the urge to formulate alternatives to the neoliberal politics and cultural politics of the last three decades, there is a need to return to the rich tradition of utopian thought in philosophy. In this semester the German Philosophy Seminar will be devoted to a single book that has played a central role in utopian philosophy: Ernst Bloch's Geist der Utopie. Published in 1918 as Bloch's first book on recommendation by Otto Klemperer, it occupies a place as a secret source at the beginning of important currents in 20th century German thought. Nevertheless, its reception has been limited in recent years. Barocque from the outset and written in a modernist-expressionist style which some have called dithyrambic and with which Bloch immediately placed himself outside the accepted forms of academic philosophical writing, he sets out in this book to reformulate and rescue the ideas of transcendence, totality, longing and purpose in a materialist, existentialist and revolutionary context. In doing so, Bloch reconstitutes philosophy from the start -- it is this feature that makes this work an eminently philosophical one and that gives it a unique place in the history of German philosophy; philosophy appears here, in its form as much as in its content, as a meditation on the forms of utopia and our travels towards it. It defines its efficacy, also its existential, critical, cultural and political efficacy, in that context.
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