Ernst Bloch Quotes

Ernst Bloch was a German Marxist philosopher.

Bloch was influenced by Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious thinkers such as Thomas Müntzer, Paracelsus, and Jacob Boehme. He established friendships with György Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno. Bloch's work focuses on the thesis that in a humanistic world where oppression and exploitation have been eliminated there will always be a truly revolutionary force. Wikipedia  

✵ 8. July 1885 – 4. August 1977
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Ernst Bloch: 16   quotes 3   likes

Famous Ernst Bloch Quotes

“We must die without much delay, and corpses may not require such expansive wrappings, in order to go the way of all flesh. The inner wealth of brotherhood will be the same ephemeral spectre, rotting into tree bark like the spurious treasure of Rübezahl, the German mountain spirit, unless it shows it has the strength to withstand even death, and conquer death; and thus not only to undergo it but to be strongly above it as an essential part of eternal life.”

Denn wir müssen sterben, mit kurzem Verzug, und vielleicht brauchen die Leichen keinen so weiten Faltenwurf, den Weg alles Fleisches zu gehen. Der brüderlich innere Reichtum wird nicht minder kurzer Spuk, verwest zu Baumrinde wie Rübezahls falsche Schätze: zeigt sich in ihm keine Kraft, gar den Tod zu bestehen, zu besiegen, mithin nicht nur von unten an hindurch zu gehen, sondern auch an sich selbst ein kräftig oberer Teil zu sein und das Wesenselement des ewigen Lebens.
Source: Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (1959), p. 41

“The soul must accept guilt in order to destroy existing evil, lest it incur the greater guilt of idyllic withdrawal, of seeming to be good by putting up with wrong.”

Aber es steht doch in der Regel so, daß die Seele schuldig werden muß, um das schlecht Bestehende zu vernichten, um nicht durch idyllischen Rückzug, scheingute Duldung des Unrechts noch schuldiger zu werden.
Source: Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (1959), p. 36

Ernst Bloch Quotes

“Indiscriminate ideological suspicion of any idea, without the urge to exalt an idea of one's own, will discourage rather than promote lucidity.”

Desgleichen kann es ... keinem Zweifel unterliegen, daß die unterschiedslos ideologische Verdächtigung jeder Idee, ohne Bedürfnis, selbst eine zu exaltieren, das Lichtere nicht ermutigt.
Source: Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (1959), p. 38

“Only an atheist can be a good Christian.”

Atheismus im Christentum 1968, english translation: Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom 1972

“Marxist fixation on an atheistic status quo … offers the human soul nothing but a more or less eudaimonistically furnished "heaven on earth" without the music we ought to hear from this effortlessly functioning economic and social mechanism.”

... wenn der Marxismus atheistisch fix mit Status quo bleibt, um der Menschenseele nichts als einen mehr oder minder eudämonistisch eingerichteten »Himmel« auf Erden zu setzen - ohne die Musik, die aus diesem mühelos funktionierenden Mechanismus der Ökonomie und des Soziallebens zu ertönen hätte.
Source: Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (1959), p. 38

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