Philosophy Today

Volume 14, Issue 4, Winter 1970

A Critique of Ernst Bloch's Philosophy of Hope

We are happy to be able to present here a Marxist critique of Bloch's philosophy of hope. Manfred Buhr is the director of the Zentralinstituts fuer Philosophie of the German Academy in Berlin. This essay was originally published in the Deutsche Zeitschrift fuer Philosophie, which Bloch himself edited at one time. It appeared almost simultaneously with Prinzip Hoffnung. The original title of the article is "Der religiose Ursprung und Charakter der Hoffnungsphilosophie Ernst Bloch." Although published some time ago, we feel that it has more than historical interest for the collection of articles we are presenting in this issue of Philosophy Today as an "introduction" to Ernst Bloch's thought. We wish to thank the present editor of the Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Philosophie and the VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften of Berlin for their kind permission to publish this translation. Because of space limitations we have had to edit out some of the original article. At most this amounts to a few pages. We have indicated where the cutting has taken place (***** or .....) and have tried carefully to respect the substance and continuity of Professor Buhr's essay. (Editor)