Heritage of Our Times

Ernst Bloch

CONTENTS

Translators’ introduction  ix
Preface to the 1935 edition (1934) <—> [1] 1
Postscript, 1962 (March 1962) 6
   

DUST

 9
Half  11
Mustiness 12
Gossip 13
Knowing eyes 14
From near and far 16
Kitsch that writes 17
Unchecked 18
   

PART I
EMPLOYEES AND DIVERSION

 19
The jaded man  21
The collars  22
Small town (1924) 23
Artificial centre (1929): on Kracauer’s The Employees 24
The dazzling film star 27
Below the borderline 29
A victory of the magazine (1929) 31
Appearance that describes 34
Substitute and new 36
   

PART II
NON-CONTEMPORANEITY AND INTOXICATION

 37
The dark ones  39
Leap back   40
Rage and merriment (1929) 41
Saxons without forests  (1929) 44
Rough night in town and country (1929) 48
Amusement Co., horror, Third Reich (September 1930) <—> 56
Inventory of revolutionary appearance (1933) <—> 64
New slave morality of the newspaper (1934) <—> 70
Jugglers’ fair beneath the gallows  (1937) <—> 75
From the history of the great waste  (1934) 81
Racial theory in the Vormärz  (1934) 85
Myth of Germany and the medical powers  (1933) 88
   

SUMMARY TRANSITION:
NON-CONTEMPORANEITY AND
OBLIGATION TO ITS DIALECTIC
(May 1932)

 97
A. Early condition 97
B. Non-contemporaneities, reported 97
C. Non-contemporaneity and contemporaneity, philosophically 98
Genuinely non-contemporaneous arrears — Logical character of non-contemporaneous contradictions — Problem of a multi-layered dialectic
104
D. On the original history of the Third Reich (International Literature, Moscow, 1937) 117
The future liberator —  The gospel of this world — Chiliasm or the earth as paradise — Result for a part of concrete-utopian practice
 
E. Not Hades, but heaven on earth 138
Enlightenment and dialectical wisdom together — Examples of transformation
 
Reminder: Hitler’s force (April 1924, Das Tag-Buch, no. 15) 145
   

FINAL FORM: ROMANTIC HOOK-FORMATION

 149
The colourful escape 151
On fairytale, colportage and legend  153
Tom Thumb — Winnetou’s Silver Rifle — Dream appearance, fair and colportage — The giants’ toy as legend
 
Occult fantasticality and paganism 169

Learnt creepiness — Science drolatique — Mystery-mongering as a large-scale enterprise — Hidden quality
 
Songs of remoteness 179
Sham with poison 184
   

PART III
UPPER MIDDLE CLASSES,
OBJECTIVITY AND MONTAGE

 187
The jolt 189
New corner window 190
Ludwigshafen — Mannheim (1928) 191
Transition: Berlin, functions in hollow space 195

The momentum — Objectivity, direct — Objectivity, indirect — Montage, direct — Montage once again: of a higher order — Montage, indirect
 
The void  209
The ship-house 210
On the Threepenny Opera 211
Time-echo Stravinsky 214
Novels of strangeness and theatre of montage 221
A Leninist of the stage (1938) 229
Expressionism, seen now (1937) 234
Discussions of Expressionism  (1938) 241
The problem of Expressionism once again (1940) 251
   

RELATIVISMS AND EMPTY MONTAGE

 254
The eye  257
The fictitious ones  258
The empiricists 259
Lax, social and physical relativism  262
Social reflections — Physical relativism
 
Foundation of phenomenology 271
‘Ontologies’ of profusion and transitoriness 277
Existential illumination and symbolic vision ‘crosswise to existence’ 284
Tribute of virtue to vice 288
Appendix: Spengler’s predators and relative cultural gardens 290
   

PHILOSOPHIES OF UNREST, PROCESS, DIONYSUS

 299
The clever intoxication 299
The speckled primeval flood 300
Romanticism of diluvium 304
Imago as appearance from the ‘depths’ 312
Bergson’s élan vital  <—> 319
The impulse of Nietzsche   325
   

THINKING SURREALISMS

 332
A hand in the game  333
Revue form in philosophy  (1928) 334
Rescuing Wagner through surrealistic colportage (1929) 338
Hieroglyphs of the nineteenth century 346
Many chambers in the world-house  (1928) 352
Topical crosswiseness: fear of ‘chaos’  (1932) 360
Flag red and gold  (1932) 366
Faith without lies  369
   
Index  373

[1] Ernst Bloch on reason, unreason, the ‘non-contemporaneous’ & Nazism


SOURCE: Bloch, Ernst. Heritage of Our Times, translated by Neville and Stephen Plaice. Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991. Contents, pp. v-viii.

Note: I have boldfaced and marked essays with “<—>” as especially significant. When followed by a number in brackets, the footnote indicated links to a quotation on a separate web page. — RD

Adorno to Bloch on the Blockage of Utopia

Ernst Bloch on Expressionism, Lukács, totality

Siegfried Kracauer On History and Non-Simultaneity

On Guterman & Lefebvre’s La conscience mystifiée (1936)
by Riki Scanlan

Louis Althusser on Hegel’s Expressive Totality

Positivism vs Life Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie) Study Guide

Theodor W. Adorno & Critical Theory Study Guide

Ideology Study Guide

Marx and Marxism Web Guide

Offsite:

“Nonsynchronism and the Obligation to Its Dialectics” by Ernst Bloch

Non-simultaneity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reclaiming Utopia: The Legacy of Ernst Bloch by Tim Dayton

Tendencies of Utopia: Reflections on Recent Work in the Modern Utopian Tradition
by Christopher Kendrick

Ernst Bloch Assoziation [in German]

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