Ernst Bloch, Aesthetics and Utopia

Guest Professor: Miguel Vedda - Universidad de Buenos Aires

Dates: Tuesday, May 18 and Thursday, May 20, 2021

Time: 6:00 p.m.

Place: Location: ZOOM Tuesday 18 / ZOOM Thursday 20

Free admission

Live streaming through https://web.facebook.com/HumanidadesPUCP

Sumilla

The purpose of the course is to reflect on some of the central aspects of the thought (philosophical, political, aesthetic) of Ernst Bloch (1885-1977), showing its historical transformations and displacements and its link with the Marxisms of the twentieth century. The discussion of the works will be placed in relation to the evolution of Bloch's thought and will examine its possible relevance for the contemporary world.

Thematic Units

1. Ernst Bloch's early literary and aesthetic theories: Basic concepts of Blochian thought and literary criticism: the already-not-conscious (das Nicht-Mehr-Bewußte) and the not-yet-not-conscious (Das Noch-Nicht-Bewußte); the ontology of the not-yet-existent (Ontologie des Noch-Nicht-Seins). The "impossible-to-construct question". The categories and the experimentum mundi. The early theory of drama: the excursus "Inhibition and tragedy on the way to real self-invention" in Spirit of Utopia. Expressionism and tragedy. The polemic with the Lukácsian "Metaphysics of tragedy": opposition between the tragic hero and the comic hero. The theory of revolution in Thomas Münzer, theologian of the revolution.
2. Bloch's mature thought: Revision of early utopianism. Aesthetic and political reflections in Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Inheritance of this age). Reflections on realism and on the relationship between literature and social reality. Theory of asynchrony (Ungleichzeitigkeit). Memory (Gedächtnis) and remembrance (Erinnerung). The phenomenology of the big city: affinities and divergences with the essayistic work of Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benajmin. The theory of fascism. Aesthetic-philosophical fragments: Spuren (Traces). Concept of personality.
3. The theory of exile and the late period: The encyclopedia of a possible salvation: The principle of hope. The deduction of the concept of hope. Desiderative images. Fundamental categories of Blochian ontology. Utopias and Marxism as a concrete utopia. Aesthetics of pre-appearance (Vor-Schein). Discussion with Freudian psychoanalysis. The "forward thinking" and the "upright gait". The philosophy of religion: Atheism in Christianity. Socialism and justice: Natural law and human dignity.

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