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I am. We are. That is enough. Now we have to start. These are the opening words of Ernst Bloch's first major work, The Spirit of Utopia, written mostly in 1915-16, published in its first version just after the First World War, republished five years later, 1923, in the version here presented for the first time in English translation. The Spirit of Utopia is one of the great historic books from the beginning of the century, but it is not an obsolete one. In its style of thinking, a peculiar amalgam of biblical, Marxist, and Expressionist turns, in its analytical skills deeply informed by Simmel, taking its information from both Hegel and Schopenhauer for the groundwork of its metaphysics of music but consistently interpreting the cultural legacy in the light of a certain Marxism, Bloch's Spirit of Utopia is a unique attempt to rethink the history of Western civilizations as a process of revolutionary disruptions and to reread the artworks, religions, and philosophies of this tradition as incentives to continue disrupting. The alliance between messianism and Marxism, which was proclaimed in this book for the first time with epic breadth, has met with more critique than acclaim. The expressive and baroque diction of the book was considered as offensive as its stubborn disregard for the limits of "disciplines." Yet there is hardly a "discipline" that didn't adopt, however unknowingly, some of Bloch's insights, and his provocative associations often proved more productive than the statistical account of social shifts. The first part of this philosophical meditation--which is also a narrative, an analysis, a rhapsody, and a manifesto--concerns a mode of "self-encounter" that presents itself in the history of music from Mozart through Mahler as an encounter with the problem of a community to come. This "we-problem" is worked out by Bloch in terms of a philosophy of the history of music. The "self-encounter," however, has to be conceived as "self-invention," as the active, affirmative fight for freedom and social justice, under the sign of Marx. The second part of the book is entitled "Karl Marx, Death and the Apocalypse." I am. We are. That's hardly anything. But enough to start.… (more)
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Bloch opens with a rather poetic statement of society's State insofar as he sees it. As he makes quite clear in his penultimate section, "The Shape of the Inconstruable Question", Bloch's theory appears quite Hegelian in its own way. Doubling down on that, the second and by far the longest section, "The Philosophy of Music" Bloch attempts to rouse the philosophical question, the unbounded thought, the question of substantiating the human Spirit, by tracing a path through the history and evolution of music.
This section is incredibly dense. Not just in Bloch's own style of writing but in his revealing of such depth of knowledge when it comes to his analysis. His references not only to particular composers, but to their contemporaries and the effects with which one had upon the other. Without having some idea of who he references, things can get a little hard to follow. That being said, Bloch most definitely presents an entrancing thread through history not by tracing the most prominent cases of human action, but by tracing the most prominent demands of particular human satisfaction. Bloch, much like Hegel, sees an circular influence of Society and Spirit which is emphasized by exposing the thought and the preference applied to music since antiquity. For Bloch, The Philosophy of Music is precisely the awakening agent for the dormant Spirit as he saw it.
After the lengthy exposition of musical philosophy, the medium and the contours of the Spirit have been divulged. It is from here in which Bloch now poses the Inconstruable Question. This question is one which Bloch poses as something more recent and, indeed, we see this in his criticism of Kant's philosophy as something inhuman in its nature which, he believes, is why it was possible for his symmetrical holism; the notion of his Pure and Practical reason. This is where Bloch makes his stance clear by not only pitting Hegel against Kant, but by emphasizing Hegel's intentional asymmetry. Hegel wasn't intending to delude anyone with his Phenomenology, himself included. Hegel, like Bloch, sees the Spirit as something inevitable and necessitating of enrichment. It is here that Bloch speaks to the fire that went up too quickly, as a result of the optimism and innocence of the newly enlightened thinker and, as such, it could not help supressing itself to smoke.
The cornerstone of Bloch's thought is finalized with the final section, "Karl Marx, Death, and the Apocalypse." Bloch emphasizes the unity of Marxism which he appreciates for its simplistic approach to the unknown in its attempt to insulate itself with its then quite scientific veneer. Bloch's primary purpose here is to disassemble the purity of Marxist doctrine and expose it as it is: an Idea, just like any other. Death, being another importance to the Spirit, is something else that Bloch tackles, though I didn't personally find anything too enlivening here. He seeks to make Death something of wonder while rationalizing it insofar as it can be without making it exactly Nothing. The final subject, the Apocalypse, is Bloch's term for the reinvigorated Spirit of Society (which, to me, seemed relatively similar to the modern Marxist notion of "infinite revolution") which is simply the salvation and redemption of us all – something that is only possible when we are freed from the Idea and the Notion as Absolute.
Three stars mostly because of the effort I personally had to put in through the Philosophy of Music. Having to track down the compositions of many composers and pieces that I haven't heard in some time or have not heard at all took quite a bit of effort. This certainly helped in understanding some very particular things, but overall, this section is quite long (too long, in my opinion) and nothing would be lost with a good skim.