Chapter 9: The future is latent in the present: a phenomenological interpretation of Ernst Bloch's atheistic eschatology (with emphasis on the image)

Conference item

Ernst Bloch devoted his writing to expressing a hopeful, personally applicable Marxist eschatology. He fused his earlier philosophical education regarding the individual with his belief in collective social movement, incorporating the beauty in art and religion in his remarkably aesthetic work. This paper discusses Bloch's work in terms of his retroactive understanding of the guiding principle of hope and its manifestation, and the associated problems of probation. Further, we will highlight the ways in which phenomenology intensifies these problems, and the aid that can be offered with recourse to Heideggerian phenomenology. The intention is to show how the future acts in th present in an eschatological fashion within these atheistic philosophies, and (not to state that these are covert Christian philosophies, but) to suggest ways that Christians can see within these philosophies a self-corrective route to a genuine Novum in eschatology, latent around the edges of the present moment.

Authors: Davies, V

• Publication status: Not published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Language: English
• Keywords: Vorschein; Heimat; Ernst Bloch; Marxist; Novum; Weltbild; Formal Indication
• Subjects: Theology and Religion