Abstract
Open System: Marxist metaphysics — the conception is so unfamiliar in the Marxist tradition that there is a danger that Bloch’s achievement will be read down to the sources which were his starting points. Bloch, however, is not a metaphysician manqué, but a Marxist philosopher of unusual originality. In this and the following chapter, an attempt is made to give an account of Open System which remains faithful to the radicalism of the design. Hitherto, many commentators have trivialised Bloch’s stress on process, and then complained of his ‘lack of system’. They have domesticated his central concepts, and then found the pseudo-radicalism of the neo-classical metaphysics which ensued incompatible with Marxism. In contrast, these chapters attempt to explain Bloch’s central concepts and categories without making them clearer than they actually are.
M. Terentius Varro is supposed to have forgotten the future tense in his first attempt at a Latin grammar, but in philosophy it has not been adequately recognised even today.
The Principle of Hope
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Notes
For useful discussions of process philosophy, see Process and Divinity: The Hartshorne Festschrift, W.L. Reese and E. Freeman ed., (La Salle: Open Court, 1964); A. P. Stiernotte,‘Process Philosophies and Mysticism’, International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. IX, no. 4, Dec. (1969) pp. 560–71;
and J. Macquarrie, Twentieth Century Religious Thought (London: S.C.M., 1963) ch. XVII.
A. Münster (ed.), Tagträume vom aufrechten Gang (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1977), pp. 23–4.
For James’ relationship to process philosophy, see M. Tapek,‘Simple Location and Fragmentation of Reality’, The Monist, vol. 48, no. 2, April (1964) pp. 195–218. For Bloch’s critique of James, see Philosophische Aufsätze, GA, vol. 10, pp. 60–5.
For Frohschammer’s process philosophy, see J. Frohschammer, Die Phantasie als Grundprincip des Weltprocesses (sic) (Munich: Theodor Achermann, 1877)
B. Münz, Jakob Frohschammer, der Philosoph der Weltphantasie (Breslau, 1894)
and A. Attensperger (ed.), Jakob Frohschammers philosophisches System im Grundriss (Zweibrücken, 1899).
See E. von Hartmann, Philosophy of the Unconscious (1896), trans. W. C. Coupland, new ed. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner. 1931);
and for Bloch’s debt to von Hartmann, see Geist der Utopie (1918), GA, vol. 16, pp. 261–7; Philosophische Aufsätze, GA, vol. 10, pp. 197–203:
E. von Hartmann,‘Eduard von Hartmanns Weltprozess’ (1923); Das Materialismusproblem, GA, vol. 7, pp. 92–9, 282–8.
See E. von Hartmann, Schellings positive Philosophie als Einheit von Hegel und Schopenhauer (Berlin: Otto Loewenstein, 1869)
and D. N. K. Darnoi, The Unconscious and Eduard von Hartmann. A Historico-Critical Monograph (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967) pp. 14–19.
There is still no satisfactory account of Schelling’s late philosophy in English. See, however, P. C. Hayner, Reason and Existence, Schelling’s Philosophy of History (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967) pp. 34–61, 92–124;
F. W. Bolman Jr., Introduction to his translation of Schelling’s The Ages of the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942)
and Robert F. Brown, The Later Philosophy of Schelling. The Influence of Boehme on the Works of 1809–1815 (London: Associated Universities Presses, 1977).
In German, see K. F. A. Schelling (ed.), Sämmtliche Werke, 14 volumes in two divisions, (Stuttgart & Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1856–61) especially vol. 13, pp. 57, 127, 203;
and A. M. Koktanek, Schellings Seinslehre und Kierkegaard (Munich: R. Oldenbourg 1962);
C. Wild, Reflexion und Erfahrung. Eine Interpretation der Früh- und Spätphilosophie Schellings (Symposion, 25) (Freiburg/Munich: Verlag Karl Alber, 1968);
B. Loer, Das Absolute und die Wirklichkeit in Schellings Philosophie (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1974);
Dieter Jähnig, Schelling. Die Kunst in der Philosophie, 2 vols (Pfullingen: Neske, 1969)
H. Fuhrmans, Schellings letzte Philosophie. Die negative und positive Philosophie im Einsatz des Spätidealismus (Berlin: Junker and Dünnhaupt Verlag, 1940)
and W. Schulz, Die Vollendung des deutschen Idealismus in der Spätphilosophie Schellings (Pfullingen: Neske, 1975) 2nd ed., especially pp. 21–30, 307–20.
The interpretation of Schelling’s philosophy is the subject of dispute. For recent radicalising interpretations, see F. W. Schmidt, Zum Begriff der Negativität bei Schelling und Hegel (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1971);
M. Frank, Der unendliche Mangel an Sein, Schellings Regelkritik und die Anfänge der Marxschen Dialektik (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1975)
and M. Frank and G. Kurz (ed.) Materialen zu Schellings philosophischen Anfängen (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1975). For Bloch’s assessments of Schelling, see Subjekt-Objekt, GA, vol. 8, pp. 395–400, Das Materialismus problem, GA, vol. 7, pp. 73–7, 216–29, and Zwischenwelten in der Philosophiegeschichte, GA, vol. 12, pp. 306–19.
For a discussion of Bergson’s process philosophy, see M. ëapek, The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1961) ch. 17, especially pp. 336–9.
R. Traub and H. Wieser (ed.), Gespräche mit Ernst Bloch (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1975) p. 32.
See G. Lukacs, The Young Hegel (1948) trans. R. Livingstone (London: Merlin Press, 1975)
and H. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), and Subjekt-Objekt, GA, vol. 8, pp. 51–2, ch. 16.
cf. L. Colletti, Marxism and Hegel, trans. L. Garner (London: New Left Books, 1973) chs 3 and 4
and T. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973).
cf. N. Rotenstreich, From Substance to Subject (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974) especially chs 1 and 4.
F. J. von Rintelen, Contemporary German Philosophy and its Background (Bonn: Bouvier, 1970) pp. 25, 153 ff.
F. Engels, Anti-Duhring (1878), English trans. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969) pp. 31–3.
J. L. Mehta, The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (revised ed.) (New York: Harper and Row, 1971) ch. 3.
M. Landmann,‘Talking with Ernst Bloch: Koruula, 1968’, trans. D. Parent, in Telos, no. 25, Fall (1975) pp. 165–85, especially p. 182.
cf. J-P. Sartre, The Psychology of the Imagination (London: Methuen, 1972), especially ch. 4.
K. Kosik, Dialectics of the Concrete, trans. K. Kovanda and J. Schmidt (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1976) p. 19.
cf. H. D. Bahr,‘Ontologie und Utopie’ (1968), in B. Schmidt (ed.), Materialen zu Ernst Blochs ‘Prinzip Hoffnung’ (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1978) pp. 291–305.
See G. Marcel,‘Sketch of a Phenomenology and a Metaphysic of Hope’ in Homo Viator, trans E. Craufurd (New York: Harper and Row, 1962) pp. 29–67
and C. S. Calian, Berdyaev’s Philosophy of Hope (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968).
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© 1982 Wayne Hudson
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Hudson, W. (1982). Open System: Marxist Metaphysics I. In: The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04290-6_3
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