From Utopia To Utopia: A Textual Study Of Bloch 's Hope Philosophy

This article is intended to do research on the text of hope philosophy, which is created by Western Marxist Ernst Bloch. Originally utopia has a double meaning: on the one hand, it is a human longing for a bright abstract future, contains a beacon of hope to illuminate the human society; on the other hand, as ‘abstract utopia’, it has been mistaken as unrealistic fanaticism, which has the criticism meaning. Although the positive sense of utopia can be traced to the Hebrew culture and Plato, utopia bears too much criticism and misunderstanding in today’s society than it should be subject to. Studies of utopia performed by Western Marxist largely broke the barriers of traditional philosophy. Especially, as a Western Marxist, Bloch’s utopia research focused on the unique philosophy of hope, which greatly enriches and deepens our understanding of utopia’s Contemporariness.Bloch’s unique hope philosophy embodied in the transforming from ‘abstract utopia’ to ‘concrete utopia’: ‘Hope’ is not only a sense of human characteristics, but also a presence of existent phenomenon. The human nature is linked intrinsically with hope, and hope is rooted in human needs. Hope is ‘the structure of human nature’. Through the philosophy of hope, Bloch profoundly analyze all aspects of life in the capitalist society, in order to allow people to get rid of the survival plight under the guidance of the utopia spirit, and to pursue a better life. Bloch believes that Marxism contains the critique of the capitalist economy, the ‘cold stream’ and the humane care, the ‘warm stream’, so it is ‘concrete utopia’. Emphasizing either side of Marxism alone is not able to reach the ‘the realm of freedom’. In the process of social development, in addition to good economic development, we also need good guidance in the field of human beliefs and ideologies. It is the only way to achieve the ultimate goal of building a communist society.This paper is divided into an ‘Introduction’ and four parts. ‘Introduction’ mainly tells the object of this paper, the status of related academic research and identifies the research principles and research ideas. The first part sorts out the steps of Bloch’sphilosophy development, telling the process of hope philosophy from germination to molding; The second part is the main part, it expounds the structure and details of The principle of hope, which is the main text book of hope philosophy, and explains four essential categories of hope philosophy: the concrete utopia, not-yet exist, not-yet consciousness, home. The third part discusses the modern value of hope philosophy. Finally, the conclusion part provides a framing summary of the paper.