Heritage of Our Times

Ernst Bloch was a German Marxist philosopher. Bloch was influenced by Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious thinkers such as Thomas Müntzer, Paracelsus, and Jacob Boehme. He established friendships with György Luk&ács, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno.

• Part I: Employees and Diversion Part II: Non-Contemporaneity and IntoxicationPart III: Upper Middle Classes, Objectivity and MontageIndex

"An exemplary work of modern literature."  Times Literary Supplement"A half-century later, Bloch's untimely meditations on culture and politics retain their explosive power. Europe's contested legacy, which he sought to rescue from fascist appropriation, remains still be be claimed amidst the turmoil of the 1990s. However discredited his own political allegiances may now seem, Bloch's intransigent philosophy of hope has gained new urgency and immediacy."Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley"Bloch's Heritage of Our Times is a shocking expressionist excursion, developed in montage form, through the dialectics and unresolved contradictions of everyday experience and cultural manifestations of the early Nazi period in Germany. The work is a rich compendium of explosive insights into historical and cultural consciousness that force themselves into our times too."David Frisby, London School of Economics