Part III: Upper Middle Classes, Objectivity and Montage
Index
Heritage of Our Times is a brilliant examination of modern culture and its legacy by one of the most important and deeply influential thinkers of the 20th century. Bloch argues that the key elements of a genuine cultural tradition are not just to be found in the conveniently closed and neatly labeled ages of the past, but also in the open and experimental cultural process of our time.
One of the most compelling aspects of this work is a contemporary analysis of the rise of Nazism. It probes its bogus roots in German history and mythology at the very moment when the ideologies of Blood and Soil and the Blond Beast were actually taking hold of the German people.
The breadth and depth of Bloch's vision, together with the rich diversity of his interest, ensure this work a place as one of the key books of the 20th century.
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 Lukcs, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno.
"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."
