No other country and no other period has produced a tradition of major aesthetic debate to compare with that which unfolded in German culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. In Aesthetics and Politics the key texts of the great Marxist controversies over literature and art during these years are assembled in a single volume. They do not form a disparate collection but a continuous, interlinked debate between thinkers who have become giants of twentieth-century intellectual history.

This study of Marx serves not only as an excellent introduction to that most influential of "worldly philosophers" but is also a significant resume of the central issues of Bloch's own profound and wide-ranging thought.Special attention is given to the political maturation of the young Karl Marx and to his studies and intellectual relationship to important thinkers of his time. Bloch concludes with an insightful summons to the West to consider Marx anew as a thinker still vitally r...

In the twenty-first century, religion has come under determined attack from secular progressives in documentaries, opinion pieces and international bestsellers. Combative atheists have denounced faiths of every stripe, resulting in a crude intellectual polarization in which religious convictions and heritage must be rejected or accepted wholesale.In the long unavailable Atheism in Christianity, Ernst Bloch provides a way out from this either/or debate. He examines the origi...

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 ...

Ernst Bloch was one of the most significant twentieth-century German thinkers, yet he remains overshadowed by his Frankfurt School contemporaries. Known for his engagement with utopianism and religious thought, Bloch also wrote incisively about ontological questions. In his short masterpiece Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left, Bloch gives a striking account of materialism that traces emancipatory elements of modern thought to medieval Islamic philosophers’ encounter with Aristotle...

Ernst Bloch was one of the most significant twentieth-century German thinkers, yet he remains overshadowed by his Frankfurt School contemporaries. Known for his engagement with utopianism and religious thought, Bloch also wrote incisively about ontological questions. In his short masterpiece Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left, Bloch gives a striking account of materialism that traces emancipatory elements of modern thought to medieval Islamic philosophers’ encounter with Aristotle...

Ernst Bloch is perhaps best known for his subtle and imaginative investigation of utopias and utopianism, but his work also provides a comprehensive and insightful analysis of western culture, politics and society. Yet, because he has not been one of easiest of writers to read his full contribution has not been widely acknowledged. Block developed a complex conceptual framework, and presented this in a prose style which many have found to verge on the impenetrable. In this critical and acc...

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Neitzsche in just one hour.Philosophy has always been dangerous for philosophers; Friedrich Nietzsche made it dangerous for everyone. His ideas presaged a collective madness which was to ravage Europe throughout the first half of the twentieth century, drawing a chilling parallel with the insanity that gripped Nietzsche towards the end of his life. His philosophy is one of aphorisms and penetrating psychologic...

This captivating collection brings together five of Friedrich Nietzche’s most important philosophical works, exploring themes such as nihilism, metaphysics, and the nature of morality—featuring an introduction by Peter Gay and commentary from Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, and Gilles DeleuzeMore than one hundred years after his death, Friedrich Nietzsche remains the most influential philosopher of the modern era. Basic Writings of Nietzsche gathers the co...

A Pulitzer Prize Winner and landmark book from one of the truly original scholars of our time: a magnificent revelation of turn-of-the-century Vienna where out of a crisis of political and social disintegration so much of modern art and thought was born."Not only is it a splendid exploration of several aspects of early modernism in their political context; it is an indicator of how the discipline of intellectual history is currently practiced by its most able and ambitious craftsme...

Widely recognized as one of the finest introductions to existentialist philosophy ever written, Irrational Man helped introduce existentialism to an American audience when it was first published in 1958.Barrett writes with eloquence and clarity about concerns that remain as relevant today as ever: the persistence of the irrational and absurd, the search for meaning in a fractured world, and humanity's capacity to shape or destroy its own future without ful...

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Schopenhauer in just one hour.Arthur Schopenhauer, the ‘philosopher of pessimism,’ makes it clear that he regards the world and our life in it as a bad joke. However, if the world is indifferent to our fate it doesn’t thwart us deliberately – its façade is supported by what Schopenhauer calls the universal Will. He saw this as a force that is blind and without purpose, bringing on all our misery and suffering....