Ernst Bloch The Principle of Hope Vol1

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The Principle of Hope
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Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought (partial list)

Thomas McCarthy, General Editor
Theodor W. Adorno, Hegel: Three Studies
Theodor W. Adorno, Prisms
Seyla Benhabib, Wolfgang Bon, and John McCole, editors, On Max Horkheimer: New
Perspectives
Ernst Bloch, Natural Law and Human Dignity
Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope
Ernst Bloch, The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays
Hans Blumenberg, The Genesis of the Copernican World
Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age
Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth
Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project
Jrgen Habermas, On the Logic of the Social Sciences
Jrgen Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians' Debate
Jrgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures
Jrgen Habermas, Philosophical-Political Profiles
Jrgen Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays
Jrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society
Axel Honneth, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory
Max Horkheimer, Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings
Pierre Missac, Walter Benjamin's Passages
Guy Oakes, Weber and Rickert: Concept Formation in the Cultural Sciences
William E. Scheuerman, Between the Norm and the Exception: The Frankfurt School and the
Rule of Law
Dennis Schmidt, The Ubiquity of the Finite: Hegel, Heidegger, and the Entitlements of
Philosophy
Georgia Warnke, Justice and Interpretation
Mark Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought
Albrecht Wellmer, The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics and
Postmodernism
Joel Whitebook, Perversion and Utopia: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory
Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance
Lambert Zuidervaart, Adorno's Aesthetic Theory: The Redemption of Illusion
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The Principle of Hope

Volume One
Ernst Bloch
Translated by Neville Plaice,
Stephen Plaice and Paul Knight
Page iv
Third printing, 1996

First MIT Press paperback edition, 1995
Written in the USA 19381947
revised 1953 and 1959;
first American edition published by The MIT Press, 1986
English translation 1986 by Basil Blackwell, Ltd.
Originally published as Das Prinzip Hoffnung, 1959 by
Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Federal Republic of Germany.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduccd in any form or by any electronic
or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and
retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bloch, Ernst, 18851977
The principle of hope.
(Studies in contemporary German social thought)
Translation of Das Prinzip Hoffnung.
Includes index.
1. Hope. 2. Imagination. 3. Utopias. 4. Creation
(Literary, artistic, etc.) I. Title. II. Series.
B3209.B753P7513 1986 193 85-23081
ISBN 0-262-52199-7 (volume 1)
0-262-52200-4 (volume 2)
0-262-52201-2 (volume 3)
0-262-52204-7 (3-volume set)
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Page v
CONTENTS
Translators' Preface xvii
Translators' Introduction xix
Introduction 3
Volume One
Part One (Report)

Little Daydreams
1. We Start Out Empty 21
2. Much Tastes of More 21
3. Daily into the Blue 21
4. Hiding-Place and Beautiful Foreign Lands 22
By Ourselves 22
At Home Already on Our Way 23
5. Escape and the Return of the Victor 24
Putting to Sea 24
The Glittering Bowl 26
6. More Mature Wishes and their Images 29
The Lame Nags 29
Night of the Long Knives 30
Shortly before the Closing of the Gate 31
Invention of a New Pleasure 33
Opportunity to be Friendly 35
7. What is Left to Wish for in Old Age 35
Wine and Purse 36
Evocations of Youth; Counter-Wish: Harvest 36
Evening and House 39
8. The Sign that Changes 41
Page vi
Part Two (Foundation)

Anticipatory Consciousness
9. What Goes Ahead as Urging 45
10. Naked Striving and Wishing, Unsatisfied 45
11. Man as a Quite Extensive Complex of Drives 47
The Individual Body 47
No Drive Without Body Behind It 48
The Changing Passion 49
12. Various Interpretations of the Basic Human Drive 51
The Sexual Drive 51
Ego-Drive and Repression 52
Repression, Complex, Unconscious Material and Sublimation 54
Power-Drive, Frenzy-Drive, Collective Unconscious 57
'Eros' and the Archetypes 61
13. The Historical Limitation of All Basic Drives; Various Locations of 65

Self-Interest; Filled and Expectant Emotions
The Urgent Need 65
Most Reliable Basic Drive: Self-Preservation 65
Historical Change of the Drives, Even of the Self-Preservation Drive 67
Mental Feelings and State of Self, Appetite of the Expectant 70

Emotions, Especially of Hope
Self-Extension Drive Forwards, Active Expectation 75
14. Fundamental Distinction of Daydreams from Night-Dreams. 77

Concealed and Old Wish-Fulfilment in Night-Dreams, Fabulously
Inventive and Anticipatory Wish-Fulfilment in Daylight Fantasies
Inclination to Dream 77
Dreams as Wish-Fulfilment 78
Anxiety Dreams and Wish-Fulfilment 82
A Crucial Point: The Daydream is not a Stepping-Stone to the 86

Nocturnal Dream
First and Second Characteristics of the Daydream: Clear Road, 88

Preserved Ego
Third Characteristic of the Daydream: World-Improving 91
Fourth Characteristic of the Daydream: Journey to the End 95
Merging of Nocturnal and Daytime Dream-Games, Its Dissolution 99
More on Inclination to Dream: The 'Mood' as Medium of Daydreams 103
More on the Expectant Emotions (Anxiety, Fear, Terror, Despair, 108

Hope, Confidence) and the Waking Dream
Page vii
15. Discovery of the Not-Yet-Conscious or of Forward Dawning. Not- 114

Yet-Conscious as a New Class of Consciousness and as the Class of
Consciousness of the New: Youth, Time of Change, Productivity.
Concept of the Utopian Function, Its Encounter with Interest, Ideology,
Archetypes, Ideals, Allegory-Symbols
The Two Edges 114
Double Meaning of the Preconscious 115
Not-Yet-Conscious in Youth, Time of Change, Productivity 117
Further Thoughts on Productivity: Its Three Stages 122
Different Kinds of Resistance Which the Forgotten and the Not-Yet- 128
Conscious Offer to Illumination
Epilogue on the Block which has Prevented the Concept of the Not- 132
Yet-Conscious for so Long
Conscious and Known Activity in the Not-Yet-Conscious, Utopian 142

Function
More on the Utopian Function: The Subject in it and the Counter- 147
Move to the Badly Existing
Contact of the Utopian Function with Interest 150
Encounter of the Utopian Function with Ideology 153
Encounter of the Utopian Function with Archetypes 158
Encounter of the Utopian Function with Ideals 165
Encounter of the Utopian Function with Allegory-Symbols 174
16. Utopian Image-Trace in Realization; Egyptian and Trojan Helen 178
Dreams Want to Drift 178
Non-Satisfaction and What Can Lie Within It 179
First Reason for Disappointment: Happiness is There Where You are 180
Not; Second Reason: Dream Rendered Independent and the Legend
of the Double Helen
Objection to the First and Second Reason: Odyssey of Aquiescence 186
Third Reason for Utopian Trace-Images: The Aporias of Realization 189
17. The World in Which Utopian Imagination has a Correlate; Real 195
Possibility, the Categories Front, Novum, Ultimum and the Horizon
Man is not Solid 195
Much in the World is Still Unclosed 196
Militant Optimism, the Categories Front, Novum, Ultimum 198
'What-Is According to Possibility' and 'What-Is in Possibility', Cold 205

and Warm Stream in Marxism
Artistic Appearance as Visible Pre-Appearance 210
False Autarky; Pre-Appearance as Real Fragment 217
It is a Question of Realism, Everything Real has a Horizon 222
18. The Layers of the Category Possibility 223
The Formally Possible 224
The Factually-Objectively Possible 225
Page viii
The Fact-Based Object-Suited Possible 229
The Objectively-Real Possible 235
Memory: Logical-Static Struggle Against the Possible 241
Realizing Possibility 246
19. Changing the World or Marx's Eleven Theses on Feuerbach 249
Time of Drafting 250
Question of Grouping 254
Epistemological Group: Perception and Activity (Theses 5, 1, 3) 255
Anthropological-Historical Group: Self-Alienation and True 262

Materialism (Theses 4, 6, 7, 9, 10)
Theory-Practice-Group: Proof and Probation (Theses 2, 8) 267
The Password and its Meaning (Thesis 11) 274
The Archimedean Point; Knowledge Related not Only to What is 282

Past, But Essentially to What is Coming Up
20. Summary/Anticipatory Composition and Its Poles: Dark Moment 287

Open Adequacy
Pulse and Lived Darkness 287
Room for Possible Advance 287
Source and Outflow: Astonishment as Absolute Question 288
Once More: Darkness of the Lived Moment; Carpe Diem 290
Darkness of the Lived Moment, Continuation: Foreground, Dead 295

Space, Melancholy of Fulfilment, Self-Mediation
More on Astonishment as Absolute Question, in the Shape of 300

Anxiety and of Happiness; the Directly Utopian Archetype: Highest
Good
The Not in Origin, the Not-Yet in History, the Nothing or Conversely 306
the All at the End
Utopia no Lasting State; Therefore After All: Carpe Diem, But a 313
Genuine One in Genuine Present
21. Daydream in Delightful form: Pamina or the Picture as Erotic 316

Promise
The Tender Morning 316
Effect Through the Portrait 317
Nimbus Around Encounter, Betrothal 320
Too much Image, Rescue from It, Nimbus Around Marriage 323
High Pair, Corpus Christi or Previous Cosmic and Christ-Like Utopia 327
of Marriage
After-Image of Love 331
22. Daydream in Symbolic form: Pandora's Box; the Good Thing that 333
Remains
Part Three (Transition)

Wishful Images in the Mirror
(Display, Fairytale, Travel, Film, Theatre)
23. Making Ourselves More Beautiful than We are 339
Page ix
24. What the Mirror Tells Us Today 340
Being Slim 340
Good at Cringing 340
25. New Clothes, the Illuminated Display 341
Well Laid Out 342
Light of Advertising 343
26. Beautiful Mask, Ku Klux Klan, the Glossy Magazines 345
The Crooked Paths 345
Success Through Terror 347
Bestsellers, Syrupy Stories 349
27. Better Castles in the Air in Fair and Circus, in Fairytale and 352
Colportage
Courage of the Clever 354
Magic Table, Genie of the Lamp 355
'On Wings of Song, My Darling, I will Carry You Away' 357
'Let Us Go to the Meadows of the Ganges, There I Know the 360

Loveliest Place'
South Seas in Fair and Circus 363
The Wild Fairytale: As Colportage 367
28. Lure of Travel, Antiquity, Happiness of the Gothic Novel 369
Beautiful Foreign Lands 370
Distance-Wish and Historicizing Room in the Nineteenth Century 375
Aura of Antique Furniture, Magic of Ruins, Museum 381
Castle Garden and the Buildings of Arcadia 387
Wild Weather, Apollo By Night 391
29. Wishful Image in the Dance; Pantomime and Filmland 393
New Dance and Old 394
New Dance as Formerly Expressionist Dance, Exoticism 397
Ritual Dance, Dervishes, Blessed Circles 399
The Deaf and Dumb and the Significant Pantomime 402
New Mime Through the Camera 406
Dream-Factory in the Rotten and in the Transparent Sense 409
30. The Theatre, Regarded as Paradigmatic Institution, and the Decision 412
in It
The Curtain Rises 412
Rehearsal on the Model 413
More on the Rehearsal on the Model to be Sought 416
Reading, Spoken Mime and Scene 418
Illusion, Sincere Appearance, Moral Institution 422
False and Genuine Topicalization 426
Further Genuine Topicalization: Not Fear and Pity, But Defiance and 429
Hope
31. Mocked and Hated Wishful Images, Voluntarily Humorous Ones 431
The Little Word If 431
'None of These New-Fangled Things Are Any
Page x
Good' 432
Le Nant; Another World 433
The 'Birds' of Aristophanes and Cloud-Cuckoo-Land 435
Merry Outdoing: Lucian's 'Vera Historia' 436
Voluntary-Humorous Wishful Images 438
32. Happy End, Seen Through and Yet Still Defended 441
Volume Two
Part Four (Construction)
Outlines of a Better World
(Medicine, Social Systems, Technology, Architecture, Geography,
Perspective in Art and Wisdom)
33. A Dreamer Always Wants Even More 451
34. Physical Exercise, Tout Va Bien 451
35. Struggle for Health, Medical Utopias 454
A Warm Bed 454
Lunatics and Fairytales 455
Medicines and Planning 456
Hesitation and Goal in Actual Bodily Rebuilding 462
Malthus, Birth-Rate, Nourishment 467
The Doctor's Care 469
36. Freedom and Order, Survey of Social Utopias 471
I. Introduction/A Frugal Meal 472
The Roast Pigeons 472
Lunacy and Colportage Even Here 473
New Moral Worlds on the Horizon 475
Utopias Have Their Timetable 479
II. Social Wishful Images of the Past/Solon and the Contented 481
Medium
Diogenes and the Exemplary Beggars 482
Aristippus and the Exemplary Scroungers 483
Plato's Dream of the Doric State 484
Hellenistic Fairytales of an Ideal State, Iamboulos' Island of the Sun 488
The Stoics and the International World-State 491
The Bible and the Kingdom of Neighbourly Love 496
Augustine's City of God from Rebirth 502
Joachim of Fiore, the Third Gospel and Its Kingdom 509
Thomas More or the Utopia of Social Freedom 515
Counterpart to More: Campanella's City of the Sun or the Utopia of 523

Social Order
Socratic Inquiry into Freedom and Order, with Regard to 'Utopia' and 528
'Civitas Solis'
Continuation: Social Utopias and Classic Natural Right 534
Enlightened Natural Right in Place of Social Utopias 541
Fichte's Closed Commercial State or Production and Exchange in 548

Accordance with Rational Law
Federative Utopias in the Nineteenth Century: Owen, Fourier 555
Centralist Utopias in the Nineteenth Century: Cabet, Saint-Simon 561
Individual Utopians and Anarchy, Stirner, Proudhon, Bakunin 568
Proletarian Castle in the
Page xi
the Air from the Vormrz: Weitling 575
A Conclusion: Weakness and Status of the Rational Utopias 578
III. Projects and Progress Towards Science/Topical Remnants: 583

Bourgeois Group Utopias
Beginning, Programme of the Youth Movement 585
Struggle for the New Woman, Programme of the Women's 589

Movement
Old New Land, Programme of Zionism 598
Novels Set in the Future and Full-Scale Utopias After Marx: 611
Bellamy, William Morris, Carlyle, Henry George
Marxism and Concrete Anticipation 619
37. Will and Nature, the Technological Utopias 625
I. Magic Past/Plunged into Misery 626
Fire and New Armament 626
Lunacy and Aladdin's Fairytale 627
'Professor Mystos' and Invention 629
Andreae's 'Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz Anno 1459' 634
Alchemy Again: Mutatio Specierum (Transmutation of Inorganic 639

Species) and its Incubator
Unregulated Inventions and 'Propositiones' in the Baroque Period 646
Bacon's Ars Inveniendi; Survival of the Lullian Art 649
New Atlantis, the Utopian Laboratory 654
II. Non-Euclidean Present and Future, the Problem of Technological 658

Contact/Plans Must also be Spurred on
Late Bourgeois Curbing of Technology, Apart from the Military 658
Kind
De-Organization of the Machine; Atomic Energy, Non-Euclidean 661

Technology
Subject, Raw Materials, Laws and Contact in De-Organization 666
Electron of the Human Subject, of Technology of the will 674
Co-Productivity of a Possible Natural Subject or Concrete 686

Technology of Alliance
Technology Without Violation; Economic Crisis and Technological 691

Accident
Chained Giant, Veiled Sphinx, Technological Freedom 696
38. Buildings Which Depict a Better World, Architectural Utopias 699
I. Figures of Ancient Architecture/Glance through the Window 699
Dreams on the Pompeian Wall 700
Festive Decorations and Baroque Stage Sets 701
Wishful Architecture in the Fairytale 706
Wishful Architecture in Painting 709
The Church Masons' Guilds or Architectural Utopia in Actual 714

Construction
Egypt or the Crystal of Death Utopia, Gothic or the Tree of Life 721
Utopia
Further and Individual Examples of Guiding Space in Ancient 726

Architecture
II. Building on Hollow Space/New Houses and Real Clarity 733
Town Plans, Ideal Towns and Real Clarity Again: Permeation of 738
Crystal with Profusion
Page xii
39. Eldorado and Eden, the Geographical Utopias 746
The First Lights 746
Inventing and Discovering; Characteristic of Geographical Hope 747
Fairytales Again, the Golden Fleece and the Grail 752
Island of the Phaeacians, the Bad Atlantic, Location of the Earthly 756
Paradise
Voyage of St Brendan, the Kingdom of Prester John; American, 762

Asiatic Paradise
Columbus at the Orinoco Delta; Dome of the Earth 772
South Land and the Utopia of Thule 777
Better Abodes on Other Stars; Hic Rhodus 782
The Copernican Connection, Baader's 'Central Earth' 785
Geographical Line of Extension in Sobriety; the Fund of the Earth, 790

Mediated with Work
40. Wishful Landscape Portrayed in Painting, Opera, Literature 794
The Moved Hand 794
Flower and Carpet 795
Still Life Composed of Human Beings 796
Embarkation for Cythera 797
Perspective and Large Horizon in Van Eyck, Leonardo, Rembrandt 799
Still Life, Cythera and Broad Perspective in Literature: Heinse, 802

Roman de la Rose, Jean Paul
The Wishful Landscape of Perspective in Aesthetics; Status of the 807

Matter of Art According to its Dimension of Depth and Hope
Painters of the Residual Sunday, Seurat, Czanne, Gauguin; Giotto's 813
Land of Legend
Land of Legend in Literature: As Celestial Rose in Dante's 'Paradiso', 820

as Transcendental High Mountains in the Faustian Heaven
Splendour, Elysium in Opera and Oratorio 827
Contact of the Interior and the Boundless in the Spirit of Music: 834
Kleist's Ideal Landscape; Sistine Madonna
41. Wishful Landscape and Wisdom Sub Specie Aeternitatis and of 838
Process
The Search for Proportion 838
The 'Authentic' in Primary Matter and Law 840
Kant and the Intelligible Kingdom; Plato, Eros and the Pyramid of 842
Value
Bruno and the Infinite Work of Art; Spinoza and the World as 847
Crystal
Augustine and Goal-History; Leibniz and the World as Process of 853

Illumination
The Watchful Concept or the 'Authentic' as a Task 862
Two Wishful Propositions: Teachable Virtue, the Categorical 866

Imperative
The Proposition of Anaximander or World which Turns into 874

Likeness
Lightness in the Depths, Joyfulness of the Phenomenon of Light 879
42. Eight-Hour Day, World in Peace, Free Time and Leisure 885
The Whip of Hunger 886
From the Casemates of the Bourgeoisie 886
All Kinds of Alleviation Through Benefaction 890
Bourgeois
Page xiii
Pacifism and Peace 893
Technological Maturity, State Capitalism and State Socialism; 897

October Revolution
Delusions of Free Time: Toughening up for Business 904
Residual Older Forms of Free Time, Spoiled, But not Hopeless: 907
Hobby, Public Festival, Amphi-Theatre
The Surroundings of Free Time: Utopian Buen Retiro and Pastoral 914
Leisure as Imperative, Only Half Explored Goal 920
Volume Three
Part Five (Identity)
Wishful Images of the Fulfilled Moment
(Morality, Music, Images of Death, Religion, Morning-Land of
Nature, Highest Good)
43. Not Straight with Oneself 927
44. Home and School Guide the Way 928
45. Guiding Images Themselves, to Become Like Proper Human Beings 930
46. Guiding Panels of Dangerous and Happy Life 934
Much Still Open 934
Too Warmly Dressed 934
Wild, Bold Hunt 935
French Happiness and Joy 937
Adventures of Happiness 938
47. Guiding Panels of will Tempi and of Contemplation, of Solitude and 939
Friendship, of Individual and Community
A Decent Person 939
Fabius or the Hesitant Man of Action 940
Sorel, Machiavelli or Energy and the Wheel of Fortune 942
Problem of Breaking, Hercules at the Crossroads, Dionysus-Apollo 948
Vita Activa, Vita Contemplativa or the World of the Chosen Good 953
Part
Double Light of Solitude and Friendship 958
Double Light of Individual and Collective 965
Salvation of the Individual Through Community 969
48. Young Goethe, Non-renunciation, Ariel 973
The Wish to Smash Things 973
Wertherian Happiness and Suffering 974
The Demand, Prometheus, Ur-Tasso 975
Intention of Sublimity, Faust Gothic and Metamorphosis 980
Ariel and Poetic Imagination 985
The Demonic, and the Allegorical-Symbolic
Page xiv
Sealedness which Expresses Itself 989
Just Those Who Know Such Longing: Mignon 993
Wishes as Presentiments of Our Capacities 997
49. Guiding Figures of Venturing Beyond the Limits; Faust and the 1000
Wager of the Fulfilled Moment
No Wet Straw 1000
Play the Lute and Drain the Glasses 1001
Don Giovanni, All Women and the Wedding 1004
Faust, Macrocosm, Stay a While You are So Fair 1011
Faust, Hegel's Phenomenology and the Event 1016
Odysseus did not Die in Ithaca, He Journeyed to the Unpeopled 1023

World
Hamlet, Sealed will; Prospero, Groundless Joy 1027
50. Guiding Panels of Abstract and Mediated Venturing Beyond the 1034
Limits, Illustrated by the Cases of Don Quixote and Faust
The Fermenting will 1034
Don Quixote's Rueful Countenance and Golden Illusion 1035
A Related Question: The Wrongs and Rights of Tasso Versus 1051

Antonio
The Luciferian-Promethean and the Layer of Sound 1053
51. Venturing Beyond and Most Intense World of Man in Music 1057
Happiness of the Blind 1058
The Nymph Syrinx 1058
Bizarre Hero and Nymph: Symphonie Fantastique 1060
Human Expression as Inseparable from Music 1062
Music as Canon and World of Laws; Harmony of the Spheres, More 1070
Humane Lode-Stars
Tone-Painting, Work of Nature Once Again, the Intensity and 1081

Morality of Music
The Hollow Space; Subject of the Sonata and Fugue 1089
Funeral March, Requiem, Cortge Behind Death 1097
Marseillaise and the Moment in Fidelio 1101
52. Self and Grave-Lamp or Images of Hope Against the Power of the 1103
Strongest Non-Utopia: Death
I. Introduction/No Talk of Dying 1104
Utopias of the Night With No Morning Any More in this World 1105
II. Religious Counterpoints from Death and Victory/Only Good of 1109

the Dead
Shades and Greek Twilight 1111
Affirmation of Recurrence; Orphic Wheel 1112
Elixirs of the Soul and the Gnostic Journey to Heaven 1116
Egyptian Heaven in the Tomb 1121
Biblical Resurrection and Apocalypse 1125
Mohammedan Heaven, Strength of the Flesh, Magic Garden 1133
Sheer Repose Seeks Deliverance Even from Heaven, the Wishful 1136
Image of Nirvana
Page xv
III. Enlightened and Romantic Euthanasias/The Freethinker as Strong 1142

Thinker
Youth with the Reversed Torch and with the Newly Lighted Torch 1143
Dissolution in the Universe, Lethal Return to Nature 1148
Glacier, Earth-Mother and World-Spirit 1152
IV. Further Secularized Counter-Moves, Nihilism, House of 1156

Humanity/Still the Dyeing of Nothingness
Four Signs of a Borrowed Faith 1157
Metaphorical Immortality: in the Work 1161
Death as the Chisel in Tragedy 1167
Disappearance of Lethal Nothingness in Socialist Consciousness 1172
V. Joy of Life and Fragment in All Things/Journey of Discovery into 1176

Death
The Moment as Not-Being-Here; Extra-Territoriality to Death 1178
53. Growing Human Commitment to Religious Mystery, to Astral Myth, 1183

Exodus, Kingdom; Atheism and the Utopia of the Kingdom
I. Introduction/In Good Hands 1183
Lunatics Again, Occult Path 1184
Chiefs and Magicians; Every Religion has Founders 1189
A Numinous Element, Even in the Religious Humanum 1193
II. Founders, Glad Tidings and Cur Deus Homo/The Stranger as 1203
Teacher: Cadmus
Singer of ecstatic salvation: Orpheus 1204
Poets of Apollonian Gods and Their Attendance: Homer and Hesiod; 1205
Roman State Gods
The Unblossomed Belief in Prometheus and the Tragic Liturgy: 1212
Aeschylus
Fish-Man and Moon-Scribe of Astral Myth: Oannes, Hermes 1216

Trismegistus-Thoth
Glad Tidings of Earthly-Heavenly Balance and of the Inconspicuous 1220

World-Rhythm (Tao): Confucius, Lao Tzu
A Founder Who is Himself Part of the Glad Tidings: Moses, His God 1230
of Exodus
Moses or Consciousness of Utopia in Religion, of Religion in Utopia 1235
Warlike Self-Commitment, Mingled with Astral Light: Zoroaster, 1241

Mani
Redemptive Self-Commitment, Limited to Acosmos, Related to 1249

Nirvana: Buddha
Founder from the Spirit of Moses and the Exodus, Completely 1256
Identical with his Glad Tidings: Jesus, Apocalypse, Kingdom
Jesus and the Father; The Serpent of Paradise as Saviour; the Three 1265
Wishful Mysteries: Resurrection, Ascension, Return
Fanaticism and Submission to Allah's will: Mohammed 1274
III. The Core of the Earth as Real Extra-Territoriality/The Road of 1278

the Non-Existent What For
Inavertible and Avertible Fate, or Cassandra and Isaiah 1280
God as Utopian Hypostatized Ideal of
Page xvi
the Unknown Man; Feuerbach, Cur Deus Homo Again 1283
Recourse to Atheism; Problem of the Space into Which God Was 1290
Imagined and Utopianized
Stay Awhile in the Religious Layer: The Unity of the Instant in 1298
Mysticism
Miracles and the Miraculous; Moment as the Foot of Nike 1303
54. The Last Wishful Content and the Highest Good 1312
Drive and food 1312
Three Wishes and the Best 1313
Value-Images as Variations of the Highest Good; Cicero and the 1315

Philosophers
Stay Awhile and Highest Good; Problem of a Guiding Image in the 1321
World Process
Drive and Food Once Again or Subjectivity, Objectivity of Goods, of 1325

Values and of the Highest Good
Hovering and Severity with Reference to the Highest Good (Evening 1334
Wind, Statue of Buddha, Figure of the Kingdom)
Number and Cipher of Qualities; Meaning of the Highest Good in 1347

Nature
55. Karl Marx and Humanity; Stuff of Hope 1354
The True Architect 1354
'To Overturn All Circumstances in Which Man is a Degraded, a 1355

Subjugated, a Forsaken, a Contemptible Being'
Secularization and the Power of Setting Things on Their Feet 1359
Forward Dream, Sobriety, Enthusiasm and Their Unity 1365
Certainty, Unfinished World, Homeland 1370
Glossary of Foreign Terms G-1
Name and Title Index I-1
Page xvii
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
The English text of the Principle of Hope is based on Bloch's revised version of the work,
first published by Suhrkamp in 1959. As far as possible the format of this edition conforms to
the German text which Bloch himself authorized. There are no footnotes in the original
German but we have included explanations and references where we felt these would be
helpful or especially interesting for the English reader. Wherever possible, we have also
annotated the numerous implicit and explicit allusions to the Bible and to Goethe's Faust, the
central spiritual and poetic legacies inherited by The Principle of Hope. All translations are
our own, with the exception of biblical quotations for which we have used the Authorized
Version.
Bloch's own references are included in the body of the text. Where a specific page reference
is given to a German work, we have left the original title and supplied a translation in the
bilingual index. Otherwise book titles have been translated in the text and retained in the
bilingual index, with the exception of Latin titles, which have been left in the original
throughout. To preserve the structure and fabric of Bloch's text, it has been necessary to
override certain English publishing conventions. Except for epigraphs, quoted extracts have
not been displayed, but are run on in text within quotation marks. To avoid confusion with
Bloch's own emphatic italics, classical and foreign expressions have not been italicized.
These expressions have been left in the original, as they are also very much a feature of
Bloch's style. We have included a glossary of foreign terms not directly explained in the text.
It precedes the index at the end of the third volume.
The project of translating The Principle of Hope was first suggested to Paul Knight by Basil
Blackwell Ltd to whom the book had been recommended by Bryan Magee. The translators
would like to thank the following people for their assistance and encouragement. At Basil
Blackwell: Ren Olivieri, Ray Addicott, Julia Mosse and Sue Banfield, all of whom
demonstrated the principle of hope in setting up and realizing this project. Our thanks to
George Steiner for his advice at important stages of its development. Margot Levy undertook
the task of copy-editing the work. She also supplied us with some valuable references. Isabel
Raphael interpreted Bloch's Latin devices
Page xviii
and allusions cum ira et studio, and likewise helped us to reference them. Our special thanks
to them both. Thanks also to Kevin Mulligan and to Martin Shovel.
The translators would like to acknowledge the financial assistance of Inter Nationes and of
South East Arts.
Page xix
TRANSLATORS' INTRODUCTION
Bloch's Early Life

Ernst Bloch was born in Ludwigshafen on 8th July 1885, the son of a Jewish railway official.
A stark contrast was presented to him as a child between the new industrial, proletarian city
where he grew up and the fading nineteenth-century opulence of Mannheim, the other city
just across the Rhine, with its Grnderzeit architecture and its old Residenz, one of the most
elaborate palaces in Germany. Though Bloch by no means dismisses the achievements of the
nineteenth-century bourgeoisie and describes them with a certain affection, this early
landscape of class contradiction must have been decisive in his formation as a socialist. The
local aniline and soda factory, Bloch points out in his early impressionistic and
autobiographical work 'Spuren' (Traces), was moved to Ludwigshafen 'so that the smoke and
proletariat did not drift over Mannheim'. But though he lived on the wrong side of the bridge,
his childhood was an imaginative and rewarding one which he looked back on fondly in his
later books. The visions and longings of the child are for Bloch the emotional inklings of the
spirit of 'venturing beyond' which he esteemed so highly in thinkers and innovators, and
without which the New is inconceivable. The games he played with his childhood friends
transformed the dismal, flat industrial hinterland of Ludwigshafen into an almost numinous,
hallucinatory landscape, populated with characters out of the adventure stories of Karl May.
As a boy Bloch immersed himself in these stories, a love of which he retained for the whole
of his life. Even in the core work of his mature system 'The Principle of Hope', a section is
devoted to fairytale and to colportage, the term he employed to describe the genre of the
adventure story. 'There is only Karl May and Hegel', he once said, 'everything in between is
an impure mixture'.
Bloch was an indifferent pupil, but a precocious intellect. As a schoolboy he was composing
speculative tracts with ambitious titles like 'The Universe in the Light of Atheism',
'Renaissance of Sensuality'. By the age of seventeen he was already corresponding with
prominent German philosophers
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of the day. Even as an old man he was to reach back into these early writings for a motto to
suit a volume of his complete works: ' . . .but the essence of the world is cheerful spirit and
the urge to creative shaping; the Thing In Itself is objective imagination'. This pre-appearance
and its re-appearance across seven decades demonstrates the homogeneous development of
Bloch's work and thought. It is also entirely consistent with his idea that only at the end of a
process does its beginning reveal itself and finally begin. Yet his school report for 1904/5,
two years after the above was written, informs us that 'his achievements are so minimal that,
considering the profound gaps in his knowledge, he will only be able to pass his final exams
by the most strenuous application'.
After studying philosophy in Munich and in Wrzburg, in both cases pursuing the idea of
bohemia and a particular girl-student rather than seeking out a particular professor, Bloch
moved to Berlin, where he was befriended and encouraged by Georg Simmel, a fashionable
professor whose interests ranged, as Bloch's were later to do, over the whole spectrum of
philosophy, sociology and metaphysics. Simmel was also one of the 'Georgekreis', the
intimate circle around the lyric poet Stefan George. But Bloch was dismissive of the aesthetic
posturing of the 'Georgekreis' and soon disillusioned by Simmel's inability to commit himself
to any of the positions he was so adept at expounding. During these years in Berlin Bloch
also forged an important friendship with the philosopher and critic Georg Lukcs. Bloch
travelled widely at this time, both with Lukcs and with Simmel, particularly in Italy. His
work reflects an interest not only in travel and travellers, but in the psychological attraction
of distance and foreignness in the daydreams and wishful images of the little man confined to
the everyday. It is with these dreams that 'The Principle of Hope' opens.
In 1911 Bloch went to Garmisch and began work on his own philosophy in earnest,
developing the key-concept of the Not-Yet-Conscious which he had formulated as early as
1907. For the next few years, Bloch moved between Garmisch and Heidelberg where Lukcs
was living. Later he wrote of this time and of his friendship with Lukcs: 'We had become so
close that we functioned like speaking-tubes. I was always away from Heidelberg, actually
had my writing-desk in Garmisch, I alternated between Garmisch and Heidelberg; the
beginnings of my philosophy were written in Garmisch a Bavarian birth then, with the will
to be worthy of the Alps which I had outside my window. If we were separated, I in
Garmisch and Lukcs in Heidelberg or somewhere else, and then we saw each other again
after a month or two then it might happen that I or he began to speak
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or to think where the other had just left off.' In Heidelberg Bloch became part of the circle
around the sociologist Max Weber. Marianne Weber gives us a picture of him at that time: 'A
new Jewish philosopher has recently arrived a boy with an enormous quiff and just as
enormous self-importance, he obviously regards himself as the forerunner of a new Messiah
and wants people to regard him as such.' Weber shared his wife's opinion and distanced
himself from Bloch, suspicious of his mystical ideas. In 1913 Bloch married Elsa von
Stritzky, a sculptress from Riga. Unfit for military service, he lived in Grnewald in the Isar
valley for most of the First World War before moving to Berne in 1917. He was emphatic in
his opposition to the war, which he saw as a fundamentally imperialist conflict. When
Simmel lent his support to the wave of patriotism sweeping Germany, Bloch finally severed
their friendship. In Zurich Bloch became acquainted with Walter Benjamin, seven years his
junior, the essayist and critic. Benjamin described him in a letter as 'the only person of
significance I have met in Switzerland so far', and later as the writer who alongside Kafka
and Brecht had perfected the German essay, a compliment he might justifiably have paid
himself.
The Spirit of Utopia

During this central decade of Expressionism, Bloch continued to develop the concept of the
Not-Yet-Conscious, and in 1918 published 'Geist der Utopie' (The Spirit of Utopia), a
mystical and prophetic work written in a highly Expressionist style. The book, his first major
work, is dedicated to his wife. Bloch's interest in religion which first becomes manifest in
'The Spirit of Utopia', unusual in a Marxist, may to some extent be attributed to the influence
of Elsa's almost gnostic Christian mysticism. This essayistic work is a blend of messianism,
socialism and ideas of unrevealed spiritual truth, but the book also reflects Bloch's early
interest in what was to become the principal field of his future study utopia. Bloch's great
friend Margarete Susman seems to have anticipated the importance of the ideas contained in
the book, seeing in it elements of a new German metaphysics.
Bloch's first wife, to whom he was devoted, died in 1921 after several years of illness. Her
death had a devastating effect on him, and continued to affect him throughout his life, as we
may see from the end of the very moving section on marriage in 'The Principle of Hope',
begun almost twenty years later: 'Just as the pain of love is a thousand times better than
Page xxii
unhappy marriage, in which there only remains pain, fruitless pain, so too the landlocked
adventures of love are diffuse compared with the great sea voyage which marriage can be,
which does not end with old age, not even with the death of one partner.' Here still, as
elsewhere in the section, there is a sense of his relationship with Elsa, and perhaps too of his
second abortive marriage to a painter from Frankfurt which lasted less than a year, an attempt
perhaps to replace the intimacy of the first. In 1928 a former girlfriend of Bloch's from the
days when he was living in Positano gave birth to a daughter, Mirjam, after their relationship
had ended. Frida Abeles did not inform Bloch of the pregnancy or of the birth; the news
reached him through the poet Else Lasker-Schler. The relationship was obviously an
embarrassment to Bloch who was by this time involved with Karola Piotrkowska, a young
student of architecture from Lodz in Poland whom he subsequently married in 1934. A
portrait of their felicitous life together may be read in Frau Karola Bloch's book 'Aus meinem
Leben' (From My Life).
Bloch continued to travel throughout the twenties after the death of his first wife. His visit to
Tunisia in 1926 brought him into contact with the world of Islam for the first time, a religion
which significantly contributes to the 'wishful images of the fulfilled moment' in volume
three of 'The Principle of Hope' alongside the Christian and Jewish traditions. When in
Germany, he was mainly based in Berlin. Another major friendship began here in the
twenties, with one of the philosophers who was later to be a major figure in the Frankfurt
School, Theodor Adorno. Adorno later speaks of 'the great Blochian music', and retained a
great admiration for Bloch, but as with Lukcs, the friendship was strained by the alleged
unorthodoxy of Bloch's subjectivist approach to socialism, even though by the twenties
Bloch was politically a hard-line communist. There seems to be some evidence that he
attempted to align himself in a more orthodox way with the mainstream of Marxist thinking.
In 1923 he issued a second re-written edition of 'The Spirit of Utopia' giving a more
systematic introduction to his utopian philosophy and attempting to fuse it with Marxism.
Bloch seems to have had a closer affinity with Walter Benjamin, with whom he was in close
contact in Berlin. Benjamin shared Bloch's interest in mystical traditions, particularly the
Cabbala, and they experimented with hashish together, another productive source of the
creative daydream for Bloch, as 'The Principle of Hope' elaborates. Elements of Benjamin's
theory of tragedy may be detected in Bloch's analysis of the
Page xxiii
social function of theatre at the end of the first volume of this work. By this tame Bloch's
literary reputation was established and he was writing regularly for the major newspapers in
Berlin. He had met Bertolt Brecht as early as 1921 and their friendship endured until the
latter's death. He was drawn to Brecht by his undogmatic approach to Marxism, and Brecht's
work forms the backbone of Bloch's view of the theatre as a socially instructive 'paradigmatic
institution'. Towards the end of the decade there were also friendships with Kurt Weill,
Hanns Eisler and Otto Klemperer.
In 1930 Bloch's major literary work was published, 'Spuren' (Traces), a collection of prose
pieces which set the tone for the cryptic passages that introduce each section of 'The
Principle of Hope'. During these Berlin years Bloch began work on 'Erbschaft dieser Zeit'
(Legacy of this Time), a critical analysis of the twenties and the rise of fascism, but this work
was interrupted by Hitler's accession to power. Bloch emigrated to Zurich at the beginning of
March 1933. During this period his friendship with Lukcs gradually developed into public
disagreement. This culminated in the notorious debate concerning Expressionism which by
1935 Lukcs, now a leading communist critic, saw as a direct cultural antecedent of National
Socialist ideology. Bloch published his first reply in an essay written as a result of the Nazis'
exhibition of 'degenerate art' in which many Expressionist works were included. But as 'The
Principle of Hope' illustrates at several points, Bloch remained loyal throughout his life to his
concept of Expressionism as a progressive artistic movement. Lukcs distanced himself more
and more from Bloch's mystical approach to the revelation of socialism. Lukcs pointed to
the decisive difference in position between his own 'Geschichte und Klassenbewutsein'
(History and Class Consciousness) and the utopian philosophy of 'The Spirit of Utopia' or
Bloch's book on the millenarian Christian Thomas Mnzer, 'Thomas Mnzer als Theologe
der Revolution' (Thomas Mnzer as Theologian of the Revolution). Even though as young
men they had both developed a socialist perspective, Lukcs did not consider Bloch to be a
'genuine Marxist'. Bloch also looked back on their early dialogue together with affection, and
in 1972, still with obvious respect for Lukcs, he dedicated 'Das Materialismusproblem' (The
Problem of Materialism) to the friend of his youth.
Exile in America
After Zurich, Bloch moved on to Vienna, then Paris and Prague where
Page xxiv
his son Jan was born in 1937. Keeping one step ahead of the Nazis, he emigrated to the
United States in 1938 and remained there for over a decade, living on the East Coast. It was
during this period that 'The Principle of Hope' was largely written (it was revised in the
1950s). Originally Bloch hoped to publish it in America under the title 'Dreams of a Better
Life'. The book shows a clear antipathy to a culture which he saw as the inevitable heir of the
fascism he had left Europe to escape. 'The Principle of Hope' bristles with anti-American
sentiments, and a good deal of its ideological analysis of the psychology of the Babbitt (a
term he borrowed from the American author Sinclair Lewis), the archetype of the little man,
has an American frame of reference. Bloch never fully mastered English, as may be seen
from some of his rather bizarre uses of American colloquialisms, and in fact he lived rather
remote from the other exiled German intellectuals in the United States, grouped around
Thomas Mann. The comprehensive 'Triptych of the German Emigration' painted by Arthur
Kaufmann during those years shows Bloch withdrawn, in the very back row. Like Benjamin,
who died during exile, Bloch was not given employment in Horkheimer's Institute for Social
Research when it moved from France to the USA, though Adorno's influence must have
carried great weight there. This perhaps shows the extent to which their friendship had
atrophied in the thirties. In 1942 Adorno did make a public appeal on behalf of Bloch in a
New York journal, outlining the deprivation in which Bloch was living at the time and
requesting donations. But this must have been very double-edged loyalty for Bloch, since
Adorno incorrectly stated that Bloch had been earning his living by washing dishes and that
he had been dismissed for his slowness. In fact, Karola Bloch supported Ernst and Jan by
working first as a waitress and then in an architect's office. Neither were the Blochs entirely
free of the anti-Semitism which had forced them to leave Germany. Many places of
recreation, Karola reports in her biography, were 'restricted' and inaccessible for Jews. In
1938, more than a decade before McCarthyism, a committee against 'un-American activities'
had been founded to counteract communism. Bloch was repeatedly forced to appear in the
Immigration Office in Boston to establish whether he was fit for American citizenship.
Though he had never been a member of the KPD, the Communist Party in Germany, he was
considered 'a premature anti-fascist', that is, someone who had been opposed to the fascists
before Pearl Harbour. Finally he was forced to undergo an oral examination on the American
Constitution. Karola Bloch relates that the astonished examiner called in his colleagues to
listen to Bloch's riveting analysis of the American War of Independence.
Page xxv
In this way he finally secured citizenship, two years later than his wife.
East and West

Bloch returned to Germany in 1949 to take up the chair of philosophy at the university of
Leipzig at the age of sixty-four. As 'The Principle of Hope' tells us, he did not consider that
the war was over, merely that the seat of fascist power had removed itself from Berlin to
Washington. To begin with, he seems to have firmly believed in the possibility of creating a
new anti-fascist society in the German Democratic Republic which would restore German
culture to greatness. In 1954/5 the first two volumes of 'The Principle of Hope' appeared, and
Bloch was awarded the National Prize of the GDR, and recognized as its leading philosopher.
But gradually his philosophical and political position became irreconcilable with that of the
leadership of the Stalinist SED (the ruling state party in the GDR). A number of his students
were arrested in 1957, among them Wolfgang Harich, a supporter of Tito's non-Stalinist
regime in Yugoslavia. Though Bloch rejected Harich's democratic humanist ideas of reform
for the GDR, he was implicated in counter-revolutionary activity and was fortunate to escape
arrest. Harich was sentenced to ten years imprisonment, accused of conspiracy with the West.
Bloch was forced to retire, forbidden to teach, and was obliged to give up the editorship of
the politically influential 'Deutsche Zeitschrift fr Philosophie'. His and Harich's
contributions were expunged from its index. Walter Ulbricht, leader of the SED, suggested
that Bloch's teaching adopted non-Marxist principles, laid too much emphasis on the
subjective, and that his utopian philosophy was ignoring the concrete class-struggle and
idealistically pursuing a 'distant goal'. These sentiments seem to echo those of Bloch's old
friend Lukcs, who had become the Minister of Culture in Hungary in the Nagy regime, but
it is worth considering that in 1956 Soviet troops were already suppressing
'counterrevolutionary' tendencies in Hungary, and Lukcs himself was forced into temporary
exile in Rumania, because of his closeness to the 'Yugoslavian' line. In 1957, with official
sanction, a pamphlet criticizing Bloch appeared in Berlin entitled 'Ernst Bloch's Revision of
Marxism'.
Branded as a revisionist, even as a mystic pantheist, Bloch was no longer able to participate
in academic life in the East. He lived in isolation, having contact only with personal friends.
His books continued to appear fitfully
Page xxvi
in the East, however. In 1959 the third volume of 'The Principle of Hope' was published.
Bloch began to travel more frequently to the West to deliver lectures and attend congresses.
In 1961 he was coincidentally in West Berlin when the Berlin Wall was first erected and
spontaneously took the decision to remain in the West, accepting a guest professorship at
Tbingen university where he continued to be an active advocate of socialism and, most
untypically for a German professor, devoted much of his time to his students. He spoke
publicly against the voting of emergency powers in October 1966. Later in the sixties he
befriended Rudi Dutschke and lent his support to the student movement, though with
characteristic anticipatory consciousness, expressing surprise that the radical movement
against capitalism in the West should emerge from the children of the middle class.
Bloch never visited the Soviet Union. His attitude to it in 'The Principle of Hope' is still
positive, but already we may detect a good deal of implicit criticism, of the ideology of the
comrade for example, of the nonintervention pact, and of State Socialism in general. But he
considered the artistic developments in dance and film in the Soviet Union to be extremely
progressive tendencies, and praised the elements of folk-culture which the revolution had
preserved, though he was well aware that the USSR had not reached political maturity, was
still in a transitional stage, contained elements of State Socialism and fell far short of the
'final state' which corresponded to his own utopian vision of international socialism. His own
reappraisal of Stalinism came late, after Khrushchev's in 1956, after Hungary, and only after
his own experiences in East Berlin. In later life he was opposed both to Soviet domination
and to American imperialism, supporting the Prague Spring and vehemently denouncing
America's part in the Vietnam War, advocating a diversification of socialism away from the
Soviet model. Bloch saw Marxism as a necessary synthesis of 'cold' and 'warm' streams, the
one representing its undeceived critical rigour, the other its idealistic and imaginative
receptivity. As early as the 1930s, Bloch warned against the separation of 'bread' and 'violin'
in the communist world. Ultimately he was condemned for not subordinating the latter to the
former in a decade of ideological entrenchment in the East.
Bloch was not exposed to the international acclaim accorded to the Frankfurt School in the
English-speaking world in the sixties and seventies, perhaps indeed because his works were
not available to readers of English. He shared Marcuse's suspicion of the ideologies into the
service of which the new technologies were being pressed in East and West. His voice was
Page xxvii
not heard outside Germany. But at Tbingen he became the pipe-smoking father figure of
philosophy in his own country, ultimately preferring, like his great literary guiding-image
Goethe, the climate of Southern Germany where his philosophy had begun. Bloch's
conception of old age, and the counselling role of the elder, was certainly one which he
realized in his own life. Though he became blind in later years, he lived to supervise and to
revise the seventeen volumes of his collected works, an astonishing achievement for a
philosopher in his own life-time and consistent with his wishful image and archetype of
harvest. He died in the summer of 1977 at the age of ninety-two.
Bloch and Tradition

Consistent with his view that the past contains a cultural inheritance and utopian content still
to be extracted, Bloch's philosophy, though firmly rooted in the German tradition, contains an
eclectic mixture of progressive elements drawn from classical, oriental and Western
philosophies. The inheritance that is to be claimed from the past, however, is not a legacy of
fixed tradition, but of undischarged hope-content and utopian content in the works of the
past. Thus Bloch takes the utopian aspirations and energy of the subjective factor in German
Idealism first systematized by Kant and combines it with the objective factor in the
materialist philosophy of Marx and Engels. He takes the concept of process from Hegel and
develops it into his own concept of open process at work in dialectical materialism. He takes
Aristotle's concept of 'entelechy' and builds it into his own theory of possibility. He takes
Bacon's 'New Atlantis' and includes it in the historical programme for socialism. But
claiming this inheritance in no way makes Bloch a secondary thinker. It is entirely consistent
with his wholly original concept of the Not-Yet-Conscious, the preconscious dimension in
both past and future. New meaning and fresh synthetic combinations can be extracted from
the thinking of the past, precisely because this thinking is not yet finished, and is to be
discovered and inherited by each succeeding age. The works of the past contain the
premonitory and pre-figurative images of the next stage of society. In open process,
succeeding ages 're-function' the material of the past to suit their ideological requirements,
whether reactionary or progressive. But from all progressive thinking a utopian surplus is
carried over into the future. It may lie dormant for centuries before new social conditions
recall it and extract its new
Page xxviii
meaning. 'The Principle of Hope' is an encyclopaedia of hope that attempts to catalogue the
surplus of utopian thought from the early Greek philosophers to the present day. Bloch
understands utopia not as an impossible ideal, but as a real and concrete final state which can
be achieved politically. He sees the development of socialism as the modern expression of
the utopian function which effects this change, the goal towards which the process of history
is impelled by utopian thinking.
But history is by no means mechanical or fully determined for Bloch. It is not an inevitable
march towards socialism. Its dynamic is not a Hegelian world-spirit. It advances at all stages
through possibility. The possibility of Nothing, of the In-Vain remains. Possibility is itself an
open process, and not merely in the subject. Bloch considers that the object itself contains
layers of possibility, culminating in the objectively real Possible, the ultimate synthesis of
subjective and objective realization of the world. Bloch has often been placed squarely in the
Romantic tradition because of this attempted synthesis, as if he were continuing the utopian
search for the 'blue flower' of German Romanticism where imagination and world finally
meet. But the subjective idealism of Schelling and Fichte, the philosophical inspiration
behind German Romanticism, sought this synthesis without considering possible
development in the object, in objective process in the world. Whereas Bloch insists on the
bilateral development of both the subjective and the objective factor and on their dialectical
interaction. Bloch takes as his model for this final state of subjective and objective cognition
the idea mentioned in a letter from Marx to Ruge in 1843 of the world possessing 'a dream of
the matter', of a real state of the world that has not yet become manifest and will only become
so through socialism. Yet Bloch understands that this ultimately real perception of the world
implies the political task of humanizing the world. Hegel's 'Thing in Itself' must also become
Engels' 'Thing For Us'. By theoretically and practically realizing the real possibility of the
world, it may be transformed into 'Heimat' homeland, where, in the words of Bloch's
literary guiding-image, Faust, we may say 'Here I am human, here I am entitled to be!' At all
points in Bloch there is the sense of this human freedom. The problematic dialectic of
freedom and order is a central question in his work. His discussion of this relationship (which
forms part of volume two of 'The Principle of Hope') was the first of his writings to appear
after the war, but the political implications did not endear him to his post-war sponsors in the
stabilizing regimes of the Eastern Bloc.
The Not-Yet-Conscious can be contained in past, present and future.
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Unrealized meaning can be trapped in the works of the past. The 'darkness of the just lived
moment' which prevents us from experiencing and enjoying the world in a Carpe diem sense
indicates the presence of the Not-Yet-Conscious in the present. The future aspect of the Not-
Yet-Conscious is principally revealed in what Bloch calls 'forward dawning' and 'pre-
appearance' ('Vor-Schein', which also has the connotation of 'shining ahead'). Every age
contains its horizon, its Front over which this Not-Yet-Conscious flows when the block of
static and regressive thinking is lifted. It may actually be observed in social and political
events, as in the storming of the Bastille, for example, but art is the major repository of the
images, archetypes and symbols of the Not-Yet-Conscious, supplying us with the guiding-
images that 'venture beyond' the statics of the known world. In his historical survey of the
Not-Yet-Conscious, Bloch concentrates on the thinkers and project-makers who have
extended this Front by venturing beyond, by inventing, visualizing the possibilities of the
world that is coming over the threshold. 'The Principle of Hope' is thus an encyclopaedia of
these figures and their appearance in reality and in art.
The Not-Yet-Conscious contains an individual psychological dimension as well as social and
political expression. In characteristically polemical style, Bloch attacks Freud and
particularly Jung (whom he regarded as a thinker complicit with fascism) for confining the
unconscious to the past, in Jung's case to an ahistorical dimension of primal experience.
Bloch illustrates how this theory was appropriated to serve the bogus notions of Aryan purity
and native soil by German Nazism. His criticism of Freud largely centred on the latter's
understanding of repression. Freud's analysis solely attempted to lead his patients back into
the past to confront the origins of their neurosis, the repressed material that was inhibiting
them. There was no concern with future, not yet conscious development. Analogously, in
Bloch's view, Freud avoided analysis of the social causes of repression and entertained no
idea of the future development of the society which might improve the psychological
conditions of his patients. He only addressed himself to the symptoms and not the
fundamental causes of their neuroses. Furthermore, he ignored the most basic human drive,
the closest drive to the unrevealed 'That' which drives on within us, namely hunger. It is
significant that Freud never uses the German term 'Instinkt' for his theory of the drives, but
rather the word 'Trieb'. It may well be that Strachey's English translation of Freud has
committed a major error in referring to the drives as 'instincts'. Bloch's analysis of Freud
makes this distinction unequivocal. He extends the theory of the drives by demonstrating
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that they are socialized rather than innate, and thus wholly distinct from instincts.
It is perhaps no coincidence that Bloch's philosophy was ultimately considered heretical in
the East. Bloch's attention always seems to wander in the direction of heretical rather than
orthodox figures. His earlier book on Thomas Mnzer is a pre-appearance of his
preoccupation with thinkers who are challenging orthodox beliefs. Mnzer and millenarians
like Joachim of Fiore feature largely in 'The Principle of Hope', whereas Luther, the father of
the orthodox Reformation in Germany, only merits a handful of references. Bloch's
commitment to the Hermetic tradition and to heretical figures in general reflects his
preference for those thinkers who regard the world as an unrevealed mystery rather than a
body of received laws and commandments. In 'The Principle of Hope' he chooses to
investigate the Cabbala rather than the Torah, prospective alchemy rather than determined
astrology, systems of thought that are processive and open rather than already manifest and
absolute. Bloch's 'Principle of Hope' is of course such a system itself, and owes almost as
much to the Hermetic tradition as it does to the tradition of dialectical materialism. Sections
of the work have a mystical quality as they approach the That-riddle of consciousness that
appears behind the drives, but Bloch would not see this as metaphysical speculation
incompatible with a materialist approach to the world. He seeks to relocate man's
metaphysical aspirations and apotheoses in worldly experience itself, and to reveal the world
precisely as the mystery towards which Hermetic thinking has been groping.
This mystical aspect of Bloch's work, often lifting his thought out of culturally specific
historical and philosophical argument on to a different level of elliptical conceptual and
linguistic connection, may well have contributed to the notion that Bloch is a difficult
thinker. But these passages, cryptically opening each section of 'The Principle of Hope',
transcendentally and climactically closing each section with a sweeping gesture of optimism
or hope, perhaps hold the key to Bloch's literary style. The notion of 'intensification'
(Steigerung), already present in Goethe, permeates Bloch's work. Bloch's cadences do not
fall, they are always going up. It is therefore no coincidence that many sections of the work
end on the 'heights', on the metaphor of the high mountains, as indeed does 'Faust', a fact of
which Bloch was well aware. The book is full of explicit and implicit references to 'Faust',
and the structure of Goethe's major work is unmistakably present behind Bloch's own, as it
moves towards 'identity'. The symphonic structure of the work is also clearly evident. Bloch
considered music to
Page xxxi
be the most important of the arts, in which the Not-Yet and the utopian could be most
perfectly realized. Reprises, refrains, codas, the musical gestures are unmistakable. Bloch
was not only anxious to include the ontological and utopian gestures of music in his
catalogue of hope (a section is devoted to it in volume three), but also to incorporate these
gestures in the structure of his major work itself.
The Style of 'The Principle of Hope'

'The Principle of Hope' is thus certainly a literary work in its own right, and this may also
account for the suspicion with which it has been received in Marxist circles. Alongside the
metaphor of the high mountains is that of the ship venturing beyond the Pillars of Hercules,
an image inherited from Francis Bacon, whom Bloch greatly admired. These images become
sunken metaphors, often just below the text, apparently lost, then surfacing again with new
significance, perfectly mirroring in metaphorical terms Bloch's theory of the continuing
legacy of utopian content. Forward dawning is also an aspect of Bloch's style. An image will
be filtered into the argument before it emerges in its full metaphorical plumage, as real
cipher. But Bloch's philosophy, of course, acknowledges the residual traces of past
consciousness in advancing process, and this is also reflected in the fabric of the text, which
reveals a great deal of after-ripening of ideas and images, reintroductions of motifs and
metaphors, charged with renewed significance. A repeated idea, as Bloch states in his own
introduction, may have learnt something in the meantime. Bloch's eclectic choice of register
is in itself a further reflection of his theory of the mutual presence of the past and future in
each other. He blends archaisms, Latin and Greek terms, obsolescent usages,
'Volksweisheiten' (popular sayings and proverbs) with the language of Marxism, science and
dialectical materialism to produce a kind of cultural lexicon of the German language.
As a poet, Bloch is perhaps a poet of light. The quality of light, morning red, distant blue, the
blue hour of twilight, are metaphorical expressions of states of consciousness, both individual
and social, and of states of hope and realization. New and unexpired ideas appear as
premonitory glimmerings and extended after-glowings, shining ahead or continuing to bathe
history in their unextinguished light. Bloch holds up a light-meter to history to test its utopian
content. Light, and all its nuances, becomes the most fundamental 'real cipher' in the book.
The theory of the 'real cipher' is
Page xxxii
crucial to an understanding of Bloch's literary style and of his use of metaphor. He develops
Goethe's conclusion in 'Faust' that 'Everything transitory is only a metaphor', and sees the
very objects of the phenomenal world as 'real ciphers' of the world-riddle, that is, he believes
the world contains in metaphorical form the secret signatures of the world mystery that is to
be revealed. Bloch had conceived this idea of traces which the world-secret leaves behind it
in the physical details of the world much earlier in 'Traces', begun in 1917 though completed
in 1930, but it is in 'The Principle of Hope' that this aspect of his theory is developed into a
fully fledged aesthetics, synthesized with the concept of the possible utopian All that, if
progressive forces prevail, may finally be attained. Art is thus fundamentally concerned not
with the imitation but with the revelation of the world, the process by which the images of
the Not-Yet-Conscious are brought into consciousness. But for Bloch the successful
achievement of this utopian final state is by no means an inevitability. He is equally aware of
the opposite cipher circulating in the world, the Nothing which expressed itself and may
express itself again in the darkness of fascism.
Venturing Beyond
This is the first full translation of any of Bloch's works in English. It is ironic to think that
'The Principle of Hope' might first have been published in England before it had even
appeared in Germany. Paul Tillich, among others, was instrumental in trying to get the book
published in Oxford in the 1940s. But no contract was ultimately signed. The work seems to
have been hovering on English consciousness for many years, its arrival inhibited by the
resistance to heterodox socialist thought in British academic philosophy. This delay is itself a
true example of the Blochian Not-Yet-Conscious. But there is no sense in which the book
now appears, forty years later, as an anachronism. Always when reading Bloch there is the
impression of a mind not confined to a specific decade but spanning the century, forwards
and backwards. This year, 1985, is his centenary. There could be no more fitting time to
present 'The Principle of Hope' in an English translation. In a time of cultural re-
entrenchment and social pessimism, it presents a radical reappraisal of utopian socialist
thinking. But it is not merely an academic catalogue of socialist and utopian thinkers. In fact,
though Bloch was himself suspicious of the idea of 'Lebensphilosophie', programmatic
philosophies of life, he provides in this book a moral and
Page xxxiii
intellectual agenda for socialism, a philosophical and historical counter-argument to the

popular ideology that radical change in itself presents a danger and a threat to humanity and
to 'order'. By providing a panoramic view of history, Bloch demonstrates that it is precisely
radical thinkers 'venturing beyond' available existence who have extended and humanized the
world through intellectual, scientific and artistic innovation. He may now certainly take his
place amongst the great innovators and utopians who have espoused the principle of hope.
Fittingly, his own epitaph, taken from this book, reads: 'Thinking means venturing beyond'.
Bloch was no utopist, he considered his philosophy to be concretely utopian, mediated with
real possibility, and his philosophy advocates engagement with, rather than contemplation of,
the world. There is certainly no sense of detachment, in his life or in his work, from political
reality and practice. From the beginning, he was a tireless opponent of imperialism, fascism
and war. From very early on, he was aware of the potential of nuclear weapons, of the
negative Ultimum, of the destruction to which man's scientific innovations could be turned.
And he never wavered in the belief that socialism was ultimately the only alternative to the
annihilation capitalism would inevitably bring if man did not venture beyond it politically
and embrace radical change. 'The Principle of Hope', Bloch's central work, is a historical and
collective statement of hope against this annihilation, but also a practical guide to living in
late capitalist society, in cultural decline, where the possibility of a truly human society
seems remote and the dominant emotion is fear. As an alternative, it offers a socialist theory
of the emotions based instead on the strongest of the expectant emotions hope. It envisages
a new society where men and women can at last become like proper human beings, living
and working and above all enjoying themselves in a world which has become Thing For Us,
or in Bloch's own phrase, where man is walking upright.
NEVILLE PLAICE
STEPHEN PLAICE
PAUL KNIGHT
BRIGHTON, 1985
Page xxxiv
To my son Jan Robert Bloch
Page 3
INTRODUCTION
Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What are we waiting for? What
awaits us?
Many only feel confused. The ground shakes, they do not know why and with what. Theirs is
a state of anxiety; if it becomes more definite, then it is fear.
Once a man travelled far and wide to learn fear. In the time that has just passed, it came
easier and closer, the art was mastered in a terrible fashion. But now that the creators of fear
have been dealt with, a feeling that suits us better is overdue.
It is a question of learning hope. Its work does not renounce, it is in love with success rather
than failure. Hope, superior to fear, is neither passive like the latter, nor locked into
nothingness. The emotion of hope goes out of itself, makes people broad instead of confining
them, cannot know nearly enough of what it is that makes them inwardly aimed, of what may
be allied to them outwardly. The work of this emotion requires people who throw themselves
actively into what is becoming, to which they themselves belong. It will not tolerate a dog's
life which feels itself only passively thrown into What Is, which is not seen through, even
wretchedly recognized. The work against anxiety about life and the machinations of fear is
that against its creators, who are for the most part easy to identify, and it looks in the world
itself for what can help the world; this can be found. How richly people have always dreamed
of this, dreamed of the better life that might be possible. Everybody's life is pervaded by
daydreams: one part of this is just stale, even enervating escapism, even booty for swindlers,
but another part is provocative, is not content just to accept the bad which exists, does not
accept renunciation. This other part has hoping at its core, and is teachable. It can be
extricated from the unregulated daydream and from its sly misuse, can be activated
undimmed. Nobody has ever lived without daydreams, but it is a question of knowing them
deeper and deeper and in this way keeping them trained unerringly, usefully, on what is right.
Let the daydreams grow even fuller, since this means they are enriching themselves around
the sober glance; not in the
Page 4
sense of clogging, but of becoming clear. Not in the sense of merely contemplative reason
which takes things as they are and as they stand, but of participating reason which takes them
as they go, and therefore also as they could go better. Then let the daydreams grow really
fuller, that is, clearer, less random, more familiar, more clearly understood and more
mediated with the course of things. So that the wheat which is trying to ripen can be
encouraged to grow and be harvested.
Thinking means venturing beyond. But in such a way that what already exists is not kept
under or skated over. Not in its deprivation, let alone in moving out of it. Not in the causes of
deprivation, let alone in the first signs of the change which is ripening within it. That is why
real venturing beyond never goes into the mere vacuum of an In-Front-of-Us, merely
fanatically, merely visualizing abstractions. Instead, it grasps the New as something that is
mediated in what exists and is in motion, although to be revealed the New demands the most
extreme effort of will. Real venturing beyond knows and activates the tendency which is
inherent in history and which proceeds dialectically. Primarily, everybody lives in the future,
because they strive, past things only come later, and as yet genuine present is almost never
there at all. The future dimension contains what is feared or what is hoped for; as regards
human intention, that is, when it is not thwarted, it contains only what is hoped for. Function
and content of hope are experienced continuously, and in times of rising societies they have
been continuously activated and extended. Only in times of a declining old society, like
modern Western society, does a certain partial and transitory intention run exclusively
downwards. Then those who cannot find their way out of the decline are confronted with fear
of hope and against it. Then fear presents itself as the subjectivist, nihilism as the objectivist
mask of the crisis phenomenon: which is tolerated but not seen through, which is lamented
but not changed. On bourgeois ground, especially in the abyss which has opened and into
which the bourgeoisie has moved, change is impossible anyway even if it were desired,
which is by no means the case. In fact, bourgeois interest would like to draw every other
interest opposed to it into its own failure; so, in order to drain the new life, it makes its own
agony apparently fundamental, apparently ontological. The futility of bourgeois existence is
extended to be that of the human situation in general, of existence per se. Without success in
the long run, of course: the bourgeois emptiness that has developed is as ephemeral as the
class which alone still expresses itself within it, and as spineless as the illusory existence of
its own bad immediacy with which it is in league. Hopelessness
Page 5
is itself, in a temporal and factual sense, the most insupportable thing, downright intolerable
to human needs. Which is why even deception, if it is to be effective, must work with
flatteringly and corruptly aroused hope. Which is also why hope is preached from every
pulpit, but is confined to mere inwardness or to empty promises of the other world. Which is
why even the latest miseries of Western philosophy are no longer able to present their
philosophy of misery without loaning the idea of transcendence, venturing beyond, from the
bank. All this means is that man is essentially determined by the future, but with the
cynically self-interested inference, hypostasized from its own class position, that the future is
the sign outside the No Future night club, and the destiny of man nothingness. Well: let the
dead bury their dead; even in the hesitation which the outstaying night draws over it, the
beginning day is listening to something other than the putridly stifling, hollowly nihilistic
death-knell. As long as man is in a bad way, both private and public existence are pervaded
by daydreams; dreams of a better life than that which has so far been given him. In what is
false, and all the more so in what is genuine, every human intention is applied on to this
ground. And even where the ground, as so often before, may deceive us, full of sandbanks
one moment, full of chimeras the next, it can only be condemned and possibly cleared up
through combined research into objective tendency and subjective intention. Corruptio
optimi pessima: fraudulent hope is one of the greatest malefactors, even enervators, of the
human race, concretely genuine hope its most dedicated benefactor. Thus, knowing-concrete
hope subjectively breaks most powerfully into fear, objectively leads most efficiently
towards the radical termination of the contents of fear. Together with informed discontent
which belongs to hope, because they both arise out of the No to deprivation.
Thinking means venturing beyond. Admittedly, venturing beyond has not been all that adept
at finding its thinking until now. Or even if it was found, there were too many bad eyes
around which did not see the matter clearly. Lazy substitution, current copying
representation, the pig's bladder of a reactionary, but also schematizing Zeitgeist, these
repressed what had been discovered. Marx's work marks the turning-point in the process of
concrete venturing beyond becoming conscious. But around this point deeply ingrained
habits of thinking cling to a world without Front. Not only man is in a bad way here, but so is
the insight into his hope. Intending is not heard in its characteristic anticipating tone,
objective tendency is not recognized in its characteristic anticipatory powerfulness. The
desiderium, the only honest attribute of all men, is unexplored. The
Page 6
Not-Yet-Conscious, Not-Yet-Become, although it fulfils the meaning of all men and the
horizon of all being, has not even broken through as a word, let alone as a concept. This
blossoming field of questions lies almost speechless in previous philosophy. Forward
dreaming, as Lenin says, was not reflected on, was only touched on sporadically, did not
attain the concept appropriate to it. Until Marx, expectation and what is expected, the former
in the subject, the latter in the object, the oncoming as a whole did not take on a global
dimension, in which it could find a place, let alone a central one. The huge occurrence of
utopia in the world is almost unilluminated explicitly. Of all the strange features of
ignorance, this is one of the most conspicuous. In his first attempt at a Latin grammar, M.
Terentius Varro is said to have forgotten the future tense; philosophically, it has still not been
adequately considered to this day. This means: an overwhelmingly static thinking did not
name or even understand this condition, and it repeatedly closes off as something finished
what has become its lot. As contemplative knowledge it is by definition solely knowledge of
what can be contemplated, namely of the past, and it bends an arch of closed form-contents
out of Becomeness over the Unbecome. Consequently, even where it is grasped historically,
this world is a world of repetition or of the great Time-and-Again; it is a palace of fateful
events, as Leibniz called it without breaking out of it. Occurrence becomes history,
knowledge re-remembering, celebration the observance of something that has been. This is
how all previous philosophers went about it, with their form, idea or substance posited as
being finished, even postulating Kant, even dialectical Hegel. In this way physical and
metaphysical need spoiled its appetite, in particular its paths to outstanding satisfaction,
certainly not just that achieved in books, were blocked. Hope, with its positive correlate: the
still unclosed determinateness of existence, superior to any res finita, does not therefore
occur in the history of the sciences, either as psychological or as cosmic entity and least of all
as functionary of what has never been, of the possible New. Therefore: a particularly
extensive attempt is made in this book to bring philosophy to hope, as to a place in the world
which is as inhabited as the best civilized land and as unexplored as the Antarctic. In critical
and further elaborated connection with the contents of the author's previous books, 'Traces',
especially 'The Spirit of Utopia', 'Thomas Mnzer', 'Legacy of this Time', 'Subject-Object'.
Longing, expectation, hope therefore need their hermeneutics, the dawning of the In-Front-
of-Us demands its specific concept, the Novum demands its concept of the Front. And all this
so that ultimately the royal road through the mediated
Page 7
realm of possibility to the necessarily Intended can be critically laid, and can remain
orientated, without being broken off. Docta spes, comprehended hope, thus illuminates the
concept of a principle in the world, a concept which will no longer leave it. For the very
reason that this principle has always been in the process of the world, but philosophically
excluded for so long. Since there is absolutely no conscious production of history along
whose path of informed tendency the goal would not likewise be all, the concept of the
utopian (in the positive sense of the word) principle, that of hope and its contents worthy of
human beings, is an absolutely central one here. Indeed, what is designated by this concept
lies in the horizon of the consciousness that is becoming adequate of any given thing, in the
risen horizon that is rising even higher. Expectation, hope, intention towards possibility that
has still not become: this is not only a basic feature of human consciousness, but, concretely
corrected and grasped, a basic determination within objective reality as a whole. Since Marx,
no research into truth and no realistic judgement is possible at all which will be able to avoid
the subjective and objective hope-contents of the world without paying the penalty of
triviality or reaching a dead-end. Philosophy will have conscience of tomorrow, commitment
to the future, knowledge of hope, or it will have no more knowledge. And the new
philosophy, as it was initiated by Marx, is the same thing as the philosophy of the New, this
entity which expects, destroys or fulfils us all. Its consciousness is the openness of danger
and of the victory which is to be brought about in those conditions. Its space is the
objectively real possibility within process, along the path of the Object* itself, in which what
is radically intended by man is not delivered anywhere but not thwarted anywhere either. Its
concern, to which all its energies must be devoted, remains what is truly hoping in the
subject, truly hoped for in the object: our task is to research the function and content of this
central Thing For Us.
The good New is never that completely new. It acts far beyond the daydreams by which life
is pervaded and of which the figurative arts are full. All freedom movements are guided by
utopian aspirations, and all Christians know them after their own fashion too, with sleeping
conscience or with consternation, from the exodus and messianic parts of the Bible. In
addition, the merging of have and have-not constituted by longing and hope, and by the drive
to reach home again, has in any case been burrowing in great philosophy. Not only in Plato's
Eros, but also in the far-reaching Aristotelian concept of matter as that of possibility towards
essence, and
*
For a distinction between 'Objekt' (object) and 'Gegenstand' (Object) see footnote on p. 166.
Page 8
in Leibniz's concept of tendency. Hope acts unmediatedly in the Kantian postulates of moral
consciousness, it acts in a world-based, mediated way in Hegel's historical dialectic.
However, despite all these Enlightenment patrols and even expeditions into terram utopicam,
there is something broken off about them all, broken off by contemplation. Most obviously
perhaps in Hegel, who ventured out furthest: What Has Been overwhelms what is
approaching, the collection of things that have become totally obstructs the categories Future,
Front, Novum. Thus the utopian principle could not achieve a breakthrough, either in the
archaic-mythical world, despite exodus from this, or in the urbane-rationalistic one, despite
explosive dialectics. The reason for this is invariably that both the archaic-mythical and the
urbane-rationalistic cast of mind are contemplative-idealistic, consequently, being merely
passive-contemplative, they presuppose a closed world that has already become, including
the projected over-world in which What Has Become is reflected. The gods of perfection in
the former, the ideas or ideals in the latter are in their illusory being just as much res finitae
as the so-called facts of this world in their empirical being. Future of the genuine,
processively open kind is therefore sealed off from and alien to any mere contemplation.
Only thinking directed towards changing the world and informing the desire to change it does
not confront the future (the unclosed space for new development in front of us) as
embarrassment and the past as spell. Hence the crucial point is: only knowledge as conscious
theory-practice confronts Becoming and what can be decided within it, conversely,
contemplative knowledge can only refer by definition to What Has Become. In myth, the
direct expression of this pull towards What Has Been, this relation to What Has Become is
self-absorption, is the urge towards the immemorial, also the continual predominance of what
is truly pagan, namely astral-mythic, the fixed dome arching over all occurrence. The
methodical expression of the same connection to the past, estrangement from the future in
rationalism is Plato's anamnesis, or the doctrine that all knowledge is simply re-remembering.
Re-remembering of the ideas perceived before birth, of totally primal past or what is
ahistorically eternal. Whereby Beingness simply coincides with Been-ness, and the owl of
Minerva always begins its flight only after dusk has fallen, when a form of life has already
become old. Even Hegel's dialectic, in its ultimate 'circle of circles', is similarly inhibited by
the phantom of anamnesis and banished into the antiquarium. Marx was the first to posit the
pathos of change instead of this, as the beginning of a theory which does not resign itself to
contemplation and interpretation. The rigid divisions between future
Page 9
and past thus themselves collapse, unbecome future becomes visible in the past, avenged and
inherited, mediated and fulfilled past in the future. Past that is grasped in isolation and clung
to in this way is a mere commodity category, that is, a reified Factum without consciousness
of its Fieri and of its continuing process. But true action in the present itself occurs solely in
the totality of this process which is unclosed both backwards and forwards, materialistic
dialectics becomes the instrument to control this process, the instrument of the mediated,
controlled Novum. The Ratio of the bourgeois epoch which remained progressive is the next
inheritance for this (minus ideology which is tied to its location and the increasing emptying
of contents). But this Ratio is not the sole inheritance, on the contrary, preceding societies
and even many myths in them (again minus mere ideology and particularly minus pre-
scientifically preserved superstition) may also provide a philosophy which has surmounted
the bourgeois barrier of knowledge with possibly progressive inherited material, even
though, as is obvious, this material particularly requires elucidation, critical acquisition,
functional change. Consider for example the role of purpose (Where To, What For) in pre-
capitalist world-pictures or even the meaning of quality in their non-.mechanical concept of
nature. Consider the myth of Prometheus, whom Marx calls the most distinguished saint in
the philosophical calendar. Consider the myth of the Golden Age and its transposition into
the future in the messianic consciousness of so many oppressed classes and peoples. Marxist
philosophy, as that which at last adequately addresses what is becoming and what is
approaching, also knows the whole of the past in creative breadth, because it knows no past
other than the still living, not yet discharged past. Marxist philosophy is that of the future,
therefore also of the future in the past; thus, in this collected consciousness of Front, it is
living theory-practice of comprehended tendency, familiar with occurrence, in league with
the Novum. And the crucial point remains: the light, in whose appearance the processive-
unclosed Totum is depicted and promoted, is called docta spes, dialectical-materialistically
comprehended hope. The basic theme of philosophy which remains and is, in that it becomes,
is the still unbecome, still unachieved homeland, as it develops outwards and upwards in the
dialectical-materialistic struggle of the New with the old.
Furthermore a signal is set for this. A forward signal which enables us to overtake, not to trot
behind. Its meaning is Not-Yet, and the task is to grasp it thoroughly. In line with what Lenin
meant in a passage which has come to be very much praised over the years, but not so
eagerly taken to heart:
Page 10
' ''What must we dream of?" I have written these words down and am shocked. I imagine I
am sitting in a 'coordination conference' and opposite me are sitting the editors and staff of
the 'Rabocheye Dyelo'. And then Comrade Martinov stands up and turns to me menacingly:
"May I be permitted to ask if an autonomous editorial staff still has the right to dream
without previously consulting the Party committee?" And after him Comrade Kritschevski
stands up and (philosophically expanding the ideas of Comrade Martinov who has long been
expanding those of Comrade Plekhanov) continues even more menacingly: "I'll go further
than that. I'm asking whether a Marxist has the right to dream at all, unless he forgets that
according to Marx humanity only sets itself tasks that it can solve, and that tactics are a
process of growth of these tasks, which grow together with the Party?"
I shudder at the mere thought of these menacing questions, and I wonder where I can hide. I
will try and hide behind Pissarev.
"One gulf is different to another", wrote Pissarev concerning the gulf between dream and
reality. "My dreams can overtake the natural course of events, or they can go off at complete
tangents, down paths that the natural course of events can never tread. In the first case
dreaming is totally harmless; it can even encourage and strengthen the working man's power
to act . . . There is nothing about such dreams which impairs or cripples creativity. In fact,
quite the contrary. If a person were completely devoid of all capability of dreaming in this
way, if he were not able to hasten ahead now and again to view in his imagination as a
unified and completed picture the work which is only now beginning to take shape in his
hands, then I find it absolutely impossible to imagine what would motivate the person to
tackle and to complete extensive and strenuous pieces of work in the fields of art, science,
and practical life . . . The gulf between dream and reality is not harmful if only the dreamer
seriously believes in his dream, if he observes life attentively, compares his observations
with his castles in the air and generally works towards the realization of his dream-construct
conscientiously. There only has to be some point of contact between dream and life for
everything to be in the best order."
In our movement there are unfortunately precious few dreams of this kind. And those people
are chiefly responsible for this who boast how sober they are and how "close" they stand to
the "concrete", and those are the representatives of legitimate criticism and the illegitimate
politics of trotting behind' (Lenin, What is to be Done?).
So let a further signal be set for forward dreaming. This book deals with nothing other than
hoping beyond the day which has become. The
Page 11
theme of the five parts of this work (written between 1938 and 1947, revised in 1953 and
1959) is the dreams of a better life. Their unmediated, but principally their mediatable
features and contents are broadly taken up, explored and tested. And the path leads via the
little waking dreams to the strong ones, via the wavering dreams that can be abused to the
rigorous ones, via the shifting castles in the air to the One Thing that is outstanding and
needful. * So the book begins with daydreams of an average kind, lightly and freely selected
from youth to old age. They fill the first part: report, concerning the man in the street and
unregulated wishes. This is immediately followed, founding and supporting everything else,
by the second and fundamental part: the examination of anticipatory consciousness. For
reasons founded in the subject itself, the foundation makes many sections of this part no easy
reading, but of gradually increasing difficulty. But, to the reader who is being informed by it
and being led deeper into it, it equally becomes of decreasing difficulty. The interesting
nature of the subject also relieves the effort of assimilating it, just as the light above is part of
climbing a mountain, and climbing a mountain is part of the inspiring view at the top.
Hunger, the main drive, must be worked out here, and the way it proceeds to the rejection of
deprivation, that is, to the most important expectant emotion: hope. A central task in this part
is the discovery and unmistakable notation of the 'Not-Yet-Conscious'. That is: a relatively
still Unconscious disposed towards its other side, forwards rather than backwards. Towards
the side of something new that is dawning up, that has never been conscious before, not, for
example, something forgotten, something rememberable that has been, something that has
sunk into the subconscious in repressed or archaic fashion. From Leibniz's discovery of the
subconscious via the Romantic psychology of night and primeval past to the psychoanalysis
of Freud, essentially only 'backward dawning' has previously been described and
investigated. People thought they had discovered that everything present is loaded with
memory, with past in the cellar of the No-Longer-Conscious. What they had not discovered
was that there is in present material, indeed in what is remembered itself, an impetus and a
sense of being broken off, a brooding quality and an anticipation of Not-Yet-Become; and
this broken-off and broached material does not take place in the cellar of consciousness, but
on its Front. So it is a question here of the psychological processes of approaching, which are
so characteristic above all for youth, for times of change, for the adventures
*
Cf. Luke 10, 42.
Page 12
of productivity, for all phenomena therefore in which Unbecome is located and seeks to
articulate itself. The anticipatory thus operates in the field of hope; so this hope is not taken
only as emotion, as the opposite of fear (because fear too can of course anticipate), but more
essentially as a directing act of a cognitive kind (and here the opposite is then not fear, but
memory). The imagination and the thoughts of future intention described in this way are
utopian, this again not in a narrow sense of the word which only defines what is bad
(emotively reckless picturing, playful form of an abstract kind), but rather in fact in the
newly tenable sense of the forward dream, of anticipation in general. And so the category of
the Utopian, beside the usual, justifiably pejorative sense, possesses the other, in no way
necessarily abstract or unworldly sense, much more centrally turned towards the world: of
overtaking the natural course of events. Thus understood, the theme of the second part is the
utopian function and its contents. The exposition examines the relationship of this function to
ideology, to archetypes, to ideals, to symbols, to the categories Front and Novum, Nothing
and Homeland, to the fundamental problem of the Here and Now. Here, against all stale and
static nihilism, it must be borne in mind: even the Nothing is a utopian category, though an
extremely anti-utopian one. Far from forming a nullifying basis or being a background of this
kind (so that the day of being lies between two absolute nights), the Nothing is exactly like
the positive Utopicum: Homeland or the All simply 'existing' as objective possibility. It
circulates in the process of the world, but does not ride on it; both: Nothing and All are still
in no way decided as utopian characters, as threatening or fulfilling result-definitions in the
world. And likewise the Here and Now, what is repeatedly beginning in nearness, is a
utopian category, in fact the most central one; even though, in contrast to the annihilating
circulation of a Nothing, to the illuminating circulation of an All, it has not yet even entered
time and space. Instead, the contents of this most immediate nearness still ferment entirely in
the darkness of the lived moment as the real world-knot, world-riddle. Utopian consciousness
wants to look far into the distance, but ultimately only in order to penetrate the darkness so
near it of the just lived moment, in which everything that is both drives and is hidden from
itself. In other words: we need the most powerful telescope, that of polished utopian
consciousness, in order to penetrate precisely the nearest nearness. Namely, the most
immediate immediacy, in which the core of self-location and being-here still lies, in which at
the same time the whole knot of the world-secret is to be found. This is no secret which
exists only for
Page 13
insufficient intellect, for example, while the matter* itself is content which is totally clear or
reposing in itself, but it is that real secret which the world-matter is to itself and towards the
solution of which it is in fact in process and on the way. Thus the Not-Yet-Conscious in man
belongs completely to the Not-Yet-Become, Not-Yet-Brought-Out, Manifested-Out in the
world. Not-Yet-Conscious interacts and reciprocates with Not-Yet-Become, more
specifically with what is approaching in history and in the world. And the examination of
anticipatory consciousness must fundamentally serve to make comprehensible the actual
reflections which now follow, in fact depictions of the wished-for, the anticipated better life,
in psychological and material terms. From the anticipatory, therefore, knowledge is to be
gained on the basis of an ontology of the Not-Yet. So much for the second part here, and for
the subject-based and object-based function analysis of hope begun within it.
Going back now to individual wishes, the first to surface again are the dubious ones. Instead
of the unregulated little wishful images of the report, those harnessed and manipulated by the
bourgeoisie now become visible. Thus manipulated, these images can be held down and
misused, coloured pink and with blood. The third part: transition shows wishful images in the
mirror, in a beautifying mirror which often only reflects how the ruling class wishes the
wishes of the weak to be. But the picture clears completely as soon as the mirror comes from
the people, as occurs quite visibly and wonderfully in fairytales. The mirrored, so often
standardized wishes comprise this part of the book; common to all of them is a drive towards
the colourful, representing what is supposedly or genuinely better. The appeal of dressing-up,
illuminated display belong here, but then the world of fairytale, brightened distance in travel,
the dance, the dream-factory of film, the example of theatre. Such things either present a
better life, as in the entertainment industry, or sketch out in real terms a life shown to be
essential. However, if this sketching out turns into a free and considered blueprint, then we
find ourselves for the first time among the actual, that is, planned or outlined utopias. They
comprise the fourth part: construction, with historically rich content which does not merely
remain historical. It develops in the medical and social, the technological, architectural and
geographical utopias, in the wishful landscapes of painting and literature. Thus the wishful
images of health emerge, the fundamental ones
*
Bloch uses the term 'Sache' here and elsewhere to mean the true state of affairs which has not yet
been revealed. We have translated this as 'the matter'.
Page 14
of society without deprivation, the marvels of technology and the castles in the air in so many
of the existing wishful images of architecture. Eldorado-Eden appears in the geographical
voyages of discovery, the landscapes of an environment formed more adequately for us in
painting and poetry, the perspectives of an Absolute in wisdom. All this is full of
overhauling, builds implicitly or explicitly on to the road and the goal-image of a more
perfect world, on to more thoroughly formed and more essential appearances than have
empirically already become. There is also a lot of random and abstract escapism here, but
great works of art essentially show a realistically related pre-appearance of their completely
developed subject-matter. The glance towards prefigured, aesthetically and religiously
experimental being is variable within them, but every attempt of this kind is experimenting
with something that overhauls, something perfect which the world has not yet seen. The
glance towards this is concrete in various ways depending on the respective class barrier, but
the basic utopian goals of the respective so-called artistic aspiration in so-called styles, these
'excesses' over and above ideology, do not always perish with their society. Egyptian
architecture is the aspiration to become like stone, with the crystal of death as intended
perfection; Gothic architecture is the aspiration to become like the vine of Christ, with the
tree of life as intended perfection. And in this way the whole of art shows itself to be full of
appearances which are driven to become symbols of perfection, to a utopianly essential end.
Of course, until now it has only been self-evident in the case of the social utopias that they
are utopian: firstly, because that is what they are called, and secondly, because the word
cloud-cuckoo-land has mostly been used in association with them, and not only with the
abstract ones among them. Because of which, as noted, the concept utopia has been both
unduly restricted, namely confined to novels of an ideal state, and also above all, through the
predominant abstractness of these novels of an ideal state, it has preserved that abstract
playful form which only the progress of socialism from these utopias towards science has
moved out of the way and removed. Nevertheless, despite all these dubious aspects, the word
utopia emerged here coined by Thomas More, though not the philosophically far more
comprehensive concept of utopia. On the other hand, little utopian material worthy of
consideration was noticed in other, for example, technological wishful images and plans.
Despite Francis Bacon's 'New Atlantis ' no frontier-land with its own pioneer status and its
own hope-contents introduced into nature was distinguished in technology. This was seen
even less in architecture, in buildings which form, re-form or pre-form
Page 15
a more beautiful space. And similarly, utopian material astonishingly remained undiscovered
in the situations and landscapes of painting and poetry, in their extravagances and especially
in their deeply inward and outward-looking realisms of possibility. And yet, in all these
spheres, utopian function is at work, with modified content, fanatical in the lesser creations,
precise and realistic sui generis in the great ones. The very profusion of human imagination,
together with its correlate in the world (once imagination becomes informed and concrete),
cannot possibly be explored and inventoried other than through utopian function; any more
than it can be tested without dialectical materialism. The specific pre-appearance which art
shows is like a laboratory where events, figures and characters are driven to their typical,
characteristic end, to an abysmal or a blissful end; this essential vision of characters and
situations, inscribed in every work of art, which in its most striking form we may call
Shakespearean, in its most terminalized form Dantean, presupposes possibility beyond
already existing reality. At all points here prospective acts and imaginations aim, subjective,
but possibly even objective dream-roads run out of the Become towards the Achieved,
towards symbolically encircled achievement. Thus the concept of the Not-Yet and of the
intention towards it that is thoroughly forming itself out no longer has its only, indeed
exhaustive example in the social utopias; important though the social utopias, leaving all
others aside, have become for the critical awareness of elaborated anticipating. But to limit
the utopian to the Thomas More variety, or simply to orientate it in that direction, would be
like trying to reduce electricity to the amber from which it gets its Greek name and in which
it was first noticed. Indeed, the utopian coincides so little with the novel of an ideal state that
the whole totality of philosophy becomes necessary (a sometimes almost forgotten totality) to
do justice to the content of that designated by utopia. Hence the breadth of the anticipations,
wishful images, hope-contents collected in the part called: construction. Hence in front of
as well as behind the fairytales of an ideal state the aforementioned notation and
interpretation of medical, technological, architectural, geographical utopias, also of the actual
wishful landscapes in painting, opera, literature. Hence, finally, this is the place for the
portrayal of the multifarious hope-landscape and the specific perspectives on it in the
collective thinking of philosophical wisdom. Despite the predominant pathos of What Has
Been in previous philosophies; the almost continually intended direction: appearance
essence nevertheless clearly shows a utopian pole. The sequence of all these formations,
socially, aesthetically,
Page 16
philosophically relevant to culture of 'true being', accordingly ends, coming down to always
decisive earth, in questions of a life of fulfilling work free of exploitation, but also of a life
beyond work, i.e. in the wishful problem of leisure.
The final will is that to be truly present. So that the lived moment belongs to us and we to it
and 'Stay awhile'* could be said to it. Man wants at last to enter into the Here and Now as
himself, wants to enter his full life without postponement and distance. The genuine utopian
will is definitely not endless striving, rather: it wants to see the merely immediate and thus so
unpossessed nature of self-location and being-here finally mediated, illuminated and fulfilled,
fulfilled happily and adequately. This is the utopian frontier-content which is implied in the
'Stay awhile, you are so fair' of the Faust scheme. The objective hope-images of the
construction thus press inevitably towards those of fulfilled human beings themselves and
their environment fully mediated with these images, that is, towards homeland. The fifth and
final part: identity attempts to take up these intentions. As attempts to become like proper
human beings, the various moral guiding images appear, and the so often antithetical guiding
panels of the right life. The fictional figures of human venturing beyond the limits then
appear: Don Giovanni, Odysseus, Faust, the last precisely on the way to the perfect moment,
in utopia which thoroughly experiences the world; Don Quixote warns and demands, in
dream-monomania, dream-depth. As call and pull of very immediate, very far-striking lines
of expression, music emerges, the art of strongest intensity distilled into song and sound, of
the utopian Humanum in the world. And then: the images of hope against death are gathered,
against this hardest counterblow to utopia; death is therefore its unforgettable awakener. It is
especially a circulation of that Nothing which is devoured into being by the utopian pull;
there is no becoming and no victory into which the annihilation of what is bad is not actively
devoured. All the glad tidings which constitute the imagination of religion culminate
mythically, against death and fate, both the completely illusory tidings and those with a
humane core, ultimately related to deliverance from evil, to freedom towards the 'kingdom'.
There follows, precisely concerning this-worldly intention towards this becoming homeland,
the future problem in the bearing, encompassing space of homeland: of nature. The problem
of what is worth wishing for in general, or of the highest good, always remains the central
point here. Its utopia
*
Cf. Goethe's 'Faust', Part 1, 1700. The moment for which Faust will gladly sell his soul.
Page 17
of the One Thing Necessary, although it in fact still stands completely in premonition, like
the being-in-the-present of men themselves, governs all the rest. If only the less high goods
were attained and accessible of course, on the road to the abolition of base deprivation. On
the road which first leads to the treasures where moth and rust doth corrupt,* and only then to
those which stay awhile. This road is and remains that of socialism, it is the practice of
concrete utopia. Everything that is non-illusory, real-possible about the hope-images leads to
Marx, works as always, in different ways, rationed according to the situation as part of
socialist changing of the world. The architecture of hope thus really becomes one on to man,
who had previously only seen it as dream and as high, all too high preappearance, and one on
to the new earth. Becoming happy was always what was sought after in the dreams of a better
life, and only Marxism can initiate it. This provides fresh access to creative Marxism, even
pedagogically and in terms of content, and from new premises, of a subjective and objective
kind.
What is thus intended needs to be broadly delineated here. On a small and large scale, tested
if possible, with the will to set free what is real within it. So that by the yardstick of real
possibility, What Is in real possibility, what is really still outstanding (everything else is chaff
of mere opinionizing and fools' paradise) achieves positive being. This is ultimately a great
simplicity or the One Thing Needful. An encyclopaedia of hopes often contains repetitions,
but never overlappings, and so far as the former is concerned, Voltaire's statement is valid
here that he would repeat himself as often as was necessary until he was understood. The
statement is even more valid since the repetitions of the book ideally always occur on a new
level, have therefore both learnt something in the meantime and may allow the identical thing
they are aiming at to be learned anew. The direction towards the One Thing Needful was also
alive in previous philosophies; how else could they have been a love of wisdom? And how
else could there have been great philosophy, that is, ceaselessly and totally related to the
Authentic, the Essential? Let alone materialistically great philosophy with the capability for
the real depiction of what is coherently essential? With the basic pull towards explaining the
world in terms of itself (and with the certain confidence of being able to explain it in these
terms), towards this-worldly happiness (and with the certain confidence of finding it)? But,
until Marx, the previous lovers of wisdom, even the materialist
*
Matthew 6, 19.
Page 18
ones, posited the Authentic as already ontically* existing, in fact statically closed: from the
water of the simple Thales** to the In-and-For-Itself of the absolute Hegel. Time and again, it
was ultimately the ceiling of Plato's anamnesis above dialectically open Eros which kept out
and, in a contemplative antiquarian fashion, closed off previous philosophy, including Hegel,
from the seriousness of the Front and the Novum. Thus the perspective was broken off, thus
remembering defused hope. Thus hope did not in fact arise in remembering either (in the
future in the past). Thus remembering did not arise in hope either (in concrete utopia which is
historically mediated, but which pours forth history). Thus we appeared to have already got
behind the tendency of being, that is, to have arrived behind it. Thus the real process of the
world appeared to have got behind itself, to have arrived and to have been brought to a
standstill. But the forming-depicting aspect of the true, of the real, is never so easily broken
off, as if the process pending in the world were already decided. Only with the farewell to the
closed, static concept of being does the real dimension of hope open. Instead, the world is
full of propensity towards something, tendency towards something, latency of something,
and this intended something means fulfilment of the intending. It means a world which is
more adequate for us, without degrading suffering, anxiety, self-alienation, nothingness.
However, this tendency is in flux, as one that has precisely the Novum in front of it. The
Where To of the real only shows in the Novum its most basic Objective determinateness, and
it appeals to man who is the arms of the Novum. Marxist knowledge means: the difficult
processes of what is approaching enter into concept and practice. In the problem area of the
Novum inherently lies the profusion of even whiter fields of knowledge where worldly
wisdom becomes young and original again. If being is understood out of its Where From,
then it is so only as an equally tendential, still unclosed Where To. The being that conditions
consciousness, and the consciousness that processes being, is understood ultimately only out
of that and in that from which and towards which it tends. Essential being is not Been-ness;
on the contrary: the essential being of the world lies itself on the Front.
*
Bloch makes a distinction between ontological and ontical. The former broadly refers to 'being', the
latter to 'entities' and facts concerning them.
**
Thales of Miletus (c. 624565 B.C.), the earliest of the Greek scientists, saw water as the basic material of
all being.
Page 19
PART ONE
(REPORT):
LITTLE DAYDREAMS
Page 21
1
We Start Out Empty
I move. From early on we are searching. All we do is crave, cry out. Do not have what we
want.
2
Much Tastes of More
But we also learn to wait. Because what a child wishes seldom comes in time. We even wait
for wishing itself, until it becomes clearer. A child grasps at everything to find out what it
means. Tosses everything aside again, is restlessly curious and does not know what about.
But already here the freshness, the otherness lives, of which we dream. Boys destroy what
they are given, they search for more, unpack the box. Nobody could name it or has ever
received it. So what is ours slips away, is not yet here.
3
Daily into the Blue
Later we reach out more confidently. Wish ourselves where things are named more clearly.
The child wants to be a bus-conductor or a confectioner. Seeks long journeys, far away, cake
every day. That seems like real living.
With animals too we dream we are big. With small ones especially, they are less frightening,
they run into our hands. Or can be caught in nets; distant wishing becomes active in this way.
The confectioner turns into a hunter, in a strangely filled outdoors. Green and blue runs the
lizard, something elusively colourful flies as a butterfly. Even the stones are alive, but do not
run away, we can play with them, they join in, 'I want
Page 22
everything to be like that' said a child, meaning the marble which rolled away but then waited
for the child. Play is transformation, though within what is safe and returns. As he wishes,
play changes the child himself, his friends, all his things into strangely familiar stock, the
floor of the playroom itself becomes a forest full of wild animals or a lake on which every
chair is a boat. But fear breaks out if what we are used to runs too far away or if it does not
smoothly slip back into its former aspect. 'Look, the button is a witch', screamed a child in
play and then would not touch the button even later on. It had become no more than this child
had wished it to be, but it had stayed that way too long. The homely den must never venture
too far into the dream. It must remain a place the lizard has not yet violated, the butterfly not
yet threatened. From here what we like doing best is playing and collecting window-views,
deep and brief glimpses into otherness. The colourful animal is itself a colourful window,
behind which the wished-for distance lies. Soon it is no different than a stamp, which tells of
foreign countries. It is like the shell in which the sea roars when we hold it close enough to
our ears. The boy sallies forth, collects from everywhere what is sent his way. This may also
bear witness to the things the boy must go to bed too early to see. When he is gazing at a
coloured stone many of those things germinate which he later wishes for himself.
4
Hiding-Place and Beautiful Foreign Lands
By Ourselves
Here too the fun of being invisible ourselves. We seek out a corner, it protects and conceals.
It feels good in a narrow space, but we know we can do what we want there. A woman
relates, 'I wished I could be under the cupboard, I wanted to live there and play with the dog.'
A man relates, 'As boys we built ourselves a platform between the branches which could not
be seen from below. When we were sitting up there, when we pulled up the ladder and cut
ourselves off completely from the ground, then we felt perfectly happy.' Our own room is
prefigured here, the free life that is coming.
Page 23
At Home Already on Our Way

The hidden boy is also breaking out, in a shy way. He is searching for what is far away, even
though he shuts himself in, it is just that in breaking free he has girded himself round and
round with walls. All the better if the hiding-place is mobile, that is, if it consists of living
material. In other words, of outlawed or strange people with whom we go along, amongst
whom we are not suspected. Schoolboys do not always drop everything in an effort to please
their parents and teachers, but parents and teachers can be relied upon to put a damper on
things. Suffering at school can be nastier than any other later form of suffering, except that of
the prisoner. Hence the wish to break out, shared by the prisoner; because outside is still
indistinct, it becomes a place of wonder. A woman relates, 'As a girl I always wished that
burglars would come. I wanted to show them everything, silver, cash, linen, they could take
anything they wanted, even me, for their trouble.' A man relates, 'When I heard the bagpipes
for the first time, I ran after them as I did after everything peculiar. But I did not turn back
after a little while, as I usually did when other curiosities came along the street, the knife-
grinder, the Salvation Army and so on, instead I followed out of the city, along the country
road into the villages that I knew, into the villages that I did not know. It wasn't only the
fantastic man who drew me away, the whistling spirit enticed me which I believed lived in
the bagpipes, and in the end I became this myself.' Thus at seven or eight the narrow space
expands, the strangest things take place inside it (when the ladder is pulled up). But it is
really only the hiding-place which seeks to be transposed here, the boy inside it only breaks
free invisibly with his friends. Carries himself off on his snorting steed, with a fluttering
feather into the security of the adventure. The night is full of taverns and castles, in each one
there are furs, weapons, roaring fires, men like trees, no clocks. Drawings on blotting-paper
in exercise books also seem characteristic of the sprinkled pleasure in hiding-places at this
time. A spiky security is committed to paper, a house, a town, a coastal fortress bristling with
cannon. There are islands offshore, they deter the enemy from sea attack; inland there are
three rings of forts. They guard the road, the only one which leads to the dream fortress, and
it is mined. Thus the coastal town lies, out of sight of school and home, inaccessible, with
eyes that seem to slumber. And yet: the fortress was not simply drawn as being impregnable,
but also as being powerful, radiant;
Page 24
its effect carries beyond the edge of the paper, into the unknown. Our own life was protected
and rimmed by battlements high above, but these could be climbed at any time to look out.
Even later on this combination of narrowness and beautiful foreign lands does not disappear.
In other words: from this time the wishful land is an island.
5
Escape and the Return of the Victor
When someone dreams, they never remain rooted to the spot. They move almost at will away
from the place or the state in which they find themselves. Around the thirteenth year, the
fellow-travelling ego is discovered. That is the reason why dreams of a better life grow so
luxuriantly around this time. They stir the fermenting day, fly beyond school and home, take
with them what is good for and dear to us. Are outriders of our escape and establish the first
quarters for our clarifying wishes. We practise the art of talking about what we have not yet
experienced. Even an average mind tells itself stories at this time, simple fables in which
things go better. It spins out the stories on the way home from school or when walking with
friends, and the narrator is always in the middle as in a posed picture. Almost everyone is
filled with a hatred for the average at this time, even if they have not strayed too far from the
nest themselves. The silly young goose wants to improve herself, the young lout sneers at his
stuffy home. Girls play around with their first name, just like they do with their hairstyles,
they make it more piquant than it is, and in doing so they reach the beginning of a dreamed
existence that is different. Young boys aspire to a nobler life than their father might lead, to
tremendous deeds. They try their luck, it tastes forbidden and makes everything new.
Putting to Sea
Sexual attraction is not always part of this process, at least not in an obvious way. Girls retain
an acquired shyness for a long time, boys pride themselves on a certain dry coolness. Often
arrogance and self-love prevent them from giving love a special place in their dreams. The
right boy or the right girl do not seem to be around or only among their own sex, often they
Page 25
are not even present in wishing. Thus the castle in the air seldom becomes a castle of
pleasure at this stage, the harem and the dream-woman only come later. Infantile structures
are also preserved for quite a long time in this dry fantasy; the theme of escape fulfils their
loneliness. A woman relates of this time, 'I wanted to become a painter, I dreamed myself
into an oriental castle on a mountain, living alone there with my illegitimate child which I
had had by a very distinguished man.' A man, asked about his fantasies at fifteen, related the
following: 'I wanted to go to sea and imagined a unique battleship. It was called the Argo, did
so many knots per hour that it was present on all the coasts of the earth almost
simultaneously. I was master of the Argo, with the title and rank of Prince Admiral, ruled
over all emperors and kings, re-drew the map of the world with the help of my electric
cannons, re-established my beloved Turkey once more within her old borders. Once a year
came the night of flight, the ship left the water, landed on the highest mountain on earth.
There I entertained my friends, let them see into the future through a specially placed
window, worked the mysterious green ray. This ray shines shortly after sunset on the Pacific
Ocean; and I knew how to operate it so that we could see all the lost empires of the past.'*
These are still excessive bourgeois notions of a juvenile kind; in proletarian adolescents of
this age they are much more muted, more grown-up even, and more realistic. But even if here
the contents have ceased to be so fantastic, their attraction still remains like that of a fairytale,
sharply transcending the given world. Clearly, such fantasies do not only emanate from the
depths of the mind, but just as often from newspapers, from adventure books with their
wonderfully glossy pictures. From booths at the fair where chains rattle and are broken,
where the song to the evening star is sung and the half-moon shines. Argo, Turkey and the
like come from there, even the raw or rough colour of adventure with which these figments
glow. The elemental ship image characterizes the will to depart, the dream of itinerant
revenge and exotic victory. Argo (and the equivalent images that almost every individual can
replace this with from their own experience) is a kind of Ark for the principal wishes of this
time: for the trumping wishes. The will destroys the house in which it is bored and in which
the best things are forbidden. So in timeless history it builds its mountain stronghold in the
clouds or the knight's castle in the form of a ship.
*
This dream is not completely original. Jason had a ship made for him called the Argo in which
Athene fitted an oracular beam.
Page 26
The Glittering Bowl

Only then do pleasures which have grown sweet announce themselves, foam immediately.
Love lets no one alone into the dreamed castle or out on the sea. Loneliness is no longer
sought after and spun out in fantasies, but is intolerable, it is the most intolerable aspect of
the life that begins at seventeen. So if the right girl eludes us for too long, the girl whom we
think up, think out, appears anywhere. The torment of having missed out then becomes
monstrous: every party which we did not go to leaves space for us to picture wishful images,
and the young adolescent believes that one of these descended to earth on the very evening
he missed. Now it is too late to meet her; because the girl, even if she were to be found,
would be no match for the brilliance of the image he has painted. But erotic enchantment
plays a part even in felicitous encounters. It clothes the girl in its dream. The street or the
town in which the loved one lives turns to gold, turns into a party. The name of the loved one
shines upon the stones, slates and railings, her house always lies beneath invisible palm-trees.
We are unsure of our own powers because there are too many of them and they disturb each
other. So the young man is mostly pulled to and fro between extreme dejection (to the point
of asking himself if he even deserves to be in the world at all) and compensating arrogance.
Embarrassment and impudence are bound up together here; the adolescent who is not part of
the average world or who hates it, feels he is a little God, and since the others do not take the
trouble to prove his existence, he does it himself. He wants to be the first to reach the goal,
wants to outdo the others; the goal can be a completely external one, it stands for an
unknown goal. What smooth skin, or the good fortune to have long legs or hard muscles
meant to children becomes in young girls pride in so-called gentlemen friends, in young boys
the vanity of being seen with the prettiest girl in town or in the area. Feelings of uncertainty,
of being unsure of oneself go deeper, while being spurned is never felt so bitterly, being
chosen (room at the top) never so rapturously as in puberty. Youth itself becomes a scourge
or a laurel here, there is no middle ground; beyond loneliness, which is so strenuously
avoided, there is only defeat which refutes claims to validity, claims to the future, or victory,
which proves them. Immaturity per se is an invitation to go one better, this is not empty as in
later years, but rather vexatious, taunting to itself. Thus everything wavers and wishes to be
placed, to be fixed, especially the life-light, the
Page 27
future image of the life which youth expects. All we know for certain is that it should not
contain any trivialities and that no other season except spring should count in it. The young
person torments himself with the enjoyable prospect of this future, he wants to induce it all at
once, even with storms, suffering, thunder and lightning, as long as it is just life, real life that
has so far not yet become. And the world begins with our own youth: nothing is stranger for
an adolescent than to imagine the courtship of his parents, and nothing more awkward than
imagining himself in age, with children now themselves having his own courtship and his
own apparently unsurpassable spring. During this period of youth it also becomes
apparent that the only thing that actually binds us and establishes friendship is the common
expectation of a common future; this unites us as matter-of-factly as working together does in
later years. If the common future falls away, then the living spirit of the youthful friendship
(if that is all it was) disappears; this explains why nothing is flatter and more forced than
seeing old schoolfriends again after many years. They have become like the teachers, like the
grown-ups of the past, like everything against which we had conspired. Such reunions make
it seem as if the youthful faces and dreams have not only disappeared, as is obvious, but as if
they have been betrayed. But this enormous shock does make us realize how much headiness
and Rtli oath,* how much mountain air swirled and still swirls above real seventeen-year-
olds. But this mountain air too is full of squalls, it is swept up in the changing winds racing
here and there in the most uncertain of all ages of life. Uncertain even intellectually, since
only very few young people enjoy one of those inescapable talents which make a job into a
vocation and so spare us the choice. So many young girls, of course, wish to go into films,
almost every young man has great ideas which cannot be sold in the normal job-market.
However, these are more general wishes and directions, fortunately they are not pursued for
long, they lack the detail of talent. In fact even where there is the urge more common these
days towards productive expression, towards painting, music or writing, it comes as a
surprise that everything shrinks in the execution. Adolescents of this kind know the feeling of
a fire burning inside them, of art being so close, but when they try to grasp its being, it
becomes dry, it shrinks so much that they cannot even fill a page. Talking at this time is
common and easy, writing hard, and
*
The legendary oath of allegiance of the first three Swiss confederates on the Rtli at the
Vierwaldstttesee in 1291.
Page 28
if it is produced, the fruit appears precisely to the overflowing writer himself 'like a shrivelled
plum, black and wizened'. Bettina von Arnim, who says this, and who all her life could not
get beyond this adolescent feeling, thus mostly chose letters to express herself. Another form
is the diary which, not without reason, is called secret or is imparted secretly. Many an adult
uses jottings like these, if he has made them, and if he has kept them with faithful vanity, as a
gauge to measure how low his waterlevel has sunk. Love, melancholy, embryonic images
and thought-masks, everything is fished for here and remains in its initial stages. But the life-
light, containing nothing stale, shines vexatiously, tauntingly to itself. So this time seems to
be unhappy and blissful at the same time: the feeling of spring later contains both. But the
desire for courage, for colour, breadth, height is general; the real adolescent develops from a
will which in these years is always still a chivalric will. Hence the dream of adventures
which are to be undergone, of beauty begging to be discovered, of greatness begging to be
won.
Because our own life still lies a long way ahead, all distance is made more beautiful. The
wish not only impels us towards this distance, but now it propels itself into it without a
hiding-place, all the more strongly the narrower our situation. Even the distance which the
evening express train brings into the smallest town can suffice as a symbol, the distance of
the capital, seen from the provinces. In this way a dissolutely daring, carelessly beautiful
wishful image develops, without relatives, miles away from them. Inside is the expanded soul
in which longing is at work, outside the dreamed image of a city which could fulfil it. One of
the strongest wishes in human nature, and one which is most frequently violated, is the wish
to be important, and this is further combined especially strongly with the wish for a
significant environment. Gifted girls wish to run away there; Munich had this attraction
around 1900, Paris for much longer. Thrilled, the student enters the big city, besides the
bright lights, it is populated with sheer impatient hopes. Here he believes he has at last found
the ground and background for an existence which finally suits him; the houses, the squares,
the stages seem bathed in a utopian light. In the caf, at a proud little table, the chosen few
are gathered who write verses, heavenly strings await the boy who plays the double bass,
fame taps at the window. It is not surprising that with the wishful image of triumph, that of
trumping also returns or is included in the erotic sheen. If the parents' home was not only
narrow but also bad, then the pictured homecoming of the victor is a particularly popular and
widespread dream,
Page 29
a form of satisfaction so overwhelming that it welcomes the previous misery almost as a foil.
The famous actress goes back, her parents and neighbours stand timidly aside, graciously she
forgives what they did to her. The downtrodden boy of days gone by comes back in a coach-
and-four, by his side the beautiful rich girl whom he has captured as his wife; he is now no
longer misunderstood, returning as a general or as a great artist, returning at least with a
magnificence that puts them to shame. His is the princess, graceful, proud and gentle, with
the perfume of high above, and around her swirls the silver travel-veil, all this is the
splendour their darling has won, all this is like Nice brought home. These are particularly
immature wishful dreams, but they are still to be found today in the western glossy image of
these years. Desirous, aware, mindful, possessed, in control, full, these words govern the
genitive and the wishes of bourgeois youth. The often invoked streak of blue in the bourgeois
sky became of course a streak of blood; the stupid or stupefied had their very own strong
man called Hitler. But the greyness of a young mediocrity has never shone without
capricious figures; the wish itself puts them on his arm. At this time, between the March and
June of life, there is no break, either love fills it up, or the prospect of a kind of stormy
dignity.
6
More Mature Wishes and Their Images
These do not have to be any less turbulent. Since wishing does not decrease later on, only
what is wished for diminishes. The drive that has grown older aims closer, it knows its way
around, it sets itself up in this world. But not as if it were thereby accepting the life that had
simply come to it; precisely what has already become petit bourgeois is half-baked and flat.
Something important is missing now just as it was then, so the dream does not stop inserting
itself into the gaps. An element of defeat probably also settles in, the flight often dips. An
element of vulgarity emerges which no longer has healthy red cheeks, but is hard-boiled. But
the dreamer believes he has at last found out what life ought to be offering him.
The Lame Nags

First his wish goes backwards, it makes something good again. The dream
Page 30
pictures what would have happened if a silly move had been avoided, if a clever move had
not been missed. Lame nags and good ideas come last; this is wit on the stairs. It torments
because it has missed the opportunity, and what has been missed is thus retrospectively
activated and articulated in the imagination. This imagination contains both regret and
longing together, the regret makes it into a wishful dream which improves on the past. In the
wishful dream of wit on the stairs, blows are landed which the dreamer did not have the
courage to land at the time they were due. The wishful dream of wit on the stairs makes
losses good by going back to that point in time where it was still possible to avoid them.
With bitter enjoyment it savours profits which would certainly have been made if we had
gone into the business at the right time. We drank the wrong brand how wisely we choose
the right one in the dream or in the subsequent account, with which we not only fool other
people. Or the source of the fiver down which all our hopes were dashed is imagined as a tap;
we turn it off retrospectively, as if everything were as good as could be. Regret is a feeling
that persists in the bourgeois world, but now almost exclusively in business life, so regretful
dreams mostly revolve around money that has been lost. But amidst these dreams there is still
room among the petit bourgeois for the heroic pose, the one they did not strike at the right
time, and the thundering phrase that just did not flash out at the time. The dream plays out
what is wished for as it could have been, what is right as it should have been. All boasting is
part of this, all stupid pride follows this course, and the memory that the reality was different
gives way to suit the vanity of our wishes.
Night of the Long Knives

Not so far from here are the various dreams that are fond of getting their own back. They are
particularly delicious, revenge is sweet when merely imagined, but also shabby. Most men
are too cowardly to do evil, too weak to do good; the evil that they cannot, or cannot yet do,
they enjoy in advance in the dream of revenge. The petit bourgeoisie in particular has
traditionally been fond of the fist clenched in the pocket; this fist characteristically thumps
the wrong man, since it prefers to lash out in the direction of least resistance. Hitler rose out
of the Night of the Long Knives, he was called by the masters out of the dream of this night
when he became useful to them. The Nazi dream of revenge is also subjectively
Page 31
bottled up, not rebellious; it is blind, not revolutionary rage. As for the so-called iron broom,
the hatred of the immoral life of the hooknoses and those at the top, middle-class virtue, as
always in such cases, was here merely betraying its dearest dream. Just as, with its revenge, it
does not hate exploitation but only the fact that it is not itself an exploiter, so virtue does not
hate the slothful bed of the rich, but only the fact that it has not become its own and its alone.
This is what the headlines have always aimed at in those papers which love to see red, the
gutter-press. 'The truth, latest news: Broilers at Wertheim's store The harem in the
Tiergarten villa, * sensational revelations.' But they are only revelations concerning the
outrage of the bourgeois conformist himself, both regarding Wertheim raking in the shekels
and regarding Jewish lechery. Hence the immediate impulse to set oneself up in place of the
eliminated Wertheim, after an act of retribution which, in the supposedly detested fraud,
merely replaces the subject which is practising it. The malicious and brutal aspect of this, the
repulsiveness of this kind of wish, as pervasive as the smell of urine, has always
characterized the mob. This mob can be bought, is absurdly dangerous, and consequently it
can be blinded and used by those who have the means and who have a real vested interest in
the fascist pogroms. The instigator, the essence of the Nights of the Knives was, of course,
big business, but the raving petit bourgeois was the astonishing, the horribly seducible
manifestation of this essence. From it emerged the terror, which is the poison in the 'average
man on the street', as the petit bourgeois is now called in American, a poison which has
nowhere near been fully excreted. His wishes for revenge are rotten and blind; God help us,
when they are stirred up. Fortunately though, the mob is equally faithless; it is also quite
happy to put its clenched fist back into its pocket when crime is no longer allowed a free
night on the town by those at the top.
Shortly Before the Closing of the Gate

But how is the most ordinary kind of life, the quiet everyday kind, transformed through
dreams? Let us leave the vengeful wishes, there are besides them also warm, harmlessly
foolish and colourful dreams. In general, the little man who is not class-conscious is content
just to rearrange his
*
A residential district of Berlin.
Page 32
lot slightly. He does not change anything, but he temporarily pours out the dishwater of his
previous existence which has seemed so unsatisfactory. His waking dreams remain private;
sexual dreams are particular favourites, followed by business dreams, both are effervescent.
Solitary walks give these images room, novels of his own composition begin to be woven,
involving his ego. They are no longer young, no longer full of superman, dream-ship, Prince
Admiral. But they are sufficiently adventurous to garnish his usual fried egg and chips
beyond all recognition. The reticent man or the man in a mediocre marriage enjoys the
pleasures of an accomplished lover, kindled imagination serves up double or treble portions,
inexhaustible powers are at his command. There are so-called joke-cards on which a naked
woman appears as a balloon: weightless, totally flexible, to be used for any purpose; thus the
Calypso of the deprived Babbitt* is hallucinated as unresisting in a higher sense. Usually
there are several images, a mixture of free love and harem, full of trained women. In
interchangeable positions and groups, some of them being defiled, others looking on: a
dream forest of randy eyes and spread legs. Normally the imagined harem is stocked with
those women whom the well-behaved, often also impotent lecher has failed to secure in life.
But of course excess alone does not satisfy him, even that of the so luxuriantly matured
wishes. Because a man is not made for love alone, so the waking dream of the bourgeois
conformist also becomes practical.
Younger powers must be given their head, and so in his wishes he is himself these powers,
and experienced as well. There is still room for improvement in blossoming communities, so
the dreaming walker plucks up speculative courage. Long ago in his dream he bought the
thriving shop on the corner, expanded it, brought it up to date; long ago he became a town
councillor, a man to whom many who now scarcely give him the time of day doff their hats.
Long ago the shop was sold again, the great world takes him on board, as it is shown in the
films, the hunting lodge in the forest, the castle by the sea, his own yacht. Everything almost
as it was in puberty, only now furnished with money instead of ideals; to his ever alert but
now sedate longing a group of purchasable comforts present themselves, imagined in detail,
but unpossessed. In this forest there is a different ending for him than in the forest of youth;
beyond the tropical sea through which the yacht is ploughing stands the beach casino where
people are gambling. But the private dreams of a more mature kind evidently
*
The typical little man, the central character in the Sinclair Lewis novel 'Babbitt', 1922.
Page 33
do not cease to be foolish one moment, exotic the next. Although they develop more past
material than future, more that is familiar and which simply has not been allotted to the
dreamer than defiant premonition. The imminent closing of the gate, both sexually and in
terms of business achievements, plays its part; especially as: 'Make way for efficiency'* is at
an end anyway, at least in the world which coined this slogan, the capitalist world. The little
man, the petit bourgeois, proletarianized, but without proletarian consciousness, thus dreams
considerably more castles in Spain than the bourgeois man of property who knows what he
has. The latter in his thoughts tends to swim along with the current of what has already been
achieved, the little man, on the other hand, finds only traces around him and kicks over them.
Even if only in the silence of his imagination, as long as there is no Pied Piper on hand, or as
long as he does not see through the conditions of his disgruntlement. He exercises this
imagination through images which shimmer towards him out of the solarium of life which he
has never entered.
Invention of a New Pleasure

Most people in the street look as if they are thinking about something else entirely. The
something else is predominantly money, but also what it could be changed into. Otherwise it
would not be so easy to lure with jewellery, to attract with a beautiful figure. The flneur
would not exist, nor everyone's persistent inclination to turn themselves into one. In this way
the shopping street is also steeped in dreams, not just the more rural walk or the hustle and
bustle of the suburbs. A woman stands in front of the shop-window, looking at lizard-skin
shoes trimmed with chamois leather, a man goes past, looks at the woman, and so both of
them have a share of the wishful land. There is enough happiness in the world, only not for
me: the wish tells itself this, wherever it goes. And it thus also demonstrates, of course, that it
merely wishes to break out of the world somewhat, not that it wants to change it. The
employee, the petit bourgeois, of whom we are talking here, this in no way regular, but
increasingly regularized social stratum, contents itself with the needs which are awoken by
the window-displays dressed for it. This unites all bourgeois
*
'Freie Bahn dem Tchtigen'. Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg used a similar slogan to the Reichstag,
28th September 1916.
Page 34
dreams and yet it still rations them, even in more distant excursions to the over-blue coast of
the travel agent's and beyond: so that they do not explode the given world. People with
wishes of this kind live beyond their own means, but never beyond the generally existing
means. If this is true of the employee, in middle age and with the until now so cloudy
consciousness of the middle class, then the upper middle-class citizen whose means are
sufficient certainly does not have any reason even in his wildest dreams to explode the
existing world. He finds it easiest to give up youthful ideals, to apply his will solely to what
is attainable. To pull his weight efficiently, standing right in the middle of gainful
employment, which really is that, full of plans promising profit, but on the whole without that
element which, usually with contempt, he calls utopian. Since the rich man, in contrast to the
salary earner, can indulge his every wish, he has, so to speak, no definite, that is, long-
cherished and thus fully developed wishes at all. And yet, although it is only the left-hand
side which is studied here on menus of every kind, and not, as in the case of the employee,
the right-hand side where the price is given, precisely this affluence causes a quite specific
producer of more mature, now sedate wishes to appear: instead of deprivation boredom. No
speed, no luxury, no coast however blue, helps to escape it; even the excitements of gambling
go stale eventually. This fog of boredom swirls in the abyss of possession, and the peak,
because it is not one, does not rise above it. The wishes, which nevertheless do rise above it,
are solely those of the urgently longed-for thrill, of the snobbish butterfly, of fashion and its
changes, provided they are not too gaudy. Of course, fresh styles are also continually
produced for the masses, so that there is a turnover (which is not yet ensured by shoddy
production alone); but the incentive came first from those at the top and is older than the
pleasure in turnover. The rich man, who otherwise is nothing and can do nothing, the rich
man, in the rarer and rarer guise of a gentleman of leisure, sees to it that boredom is at least
made interesting. Xerxes was already offering a prize for the invention of a new pleasure; in
its more modern form this escape attempt turns away from mere fat capital towards snobbery.
Or even towards eccentricity: a rich Englishman travelled through all the countries where
pointed arches occur to photograph them. This is how bourgeois wishes end, at least those of
private life, for ordinary people so that they also want to cut their slice of the available cake,
without changing baker's, as Brecht puts it in his 'Threepenny Opera'; in the case of the rich
these wishes necessarily end bizarrely, that is, increasingly boosted into increasing triviality.
Page 35
Opportunity to be Friendly
Even the non-bourgeois dreamer likes many things that the others have. But essentially he
imagines a life without exploitation, this must be attained. He is not the limpet stuck fast,
having to wait for what chance brings to it, he overhauls the given world, both in actions and
in dreams. The happy existence which he anticipates lies behind smoke, behind the smoke of
a powerful change. The world which then appears is likewise changed, no Babbitt has any
place in it or stretches himself out comfortably into the rotten laziness, the lazy rottenness
that he is. It is not that comfort itself is dubious or limited to its bourgeois form. To each his
chicken in the pot and two cars in the garage, that is also a revolutionary dream, not just a
French or American or 'general human' dream. But the values of comfortable happiness shift
in the prospects of the revolutionary wishful dream, if only because happiness no longer
arises out of the unhappiness of others and measures itself against it. Because our fellow man
is no longer the barrier to our own freedom, but rather the means by which this freedom is
truly achieved. Instead of freedom of acquisition, there shines freedom from acquisition,
instead of imagined pleasures of cheating in the economic struggle, there shines the imagined
victory in the proletarian class struggle. And even higher above this shines the distant peace,
the distant opportunity of being in solidarity and being friendly with all men, an opportunity
for the sake of which the struggle moves in the distant goal. The turmoil in which all this still
lies admittedly makes the individual non-bourgeois dreams considerably less distinct than
those which need only reach into the existing window-display. No department store sends a
list out to them, there is no patron who realizes these dreams from above. Instead they are
characterized not only by an incomparably higher status, but also by an expectation of the
unknown, a blueprint of the unrealized which the bourgeois wishful image of more mature
years no longer possesses at all.
7
What Is Left to Wish for in Old Age
In old age we learn to forget. Exciting wishes recede, although their images remain. They
picture escape, as they once did in March: the young girl
Page 36
and dangerous old age, the flashy teenager and the old fop can share a turbulent desire for
new life. Nevertheless, we no longer yield so willingly to temptation. Even if the wish does
not wane, the strength which thinks itself capable of fulfilling the wish does. Even if the
strength does not wane, then the disappointed gift of picturing ahead does. To this extent, and
often only to this extent, unrest decreases.
Wine and Purse

Instead the realistic fears increase, they want to be avoided. The body does not recover so
quickly as it did, everything is twice the effort. Work does not go so smoothly, economic
uncertainty weighs heavier than before. Needs in the form of addictions, those whose
satisfaction does not bring pleasure, but whose absence causes pain, do in fact decrease. Yet
instead the demand for comfort increases and to a grumpy old man everything can become
uncomfortable, even what he is used to, but even more so what is new. The adolescent is at
odds with his ordinary environment and declares war on it, the grown man applies his
strength to it, often resulting in the loss of his dreams, of his previously better consciousness,
but the elderly man, the old man, when he gets annoyed with the world, does not fight against
it like the adolescent, but stands in danger of becoming peevish towards it, moaning and
cantankerous. At least in those areas where the old personality turns sour, where it simply
shrinks back into miserliness and selfishness. In bourgeois old age money seems more
desirable than ever, both on account of the neurotic drive to cling on to things with wizened
hands, for which a means has entirely become an end, and of course also on account of the
mortal fear of an infirm being. Wine and purse remain for petty old age what remains to be
wished for, and not always only for petty old age. Wine, women and song, this association
dissolves, the bottle lasts longer. Cheers, old boy; that is why an old drinker seems nicer than
an old lover.
Evocations of Youth; Counter-Wish:

Harvest
Even young people, indeed especially young people, wish to live for a long time. But this
seldom includes the wish to be an old man. This is rarely indulged. An adolescent can
imagine himself as a man, but hardly as an
Page 37
old man; the morning points to midday, not to evening. It is remarkable in itself that getting
old, in so far as it relates to the loss of an earlier state which, whether rightly or wrongly, is
felt to be better, is not really felt until around fifty. Does the adolescent feel no loss at leaving
his childhood behind? Does the man feel none when he quits the bloom of youth, when the
green shoot turns to wood? Does the child not already die in the sexually mature girl and boy,
in the ego and its responsibility which now emerges? The mother feels this when the shadow
of her son's first beard tickles and pricks, the adolescent himself feels it when life ceases to
be a game, when small things and hiding-places become inaccessible to his growing body.
And melancholy is in fact customary during the transition into the first stage of manhood,
where the good old student days vanish, embourgeoisement begins. But the caesura of old
age is clearer than any earlier caesura and more brutally negative; loss itself seems to become
concentrated. Virility decreases, fertility ceases entirely, the lustre disappears, the summer
ends. And if the ageing man does not notice himself that he is growing old, then the others
notice it, he sees the cause by the effect, no matter how young he is urged to feel. It is very
instructive for most old men when a girl stands up to make room for them for the first time;
this politeness certainly does not act as a plus which age has brought, it has a fatal effect.
And even the old fop who usually tries to deceive himself by being superficial, the easiest
gift of youth, is surprised by the realization of how short life is. Something long since past
can seem as close in old age as distant mountains shortly before the rain. The realization is
received almost with disbelief even by the dignified old man; it seems only yesterday that he
was the same age as the young people around him. Doubtless therefore, the specific feeling
of age which sets in around fifty, sometimes even earlier, is little prepared for by the
previously experienced and yet never so sharply experienced changing stages of life, is seen
with some justification as something unfamiliar. The reason lies in the unclear nature or in
the unclarified nature of the benefits which old age brings, for all the brutal negative aspects
which can be associated with it and ultimately are associated with it. Thus the handshake of
old age is predominantly only felt to be one of farewell, that is with death at the sharp end.
The latter, possible at any stage of life, but inevitable in greater age, no longer gives the ebb
any prospect of experiencing a flow; and that makes the change called old age so decisive. It
makes it so unmistakable in contrast to the earlier stages concealed beneath new foliage; just
as if the pain of farewell which the adolescent, the man may
Page 38
have felt, or equally may not have felt, on leaving childhood and youth, were retrieved here
and added to one's own autumn. Thus an old age which is not petty also manifests wishes to
return to a youth which there and then, years ago, may well have been felt as something that
was still deficient, namely as intangible blossom and not yet as tangible, clearly defined fruit
ripe for weighing. Precisely an old man who works, who is therefore not sucking at the paws
of memory in his winter cave, will at least wish back all the time he had before him at the age
of twenty. He will wish back the magic of the long backgrounds which life possessed for him
then and which, as the future decreases (as the years are 'numbered'), certainly decreases too.
Thus resignation, which is only half-genuine and temporary in youth, exists as genuine and
collected in normal old age. No mere farewell to a phase of life is marked here, with
dispersing dreams, thwarted fulfilments, but farewell to long life itself.
It nevertheless remains strange that an oppressive sense of ageing can emerge so strongly.
And characteristically, it does not emerge with equal force, nor so uninhibitedly in all men,
nor in all periods of history. Instead, a psychological vacuum must also accompany the
organic ebb, or at least, as noted above, the unclear or unclarified nature of the benefits
which old age brings. Thus to sum up we may say: to make old age pure suffering, provided
it is relatively healthy and based on an efficient life, all that is necessary is a simpleton to
experience it and a late bourgeois society which desperately dolls itself up to look young.
There is a proverb When the candle's out, you can tell whether it was wax or tallow: so old
age is not itself at fault if the figure which it raises out of illusion and appearance is still just
an ugly one. And societies which unlike today's declining bourgeois society did not shy away
from every glimpse of the end, possessed and saw in old age a blossoming fruit, a very
desirable and welcome one. So it was in the Spartan Council of Elders, in the Senate in still
Republican Rome, even in the new dimension of socialist experience. A different destiny to
that of declining is still always to be heard here, has remained considerably more than
'honour and the hoary head'*; for a thriving society does not fear like a declining one its
reflected image in old age, but greets there its watchmen. On the whole, old age shows, like
every earlier stage of life, completely possible, specific benefits which also compensate for
the farewell to the previous stage of life. Thus growing old not only describes a desirable
stretch of time in which as much as possible has been experienced and in which as much as
*
Cf. Leviticus 19, 32.
Page 39
possible can be learnt on the way out. Growing old can also describe a wishful image
according to the situation: the wishful image of commanding view, or possibly of harvest.
Voltaire says in the same vein, for the ignorant old age is like the winter, for the educated it
is gathering and pressing the grapes. This does not exclude youth, but includes it in the after-
ripening; the wish to return to youth loses precisely its element of suffering thanks to this
matured empathy with what is coming, it compensates, fulfils itself with the footing it has
gained, with simplicity and meaning. In general, a person's later years will thus contain all
the more youth, in the unimitated sense, the more collection there already was to start with in
his youth; the phases of life, and therefore also old age, then lose their isolated sharpness.
The healthy wishful image of old age and in old age is that of thoroughly formed maturity; it
feels more at home giving than taking.
Evening and House

To be able to be so collected means there must be no noise. A final wish permeates all the
wishes of old age, an often not unquestionable one, for rest. It can be just as tormenting, even
as hungry as the earlier pursuit of diversion. The sexual flaring up, which especially in
women is often reminiscent of early puberty, is also dampened by it. Even the possibly
productive nature, related so closely to youth, so familiar with it, needs freedom from
disturbance more than before (or even more freedom from disturbance). And every old man
wishes to be allowed to be exhausted by life; even if he is caught up in the hurly-burly of the
world, a part of him behaves as if he were not caught up in it. Vanity is the last garment that
man removes, but only a very strange old man will give this garment a lot of hard wear at the
expense of silence. The image of this silence is wonderfully embellished precisely in the non-
embourgeoisement of old age, the image of the country instead of the city, the elapsion
where the wet clothes are drying, where things are not very busy. In more important cases,
the wish for rest subdues even the regret over previous omissions and mistakes; in his old age
failures in his life seemed to Goethe almost unimportant in the long run, where they had not
turned out well. Happiness refused, and particularly work unfinished, still rankle, but in
memory the latter at least, rightly or wrongly, almost takes shape. Jacob Grimm's speech
about old age, which he himself gave in his seventy-fifth year, throws light on all these
friendly late wishes and late feelings. This speech, definitely more 'nolens' than 'volens', is
sustained by the grateful
Page 40
awareness that growing old is a blessing. Physical debilities of the senses are mitigated here
in the general wish for rest, they even supplement its content. Even possible deafness,
according to Grimm, has the advantage that superfluous talk, useless chatter can no longer
interrupt us. Failing eye-sight causes many disturbing details to disappear; Grimm recalls the
blind seer. And he describes the enjoyment which the solitary walk affords the old man, how
feeling for nature is heightened in general. Man is alone with himself in nature, the chattering
conversation of nutrient plants dies down, the world grows dark in the evening, but the water
grows bright, the last drop of life is dedicated to contemplation. Past deprivation is no longer
felt, past happiness is becalmed, renewed through memory, the chisel-blows of life have
worked an essential shape, and what is essential can be seen by it better than ever before.
Nevertheless, of course, even this kind of separation from other stages of life, emphasized by
the wish for rest and a kind of strolling standstill, is different in different periods. The
Biedermeier period* is long past where the old soul, even in much less pure forms than that of
Jacob Grimm, repaired to its own breast and was served at the long table d'hte of memories.
The late capitalist world is certainly not a Bank of Good Hope for old people. Even the
winter rest of the middle class is seriously disturbed by the dwindling or the precariousness
of the savings account. Only socialist society can fulfil the wishes of old age for leisure, yet
even here this leisure, in a positive sense of course, is different to before, since the difference
between the generations is no longer so sharply divisive. Life at the moment is much more
sharply delineated politically, and it can no longer be said that old age, despite its
reflectiveness, is simply reactionary, youth, despite its freshness, simply progressive. Often it
is the other way round, and the wish of old age for rest, in a time where, to isolate one
symptom, there are still fascist youth leagues with their heads thrown back, does not always
coincide with the wish of old age to remain forever in the inertia of yesterday. It has become
easier than ever for old age to burn at both ends, namely with courage and experience
together, with new consciousness and with that of the known inheritance. The man who has
grown old and who, sitting in the cool of evening on the bench outside his front door, turns
over the pages of his spent life and nothing more this feature of Grimm's wishful image has
gone out of circulation economically and in terms of
*
Period of bourgeois culture in nineteenth-century Germany from 1815 to 1848. Also an elaborate
style of domestic art in this period.
Page 41
content. Still in circulation, however, is the vigorous wish, so commensurate with the wish
for silence, that the empty whirl of life round about should stop. Precisely love of silence can
be more remote from the capitalist scramble than a youth which mistakes the scramble for
life. Here old age (for which the bourgeois world no longer has any use) has the right to be
old-fashioned. To be genteel, giving a lead, using words and casting commanding glances
which are not of that day nor for that day. Embodying times in which as yet not everything
was the bustle of commerce, and above all in which this bustle will cease again. This makes a
striking and yet understandable connection possible for many an old man today, provided he
has grown wise, with a new age, the age without the cocky, sharp, heel-clicking wolves, i.e.
the socialist age. Wish and ability to be without vulgar haste, to see what is important, to
forget what is unimportant: all this is authentic life in old age.
8
The Sign That Changes
It is a flat feeling to be disturbed. But we let ourselves be interrupted by new things
remarkably easily, by unexpected things. As if no part of life were so good that it could not
be abandoned at any time. Pleasure in being different abducts us, it often deceives us. But it
always drives us out of what we are used to.
Something new must come to take us with it. Most are attracted merely by the empty
difference from what has previously been, by freshness, regardless for the moment what its
contents are. Here it already brings enjoyment that something is happening, only it must not
contain any misfortune for ourselves. In the lowest instance, gossip seduces us, news of other
people's quarrels. But even the newspaper lives largely from the need for the unusual, the
latest news is its appeal. Nothing is therefore more uninteresting, and so undeservedly so,
than a paper that is one or even several days old. Today's paper is overrated, yesterday's
underrated, the sting of surprise has been pulled out. All these vulgar or mediocre needs
presuppose boredom which is to be driven out, but at the same time set something higher in
motion; this something ultimately moves towards a wished-for, liberating piece of news. Its
contents are definitely not uninteresting, but they make what is new into what is expected,
finally
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attained, achieved. The New is greeted as a brother who has travelled from the region where
the sun rises. The sensational wish is in malleable, dull souls itself dull and gullible, in strong
souls capable of vision it is thorough. It wants to make sure that man is not lying crooked,
that he is in tune with his place and his work. That this work does not fob him off with alms,
but rather that the same old story of doing without finally comes to an end.
We listen in that direction, strain to see. The will which is at work here stems from
deprivation and does not disappear until the deprivation is eradicated. Thus as children we
jumped up, not always in fear, when the bell rang outside. Its ringing cuts through the silent,
gloomy room, especially towards evening. Perhaps now something darkly intended is
coming, that which we are looking for, that which is looking for us again. Its gift transforms
and improves everything; it brings a new age. The ringing of this bell remains in every ear, it
is associated with every good cry from outside. With the great awakening that is there and is
coming; of course expectation alone does not bring it. But if it is well attuned to the sound
and what it means, the expectation does not let us ignore the sound. It will not be deceived in
the long run, because the lie does not last. Any more than the more refined, that is, the almost
more cunning lie which whines and slanders pharisaically can deceive us in the long run,
because the socialist New is brought about by power and not by gossip, by the hard work of
proving ourselves and not through back-sliding excuses. The obsession with what is better
remains, even when what is better has been prevented for so long. When what is wished for
arrives, it surprises us anyway.
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PART TWO
(FOUNDATION):
ANTICIPATORY CONSCIOUSNESS
Page 45
9
What Goes Ahead As Urging
Who drives on within us? We move, are warm and keen. Everything living is aroused, and
first of all by itself. It breathes, as long as it exists, and stimulates us. To keep on bringing us
to the boil, from below.
That we are alive cannot be felt. The That which posits us as living does not itself emerge. It
lies deep down, where we begin to be corporeal. This push within us is what we mean when
we say, man does not live in order to live, but 'because' he lives. Nobody has sought out this
state of urging, it has been with us ever since we have existed and in that we exist. The nature
of our immediate being is empty and hence greedy, striving and hence restless. But all of this
does not feel itself, in order to do so it must first go out of itself. Then it senses itself as
'urge', as a quite vague and indefinite urge. No living thing can ever escape from the That of
urging, no matter how tired it may have become of this. This thirst constantly announces
itself but does not give its name.
10
Naked Striving and Wishing, Unsatisfied
From the bare inside something reaches forth. The urging expresses itself first as 'striving',
craving to go anywhere. When the striving is felt, it becomes 'longing', the only honest state
in all men. The longing itself is no less vague and general than the urge, but at least it is
clearly directed outwards. It does not burrow like urging does, but roves around, though quite
as utterly restless, addicted. And if it becomes obsessed with itself, the longing remains mere
general addiction. Roving around blind and empty, the latter can never go to the place where
it would be stilled.
To achieve this the longing must first clearly drive towards something. As something
definite, it ceases to strike out in all directions at once. It becomes a 'searching', that has and
does not have what it is searching for, it becomes goal-directed driving. Its driving-towards is
divided up
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according to the something at which it is directed, thus becomes the or that individually
nameable 'drive'. This concept, undoubtedly often dulled and reified in a reactionary way,
should be understood as meaning the same as 'need'. But since the word 'need' does not also
have the resonance of goal-directed driving, the word 'drive' and the concept, understood in
an undull way, may be allowed to stand. The drive is always searching to fill a hollow space,
a missing space in the striving and longing, to fill something lacking with an external
something. This various something, above all as bread or as woman or as power and so on, in
fact divides up the driving towards a goal into its several respective drives. Thus also, when
the striving we feel is only general longing, then the felt drive is the particular element of the
respective individual 'passions', 'emotions'. This something enables the drive to decrease
when it is satisfied, even to stop temporarily, in contrast to the insatiably continuing
addiction. So the goal towards which the drive moves is at the same time that by which (as
long as and in so far as it is to hand) it is stilled. The relation of animals to this goal is that of
their respective desires, man also pictures the goal to himself.
Thus man is not only capable of craving, but also of wishing. The latter is more extensive,
adds more colour than craving. For 'wishing' eagerly looks forward to an imagined idea in
which the desire causes what is its own to be pictured. Craving is certainly much older than
the imagining of the something which is craved. But precisely because this craving passes
over into wishing, it acquires the more or less definite idea of its something, in fact as a
better something. The demand of the wish rises precisely with the idea of the better, even
perfect aspect of its fulfilling something. So that it may be said, not of course of craving, but
of the demand of the wish: wishing arises, if not actually out of imagined ideas, then only
together with them. At the same time it is further stimulated by them to the same degree that
what is pictured, pictured ahead, promises fulfilment. Thus where there is the imagined idea
of something better, ultimately perhaps perfect, wishing takes place, possibly impatient,
demanding wishing. The mere imagined idea thus becomes a wishful image, stamped with
the cachet: this is how it should be. But here wishing, no matter how strong it is, is
distinguished from actual 'wanting' by its passive nature which is still related to longing. In
wishing there is not yet any element of work or activity, whereas all wanting is wanting to
do. We can wish for the weather to be fine tomorrow, although there is not the slightest thing
we can do about it. Wishes can even be entirely irrational, we can wish that X or Y were still
alive; it is possibly meaningful to wish this,
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but meaningless to want it. Therefore the wish remains even where the will can no longer
change anything. The remorseful man wishes that he had not carried out a certain action, but
he cannot actually want this. Even despondent, dithering, often disappointed, weak-willed
men have wishes, even especially strong wishes, without these wishes making them want to
do something. Furthermore, different things can be wished, one is spoilt for choice here, but
only one of them can be wanted; whereas the man who wants has already shown preference,
he knows what he would rather do, the choice lies behind him. Wishing can be undecided,
despite the definite imagined goal to which it eagerly looks forward; conversely, wanting is
necessarily active progress towards this goal, it goes outwards, has to measure itself
exclusively against things given as real. And the path the wishing takes, wishing augmented
and hardened by wanting, can itself be unwished for, that is, rough or bitter. And yet
ultimately nothing else can be wanted except what is wished: the interested wish is the
'driving method', 'drive-method', which releases wanting, demonstrates to it what is to be
wanted. Hence though there may be wishing without wanting, namely feeble, inactive
wishing which exhausts itself in the imagination or is impossible, there can be no wanting
that is not preceded by wishing. And wanting will be all the stronger, the more vividly the
imagined goal which it has in common with wishing has been shaped into a wishful image.
Wishes do nothing, but they depict and retain with particular fidelity what must be done. The
girl who would like to feel radiant and sought after, the man who dreams of future deeds,
wear poverty or ordinariness as a temporary skin. This does not cause the skin to be shed, but
it does make people grow into it less easily. Bare desire and its drive principally hold on to
what they have, but the wishing in them that pictures intends more. It remains unsatisfiable,
that is, nothing that exists gives it proper satisfaction. In all of this, drive as definite striving,
as a desire for something, remains alive.
11
Man As a Quite Extensive Complex of Drives
The Individual Body

The drive must have someone behind it. But who is the the searcher open to stimuli? Who
moves in the living movement, who drives in the animal,
Page 48
who wishes in man? Everything certainly does not revolve around the ego here; because a
drive 'overcomes' us. This does not mean, however, that no individual self-enclosed being is
present at all, which carries and feels the drives and takes away unpleasant feelings by
satisfying them. But this being is first and foremost the living individual body; moved by
stimuli, overcrowded with stimuli, it contains the drives, they are not floating generally. And
when the animal eats, its own body is satisfied, nothing else.
No Drive without Body Behind It

Certainly, that which feels itself to be body is itself very general. It merely 'finds' itself, in a
good or bad state of health; but these are not very clear findings. Whereas every drive
certainly seems to appear as a Who and as if it were pulling the body behind it. As if the
body did not contain the drive, but the drive contained the body and determined it, dyed it
respectively, black with rage, green with envy, red with anger, like a piece of cloth. In
addition there is also the long duration and apparently subjectless appearance which the
drives possess in so-called instinct. The chicks which have just crawled out of the egg peck
immediately for grains of corn, on a pre-determined path, in which they attain what is their
own in the most effective manner. The path is steered by the cerebellum, though
subsequently of course, according to Pavlov's discoveries, it can be steered in changing
directions by the cerebral cortex and the environment which is experienced through the latter
as changed; particularly among the higher animals. But so-called instinct works falsely as if
it were a self-guiding drive, and people experience it too, particularly women, if not in love,
then as caring mothers. Here it really does appear as if drives existed independently and
controlled the body, not to mention the soul. But even less efficient drives occasionally
pretend to be independent, make people into their prey. This is so in the case of neurotics,
where an isolated drive-direction, which appears almost self-sufficient, overwhelms not only
the body but also the conscious ego and confronts it as something alien. This is also true in
healthy people at the moment when they are 'overpowered' by a drive-feeling, as if the
emotion were a master in itself. Then we may say: it was not the love-sick girl who went into
the water out of grief, but the grief which went into the water with the love-sick girl. But
nevertheless, despite this in many ways subjectless appearance: nothing in the body allows
drives to become their own vehicles. When the bird builds
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its nest, when the swallow finds the previous year's nest, there is still of course no ego at
work in such mysterious processes, but also no independent drive which could, as it were, get
by without a body. Even the drive-instinct belongs to the economy of the individual body and
is only employed in so far as it belongs to it, in so far as the body does its own business,
fleeing from what damages it, searching for what preserves it. This is why there are also
several motivating forces, according to the circumstances, not only a single one that drives
everything along. Present throughout is only the body which wants to preserve itself and
therefore eats, drinks, makes love, overwhelms and thus drives alone in its drives, however
varied they may be and however transformed by the appearing ego and its relationships.
The Changing Passion

Man, in particular, always carries several drives with him. For he retains not only most of the
animal ones, he also produces new ones; that is, not only his body, but also his ego is
emotional. Conscious man is the most difficult of all animals to satisfy; he is in the
gratification of his wishes the animal which makes detours. If he lacks what is necessary
for life, he feels the lack like no other creature: hunger-visions surface. If he has what is
necessary, then with its enjoyment new desires surface which torment him differently, but no
less intensely than the previous naked privation. The rich and the sated (but not only them)
possibly suffer from the strange itch of the I-Don't-Know-What-It-Is; luxury above all (which
does appear to fulfil everything) is an insatiable driver. Xerxes offered a prize for the
invention of a new pleasure; not only boredom was behind this, but an unknown drive, at
least the clamour for it which also wanted to be stilled. In fact, in the course of history with
its changing forms, the increasing extent to which needs are satisfied, hardly one kind of
drive has remained the same, and not one presents itself as finished. With the new objects,
differently orientated addictions and passions awake, of which nobody had the slightest
inkling yesterday. The acquisitive drive, for example, which is itself only acquired anyway,
has grown to an extent which was quite alien to pre-capitalist times; even the sexual libido is
in many ways thwarted by it. Rather new also is the record-drive in late capitalist society,
especially the empty technological addiction to ever greater speed; this latter addiction was
first created by motorized
Page 50
vehicles. Above all, however, monopoly capitalism needs to intensify an abstract record-
drive for the purpose of whipping people on, for otherwise the maximum profit could not be
so quickly squeezed from the workers. And furthermore, the fascist death-drive has a novelty
which is almost furious, compared to, say, the sentimental death-drive of the Wertherzeit,* or
even the Romantic nocturnal kind; it is fired and orientated by a very different social
mandate. It receives a bonus partly for the slaughter in imperialist war, partly for the
pointlessness of late bourgeois existence as a whole. On the other hand, the religious drive, if
one can call this phenomenon such, heavily laden as it is with superstructure, the drive
upward, the erotic urge towards the changeless, receded. And where it was stimulated in a
depraved or deceived way, as in various fascist seductions, the previous upward drive hardly
remained one, it sank into the soil, into Blood and Soil. ** In short, we realize that man is an
equally changeable and extensive complex of drives, a heap of changing, and mostly badly
ordered wishes. And a permanent motivating force, a single basic drive, in so far as it does
not become independent and thus hang in the air, is hardly conceivable. The principal
motivating force does not even become visible in men of the same time and class, by
psychoanalytically dismantling their apparently purely inner clockwork, for example. There
are certainly several basic drives; now one, now another emerges more strongly, now they
work together, like opposing winds around a ship, and they do not even remain similar to
themselves. Man wants to make his fortune, this saying certainly does sound really old and it
is also undoubtedly reliable in quite a different way from the calumny about the eternal
predatory drive, but when we ask: which fortune and for what, then immediately the
questions and refinements always begin. It would also be too remarkable if in class history,
where new imagined goals of striving repeatedly surfaced, the goal-directed striving of the
drives in fact proceeded in one direction, firmly, already complete.
*
Goethe's novel 'Die Leiden des jungen Werthers', published in 1774, caused a spate of suicides in
imitation of its hero.
**
'Blood and Soil' a Nazi propaganda slogan calling for racial purity and re-occupation of allegedly
German territory.
Page 51
12
Various Interpretations of the Basic Human Drive
The Sexual Drive

But the body must first and foremost strive towards something. After all, what is the
principal motivating force of our mind and energies, as they stand in the present? As we
know, Freud posits the sexual drive as the first and most powerful. Accordingly, libido
governs life, it is fundamental both in terms of time and content. Already the sucking of the
suckling is supposedly connected with sexual pleasure and takes place largely for the sake of
this pleasure. Even hunger is supposedly subject to the sex-drive, its satisfaction becomes
sexual relaxation. The relationship to our own body and thereafter to external objects, and all
the more so to people around us, thus appears to be always primarily sexual. But libido did
not remain the sole impulse in Freud, at least not libido in the sense of positive pleasure. The
later Freud stressed alongside it a tendency towards negative pleasure, namely the death-
drive. The animal will is then also assigned to the death in store for it, not only to mating.
Just as multicellular creatures drive towards death from the outset, and mortal decomposition
already sets in in youth, in vascular contraction for example, there is also a separate drive
towards the process of dying, of growing cold. It is the destructive and aggressive drive;
Freud sought to identify it as a separate, though always libidinally coloured drive in sadistic
desires. The din of life which emanates from love is supposed to be silenced or destroyed by
this same libido. The wish for destruction expresses itself with respect to our own body in the
pleasure taken in bare discipline, in the various ascetic tendencies. With respect to other
bodies and objects the death-drive expresses itself as cruelty, as the undeniable frenzy of
destruction now raining down on others. That the death-drive is also libidinal, however, is
supposedly indicated by the universal connection between cruelty and sexual pleasure, above
all also by the emotion of Liebestod.* In any case the core is and remains sexual here, this is
what motivates Freud's man.
*
'Love-death'. The desire to preserve the perfection of Romantic love through death, as in Wagner's
interpretation of the story of Tristan and Isolde, for example.
Page 52
Ego-Drive and Repression

Only later is this joined by another, narrower power. Of course, this narrowness, even
sharpness in man is important; since it is his ego. Freud indicates time and again, not without
retreating occasionally, that, apart from the sex-drive and the death-drive related to it, he has
distinguished a purely human drive. For if there were only libido and nothing else, then
neither conflicts nor neuroses could arise in us. Next to the 'dark id' of the body and its
drives, however, stands the ego, according to Freud. The ego-drives stand opposite the sexual
powers; indeed, the whole of psychoanalysis, says Freud, 'has been built up upon the sharp
division of the sexual drives from the ego-drives'. The ego affirms, denies and censors the
drives, consciousness depends on it, it is the power which makes our mental life coherent. It
is the power 'which goes to sleep at night and then still operates dream censorship'. The ego-
drive represses what does not fall into line with it in the sexual drives and their contents (of
which more later). Thus our mental life is dualistic, in spite of the libido, which began
everything here; it moves 'between the coherent ego and the repressed material that is split
off from it'. Precisely this tension leads, if it leads to contradiction, to pathogenic conflict,
one between the ego-drives and the sexual drives. From the ego emanate 'the repressions
through which certain mental tendencies are excluded not only from consciousness but also
from the other kinds of validity and application. This material removed by repression
confronts the ego in analysis, and the analysis is given the task of eliminating the resistances
to dealing with the repressed material expressed by the ego.' The ego sees to the removal of
unpleasant feelings through the fulfilment of drives, but it sees to this fulfilment in its own
way, in a censoring, moralizing way and above all with respect to what can be achieved, to
'reality'. This moralizing element, i.e. what has adapted to the practices of Freud's bourgeois
environment, is according to Freud the acquired line of the ego-drive. Thus there even occurs
a penetration of the libido, hence of the pleasure principle which otherwise determines all
drive-processes; the adult, or better: the bourgeois individual seen by Freud in a bourgeois
way, wears down his Dionysian horns on 'reality', as Freud calls his bourgeois environment
(the commodity world and its ideology).'The thus educated ego has become ''reasonable", it
no longer allows itself to be controlled by the pleasure principle but follows the reality
principle, which basically also wants to achieve pleasure, but pleasure
Page 53
ensured by consideration of reality, even if this is postponed and diminished pleasure.' And
yet the ego, the 'reality' itself or the bourgeois outside world would not yet be sufficient to
censor and also to sublimate the libidinal drives, if there was not also, next to and above
them, the 'super-ego' or the 'ego-ideal'. The super-ego is the other content of the ego;
according to Freud it represents our relations to our parents; it creates all the surrogate
formations of piety. The ego represents the rights of the outside world, the super-ego is
however 'the advocate of the inner world', the 'origin of conscience and of guilt feelings'
(understood as the tensions between the claims of conscience and the achievements of the
ego); it is the 'seed from which all religions have developed'. By representing father and
mother, the super-ego observes, threatens and controls the ego as the parents had previously
observed, threatened and controlled the child; thus it gives the ego a guiding image and is the
source of the formation of ideals. But precisely because of the continuing effect of parental
authority, a threatening element can easily exist in the super-ego; the conscience is strict, the
sense of duty sombre, and also the super-ego very often retains, from its parental side, the
traditions and ideals of the past. Nevertheless it skirts round the wakeful ego to get to the
libido, to the common dark, to the id of the inner world united in the dark. All this is added to
the original libido, at least in the later Freud; thus an extraordinary superstructure of drives
exists. Admittedly one which is supposed to be largely dismantled again through analysis and
which, as far as the contents of the super-ego are concerned (to which not only religion but,
for example, also the postulates of changing the world belong), supposedly consists
exclusively of 'illusions' with regard to the outside world. The inner world itself, however,
which finds its advocate in the super-ego, in the final analysis always remains that of the
libido or the repressed drives, of the 'unconscious id' in man. The id of this libido is and
remains according to Freud the unconscious realm of drives that fills the body and surrounds
us, seen from its animal side as well as from that of the super-ego. With the result 'that we are
"lived" by unknown, uncontrollable forces' (in other words: by the alien domination of the
capitalist mode of production which Freud has made into the libido-id). Psychoanalysis, on
the other hand, is 'a tool which should make the progressive conquest of the id by the ego
possible'. This merely has the effect of freeing the basic libidinal drive again, that is, it is
neither diminished in acts of repression nor eclipsed in ties of the ego-ideal. Freud does
indeed want to bring the repressed and unconscious material in it rationally to light, that is, to
reduce the hypocritical and neurosis-creating
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mustiness. But what should follow is solely daylight within the private libido and within the
'discontent' of a civilization* where apparently nothing more than a breath of psychoanalytical
air is lacking.
Repression, Complex, Unconscious Material and Sublimation

Thus the sexual drive, if not the be all and end all, still remains fundamental here. The decent
girl simply refuses to admit it, the demure ego represses sexuality. But consequently the latter
now begins to ferment and to urge all the more, it cannot work itself off in the existing or
permitted life. Sexuality and its wishes are wrapped up by bourgeois people, as Freud found
them, in a thick web of secrecy, of hypocrisy and lies. For in fact: the libido in the individual
himself, not just in the cant of society, is subject to a moralizing censorship which does not
allow our true being to step over the threshold of consciousness. This censorship debars, it
represses the sexual impulse, it slanders it, as soon as the repression is not totally successful,
it blocks itself off against knowledge of it. The libido here remains for Freud both the single
basic drive and the essential content of human existence; for the ego is, as noted, only a
checking authority. It inspects the baggage brought in by the libido, it forces the libido to
disguise itself, if necessary to 'sublimate' itself into intellectual material, but the ego itself is
unproductive. Of course, when it represses, the moralizing censorship only removes the
repressed material on the surface. The unfulfilled, even hushed-up wishes simply sink down
in the process of repression into the more or less unconscious. There they fester, form
neurotic tensions and complexes without the sufferer becoming aware of the cause. The
merely forgotten, not vanished sexual affective processing continues to work in all manner of
disguises. Freud was already looking to demonstrate the prompting of the libido in the
psychopathology of everyday life, in slips of the tongue, bungled actions, in slips** of the
seemingly most coincidental, most insignificant kind. Drives which have not been worked
off, incomplete experiences, forgotten wounds and disappointments continue to smart; they
have disappeared from the consciousness of the ego, but not from the psyche. From them
derive seemingly unfounded oversensitivity, over-reaction,
*
Bloch is alluding to Freud's 'Civilization and its Discontents', 1930.
**
'Fehlleistungen'. Strachey's English translation gives the elaborate 'parapraxes' for this simple German
compound.
Page 55
compulsively neurotic activity, and finally the group of emotions which has become
senselessly independent and devoid of content: the complex. All ghosts or perhaps merely
Freudian ghosts appear here: penis envy, the castration and Oedipus complexes and more
besides. According to Freud, a sexual irritation is at the bottom of all complexes, they are
fixated on an infantile, forgotten trauma. From the experiences of childhood derives the
castration complex, the so-called Oedipus complex of father hatred (although Oedipus
himself, as Chesterton says, was the only man who certainly had no Oedipus complex, since
he did not know until the end that Laertes, whom he killed, was his father, and Jocasta,
whom he married, was his mother). Supposedly, all these strangely named phenomena, even
more strange because they are thundered up from below, have entirely 'resulted from
interrupted, somehow disturbed processes which had to remain unconscious'. If it were then
possible to go down with consciousness into the cellar of the repressed, to make the
unconscious preconditions of the neurotic symptoms conscious, then the neurotic would be
cured, that is, his ego would have his id under its thumb. The person who knows the cause of
his complexes cures himself; though only psychoanalysis can help him to this knowledge.
Laborious probing into the depths, paying attention to seemingly incidental authorities,
particularly to authorities made to seem incidental, but also to mistrust of ideologies which
sound much too nice (like 'sanctity' of motherhood and the like) all this detective skill is
necessary to recognize the content of the neurotic symptom and to call it into the patient's
consciousness. The main road there, via regia, is supposed to be the interpretation of dreams,
as is well-known, in fact the interpretation of nocturnal dreams as such, being those where
the censoring ego is asleep, and the harsh external world can no longer be perceived. For
Freud, every dream is the fulfilment of an unconscious wish-fantasy; the task is to decipher
analytically the wishfully announced material from the symbolism in which it cloaks itself in
the dream. At all stages the neurotic puts up a characteristic resistance to this deciphering: the
forgotten wants to remain forgotten and its symptoms to remain disguised. But it is
nevertheless important to note here: the resistance to them becoming conscious lies according
to Freud solely in the will of the patient, not, for example, in the material of the unconscious
itself, i.e. that unconscious which Freud himself establishes and which apart from the
grotesque quality of its essentially merely libidinal contents is essentially a product or at
least a refuge of repression. Repression itself is in this sense a process 'through which an act
capable of consciousness, i.e. one which belongs
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to the system of pre-consciousness, is made unconscious, i.e. pushed back into the system of
unconsciousness. And likewise we call it repression, when the unconscious mental act is not
permitted to enter the next pre-conscious system at all, but is turned away on the threshold by
censorship.' The libido which has been made conscious thus reveals no other door than that
through which we re-enter the reeled-up Long Ago. Psychoanalysis seeks to be ab ovo
subcortical memory, solitary, encapsulated, and, as it itself states, subterranean, Acherontic.*
The unconscious in Freud is therefore one into which something can only be pushed back. Or
which at best, as id, surrounds consciousness as if this were a closed ring: a phylogenetic
inheritance all around conscious man. 'With the help of the super-ego, the ego draws, in a
way that is still obscure to us, on the experiences of prehistory stored up in the id.' The
unconscious of psychoanalysis is therefore, as we can see, never a Not-Yet-Conscious, an
element of progressions; it consists rather of regressions. Accordingly, even the process of
making this unconscious conscious only clarifies What Has Been; i.e. there is nothing new in
the Freudian unconscious. This became even clearer when C. G. Jung, the psychoanalytic
fascist, reduced the libido and its unconscious contents entirely to the primeval. According to
him, exclusively phylogenetic primeval memories or primeval fantasies exist in the
unconscious, falsely designated 'archetypes'; and all wishful images also go back into this
night, only suggest prehistory. Jung even considers the night to be so colourful that
consciousness pales beside it; as a spurner of the light, he devalues consciousness. In
contrast, Freud does of course uphold illuminating consciousness, but one which is itself
surrounded by the ring of the id, by the fixed unconsciousness of a fixed libido. Even highly
productive artistic creations do not lead out of this Fixum; they are simply sublimations of
the self-enclosed libido: imagination is a substitute for the fulfilment of drives. 'The problem
to be solved then', says Freud, 'is to displace the drive-goals, in such a way that they cannot
be affected by the failure of the external world.' The sex-drive can be refined into caritas, into
devotion to the well-being of one's neighbour, ultimately of humanity. More highly
sublimated libido constitutes the pleasure the artist derives from his creation, but also the
enjoyment and the (vicarious) satisfaction the non-artist derives from a work of art. The latter
does after all provide pure wish-fulfilment of a shaped yet uninhibited kind: women,
wedding, heroes and even the beautiful tragic corpse. It provides the man
*
Acheron, the river of woe in Hades.
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in the stalls with what he lacks in life, provides cloth of gold like a beautiful dream in the
night does. The viewer or the spectator works off his wishes in this way so that they no
longer cause him pain. But every 'catharsis' of this kind remains temporary, in fact illusory:
art, according to Freud, works exclusively with the illusions with which the unsatisfied libido
allows itself to be fooled. How mechanistically far away Freud is here from Pavlov's
realization that precisely the higher psychological processes work, with the constant
influence of the changes in the environment which they have grasped, on the emotional and
organic processes; that they are in no way merely dependent, nor inherently hollow modes of
substitution. In Freud, however, there remain only sexual libido, its conflict with the ego-
drives, and the cellar of consciousness as a whole, from which the illusions then rise.
Power-Drive, Frenzy-Drive, Collective Unconscious

No matter how dully grasped the body is, the sexual drive does not live in it all the time, nor
alone. After he had taken this road, Freud, as we know, was therefore contradicted by several
of his pupils. These pupils were quick either to distinguish a quite different driving force or
to bronze the libido. Alfred Adler, the originator of so-called individual psychology,
attempted to do the first, C. G. Jung the second (with a mythical patina). Thus 'the problem of
sexuality which weighs upon us all' was 'eliminated at a stroke', for which Freud criticizes
them both. At any rate, it seemed it could be eliminated. In systems based on different
motivating forces, it is not the complete be all and end all. On a bi-sexual foundation, Adler
posits, in supreme capitalist fashion, the will to power as the basic human drive: primarily
man wants to rule and overpower. He wants to get from the bottom to the top, wants to lie on
top, to pass from the female line in him to the male, feel himself individually confirmed as
the victor. Vanity, ambition, 'male protest' are accordingly the emotions in which this basic
drive appears most visibly. Wounded vanity, failed ambition are the source of most neuroses.
Sexuality is itself only a means to the final goal, the attainment of power: 'Libido, sex-drive
and tendency to perversion, wherever they may have derived from, also line up behind this
guiding principle' (Adler, Der nervse Charakter, 1922, p. 5). The feeling of insecurity and
inferiority stands threateningly at the beginning of the development of neurosis; unfulfilled
power-drive produces the inferiority complex. But as skin hardens over a wound, as a
protective measure, as it
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were, against future damage, and as the failure of one kidney strengthens the functioning of
the other, mental inferiorities are likewise overcompensated by the ego. Partly through masks
and fictions: will to power then becomes will to appearance; partly also, however, through
higher achievements: will to power then recoups its losses, possibly in a beautiful fantasy
world. Though we do not see where it takes its material from here; for the will to power, in
itself necessarily bare, cannot of course be sublimated as regards content. Nevertheless, goal-
setting remains essential in this will, precisely in accordance with the desire to be out in
front; it takes the place of mere innate drivenness from below, i.e. from the Freudian sexual
libido. The individual person builds himself up by means of a guiding image or even just by
means of play-acting and fiction: 'The insecurity which is felt to be embarrassing is reduced
to its smallest proportions and then reversed into its extreme opposite, into its contradiction
which as a fictional goal is made into the guiding point of all wishes, fantasies and
endeavours.' In this way the person forms nothing other than the individual person appears
in this individual psychology his character: 'So as not to miss the path to the summit, to
make it perfectly safe, he draws constantly effective guidelines in the form of character traits
in the broad chaotic fields of his soul.' Fundamentally, everything personal is thus made and
cultivated from the outset in Adler through a largely unconscious but no longer in any way
naive purposive will. Thus, fundamentally, the causa finalis rules, the biological factor is
subjugated to the capitalistically interested goal which is geared to the safeguarding of the
personality, to raising the feeling of personality. Because Adler therefore drives sex out of
the libido and inserts individual power, his definition of drives takes the ever steeper
capitalist path from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche and reflects this path ideologically and
psychoanalytically. Freud's concept of libido bordered on the 'will to life' in Schopenhauer's
philosophy; Schopenhauer in fact described the sexual organs as 'the focal points of the will'.
Adler's 'will to power' conversely coincides verbally, and partly also in terms of content with
Nietzsche's definition of the basic drive from his last period; in this respect Nietzsche has
triumphed over Schopenhauer here, that is to say, the imperialist elbow has triumphed over
the gentlemanly pleasure-displeasure body in psychoanalysis. The competitive struggle
which hardly leaves any time for sexual worries stresses industriousness rather than
randiness; the hectic day of the businessman thus eclipses the hectic night of the rake and his
libido.
But even that did not last, for fewer and fewer people were attracted by the day which had
become inhospitable. The petit bourgeois' wish grew
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ever stronger to allow himself to lapse back into irresponsible, but also more or less wild
obscurity. Above all the path to the so-called heights lost some of its interest and prospects,
in exact proportion to the decline of free enterprise, as a result of monopoly capitalism. The
path became more attractive which led into the so-called depths, in which the eyes roll
instead of aiming at a goal. C. G. Jung, the fascistically frothing psychoanalyst, consequently
posited the frenzy-drive in place of the power-drive. Just as sexuality is only part of this
Dionysian general libido, so also is the will to power, in fact the latter is completely
transformed into battle-frenzy, into a stupor which in no way strives towards individual
goals. In Jung, libido thus becomes an archaically undivided primeval unity of all drives, or
'Eros' per se: consequently it extends from eating to the Last Supper, from coitus to unio
mystica, from the frothing mouth of the shaman, even the berserker, to the rapture of Fra
Angelico. Even here, therefore, Nietzsche triumphs over Schopenhauer, but he triumphs as
the affirmation of a mescalin Dionysus over the negation of the will to life. As a result, the
unconscious aspect of this mystified libido is also not contested and there is no attempt to
resolve it into current consciousness, as in Freud. Rather the neurosis, particularly that of
modem, all too civilized and conscious man, derives according to Jung precisely from the
fact that men have emerged too far out of what is unconsciously growing, outside the world
of 'elemental feel-thinking'. Here Jung borders not only on the fascist version of Dionysus,
but also partly on the vitalistic philosophy of Bergson. Bergson had already, though still in a
secessionist-liberal* way, played off intuition against reason, creative unrest against closed
order and rigid geometry. But far more so than with Bergson's 'lan vital', the fascist Jung
borders on the Romantic reactionary distortions which Bergson's vitalism underwent; as in
sentimental penis-poets like D. H. Lawrence, in complete Tarzan philosophers like Ludwig
Klages. Bergson's lan vital was still directed forwards; it corresponded to the 'Art Nouveau'
or 'Secessionism' of the Nineties, it contained watchwords of freedom, none of regressive
enslavement. D. H. Lawrence, on the other hand, and Jung along with him, sings the
wildernesses of the elemental age of love, which to his misfortune man has emerged from; he
seeks the nocturnal moon in the flesh, the unconscious sun in the blood. And Klages blows in
a more abstract way on the same bull-horn; he does not only hark back
*
Bloch has in mind here the artistic secessions in the last decade of the nineteenth century in Munich
(1892), Vienna (1897) and Berlin (1899).
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like the earlier Romantics to the Middle Ages, but to the diluvium, to precisely where Jung's
impersonal, pandemonic libido lives. There are of course egos and individuals, Jung teaches,
but they do not go deep in the soul; the personality itself is only a mask or a socially played
role. What works in the personality and as such is instead supposed to be vital pressure, from
much deeper, much older layers, from the magical collective layers of the race, for example.
The individual person is collective on this ground, and leads back to it again: 'Since the
individual is not only a single being, but also assumes collective relationships to his
existence, the process of individuation therefore also leads not into isolation, but into a more
intensive and more general collective context' (Jung, Psychologische Typen, 1921, p. 637).
Contest and free competition, which in Adler still spurred people on to outstrip each other
and to keener and keener individual psychology, are submerged here into the 'folk
community' and into 'psychosynthesis', this means in fact: into archaic collective regression.
Impersonally, in fact inhumanly unconscious material opens up, a long way behind every
individual experience, if not behind the archaic traces of the mere memory of humanity.
Accordingly, primal memories are supposed to be active from the time of our animal
forefathers, i.e. a long way behind the diluvium; Jung appropriates the concept of the
'engram' for this, which Semon introduced into biology, the concept of a memory of the
whole of organic matter and its memory traces. They are incorporated in libido as a primal
animal plan, but they also keep the unconscious per se in the archaic primal dimension of
What Has Been. Thus psychosynthesis does not disperse into day and into external pieces,
but 'reflects' and takes the neurotically or otherwise given symbol back into its ancestral
night: 'Just as analysis (the causal reductive process) divides the symbol into its components,
the synthetic process condenses the symbol into a general and comprehensible expression.'
Freud's unconscious, despite phylogenetic archaic elements which he no doubt believed he
saw and which in his school have been 'excavated' down to the primal memories of the first
land animals Freud's unconscious was therefore largely individual, that is, filled with
individually acquired repressions and with repressions from the recent past of a modem
individual. Jung's unconscious on the other hand is entirely general, primeval and collective,
it purports to be 'the five-hundred-thousand-year-old shaft beneath the few thousand years of
civilization', particularly beneath the few years of individual life. In this basic ground there is
not only nothing new, but what it contains is decidedly primeval; everything new is ipso
facto without value, in fact hostile to value; according to Jung and Klages,
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the only thing that is new today is the destruction of instinct, the undermining of the ancient
basic ground of the imagination by the intellect. Even neurotic conflict is the suffering
caused by intellect to this basic ground of the drives and of the imagination; or as Lawrence
said: men have lost the moon in their flesh, the sun in their blood. Thus the neurotic must not
be completely removed from the unconscious material which he still has, rather what is
necessary is guidance back to the collective unconscious, to the 'age-old forces of life'.
Psychosynthesis fleeing the present, hating the future, searching for primeval time thus
becomes the same as 'religion' in the etymological sense of the word: namely re-ligio,
connecting back. And in fact there appears to be no difference between the frothing mouth of
the shaman and Meister Eckhart, in true night-tolerance; indeed, the shaman is better. Then
the most rampant superstition ranks more than ever above enlightenment; since, of course,
Jung's collective unconscious flows thicker in witch-crazes than in pure reason.
'Eros' and the Archetypes

It comes to this, among other things, when the conscious ego is taken away from the body.
When the libido is driven completely into the dark, into the unconscious as a goal. In Freud
the sick person was only reminded of the unconscious so that he could free himself from it.
In C. G. Jung, however, he is reminded of it so that he plunges headlong into the
unconscious, into layers lying deeper and deeper, lying deeper and deeper in the past. Libido
becomes archaic; blood and soil, Neanderthal man and Tertiary period leap out
simultaneously to confront us. Gottfried Benn, the disciple of Jung and Klages, gave this an
equally psychosynthetic and lyrical expression: 'We carry the early peoples in our souls, and
when the late Ratio loses its hold, in dream and intoxication, they rise up with their rites,
their pre-logical way of thinking, and dispense an hour of mystical participation. When the
logical superstructure dissolves and the cortex, tired of the onslaught of the pre-lunar stock,
opens the eternally contested border of consciousness, it is then that the old, the unconscious
appears in the magic ego-transformation and identification, in the earlier experience of being
everywhere and eternal.' Jung drove the libido harder and harder towards these archaic
connections, at the same time he grasped these beginnings so nebulously and generally that
the whole Irratio of those times, quite regardless of what it says, can be accommodated
interchangeably.
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This really is the night in which all cows are grey, the night of that immeasurably extended
libido, collectivized in the idea of the bosom of nature, which is now also called world soul.
Eros, Plato, Indian theosophy, alchemical and astrological imagery, Plotinus or what C. G.
Jung imagines by this, swirl around each other, all united in the 'pre-lunar' libido: 'As far as
the psychological aspect of this concept is concerned, I remind the reader here of the
cosmogonic significance of Eros in Plato and in Hesiod, as well as the orphic figure of
Phanes, the ''revealer", the first to come into being, the father of Eros . . . The orphic
significance of Phanes matches that of the Indian Karma, the love-god who is also a
cosmogonic principle' (Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, 1925, p. 127). Jung adds,
across huge gulfs, as if, because it sounds so cosmic, it were the same thing: 'In the neo-
platonist Plotinus the world soul is the energy of the intellect.' In this way the libido in Jung
opens up like a sack of undigested, atavistic secrets, or rather abracadabras, in fact this sack,
in Jung's own words, drags 'an invisible dinosaur tail behind it; carefully separated, it
becomes the saviour serpent of the mystery' (ber die Archetypen des kollektiven
Bewutseins, 1935, p. 227). For accordingly, diluvium remains the closest thing to Eros, who
began everything, and Eros strives to get back to it, along pre-logical lines, away from
consciousness. The anatomical location of this libido is the ancient sympathetic nerve, not
the cerebro-spinal system; its organon, already itself semi-insufficient, all too enlightened,
remains mythology. The mother bond, for example, is according to Jung not to the individual
mother, but to an ancient general mother image. It is the bond with Gaia or Cybele, with that
archaic beingness (Been-ness), which is also supposed to be behind Astarte, Isis, and Mary.
The occupation* of libido thus subsequently becomes 'prototypal' per se here, the 'archetypes
of the Earth Mother' shine and triumph through every individual mother. Archetype in
general, Lvy-Bruhl's 'reprsentation collective', is the cue with which Jung's libido brings on
its collective unconscious. Thereafter, the unconscious, and only this, is universally
populated by archetypes: snake, kitchen, fire, pot on the fire, deep waters, Mother Earth, the
old wise man, are a few examples of it. This prototypical material is supposed to be highly
inflammable, especially for a man of today, that is, one who is a mixture of myths: he who
speaks in archetypes, speaks
*
'Besetzung'. In Strachey's English translation of Freud this has been translated by the over-
complicated 'cathexis'. For a discussion of the misrepresentation of Freud in English translation, see
Bruno Bettelheim's 'Freud and Man's Soul', 1983.
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with a thousand tongues, and this, according to Jung, simply because the creature of intellect
is mediated with the drive-image life of the primeval man-animal, with the enormous
resonance of blood and soil. Collective unconscious is, however, not only the location of this
kind of health, according to Jung it also contains all the basic forms of human imagination:
all better or more beautiful worlds that have ever been dreamt of are racial soul, archetypal
time.
Thus the mandate to strive from the light into the darkness was followed here in such
stupefying fashion. It is only possible to run capitalist business if the consciousness of its
victims is stupefied in their free time. Consequently, Jung generalized and archaized Freud's
unconscious right down the line; it is not supposed to be resolved rationally. No sublimation
takes place here either (which, according to Freud, does at least lead to culture); Freud's pupil
Jung dissociated himself also on this point from 'Jewish psychology' when the stars were
propitious. The 'sacred dark primeval night', complete with bloody visions and a veritable
orgy of images, replaces sublimation; this force is already in good order, it is in fact the only
thing that lives in good order. Jung did stumble upon a not unimportant (as we shall see)
imaginative stock here, upon that of archetypes. But just as he took his concept of them from
Romanticism, he also failed to extricate it from unstructured Romantic dilettantism.
Prototyping is only suitable for so-called psychosynthesis lock, stock and barrel, and magical
wishy-washyness (commanded by monopoly capitalism) is useful for its purposes. The
rapport of this Panic libido with German fascism is obvious; the consciousness of the C. G.
Jung somnambulist is in no way suspended here. To fascism also, hatred of intelligence is, as
Jung actually says 'the only means of compensating for the damages of today's society'.
Fascism too needs the death-cult of a dolled-up primeval age to obstruct the future, to
establish barbarism and to block revolution. Given all this, the basic drive becomes a drive
towards that basic ground where Dionysus only wants to be called Moloch. A basic ground
of regressio is praised as medicine and morality, a ground from which everything human has
again become estranged. Thus Freud, as we said, who did at least want to bring liberal
enlightenment, and the fascistic mystifier Jung, present extensive contradictions in their
common 'depth psychology' (as it modestly calls itself): the liberal wants to make repressed
material conscious, the reactionary wants to connect conscious material back with the
repressed, to push it back ever deeper into the unconscious. In Freud the unconscious is
combated and, as far as it is individually acquired, kept in the orbit of the individual.
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In Jung the unconscious is welcomed and completely settled in the archaic-collective, and is
also contemplated with limitless tolerance towards everything that swirls around in it as fog,
numen or taboo. But neither must we forget: Freud the teacher is on the same plane as his
perverted pupil on the crucial point: both understand the unconscious solely as something
past in historical development, as something that has sunk down into the cellar and only
exists there. They both recognize, even if the regression has an extremely different nature and
extension, only an unconscious that moves backwards or underneath the already existing
consciousness; they in fact recognize no pre-consciousness of a New. And, so far as the
drive-theory under discussion here is concerned, the whole psychoanalytical school is
connected in that it emphasizes solely spicy drives, and moreover lifts them in a conceptually
mythical way out of the living body. In this way an idolized libido arises, or will to power or
primeval Dionysus, and more significantly these idols are made absolute. Just as that which
has been made absolute is lifted out of the living body, which after all only wants to preserve
itself and that is all, so too in Freud and Adler, and especially in Jung, it is never discussed as
a variable of socioeconomic conditions. But if basic drives are to be distinguished at all, they
will vary widely in material terms in men according to individual classes and epochs, and
consequently in terms of intention or as drive-direction. And most importantly: the respective
psychoanalytical basic drives that are emphasized are not basic drives at all in the strict
sense, they are too partial. They do not break through so unequivocally as say hunger, the
drive that is always left out of psychoanalytical theory; they are not such final authorities as
the simple drive to keep oneself alive. This drive is the self-preservation drive, it alone might
be so fundamental no matter what changes occur as to set all the other drives in motion in
the first place.
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13
The Historical Limitation of all Basic Drives Various Locations of Self-
Interest Filled and Expectant Emotions
The Urgent Need

Very little, all too little has been said so far about hunger. Although this goad also looks very
primal or primeval. Because a man dies without nourishment, whereas we can live a little
while longer without the pleasures of love-making. It is all the more possible to live without
satisfying our power-drive, all the more possible without returning into the unconscious of
our five-hundred-thousand-year-old forefathers. But the unemployed person on the verge of
collapse, who has not eaten for days, has really been led to the oldest needy place of our
existence and makes it visible. In any case, sympathy with the starving is the only
widespread sympathy there is, in fact the only one that is widely possible. The girl, or
especially the man, who is longing for love, these do not arouse sympathy, whereas the cry of
hunger is probably the strongest single cry that can be directly presented. We believe the
particular misfortune of the starving man; even the freezing, even the sick, not to mention the
love-sick, seem to be in luxury by comparison. Even the most hard-hearted housewife will
possibly forget her vexed stinginess when the beggar eats the soup she offers. Already in this
ordinary sympathy, deprivation and its wishes are undoubtedly clear here. The stomach is the
first lamp into which oil must be poured. Its longing is precise, its drive is so unavoidable
that it cannot even be repressed for long.
Most Reliable Basic Drive:

Self-Preservation
But no matter how loud hunger bellows, it is seldom mentioned by the doctors here. This
omission shows that it is always only the better class of sufferers who have been and are
treated psychoanalytically. The problem of finding nourishment was the most groundless of
worries for Freud and his visitors. The psychoanalytical doctor and above all his patient
come from a middle class which until recently had to worry little about its
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stomach. When Freud's Vienna became less carefree though, there was a psychoanalytical
advice bureau for attempted suicides, where there was also the opportunity to get to know the
drives beneath the libido. Because over ninety per cent of all suicides occur out of economic
deprivation and only the rest out of love-sickness (which is incidentally unrepressed).
However, even in bourgeois dclass Vienna, the notice hung on the wall of the
psychological advice bureau: 'Economic and social questions cannot be treated here.'
Understandably, little could be thus discovered about the inner life of the attempted suicide,
and just as little was done to remove the commonest complex of all, the one which Franziska
Reventlov so unmedically called the money complex. The goad of hunger is just as excluded
from psychoanalysis as the libido was from the cant of the salons. This is the class-based
limitation of psychoanalytical research into basic drives; there is also a national limitation.
Perhaps not as regards libido, but certainly concerning moral ego-censorship and
consequently repression. A characteristic difference exists here between the middle classes of
different countries, especially between France and Germany. If a bachelor in Paris does not
take a girl to his hotel room at least once a week, or if he does not stop out one night, the
manager begins to get worried about the bill: the tenant does not seem to be normal sexually,
and so it may be assumed that he may not pay the rent either. The French bourgeois thus has
a smaller reserve of cant than the average German, let alone the average Englishman;
consequently he shows less sexual stuffiness, fewer libidinal repression complexes. And in
the proletariat neither cant, nor above all the libido take up so much room as Viennese
psychoanalysis assumed ab origine. Hunger and troubles constrict libido in the lower class;
there are fewer noble sufferings here, and they have a more tangible cause with a less
sophisticated name. The neurotic conflicts of the proletariat do not unfortunately consist of
such well-heeled material as Freud's 'fixation of the libido on particular erogenous zones' or
Adler's 'badly fitting character mask' or Jung's 'imperfect regression to primeval times'; and
the fear of losing one's job is hardly a castration complex. Of course, psychoanalysis cannot
help but take notice of hunger and thirst occasionally, likewise of the interest in self-
preservation; but, strangely, the self-preservation drive is not assigned by Freud to the
stomach and the body-system in general, in which it is deeply anchored, but to the group of
late ego-drives, the same group also responsible for moral censorship. Thus it looks like a
late arrival, of which nothing is said in the advice bureau, like an acte accessoire compared to
all-driving Eros. Obviously, however, there is
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no erotic conception of history to replace the economic one, no explanation of the world in
terms of libido and its distortions, rather than in terms of the economy and its superstructure.
Here too then we should ultimately stick with the real expression of the matter: with
economic interest, not the only, but the fundamental interest. The self-preservation which
manifests itself within this interest is the soundest among the many basic drives and, despite
all temporal, class-based modifications which it is also subject to, surely the most universal.
Therefore it can be said, despite all reservations and the stated aversion to making things
absolute: self-preservation with hunger as its most obvious expression is the only basic
drive among the several which consistently deserves this name, it is the last instance of the
drive and the one most concretely related to the bearer. Even the idealist Schiller had to teach
that the world maintained its push and shove 'through hunger and through love'; and
furthermore he puts hunger in first place and love in second. Such a precedence was still
possible at that time, though without any real consequences, in the rising bourgeoisie; in the
late bourgeoisie, to which Freud's psychoanalysis also belongs, hunger was deleted. Or it
became a subspecies of the libido, its 'oral phase', as it were; subsequently, self-preservation
does not occur as an original drive at all. 'Suum esse conservare', to preserve one's being, that
is and remains however, according to Spinoza's unerring definition, the 'appetitus' of all
beings. Even if capitalist competitive economy has made it individual beyond all measure, it
still runs, however modified, remorselessly through all societies.
Historical Change of the Drives, Even of the Self-Preservation Drive

Just as no drive remains rigid, neither does what bears it. Nothing at all is fixed once and for
all here, at the beginning for instance, but rather precisely our self is not given to us in
advance. Since the passions are subject to historical change, and new ones arise with newly
set goals, the subjective hearth on which they are all cooking also changes. Nor is there an
'original' drive, nor a 'primal man' or even an 'old Adam' either. The supposed 'nature of man',
in the sense rigid research into basic drives understands it, has been cross-bred and broken up
hundreds of times in
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the course of history. Among cultivated plants and breeding animals an original variety may
have been preserved because they are brought together in an external and artificial way in the
breeding process, but this does not happen among men. Certainly, among cultivated plants
and breeding animals there is still the simple dog-rose which was ennobled into the luxury
roses, and the wood-pigeon from which all our tame pigeons stem, to which they could
possibly revert. Whereas historical man, even if he becomes wild, never again becomes
primal man from whom the various historical domesticated varieties emanated. He becomes
a decadent barbarian with a well-known, historically ordered psychopathology of drives; he
becomes a bit of Bluebeard or Nero or Caligula or Hitler, but not a Neanderthal man from the
'healthy diluvium'. Even a great number of so-called primitives today are, as we know,
nothing of the sort, they are not the oldest human creatures. Rather, they represent the waste
products of great cultures; they are not old physis, but have long since become new physis,
by virtue of inheriting historically acquired qualities. The 'heathen' whom a missionary
baptizes, the 'old Adam' whom the Christian casts off, is himself again the 'Christ' of an
earlier practice and religion, that is, of an earlier radical change of the human creature.
Therefore, the so-called man of primal drives is not to be discovered beneath historical and
modern man, and, scientifically speaking, does not exist. What we call by this name is either
(in Freud) the bourgeois man of drives, distorted and buried under the cant of the Victorian
century, or he is even (in Jung) a fascist phantasmagoria, corked up in mythological bottles.
Research into basic drives more than any other kind reflects the characteristic drive of its
times, which is why its findings have always turned out to be so different. Rousseau's 'natural
man' was Arcadian and rational, Nietzsche's 'natural man', on the other hand, was Dionysian
and irrational; i.e. the one fulfilled the wishes of the Enlightenment, the other the wishes of
Imperialism (and simultaneously of the 'anti-capitalist longing' smouldering amongst the
bourgeois). Correspondingly, the historical location of 'the human creature', as characterized
by Freud, can also be precisely determined: this libidoman lives together with his dreamed
wish-fulfilments in the bourgeois world a few decades before and a few decades after 1900
(the key year of the secessionist 'liberation of the flesh from the spirit'). The way of
perceiving sex, and consequently the excitability of the libido is always variant in every
society and in every layer of that society. Even for hunger there is no 'natural' drive structure,
for the simple reason that the kind
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of perception assigned to it, and consequently the stimulus-world, is also historically

variable. Even this is no longer a biologically maintained basic direction in man, no longer
one which remains rooted in the fixed instinct of searching for nourishment down firmly
established paths. Rather, it interacts as socially developed and guided need with the other
social, and therefore historically varying needs which it underlies and with which, for this
very reason, it is transformed and causes transformation the more, and the more
sophisticatedly, further and further layers are added to the appetite. In short, all definitions of
basic drives only flourish in the soil of their own time and are limited to that time. For this
simple reason they cannot be made absolute, even less separated from the economic being of
mankind in each age. Libido (which is confined in animals to the mating season), power-
drive (which sets in at the earliest with the division into classes) appear secondary in contrast,
but incidentally all have hunger, appetite within them. The latter's need to be satisfied is the
oil in the lamp of history, but even this primary need looks different according to the
changing ways in which needs are satisfied. Economic interest forms the final instance in the
historically existing framework of drives, but even this, precisely this once again, as we
know, has its changing historical forms, the changes in the mode of production and
exchange. Indeed, even man's self, which wants to preserve itself, which reproduces itself
through the intake of nourishment, which is co-produced by the respective form of economy
and relation to nature, is itself the historically most variable entity. Namely one that despite
its most reliable basic drive: hunger, which relatively remains the most general must
continually run throughout history, so that through work it is and becomes. History is, as
possible gaining of man, the metamorphosis of man precisely also in view of our core, of the
self which is only developing. Not confined to the selfish system, not to this capitalist phase
of egotism, but existing before it, and all the more so after it, self-preservation, human
preservation in no way seeks the conservation of that which has already been drawn and
allotted to the self. Thus self-preservation ultimately means the appetite to hold ready more
appropriate and more authentic states for our unfolding self, unfolding only in and as
solidarity. If these states approach, then self-encountering prepares itself in them; and self-
encountering begins, highly disconcerted, in all phenomena and works broaching a final
state. But our self always remains, with its hunger and the variable extensions of this hunger,
still open, moved, extending itself.
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Mental Feelings and State of Self, Appetite of the Expectant Emotions, Especially of
Hope
Taking hunger as our starting point again, not merely the immediate drives come from here.
Rather they also originate from it as 'felt' drives, as the drive-feelings in which craving or
loathing become intensely aware of themselves. These drives which drive not only directly
but also as feeling are the mental feelings or emotions; if the whole man throws himself into
a single emotion, then this becomes a passion. However, a quite special juice flows through
all mental feelings, it comes from the heart, a blood which is also psychological. * And just as
in every emotion, in contrast to sensation and imagination, there is an inner temperature, this
temperature also senses itself. Thus emotions are distinguished from sensations and
imaginations, not least because they proceed, in that they become closely aware of their
process as a still semi-immediate feeling of self. They can in fact proceed in vaguely
objective terms in this 'state-based' self-awareness, before a distinct external object even
appears to which the feeling mind relates. This happens not only in the diffuse and undecided
state called 'state-of-being', and moreover, less immediately, 'mood', (of which more later),
but also in the more decided state, in those mental feelings at least which belong from early
on to organic 'dispositions'. Thus there is in young people and in erotic personalities
throughout their lives a kind of intransitive mental feeling of being-in-love, which its objects
only enter retrospectively; they were not given narcissistically in advance to this being-in-
love either, that is, in their own body. Thus there is not as a mental feeling, but rather as a
state of mind a light-heartedness of character, even hope; it certainly does not only appear
when it knows clearly what it is hoping for. Thus we speak or used to speak of a sanguine (or
conversely, of a melancholic) 'temperament', raising the whole organic 'disposition' to a state
of mind. This temperament can extend far beyond the mere state of mind into intransitive
mental feelings, with absolutely no, or very weakly 'founding', imaginative contents. Of
course, the more sensation contents and imaginative contents are added to this, the more
clearly these intransitive processes will also become related to objects and transitive: just as
vague craving passes over into wishes with wishful contents by imagining its something, so
the emotional world is now all the more governed by love of something,
*
Cf. Mephistopheles in Goethe's 'Faust', Part I, 1740: 'Blood is a very special juice'.
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hope for something, pleasure in something. In any case there would be no loathings or
cravings at all without the external something that evokes them; only in fact: this external
something must not be clear from the very beginning. But the emotions do not remain
confined to the mere experiencing of their experience, even with the idealistic interpretation
that their content concretely emerges only as 'substance' and not also as a clearly stimulative
external object. But the difference to imaginative ideas and thoughts is nevertheless also
indelible within the process of the emotions becoming transitive. The difference is
characterized by the nature of the emotional intending, which is still occurring especially
within itself and is still semi-immediately bent back upon itself. Even in imagining and
thinking, there is an act of intending, it was separated by Franz Brentano, though here in an
impossibly exaggerated idealistic way, then by Husserl from the 'intended object'. But this act
is not in fact imagined or thought to itself in imagining and thinking, rather it must first be
laboriously made accessible to 'inner perception'. Whereas with the emotions, a retrospective
analysis in Brentano's sense, a liberation of the 'act psychology' from the 'content
psychology', is not necessary first at all: the emotions are given to themselves as intentional
acts in the form of states. And they are given to themselves in the form of states, intensively,
because they are chiefly moved by the striving, the drive, the intending, which underlies all
intentional acts, even the imagining and thinking-judging kind. 'Interest' ultimately underlies
them and is the thing which really touches man most closely. Like the basic emotion of
hunger, which primarily burrows into itself, all emotions are therefore primarily states of
self; and precisely as these states of self, they are the most active intentions. But, because
they are concerned with themselves, the life of the emotions is not only a most closely
intensive, eminently intending into itself, it is also the mode of being of what Kierkegaard
once called existential. In other words: only the 'feeling mind', as the essence of the mental
feelings, has become an 'existential' concept, one of 'affectedness', not the theoretical-
objective 'intellect'. Thus, not without reason, so-called existential thinking, which has
putrefied into nothingness today, began in Augustine with his highly emotional 'Confessions';
even the becoming conscious of consciousness emerged here in the self-reflection of a man
of intensive will-power. And, not without reason, Kierkegaard played off his 'Understanding-
Oneself-In-Existence' as an experiential phenomenon of moral and religious emotions against
Hegel's objective 'abstractions'. And finally, not without reason, a kind of existere, which has
become blood-curdling and also hesitant,
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descends from here as far as Heidegger's animal, petit-bourgeois experiential

phenomenology, as far as his 'basic state of mind': anxiety, and the care that is attached to it;
and these 'existential modi' are even supposed to provide especially 'fundamental' revelations,
concerning existing itself in fact. All this is ultimately putrefied subjectivism, but even petit-
bourgeois, reactionary existentialism at least casts an affinitive disreputable glance at the
emotions of dying out. However, the only thing that is relevant here, instead of this conscious
obscurantism, is the original, the nevertheless basically honest Kierkegaard with his playing
off of emotionalized subject-thinking against the merely object-based kind. And the reverse
check might be that the whole of object-based thinking necessarily turns away from the
emotions as an organ of knowledge. 'The whole nature of the intellect', says Descartes in the
'Meditations', 'consists in the fact that it thinks'; thus in Descartes, no theory emerges, even
from his theory of the emotions, which does not have the merely thinking intellect as its
author. And Spinoza, who was so inclined towards the extensively object-based, when he
introduced a definition of the emotions into his marble hall (Ethics, Book 3), defined them
not in the form of states, but essentially with regard to their imagined goals or 'ideas'.
Spinoza does of course emphasize that only emotions determine human wanting, but they
themselves are only determined according to the form of their objects. Descartes and Spinoza
therefore, as rational objective thinkers, also had to eliminate the emotions methodically; as
Dilthey notes, this time not wholly inaccurately, they both necessarily include 'observations
from outside, with relationships which are not given in any inner perception' in their theory
of the emotions. So unswervingly is every 'Understanding-Oneself-In-Existence' connected
with emotional closeness, and every pure observation of objects with turning away from the
emotions. Therefore we may say: where philosophy merely clings to the emotions,
everything that comes out of this is only to be regarded as 'world of idle chatter', in
Kierkegaard's sense; but where philosophizing clings purely to cogitatio, everything that aims
in the emotional sphere cum ira et studio,* is to be regarded as 'perturbatio animi' even
methodically, therefore as 'asylum of ignorance', in Spinoza's sense. But intellectual contact
(although nothing further) with the emotions is necessary for every piece of self-knowledge,
and wherever self-knowledge was comprehensively attempted, this contact presented itself.
Even in Hegel,
*
'With passion and partiality'. Tacitus in Annals I, Chap. 1 declares he will write history impartially,
'sine ira et studio'. Bloch is reversing the idea.
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despite Kierkegaard; there is no book which is more pervaded in its conceptual procedure by
both emotional machinations and emotional insights than 'The Phenomenology of Mind'.
This precisely because it disposes of the worldless pectoral dimension, a disposal which
wanted to grasp the 'pulse of vitality' first and foremost in the external, in the world. And just
as, according to Hegel, nothing great has been achieved without passion, so too undoubtedly
nothing great concerning the self can be comprehended without emotional insight.
Seen from outside, the drive-feelings were always only insufficiently ordered and divided up.
The abrupt ones were differentiated from the slowly maturing ones, the quickly disappearing
ones from the self-entrenching ones: as for example anger from hatred. They were
differentiated according to the strength which the individual drive-feelings could take on,
then according to the expression of the mental feelings in men and animals. Externally the
division is also according to asthenic and sthenic emotions, i.e. those which paralyse or
strengthen heart innervation and also the tonus of the external muscles. According to this,
emotions that suddenly break in, like fear, terror, but also excessive joy, are always asthenic,
as are unpleasurable emotions of lesser degree, like sorrow and worry. Weak and moderately
strong pleasurable emotions are however always sthenic, but anger, rising gradually, can also
be sthenic, whereas in fact joy, when it breaks out suddenly, accompanied by surprise,
appears asthenically, despite its pleasurable character. This division is thus still so external
that emotions with different, even opposite feeling-content fall into the same sthenic or
asthenic class. Nearer to the real state of things, already somewhat more from psychological
experience, comes the division of the emotions into those of rejection or inclination,
consequently into the two basic groups of hatred and love. Hunger, which must be able to
accompany all emotions, breaks out most obviously in the grouping of libido and aggression.
And nearly all the emotions can be assigned to the poles of will: negation or affirmation, the
dissatisfaction or satisfaction with themselves and with their object. And the emotions of
rejection : fear, envy, anger, contempt, hate on the one hand, the emotions of inclination :
contentment, generosity, trust, admiration, love on the other hand, largely coincide with the
old displeasure-pleasure duality. However, the rejecting-unpleasurable, inclining-pleasurable
equation does not work out perfectly either. There are also emotions here with contradictory
feeling-content which are sometimes pleasurably united: revenge, in which hatred discharges
itself, tastes sweet, almost like the moment of ecstasy in which, love discharges itself.
Likewise
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there are emotions, like greed, which, even though they lie on the side of inclination, do not
have the least in common with pleasure. Or there are mixed emotions, like resentment, in
which the rejecting intention of envy and the inclining intention of admiration get along in a
complex way, in so far as envy in fact transforms the admiration which is present into
slander, so that it does not give rise to the unpleasant feeling of envy. It follows that even
rejection and inclination, the poles of hate and love do not fully cover the curious area, so
rich in elisions, of the emotional modes of self. In retaining love and hate as basic groups, the
attempt has therefore been made to transform the mere pole relation of both into a value
relation. The emotions of rejection are thus consigned to a lower region which is itself to be
negated (and this, incidentally, since the class struggle also belongs here, appealed to
reactionary pyschology, in Scheler); the emotions of inclination on the other hand (with
truce, cosmopolitanism, pax capitalistica) stand in the light. But condemning one lot to hell
or praising one lot to the skies does least justice to the amount of truth, or at least
psychological experience, that may lie in the rejection-inclination series despite its confusion.
Thus, to sum up: what has been imported from outside into the theory of the emotions must
be completely removed; only then does the correct order of the drive-feelings emerge. This
order must be discovered from the experienced appetite itself; and the result is then the only
satisfying one, the division of the emotions into the following two series: into filled and
expectant emotions. Whereby justice is also done to the relatively legitimate aspects of the
rejection-inclination series: this series extends at least as far as the group of expectant
emotions, namely as unwish or as wish. The series in the real table of the emotions are now
definable as follows: filled emotions (like envy, greed, admiration) are those whose drive-
intention is short-term, whose drive-object lies ready, if not in respective individual
attainability, then in the already available world. Expectant emotions (like anxiety, fear,
hope, belief), on the other hand, are those whose drive-intention is long-term, whose drive-
object does not yet lie ready, not just in respective individual attainability, but also in the
already available world, and therefore still occurs in the doubt about exit or entrance. Thus
the expectant emotions are distinguished, both in their unwish and in their wish, from the
filled emotions by the incomparably greater anticipatory character in their intention, their
substance, and their object. All emotions refer to the horizon of time, because they are highly
intentioned emotions, but the expectant emotions open out entirely into this horizon. All
emotions refer to the actually temporal aspect in
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time, i.e. to the mode of the future, but whereas the filled emotions only have an unreal
future, i.e. one in which objectively nothing new happens, the expectant emotions essentially
imply a real future; in fact that of the Not-Yet, of what has objectively not yet been there.
When they are banal, fear and hope also intend unreal future, but secretly or deep down even
then a more total fulfilment has entered the banal fulfilment, one which, quite unlike the case
of the filled emotions, lies beyond the available given world. Thus the urge, the appetite and
its wish usually break out frontally in the expectant emotions. As urge, as wish, it even
breaks out in the purely negative expectant emotions, those of anxiety and fear; for where
there was no urge, there would be no unwish, which is only the reverse side of a wish.
Moreover, there is always a countersense of the negative and positive emotions at work here,
so that, as will be seen, even in anxiety dreams wish-fulfilment still takes place. In the
images of fear and hope in the daydream, the faces may often change all the more between
fear and hope, between the negative and positive expectant emotion, the still utopian
undecided faces. But the most important expectant emotion, the most authentic emotion of
longing and thus of self, always remains in all of this hope. For the negative expectant
emotions of anxiety and fear are still completely suffering, oppressed, unfree, no matter how
strongly they reject. Indeed, something of the extinction of self announces itself in them, and
something of the nothingness into which ultimately the merely passive passion streams.
Hope, this expectant counter-emotion against anxiety and fear, is therefore the most human
of all mental feelings and only accessible to men, and it also refers to the furthest and
brightest horizon. It suits that appetite in the mind which the subject not only has, but of
which, as unfulfilled subject, it still essentially consists.
Self-Extension Drive Forwards, Active Expectation

Hunger cannot help continually renewing itself. But if it increases uninterrupted, satisfied by
no certain bread, then it suddenly changes. The body-ego then becomes rebellious, does not
go out in search of food merely within the old framework. It seeks to change the situation
which has caused its empty stomach, its hanging head. The No to the bad situation which
exists, the Yes to the better life that hovers ahead, is incorporated by the deprived into
revolutionary interest. This interest always begins with hunger, hunger transforms itself,
having been taught, into an explosive force against the prison of deprivation. Thus the self
seeks not only to preserve itself, it
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becomes explosive; self-preservation becomes self-extension. And this overthrows what

stands in the way of the rising class, ultimately of the classless man. Out of economically
enlightened hunger comes today the decision to abolish all conditions in which man is an
oppressed and long-lost being. Long before this decision, and for a long time during it, the
drive towards satisfaction becomes a drive which survives the available world in the
imagination. And in human work, undertaken for the purpose of satisfying needs,
transforming raw materials into richer and richer utility values, consciousness runs as a
consciousness which overhauls the available world in the imagination. Marx has the
following to say about this, which has received nowhere near enough attention: 'We are
assuming work in a form in which it belongs exclusively to man. A spider carries out
operations which resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts many human builders to shame
with the building of its wax cells. But what distinguishes the worst builder from the best bee
from the outset, is that he has built the cell in his head before he builds it in wax, at the end of
the work process there is a result which already existed in the imagination of the worker at
the beginning of that process, i.e. already existed ideally. Not that he only effects a formal
change in the real; he also realizes his purpose in the natural world, a purpose he knows,
which determines as a law his way of doing things, to which he must subordinate his will'
(Das Kapital I, Dietz, 1947, p. 186). Therefore it follows: before a builder in all areas of
life knows his plan, he must have planned the plan himself, and must have anticipated its
realization as a brilliant, even decisively spurring forward dream. In ideal terms, all the more
necessarily, the bolder, above all the more arduous the plan, towards which a man, in contrast
to the spider or the bee, is looking, looking ahead, might be at that moment. And precisely at
this point there is formed that which stimulates the wishful element in the expectant emotions
always arising from hunger, that which possibly diverts and fatigues us, or which possibly
also activates and galvanizes us towards the goal of a better life: daydreams are formed. They
always come from a feeling of something lacking and they want to stop it, they are all dreams
of a better life. No doubt there are among them base, dubious, dismal, merely enervating
escapist dreams full of substitution, as is well-known. This kind of escape from reality has
often been combined with approval and support of the status quo; as is revealed most
strongly in the empty promises of a better hereafter. But how many other wishful daydreams
have sustained men with courage and hope, not by looking away from the real, but, on the
contrary, by looking into its progress, into its horizon. How many have reaffirmed
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their refusal to renounce, in the course of anticipation, of venturing beyond and its images.
The amount of venturing beyond that takes place in daydreams thus indicates nothing
repressed, even psychologically, nothing that has simply sunk down out of consciousness that
already existed, nor any atavistic state which was simply left over from or breaks out of
primeval man. The venturer beyond does not occupy a shaft in the ground beneath existing
consciousness, with a single exit either into the familiar daylight world of today, as in Freud,
or into a romanticized diluvium, as in C. G. Jung and Klages. What hovers ahead of the self-
extension drive forwards is rather, as will have to be shown, a Not-Yet-Conscious, one that
has never been conscious and has never existed in the past, therefore itself a forward
dawning, into the New. It is the dawning that can surround even the simplest daydreams;
from there it extends into further areas of negated deprivation, and hence of hope.
14
Fundamental Distinction of Daydreams from Night-Dreams:
Concealed and Old Wish-Fulfilment in Night-Dreams, Fabulously Inventive
and Anticipatory Wish-Fulfilment in Daylight Fantasies
Inclination to Dream
We never tire of wanting things to improve. We are never free of wishes, or only in moments
of delusion. It would be more comfortable to forget this longing rather than to fulfil it, but
what would this lead to today? These wishes certainly would not stop, or they would disguise
themselves as new ones, or worse still: without wishes we would be the dead bodies over
which the wicked would stride on to victory. This is not a time to be without wishes, and the
deprived certainly do not intend to be. They dream that their wishes will be fulfilled one day.
They dream about it night and day, as the saying goes, not only at night then. That would
indeed be strange, since deprivation and wishing are still very much with us during the day.
There are daydreams enough, we just have not taken sufficient notice of them. Even with our
eyes open, things can be colourful
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enough or dreamy inside our heads. If the inclination to improve our lot does not sleep even
in our sleep how should it do so when we are awake? Few wishes are not burdened with
dreams of some sort, especially when their senses start to clear a bit. And then: the dreamy
person during the day is clearly a different person from the one who dreams at night. The
daydreamer often follows will-o'-the-wisps, gets led astray. But he is not asleep and does not
sink back down with the mist.
Dreams as Wish-Fulfilment
As of course the nocturnal dreamer does and must do. The latter may as well be treated first,
since after all the colourful performance does begin in sleep. The word dream has nocturnal
origins, the dreamer presupposes the sleeper. The external senses are blinded, the muscles
relax, the cerebrum is at rest. So important is this general black-out here, that in fact the
sleeper often only dreams in order not to wake up. In order that he is not raised above the
threshold of consciousness by external or internal stimuli. If the stimulus is an external one
(say knocking or light or a shift of position in bed), then we wish it was not there. If it is an
internal one (thirst, hunger, micturition, sexual excitement), then it is itself a wish, we want
its stimulus to disappear. For all stimulation is unpleasant: pleasure, says Freud, is 'linked
with the diminution, reduction or extinction of the set of stimuli present in the psychic
system, but displeasure with an increase of the same'. If the sleeper did not dream, then he
would be woken by the clamour of these stimuli; so dreams protect sleep by assimilating
knocks, intrusive light, and physical unrest. Not by this means alone, however; since Freud, it
is generally agreed (and this will be his lasting contribution) that dreams are not merely a
means of protecting sleep, or a world of poppies, but as regards both their motor and their
content wish-fulfilment too. Dreams can only assimilate these disturbances at all by
breaking off their insistent prodding. Or as Freud says: 'Dreams are the elimination of
(psychic) stimuli which disturb our sleep on the road to hallucinated gratification.' As
everyone knows, Freud's real discovery is this: that dreams are not just foam,* and naturally
not prophetic oracles either, but that they lie half-way between the two as it were: precisely
as hallucinated wish-fulfilments, as fictitious fulfilments of an unconscious wishful fantasy.
And the general theme of dreams of a better life also partly includes,
*
A German saying: 'Trume sind Schume': 'Dreams are just foam'.
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with all due caution and relevance, nocturnal dreams as wishful dreams; they too are a
component (though a dislocated and not entirely homogeneous one) in the vast field of
utopian consciousness.
They are namely the component in which very early wishes circulate. In which the light of
very old, long-vanished images beneath the ego and the cerebrum is still reflected. The night-
dream has three characteristic qualities which enable it to hallucinate wishful ideas. Firstly,
the adult ego is weakened in sleep, it cannot censor that which seems indecent any more.
Secondly, from the waking state and its contents only the so-called dregs of the day remain,
that is to say ideas with greatly loosened associations, to which the dream fantasy adapts
itself. Thirdly, in connection with the weakened ego, the outside world with its realities and
practical functional content is blocked off. The ego reverts to the ego of childhood, thus there
first appears the complete uncensored drive-world straight out of our childhood, or more
accurately: as in our childhood. Freud thus stresses: 'Every dream-wish is of infantile origin,
all dreams work with infantile material, with childish psychic impulses and mechanisms.'
Moreover, in so far as the opposing tendency of material reality is cancelled by this blockade
of the outside world, the wishful ideas receive sufficient psychic energy and psychic space to
intensify into hallucinations. But the ego which censors morally, aesthetically and also in
accordance with reality is only weakened in dreams, not completely switched off. It goes on
censoring in a drunken way as it were, and forces the hallucinated wish-fulfilments to
disguise themselves from its gaze. Thus almost no night-dream is wish-fulfilment pure and
simple, but almost every one is distorted and masked, appears in 'symbolic' disguise. And the
person who is dreaming does not understand the symbolic element at all, in which his wish-
fulfilment disguises itself; it suffices here that the restlessness of the libido activates and
satiates itself in a symbolically distorting dream-image. Only the dreams of children lack this
dream-distortion, since the child knows no censoring ego whatsoever. Even very voluptuous
night-dreams of a physiologically normal and as it were permissible kind, in the wake of
involuntary seminal emissions for example, take a direct course, with no appreciable dream-
distortion; the manifest and actual dream-contents also more or less coincide here. But all the
other 'improper wishes': the incest-wishes, the death-wishes directed towards people we love
and other elements of infantile evil inside us resort to disguise in order to gratify themselves,
in order to conceal themselves from the even though weakened censorship of the dream-
ego. The conversion of latent (deeply subconscious) into manifest
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(symbolized) dream-content, Freud calls the dream-work; the analytical interpretation of

dreams takes the opposite route, the route back to desymbolized wish-fulfilment. There is a
resistance, in the person who has woken up, to the analytical interpretation of dreams, which
is analogous in an intensified form to the neurotic's resistance to the interpretation of the
symptoms of his neurosis; it is the resistance of the reinforced daytime ego to the revelation
of its other side. This other side usually tends to be very oppressive in the morally upright
and correct man; he has sensed in it all along much which would embarrass him when awake.
In this way the daytime ego can even feel responsible for the so very much weakened
nocturnal one, the moment a single sensual echo remains behind from the jumble of symbols.
Jean Paul remarks on this: 'Dreams shine terribly deep into the Epicurean and Augean Stables
we have constructed for ourselves; and we see in the night all the wild beasts of the grave and
wolves of the evening roaming around alive, which reason held in chains during the day.' In
fact, the strange question was even asked, from the standpoint of intact bourgeois propriety
and its daytime ego, whether a person should be held morally responsible for the good and
evil which he thinks and does in his dreams. A moralist and psychologist from the final
period of the Enlightenment answered in the affirmative and concluded, most comically, but
instructively as far as this resistance is concerned: 'We can therefore assert that it is a man's
moral duty to preserve the purity of his imagination even in his dreams, as far as this is
possible by his own free will, and that the good and evil which he says or does in his dreams
can also be attributed to him, namely in so far as his dream is created or modified by his
desires and these desires are dependent on his own free will' (Maa, Versuch ber die
Leidenschaften I, 1805, p. 175). So if the relatively harmless aberrations in the dreams of an
ordinary human being are disagreeable to a morally correct ego how much more so the wild
infantile variety, in symbolic disguise. Hence the resistance to the psychoanalytical
interpretation of dreams, hence the reluctance to allow these dream-images to be turned into
crime stories of one's private self. (A reluctance which significantly did not apply to the old,
so-called prophetic interpretation of dreams: Pharaoh was delighted by Joseph, because
Joseph did not see through him, the prophetic interpretation of dreams left the internal affairs
of the subject untouched.) From this moralizing reluctance chiefly springs the nocturnal ego-
drive towards masquerade, towards concealment and disguise of the dream-content; the main
part for the Freud of the libido is of course merely sexual symbolization. According to this,
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there are hundreds of symbols for the male and female genitals (dagger and casket are the
primary models), for sexual intercourse (the primary model is climbing stairs). The casket
can turn into a compartment, the dagger into the moon standing unnaturally close to the
window, into the ceiling-lamp in the compartment, into the light of this lamp, with a mild
yellow like smashed egg-yolk. The whole variety of sexual allusions and metaphors, as
displayed in Rabelais or Balzac's 'Amusing tales', is attained if not surpassed by dreams; and
this, as far as consciousness is concerned, in allegorical innocence. Balzac speaks of the
joiner who thought of keeping the front door of his house permanently locked in future, of
the page who had already planted his standard in the royal domain, and so on; all these
metaphors are also dreamlike. They are joined by images which are not even to be found in
the vast literature of pornography, namely those that have been lost; like the symbols of
wood, table, and water for woman. They seem to reach back into the depths of racial history,
depths which, as we have noted, are also familiar to Freud and his more immediate school,
not to mention C. G. Jung. The table clearly stands for a room or house, the symbol of wood
leads back to the family tree, a very old mother-image; it also suggests living wood, the tree
of life. The water symbol is traced back to the mother's amniotic fluid by Ferenczi, one of
Freud's oldest colleagues, and then, in a thoroughly phylogenetic 'excavation', to the
primitive geological oceans in which life first arose. In the history of mythology a very
differently preserved legend has grown up concerning this, that of the stork which brings
babies from a pond; but the waters of the deep appear too, above which the spirit of God
broods, just like a mother-hen. The well is an old mother-image, the reedy pond an even
older, archaic hetairan one; it was unearthed by Bachofen. Be that as it may, hardly a dream
is dreamed by adults that is not involved and enveloped. Freud comments on this with a
striking paradox: the dreamer does not know what he knows. For Freud the manifest dream-
content is simply just disguised or in fancy dress; the interpretation becomes Ash
Wednesday, the day after the carnival. The censorship of the ego only let the truth, which is
libido and its wish-fulfilment, pass through the night in the mask of a jester or a thin veil of
sanctity; nevertheless, the Freudian interpretation of dreams is intent on revealing the naked
text again. It proceeds via the symbols, without losing itself in them, to the more or less
conscious wish-fulfilment, which expresses itself in such colourfully convoluted clauses.
This embodies a true perception, even if it only emerges contorted by the narrow and false
notion of bare libido.
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In any case, something recouped is at work in the nocturnal dream, a compensating element
satiated with a wealth of images; whether this satiation occurs simply by means of these
images or within them.
Anxiety Dreams and Wish-Fulfilment

But is someone who dreams at night really having wishes fulfilled all the time? These are
mixed with enough insignificant dross after all, which evaporates and does not seem to fill
any kind of gap. Even among our vivid dreams the happy ones, that is the wish-fulfilling
ones, are by no means in the majority. Alongside them there are the anxiety dreams, from the
usual examination dreams to downright horrible ones; the sleeper wakes from these with a
yell. He was on the run from grimacing bogies which only emerge at night, but his car
changes into a snail-shell, he jumps down and runs for his life, but his feet stick in the
ground, soon they are firmly rooted to the spot. Freud naturally finds it hard to interpret even
this nocturnal Fury as a fairy godmother, yet he still incorporates anxiety dreams into his
theory of wish-fulfilment in three different ways. Firstly, a dream can suddenly break off,
then the distressing stimulus which has caused it persists, the wish-fulfilment has failed.
Secondly, a dream can turn into an anxiety dream precisely because the wish-fulfilment has
occurred within it; this absurdity appears chiefly in undistorted, uncensored dreams. In this
sort of anxiety dream, a particularly depraved wish unacceptable to the dream-ego is gratified
in a particularly blatant way; the anxiety is then not that of the physical creature itself but that
of the dream-ego, and the development of anxiety takes the place of censorship. Neuroses of
this sort, for example the perpetual fear of losing one's parents, can also be accompanied by
the wish for such a thing. The phobia is then merely the so-called moral thick end of the
wedge or the attention-seeking hangover. Thirdly, however, Freud overcomes the problem
almost involuntarily in dialectical terms, namely by not simply grasping anxieties and wishes
as strict opposites. The ultimate source of anxiety is here seen as the act of birth; it brought
'that constellation of feelings of aversion, angry rejection and physical excitement, which
have become the standard reaction to any mortal danger and have been repeated by us ever
since as an anxiety state'. The very term anxiety (angustia = narrowness) emphasizes the
constriction in breathing which occurred at that time in consequence of the interruption in our
internal breathing. But the most important thing of all is that
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this first anxiety state stemmed from separation from our mother, and hence signals
loneliness, defencelessness, abandonment. This first anxiety state is linked in Freud's view
with the so-called fear of castration, and this has moral consequences which pervade the
whole of one's life: 'From the higher being, which became the ego-ideal, there was once the
threat of castration, and the fear of castration is probably the nucleus for later anxiety of
conscience, it is this which continues as anxiety of conscience.' More plausible though is the
explanation of anxiety from the very first act of desertion, which psychologically prefigures
all the later ones, from the act of being torn from our mother by our birth; hence too the real
anxiety of the child, the pavor nocturnus without a so-called castration complex, the fear of
strange faces, darkness and the like. The longing and love of the child for its mother is
frustrated by strange faces, it is unable to channel its 'libido', which cannot find its object. So
it turns inward and is discharged as anxiety even in adulthood; the consequence is as follows:
all repressed wishful emotions turn into phobias in this realm of the unconscious. A similar
reversal of unoccupied libidinal urges which have lost their object occurs, as Freud
conjectures, in the fear of death (countering the death-drive), especially in the neurotic,
melancholic variety: 'The melancholic fear of death admits of only one explanation, that the
ego surrenders, because it feels hated and persecuted instead of loved by the super-ego . . .
The super-ego performs the same protective and rescuing function as the father at an earlier
stage, and later providence or fate.' And even in a state of health, the fear of an immense
concrete danger is increased by the fear of death which arises from desertion; the ego
surrenders because it does not think it is able to overcome the danger by itself. 'It is
moreover', adds Freud as a reminder, 'still the same situation which lay at the heart of the first
great anxiety-state of birth and the infant's anxious longing, namely that of separation from
the protective mother' (Das Ich und das Es, 1923, p. 76). And it is the same reversal of the
libido into its dialectical opposite which was already evident in the anxiety of the child when
the libidinal emotion had to be repressed because its object, the mother it loved, was missing.
Only, where the fear of death is concerned, the libidinal object has become one's own ego, or
more precisely: the ego loved by the superego; it is this very (narcissistic) occupation which
has now ceased. 'The mechanism of the fear of death could only be that the ego relinquishes
its narcissistic occupation of the libido to a large extent, and thus surrenders itself, instead of
another object as in other cases of anxiety'; but in the act of reversal it merely releases a
feeling of immense horror. Libido again
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of course, nothing but libido the whole time (and this is the part of Freud that will not endure,
in fact we can say even now: that did not endure); and together with the libido, a pure
psychologism once again, without regard to the social environment. Is sexual libido sufficient
to produce this anxiety, is it necessary to it at all? Does this negative wish-fulfilment or
anxiety stem exclusively from the subject, exclusively from the 'libidinal emotion which has
lost its object'? And are there not also Objects, circumstances, which are menacing enough in
an object-based way, unoccupied by libido, but sufficiently occupied by other things instead?
The later Freud expressed this himself when he stated that it was not repression which caused
anxiety, but anxiety which caused repression; it therefore precedes the blocked libido and
forms the blockage. Towards the end of his life, moving far beyond the internal and initial
biological experience of the act of birth, Freud even declares 'that a feared drive-situation
basically originates in a situation of external danger' (Neue Folge der Vorlesungen, 1933, p.
123). The feeling of abandonment would not have any content at all if the strange faces, the
darkness and so on were solely non-mother and otherwise neutral. Instead of which, here
too we find hunger, subsistence worries, economic despair, and existential anxiety, which are
positive and objective enough. Bourgeois society was actually founded on free competition
until recently, and is inclined towards it even today, hence it is founded on an antagonistic
relationship, even within the same class and stratum of society. The hostile tension thus
posited and even demanded between individuals produces incessant anxiety; and this does
not need the pretexts of libido and the act of birth in order to deposit itself on it. It is
sufficiently posited with the outside world as it is, especially one with two world wars to its
credit. And with the anxiety caused by fascism as well, which hardly needed the pretext of
infantile trauma in order to be delivered into the world. Thus many a tranquil night-dream
may indeed be backward-looking, perhaps also many attacks of pavor nocturnus among
sheltered children. They may consist of repressed libido, of amorous wishes unoccupied in
object-based terms, and hence of anxiety. But even in dreams, the daytime and the objective
apprehension of what is coming furnishes causes and sources enough as far as anxiety is
concerned. Sources which relate to naked self-preservation and its shattered, not merely
unoccupied wishes. In particular, however, waking anxiety culminating in the fear of death
does not go right back to the beginning to find its explanation in the vanishing libidinal
object of its own ego, that is, of the transposed mother. It is precisely this anxiety which
cannot be explained chiefly in narcissistic regressive
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terms, but rather in terms of the axe which will cut life short in the future, in terms of the pain
and horror of an objectively expected night. If the ego merely relinquished itself in the fear of
death and merely relinquished its narcissistic occupation of the libido, then neither animals
without an ego nor very matter-of-fact people who are not infatuated with their ego would
know the fear of death. If therefore the Freudian libido-subjectivisms of anxiety are
untenable, the correlation he established between phobias and repressed wishful emotions
still remains important and true; nor is it orientated around narcissistic fantasies, but around
the objective content of the wishful emotions. Anxiety and its dreams may have their initial
origin in parturition, just as they have their final biological content at the moment of death.
But where anxiety arises not merely in a biological sense, but in a way which is only to be
found in human beings, especially in the form of an anxiety dream: then it is essentially
founded on social blockages of the self-preservation drive. In fact, it is simply the
annihilated content of the wish, a content actually transformed into its very opposite, which
causes anxiety and ultimate despair.
And how does the waking dreamer fare in all this, if his wishes are variously sprinkled? If he
needs salt and pepper on his wishes, even a dash of shock, and not just honey all the time?
Freud himself refers to a merging of opposite drive-feelings, not merely a transition from one
to the other. He refers to a simultaneous 'countersense of primal words', so that 'anxiety and
wish coincide in the unconscious'. But they also undoubtedly coincide in consciousness to a
large extent, as in the case of the hypochondriac and the general pessimist, who are both
hoping to see their non-hope fulfilled. And did not the same eighteenth century in which the
hypochondriac flourished apply a thick coat of sentimentality on to this mixed feeling, with
its weeping willows and pitchers of tears, with its painful delight in mortality? The Gothic
novel in particular, which emerged at the same time, discovered the strangely homely aspect
of the uncanny; it thrived on a wishful home among shadows, on feeling at home at the
crossroads, in the horrors of the night. Things of this sort already exhibit the wish-fulfilment
fantasies of anxiety, an exchange of faces between the wish and that quality of anxiety which
has itself become spine-chilling by virtue of the hope that has been fixed on it, and as the
perverse, even positive content of that hope. It is this devious, rather eerie wish-fulfilment
which even in higher realms prevents, or at least impedes, a mere rosy red. An element of
blackness is introduced, it heightens the colours, creates dissonance in far too predictable and
hence insipid happiness, and reveals
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the peak of our wishes to be equally an abyss. Many emotional statements driven to the
extreme have caught very well this merging full of consternation, even the so-called sweet
horror in Wagner's 'Ring of the Nibelungen', in the exhibition of this neurasthenic-colossal
work of art. And so the same is true even of the nightmare as of the meadow at the bottom of
the well* and its symbols: every dream is wish-fulfilment.
A Crucial Point:
The Daydream Is Not a Stepping-Stone to the Nocturnal Dream
But clearly, people do not dream only at night, not at all. The day too has twilight edges,
where wishes are also gratified. In contrast to the nocturnal dream, that of the daytime
sketches freely chosen and repeatable figures in the air, it can rant and rave, but also brood
and plan. It gives free play to its thoughts in an indolent fashion (which can, however, be
closely related to the Muse and to Minerva), political, artistic, scientific thoughts. The
daydream can furnish inspirations which do not require interpreting, but working out, it
builds castles in the air as blueprints too, and not always just fictitious ones. Even in
caricature, the daydreamer is presented in a different light than the dreamer: he is then
Johnnie Head-in-the-air, and thus by no means the sleeper at night with his eyes closed.
Lonely walks or enthusiastic youthful discussion with a friend or the socalled blue hour
between daylight and darkness are particularly conducive to waking dreams. The account of
little daydreams with which this book began gave a brief survey of slighter, barely inward
images of this kind; it is now necessary to investigate the structure of the whole, as well as its
consequences, specifically in order to gain an understanding of these, as we shall see, very
powerful consequences: those of hope in general in the subjective factor. Yet astonishingly,
the daylight fantasy has hardly been acknowledged as an original state by psychology up till
now, not even as a special kind of wish-fulfilment, with a lot of sheer wishful thinking,** but
which does not exclude acuteness and even responsibility precisely of 'thinking'.
Psychoanalysis, however, puts daydreams completely on a par with night-dreams, and merely
sees them as incipient night-dreams. Freud remarks on this: 'We know such daydreams are
the essential models
*
This meadow appears in Grimm's fairytale 'Frau Holle'.
**
Bloch is using the English term here in the original and continues to do so throughout the text.
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for nocturnal dreams. The night-dream is basically nothing other than a daydream which has
become serviceable through the nocturnal freedom of the impulses, and distorted by the
nocturnal form of mental activity' (Vorlesungen, 1935, p. 417). And earlier on, in the same
place: 'The most well-known products of the imagination are the so-called daydreams,
imagined gratifications of ambitious, megalomaniac, and erotic wishes, which thrive all the
more profusely the more reality calls for resignation or for patience. The essence of
imaginary happiness, the restoration of the independence of pleasure-gaining from the
consent of reality, is unmistakably revealed in them.' Psychoanalysis of course, which judges
all dreams only as roads to what has been repressed, and only knows reality as that of
bourgeois society and its existing world, consistently prefers to label daydreams as a mere
stepping-stone to nocturnal ones. In any case, the poet equipped with daydreams is for the
bourgeois only the hare who sleeps with his eyes open, and this in bourgeois everyday life
which sees and employs itself as the touchstone of all reality. But if this touchstone is
challenged even for the world of consciousness, if even the nocturnal wishful dream is only
seen as a dislocated and not entirely homogeneous component in the vast field of a still open
world and its consciousness, then the daydream is not a stepping-stone to the night-dream
and is not disposed of by the latter. Not even with respect to its clinical content, let alone its
artistic, pre-appearing, frontlike anticipatory content. For night-dreams mostly cannibalize
the former life of the drives, they feed on past if not archaic image-material, and nothing new
happens under their bare moon. So it would be absurd to take daydreams: as those
presentiments of the imagination which from time immemorial have of course been called
dreams but also forerunners and anticipations, and to subsume them under or even
subordinate them to the night-dreams. The castle in the air is not a stepping-stone to the
nocturnal labyrinth, if anything, the nocturnal labyrinths lie like cellars beneath the daytime
castle in the air. And what of the equality of imaginary happiness which both are said to
share, as a 'restoration of the independence of pleasure-gaining from the consent of reality'?
More than one daydream before now has, with sufficient vigour and experience, remodelled
reality to make it give this consent; whereas Morpheus only has the arms in which we rest.
Thus the daydream requires specific evaluation of its own, since it enters and unlocks a very
different region altogether. It ranges from the waking dream of a comfortable, silly, crude,
escapist, devious and paralysing kind, to the responsible kind, the kind actively and acutely
deployed in the matter-in-hand, and the shaped kind
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in art. Above all, it is clear that 'reverie', unlike the usual nocturnal 'dream', can possibly
contain marrow and, instead of the idleness or even the self-enervation which certainly are to
be found here, a tireless incentive towards the actual attainment of what it visualizes.
First and Second Characteristics of the Daydream:

Clear Road, Preserved Ego
The first property of the waking dream is that it is not oppressive. It remains within our
power, the ego starts out on a journey into the blue, but ends it whenever it wants. However
relaxed the dreamer might be, he is not abducted or overpowered by his images, they are not
independent enough for this. Real things do appear muted, they are often distorted, but they
never completely vanish in the face of the wished-for images, however subjective. And
daydream images are not normally hallucinated, so they return from the most remote flight of
fancy at a moment's notice. There is no spell in this condition, at least none which the
daydreamer has not voluntarily imposed on himself, and which he could not revoke. The
waking dream-house is also furnished exclusively with ideas chosen by the daydreamer
himself, whereas the sleeper never knows what is awaiting him beyond the threshold of the
subconscious. Secondly, the ego in the daydream is nowhere near so weakened as it is in the
night-dream, despite the relaxation that also takes place in the former. Even in its most
passive form, where the ego merely looks on or allows itself to be carried along by its
reveries, it looks on completely intact, remains in the context of its life and its waking world.
In contrast the night-dream ego is divisible, often like mush; it feels no pain, it does not die
when it suffers death. Indeed the difference between the being of the ego in night-and
daydreams is so great that the very relaxation in which the daydream ego also participates
can subjectively burgeon into a feeling of elevation, however dubious. Because the ego itself
then becomes a wishful idea for itself, one freed of censorship, it experiences the green light
of release which appears to have come on for all other wishful ideas. The relaxation of the
ego in night-dreams is merely a sinking, whereas in the daydream it is a rising with the
general rising swarm. Thus there is even a difference between the drugs which artificially
induce the two types of dream; even pharmacologically, within the artificially stimulating
phantastica, the imagination of the sleeping cerebrum, with its benighted ego, is distinct
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from daytime imagination. Namely: opium appears to belong to the night-dream, hashish to
the freewheeling, rapturous daydream. Even under the influence of hashish, the ego alters
very little, neither the individual temperament nor its reasoning are withdrawn. Admittedly,
the external world is rather blocked off, not completely as it is in sleep, especially opium
sleep, but only to the extent that it is not compatible with the images that appear, and its
babbling interference merely appears stupid, pitifully stupid. Whereas in contrast, an external
world which reaches into the realms of the imagination and appears to be on a plane with
Parnassus or even with a fool's paradise, such as gardens, castles, beautiful old streets, is
particularly suited to the stimulation of the hashish dream. The Shiite sect of the hassasins or
Assassins, the religious murder-sect of the Arabian Middle Ages, with the Sheik of the
Mountain at their head, led the young boys who had been chosen to commit murder into the
dazzling gardens of the Sheik, into a world of unlimited sensual pleasure with their eyes wide
open even though they were under the influence of hashish. And the hashish images fitted in
perfectly with this external world comparable to a waking dream, in fact they exaggerated it
beyond all earthly measure, so that the boys with the utopian poison in their veins believed
they were enjoying a foretaste of paradise; so that they were prepared to risk their lives for
the Sheik in order to gain the real paradise. The hashish dreams of the subjects in more recent
experiments are reported to be of an enchanting levity, they have a kind of elfin spirit about
them, the asphalt of the street is transformed into yards of blue silk, random passers-by turn
into Dante and Petrarch anachronistically deep in conversation, in short, to the talented
hashish dreamer the world becomes a request concert of wishes. Another kind of levity is
available under the influence of hashish: 'The individual imagines he can see tangled plans,
the clarification of which previously seemed impossible, disentangled before him and well on
the way to being accomplished' (Lewin, Phantastica, 1927, p. 159ff.). Even delusions of
grandeur set in temporarily, anticipated achievements, almost as in paranoia. The opium-
trance is quite different, the total sleep of ego and external world; here there is nothing but
night-dream, right to the very bottom. Instead of imagined elevation of the ego, and
utopistically conducted alleviation of the environment, everything in the opium-trance is
sunken. And a sole dimension opens up of veiled, particularly undisentangled
subconsciousness: woman, ecstasy, cave, torch, midnight, crowd in upon one another,
usually in heavy, padded air. Oblivion, not light, is primarily at work in opium; it is Night
who proffers the opium poppies to Morpheus
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in ancient cameos. The chthonic priestesses carried poppy seeds in their hands to deaden
pain, Lethe was poured in the mysteries of Ceres as the opium water of oblivion, Isis-Ceres
herself is portrayed in late antiquity with poppy-heads in her hand. Even though Baudelaire
calls both the realms of intoxication of opium and hashish equally 'paradis artificiels', among
these disreputable delights, those induced by hashish are and remain in fact the only ones
which are pathologically assigned to the waking dream. So much for the illustration of a
difference even between the enervations of Morpheus on the one hand, of Phantasus on the
other.
Consequently, the ego in the waking-dream is found to be very animated, even striving. It is
particularly narrow and fundamentally wrong of Freud to observe on the subject of
daydreams that they are all the dreams of children, that they are only equipped with an
unadult ego. No doubt in some cases memories of a mistreated childhood ego are also at
work within them, as are infantile inferiority complexes, but these do not constitute the core.
The bearer of daydreams is filled with the conscious, enduringly conscious, even if variable
will for the better life, and the hero of daydreams is always our own adult personality. When
Caesar stood in Gades in front of the statue of Alexander deep in a daydream and shouted:
'Forty years and nothing yet done for immortality!', the ego which reacted in this way was not
that of the childish, but rather of the future Caesar he was to become. Far from the ego
regressing on this occasion, it is possible to say that it was not until this dream of immortality
that the Caesar we know first came into being. The ego is always preserved here with its
adult power, as unified adult experience of conscious mental processes; furthermore: the
guiding image is present of what a man would like to be and become in utopian terms. It
differs precisely on this point from the night-dream ego, all the more so from the completely
altered, deposed ego of the opium dream. As we remember, in Freud the night-dream ego
only remains sufficiently present to compel the hallucinated wish-fulfilments to disguise
themselves from its gaze; thus it practises moral censorship, even if it is patchy. Whereas the
ego of the waking dream is neither deposed, nor does it practise censorship against the often
unconventional content of its wishes. On the contrary: the censorship here is not merely
weakened and patchy as in the night-dream, rather it completely ceases despite the entirely
undiminished strength of the daydream ego, indeed because of it. It ceases precisely because
of the wishful idea which seizes the daydream ego and in fact strengthens or at least dresses
it up. In contrast to night-dreams therefore, in daydreams there is no censorship whatsoever
by a
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moral ego; rather, their utopistically intensified ego builds itself and what belongs to it into a
castle in the air in an often amazingly carefree blue. This is especially evident in crude
private reveries. In any case it is much more obvious here than in those of a considered plan
or a definite future-path. The little man who satisfies his wishes for revenge or who wishes
his otherwise more or less beloved wife dead to the extent that in his wishful dream he is
openly honeymooning with a younger woman, feels no pangs of conscience. He does not
atone for any pleasure, and, in the imaginary fulfilment of such depraved wishes, he
experiences no anxiety as a substitute for the censorship. And an ambitious dreamer really
does allow his wishes free rein, he flies with outspread wings up to the Temple of Posterity,
whether he is a Caesar or, as in most cases, a Spiegelberg.* He too feels no censorship, apart
from the hindrance of external circumstances, not even the censorship of the comic, let alone
that of the anxiety of an Icarus or a Prometheus. In waking dreams, however average, Circe
who turns men into swine, King Midas who turns the world into gold, live unrestrained
always with remarkable exemption from the rules of behaviour, all the more remarkable
since the relationship to the outside world is in no way screened as it is in the night-dream.
All this overhauling, however, is only possible because of the unaltered ego of the waking
dream and more precisely because of the already mentioned utopianizing strengthening with
which the daydream ego supplements itself and what is commensurate with it. In fact it must
supplement this whenever the daydream is not expended on chimeras like Circe and Midas,
or even on private excesses, but attains the commonly binding progression: to painting a
better world. Particularly when a daydream of this kind takes on its proper seriousness and
becomes a cleverly informed plan. What is needed for this is least of all the altered ego as in
the night-trance, but rather an ego with taut muscles and a concrete head. A head with the
will to extend itself, held up high, which knows how to be circumspect.
Third Characteristic of the Daydream:

World-Improving
The ego of the waking dream may become so extensive that it represents others along with it.
Thus we reach the third point where daydreams and night-dreams differ: human breadth
makes them different. The sleeper is alone
*
The villainous blackguard in Schiller's play 'The Robbers', 1781.
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with his treasures, the ego of the enthuser can refer to others. If the ego is no longer
introverted in such a way or does not only refer to its immediate environment, then its
daydream wants to improve publicly. Even still privately rooted dreams of this kind apply
themselves to what is inside only because they want to improve it in collaboration with other
egos; because they take the material for this above all from an outside which has been
dreamed to perfection. Thus it is instructive to read in Rousseau, in the fourth book of his
confessions: 'I filled nature with being after my own heart; I created a golden age for myself
to my own taste, by recalling the experiences of earlier days with which sweet memories
were associated, and by picturing in vivid colours the images of happiness for which I could
then long. I imagined love and friendship, the two ideals of my heart, in the most delightful
forms and decorated them with all the charms of woman.' Thus, even out of the swirling fog
of the phantasm, shapes emerge which draw the ego into their orbit, into a better, external
orbit in which millions are embraced.* World-improving dreams in general seek the
outwardness of their inwardness, they emerge like the extrovert rainbow, like a vault across
the sky. At this point the separate classification of night- and daydream which appeared
above with opium and hashish recurs; and this time it recurs in psychoses. The poppy-like
aspect of the night-dream manifests itself correspondingly in schizophrenia, as a regression,
the hashish-like aspect in paranoia, as projective delusion. Of course the two illnesses to
which these names are given are not to be strictly separated, their characteristics sometimes
flow into each other. Both are examples of extreme turning away from the current or
available reality, schizophrenia is of course literal splitting off from it, with a submerged road
back. The schizophrenic lets the world go, goes back to the autistic-archaic state of
childhood; but the paranoiac takes from this state many of his delusions, which certainly are
not turned away from the world, but in fact world-improving. Often, of course, paranoia ends
in schizophrenia; even so, there is an unmistakable difference in direction between the two
illnesses, which the utopian aspect now enables us to denote. If psychosis in general is an
involuntary giving way of consciousness to an invasion by the unconscious, then the
paranoiac unconscious, unlike the schizophrenic unconscious, at least manifests utopistic
edges. The schizophrenic succumbs defencelessly to traditional powers, is thoroughly
spellbound, stands with the regressions of his madness in archaic primeval time and paints,
rhymes, stutters
*
Cf. Schiller's 'An die Freude': 'Be embraced, you millions.'
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out of its long-lost dream; the paranoiac, on the other hand, reacts to the traditional powers
with querulousness and persecution mania, but breaks them at the same time with
adventurous inventions, social recipes, heavenly roads and more besides. Related differences
of upwards or downwards, of darkening or over-brightness also seem to be at work where the
downwards or upwards of neurotic consciousness pass over into raving. Where, that is,
regression boils up to the being-beside-oneself of ecstasy, projection to the being-above-
oneself of rapture. Iamblichus, the Syrian neo-Platonist, who knew his way around in the
false consciousness of the possessed, reports the following about this kind of upwards and
downwards in his account of the mysteries: 'It has quite wrongly been assumed that even
rapture can be attained by the influence of the demons. The latter only bring about ecstasies,
but rapture (enthusiasm) is the work of the gods. So rapture is definitely not ecstasy, rather
rapture is a turning to the good, whereas ecstasy is a falling towards evil' (De mysteriis II, 3).
These are chaotic and mythological interpretations, but what underlies them repeats precisely
in the religious-parapsychological field the different directions of significance of
schizophrenia and paranoia. In short, if schizophrenia denotes the illness (screened
exaggeration) of archaically regressing acts, paranoia does the same thing for the utopian
progressive acts, especially, however, for the tendency of the waking dream towards world-
improvement. Which explains why there have been so many of these madmen among
project-makers, and at least some among the great utopians. Almost every utopia in fact,
whether medical, social or technological, has paranoiac caricatures; for every real innovator
there are hundreds of fantastic, unreal, mad ones. If one could fish out the mad ideas which
are swimming around in the aura of lunatic asylums, alongside the archaic theory of
schizophrenia made all too famous by C. G. Jung, we would find the most astonishing
prefigurations created by paranoia. And no brooding night-symbols will be found among
them, of the heart in the pond variety, a crucifixion fountain or any other painted or fictional
antiquities derived from schizophrenia, but instead new combinations, changes to the world,
project-making forwards, in short, fiery owls of a crazy Minerva who nevertheless wants to
glimmer with red dawn. Even in such great illness the waking dream shows what it is capable
of in terms of specific world-improvement. As madness it makes fiery owls, as fairytale it
paints Arabian fairy palaces into the world, of gold and jasper.
It is further important for the waking dream, as an extensive dream, to communicate itself
outwards. It is capable of doing this, whereas the
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night-dream, like every all too private experience, can only be related with difficulty, related
in such a way that the particular feeling of the subject-matter is communicated to the listener
too. Conversely, daydreams are comprehensible on account of their openness, communicable
on account of their generally interesting wishful images. The wishful images immediately
posit external form here, in a better planned world or even in an aesthetically heightened
world, one without disappointment. On this point Freud himself gives daydreams their own
slant, they now become after all, against the grain, alongside the stepping-stone of the night-
dream, a stepping-stone to art: 'They are the raw material of poetic production; since the
writer makes out of his daydreams, by certain reshapings, disguises and omissions, the
situations which he inserts into his short stories, novels, plays' (Vorlesungen, 1922, p. 102).
Freud has touched on the truth of utopian creativity at this point, of consciousness directed
into the good New; but the merely diluting concept of 'sublimation' which follows
immediately in Freud made the psychology of the New once more unrecognizable. Yet the
daydream, because it is common property, extends both into the broad and into the deep
expanse, into the non-sublimated, but in fact concentrated expanse, into that of the utopian
dimensions. And this automatically posits the better world also as the more beautiful, in the
sense of completed images, the like of which have not yet been seen on earth. Through
planning or forming, windows are hewn in deprivation, hardness, rawness, banality, with
distant prospects, full of light. The daydream as a stepping-stone to art so very obviously
intends world-improvement, has this as its robustly real character: 'Ahead, with lowered
gaze, the earthly pain/Entwined with joy, a figure in a dream': thus, in 'Death of the Poet'
Gottfried Keller characterizes the companions of the poet, together with imagination and its
wit. Art contains this utopianizing character by virtue of the daydream, not as a frivolously
gilding character, but as one which also contains renunciation and which, though the latter is
certainly not conquered by art alone, is not forgotten within it either, but embraced by joy as
the figure that is approaching. The daydream goes into music and echoes in its house which
is invisible but nevertheless as much a part of world-extension, now it is dynamic and
expressive in music. It posits all the figures of venturing beyond, from the noble robber to
Faust, all the wishful situations and wishful landscapes, from the aurora in oil to the symbolic
circles of the Paradiso. People and situations are themselves driven to their end by virtue of
the daydream riding to its end in great art: the consistent, the objectively possible becomes
visible. In realistic writers such objective
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possibilities in the world they portray become quite distinct. This however, not by making
nature fantastic for example, but rather by making known through fantasy, a fantasy which is
concretely related and hurries on ahead, that dream of a matter in nature and history which
the matter has of itself and which belongs both to its tendency and to the settlement of its
Totum and essence. Where extrovert imagination is completely lacking, as in Naturalists and
in those people Engels called 'induction asses', then of course only matters of fact and
superficial connections are apparent. Consequently, waking dream with world-extension is
always presupposed for the accomplished work of art, as the most exact imaginative
experiment of perfection possible; in fact not only for the work of art. Ultimately, even
science only gets beyond the superficial connection through an act of anticipation, through
one, it goes without saying, of a specific kind. This may simply consist in the so-called
heuristic 'assumptions', which present a picture of the whole matter, still not in detail, but
purely in outline. However, a perfect waking dream of harmonious connection with nature
may also come first: Kepler intended such world-perfection, and he discovered the laws of
planetary motion. The reality of these laws certainly did not correspond to the dream of
perfection of the harmony of the spheres; nevertheless: the dream went on ahead, was the
estimate of a totally harmoniously ordered world. This sort of thing is as remote as can be
from the regression of the night-dream: for the latter shows, in its sinking back and archaism,
only prelogical images, as categories of a society which has long since passed, not those of a
rational cosmos. Anticipations and intensifications which refer to men, social utopian ones
and those of beauty, even of transfiguration, are really only at home in the daydream. Above
all revolutionary interest, with knowledge of how bad the world is, with acknowledgement of
how good it could be if it were otherwise, needs the waking dream of world-improvement,
keeps hold of it in a wholly unheuristic, wholly realistic way in both its theory and practice.
Fourth Characteristic of the Daydream:

Journey to the End
Fourthly, the waking, that is, open dream knows how not to forgo. It refuses to be fictitiously
full or even simply to spiritualize wishes. The day-fantasy begins like the night-dream with
wishes, but carries them radically to their conclusion, wants to get to the place of their
fulfilment.
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Two typical daydreams of writers are relevant here; for, despite all weakness and escapism,
they posit this place in a really prototypical way. The two daydreams, both incidentally of
quiet writers, are all the more relevant here because they intend an arrival, not merely a
world-improving roaming. One comes from the childhood of Clemens Brentano, the other
comes from the youth of Mrike and already contains all the seeds of a poetic ideal
landscape. After Brentano, with his sister Bettina and other children, had established a
kingdom called Vaduz in a Frankfurt attic, it was, as Brentano says, like being driven out of
paradise when he later learnt that there was a real Vaduz and that it was the capital of the
principality of Liechtenstein. But Goethe's old mother consoled him: 'Don't let it upset you,
believe me, your Vaduz is yours and is not marked on any map, and all the soldiers of
Frankfurt, even the household cavalry with the Antichrist at their head, can't take it away
from you . . . Your kingdom is in the clouds and not of this earth, and every time it touches
the earth it will rain tears, I wish you a blessed rainbow.' Mrike's account concerning the
direct transition from day-fantasy into poetry is to be found in his novel 'Maler Nolten', and it
records the following, as transposed autobiography: 'When I was still at school I had a friend
whose way of thinking and aesthetic endeavour went hand in hand with mine; we spent our
free time together and soon created our own sphere of poetry . . . All the shapes of our
imagination still stand before me, vivid, earnest, true, and anyone into whose soul I could
play just one ray of the poetic sun which warmed us then, truly golden as it was, would not at
least begrudge me a serene pleasure, he would even forgive the mature man for taking
another idle walk in the redolent landscape of this poetry and even for bringing back a piece
of old stone from the beloved ruin. We invented for our poetry a territory which lay outside
the known world, a secluded island on which a powerful heroic people was supposed to live.
This island was called Orplid, and we imagined it was situated in the Pacific Ocean between
New Zealand and South America.' So much for Brentano's Vaduz founded in the children's
attic, and Mrike's Orplid transported so far away. The mere assignment of the daydream to
the chimeras of the night or even to art seen as a kind of game does least justice to such or
similar imaginative landings. For this sees only sublimations in them or even archaic return,
instead of attempted articulation of a utopian hope-content. In a thinker like Freud, nothing at
all corresponds to these contents in the outside world either (which must in fact appear to the
late bourgeoisie as leaden sobriety and nothingness); art as a whole is false appearance,
religion as
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a whole, illusion. What is essential for the daydream, particularly in the journey to the end,
is: the seriousness of a pre-appearance of the possibly Real, this is almost more definitely
blocked off for it here than for the night-dream which is in any case symptom-like. The usual
simple bourgeois illusion-theory of the daydream leaves within it and around it only the
playing space for the pretty games of infantilisms and archaisms: 'In the exercise of his
imagination, man thus continues to enjoy the freedom from external compulsion which he
has long since renounced in reality. . . . The creation of the spiritual realm of the imagination
finds its complete counterpart in the laying-out of conservation areas, nature reserves in those
places where the demands of agriculture, of traffic and of industry threaten to change quickly
the original face of the earth beyond recognition. The nature reserve preserves this old state
which we have elsewhere regretfully sacrificed to necessity. Everything may thrive and grow
as it wants, even what is useless or harmful. The spiritual realm of imagination is also such a
conservation area, withdrawn from the reality principle' (Freud, Vorlesungen, 1922, p. 416).
If art was everywhere and always the same as mere formal or non-committal armchair
observation, i.e. like enjoyment of art that merely conserves, then the nature reserve theory
would perhaps be all right; and a kind of jester's licence for the purpose of producing
pleasure would follow, for anywhere from the night-club to the National Gallery. But even
the bourgeoisie was not always committed solely to the stalls of contemplation, it did once
dream of the aesthetic education of man,* and consequently of art which grasps, in fact
attacks, and of a morning gate of the beautiful. How little Socialist Realism has in common
with philistine enjoyment of art, let alone with 'a conservation area withdrawn from the
reality principle'. In Freud, reality always appears as immutable, and it appears as mechanical
reality consistent with the world-picture of the last century. Precisely by this process, utopian
daydream, particularly as journey to the end, is made reflexive, or, psychologically speaking,
purely introverted, as is the night-dream. In C. G. Jung this introverted material only had to
be excavated vertically in order to transfer Orplid into the archaic realm; from the nature
reserve into the Tertiary period. By this process, imaginative landing was only possible as an
archetype, that is, in Jung, only in the long since sunken land of myth. This is decisively
contradicted by the fact that Vaduz and Orplid, and what is intended by these radical
conceptions, have never sought their place of fulfilment
*
A reference to Schiller's essay 'On the Aesthetic Education of Man', 1795.
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anywhere but in the future. Even the transferral of such fairytale images into Once-upon-a-
time always allows the One Day as something coming to shimmer through the One Day as
something past. Even the transferral to secluded valleys or South Sea islands, as was the case
in older novels of an ideal state,* involves future in its remoteness, utopian destination in its
distance. Even the really archaic basic ground of memory to which so many images of hope
refer back: the archetype Golden Age, Paradise stands likewise, as something expected in
the Some Day of time. The Orplidic thus hangs with hundreds of small and great pearls on
the little-explored red thread** of dream-utopia and is continually held together by it. It is
held together by the intention towards something perfect, no matter how variably the contents
of this perfect something have been pictured in accordance with previous classes and
societies. The will to journey to the end where everything turns out well thus always
pervades utopian consciousness, plays throughout this consciousness with a never to be
forgotten spirit of fairytale, works in the dreams of a better life, but also, and this must finally
be understood, suo modo in works of art. The world-improving imagination lands in them not
just so that all men and things are driven to the limits of their possibility and all their
situations are used up and their forms fully fashioned. Rather, every great work of art,
besides its manifest essence, is also carried towards a latency of its coming side, that is:
towards the contents of a future which had not yet appeared in its time, in fact ultimately
towards the contents of an as yet unknown final state. For this reason alone, great works of
every age have something to say, and indeed something new that the previous age had not yet
noticed in them; for this reason alone, the fairytale Magic Flute, but also the historically
rigidly fixed Divine Comedy have their 'eternal youth'. What is important is, as Goethe says,
the 'far radiating' quality of these great imaginative creations, through which they at least
hold open the exit in given reality, possibly a window on to something Absolute. And the
great, i.e. realistic works of art do not become less realistic through the notation of latency,
through the space however blank of the Absolute, but more realistic; since everything real
mingles with the Not-Yet within that space. Significant daydream imaginative creations do
not blow soap-bubbles, they open windows, and outside them is the daydream world of a
possibility which can at any rate be given form. There are enough differences
*
Novels in which life in an imaginary state is described, as in Thomas More's 'Utopia'.
**
'The red thread' also means 'the central theme' in German.
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between the two kinds of dream even at this end; the mode as well as the content of wish-
fulfilment diverge in them insuppressibly. This always means: the night-dream lives in
regression, it is indiscriminately drawn into its images, the daydream projects its images into
the future, by no means indiscriminately, but controllable even given the most impetuous
imagination and mediatable with the objectively Possible. The content of the night-dream is
concealed and disguised, the content of the day-fantasy is open, fabulously inventive,
anticipating, and its latency lies ahead. It comes itself out of self- and world-extension
forwards, it is wanting to have better, often simply wanting to know better. Longing is
common to both kinds of dream, for it is, as noted, the only honest quality of all men; but the
desiderium of the day, in contrast to that of the night, can also be the subject not only the
object of its science. The daytime wishful dream requires no excavation and interpretation,
but rectification and, in so far as it is capable of it, concretion. In short, it does not have a
measure from the outset any more than the night-dream but, unlike the spooks of the night, it
has a goal and makes progress towards it.
Merging of Nocturnal and Daytime Dream-Games, its Dissolution

Being different from one another does not of course mean being unrelated. Between the level
of the dreamer and that of the daydreamer there is sometimes an exchange. There is a play of
colours in the night which can also exist during the day, which looks like something
exceptional and doubtless can be portrayed as such. Remarkable collections of this kind
exist. Friedrich Huch published a hundred accounts of 'Dreams', thus a particularly tangled
strangeness, the novel 'The Other Side' (by the illustrator Alfred Kubin) stems mainly from
moon and sleep. Day writings, however, also certainly incorporate dreams, most strikingly
and most beautifully even in the realist Keller. They are reported like other events, but they
also blend effortlessly with the solid yet fairytale-like lavishness in which all Keller's
observations are steeped. Der grne Heinrich,* shortly before his sad return home, succumbs
to a real orgy of dreams. They are all reproachful wish-fulfilments. Among them belongs the
vision of his home town, transfigured, changed, a crazy aerial picture on the ground, into
which there is no entry. Valleys
*
The hero of Keller's most famous novel of the same name, 18545.
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and streams appear with unheard-of, yet well-known names, rose-gardens float away into the
distance, spreading out a reddish hue on the horizon: 'the alpine glow streams out and
surrounds the fatherland'. It is a different red to that of reddening dawn, the waking dawn of
former times when der grne Heinrich left his home town and turned back to the mountains:
'now the morning star glimmered only over the last ice-altar'; the light now comes from
Hades, pretends to be the last remaining hope. His mother's house appears, actually the
parlour at dusk turned inside out, unforgettable, only the night-dream provides the raw
material and image for this: 'On the ledges and in the recesses stood rows of antique silver
pots and beakers, porcelain jars and little marble images. Window-panes of glass-crystal
sparkled with mysterious brilliance in front of a dark background between the grainy doors of
rooms and cupboards with shining steel keys in them. Above this strange faade the sky
arched dark-blue, and a half-nocturnal sun was reflected in the dark splendour of the walnut,
in the silver of the jugs and in the window-panes.' This sort of thing does of course show the
traffic between the antipodes of night and daylight, they seem completely immersed in each
other, uncannily and peculiarly full of foreboding. With what elective affinity Romanticism
in particular was able to use this mixed light, as a dream-game and not only as a game. Every
dream was for Novalis 'a significant tear in the mysterious curtain which falls in a thousand
folds in our inner being'. It was predominantly also the metamorphosis of dream-images
which recommended itself to Romantic antistatics and to its waking dream, in an almost
scholarly fashion. Night-dream as novel grown wild was discovered by Romantic nature
philosophy: 'These creations then are not without voice and speech; sounds and words,
coming as if from all different directions, comprehensible and incomprehensible, meet and
mutually suppress each other, and thus nothing seems to be lost from that inner nature, in
contrast to the outer, except the steadiness and quiet which the latter has. For such inner
figments, as if made of fleeting clouds, come and disappear; here neither the high mountains
are protected by their greatness, nor the tree by the power of its roots from passing quickly
away, and where one moment there was cliff and forest, there suddenly now appears a plain
or a room enclosed by walls' (G. H. Schubert, Die Geschichte der Seele, 1830, p. 549). Thus
the appearance arose as if night-dreams and daydreams underwent, beside their exchange,
even a merging of their images, on the same ground, romantically-objectively united. The
pure Romantic simply no longer wants to know whether subconscious chaos or consciously
shaping, re-shaping
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imagination predominates in his poetry. For him the night-dream is in any case removed
from all concepts of time and space of current sobriety, from all causal and identity-forms of
the grey cortex of civilization; the night-dream is constructed pre-logically and is thus an
archaic element against the expanse, the morning, the future of the day. This is a legacy
which Romanticism brought from the night into the day layer, though there was continually
an element of new connection at work between the two layers. Accordingly the overlap of the
black and the blue hours happened again every time both were proud not to be day in the
sense of superficial clarity, mere superficial connection. The crack in the previous surface
then tore open cave and distant blue together; ultimately in Expressionism, particularly in
Surrealism. Though now with the important difference from Romanticism that the utopian
did not so much want to turn towards the past, as the past towards something utopian. No
matter how lunar the atmosphere in the Expressionist poem: 'pale evening trees, willows
which steal the light from the moonfond pond, moon flakes silvering through the window',
and many more Dubler phrases besides:* night-lines were incorporated into utopian ones in
this strained way. Even stammering nonsense of the night in the attempt to travel, on the
basis of such dissolutions of the former day connections, to a new land, to better shores, even
to rationally ordered shores. An object-lesson in these transitions was given by James Joyce
in 'Ulysses'; highly post-Romantic, highly un-Romantic. The cellar of the unconscious
discharges itself in Joyce into a transitory Now, provides a mixture of prehistoric
stammering, smut and church music; the author does not interrupt with a single comma the
decoction that surges over the levelled threshold of consciousness for eighty pages. But in the
midst of the monkey-chatter (from one day and a thousand subconscious human reactions
strictly mixed up) there appears something clearly viewed, applied montage shows quite
rational cross-connections or analogiae entis; Lot's wife and The Old Ireland Tavern near the
salt water down by the docks, cutting straight through time and space, celebrate their
meeting, their everyday beyond space and time. 'So that', says Stephen Dedalus, 'so that
gesture, not music, not odours, would be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering
visible not the lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm' (Ulysses, Part II
(Circe)). Primeval caves, with babbling and speaking in tongues inside them, are thus
conjured up in day-fantasies and these are then lowered down again; a continual merging
*
Theodor Dubler, Expressionist poet, 18761934.
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of grotesque night-faces and outlines develops. And in Surrealism, i.e. corresponding to the
very time of collapse to which Surrealism belongs, as always in the sudden combination of
incompatibles, there is no lack of humour; a contemptible humour sometimes, one which
then unmasks the design merely to pater le bourgeois, or even a humour of pettily contrived
jokes, and after that things become quite cosy in the dream-house at the sign of the Double
Strangeness. But more essential in Surrealism remains the fundamental coupling of Hecate
and Minerva, remains the visionary face, a montage of mere shreds and collapses. This is in
fact a difference from Romanticism understood as the age of Restoration;* at that time the
daydream was fundamentally incorporated into night-lines without becoming
phosphorescent. At any rate, it is a protracted mixed world of subconsciousness and red
dawn, a contact-world in which the regressio makes use of the journey to the end, or the
journey to the end makes use of the regressio. The labyrinth of the night-dream even
aesthetically is not a stepping-stone to the castle in the air, and yet: in so far as it forms its
dungeons, archaic material can communicate with waking imagination. And above all: from
the example of Gottfried Keller's dream-house, which flashes like the Styx, a night-piece of
the house of the mother and of youth, it also becomes apparent why conversely the waking
dream is no less able to communicate with archaic material. It can do so because, not only
psychologically, but also objectively, future still exists in the past, because many night-pieces
are also undischarged or unfinished and therefore demand daydream, forward-intention. This
night still has something to say, not as something brooding that has primally been, but as
something that has not become, that has never really become known anywhere, which is
encapsulated in parts within it. But it can only say something in so far as it is exposed by
waking imagination, by an imagination that is directed towards what is becoming; in itself
the archaic is dumb. Only as something brooding in an undischarged, undeveloped, in short,
utopian way does it have the power to open up in the daydream, does it attain the power not
to hold itself sealed against the latter; but as such, even though only as such, it can circulate
in the notions of clear road, preserved-retained ego, world-improvement, journey to the end.
The insight therefore that archaic brooding can be utopian in reality finally explains the
possibility of a merging of night-dreams and daydreams, gives the explanation and
dissolution of a partially possible merging of the dream-games. And even
*
Bloch is referring to the reactionary period of the restoration of the French monarchy after 1814.
Page 103
with the continuing primacy of the waking imagination: it is not the utopian that capitulates
here to archaism, but archaism which capitulates, on account of its undischarged
components, possibly to the utopian; every other merging and every other explanation of it is
illusion. The elaboration of it is in any case the business of the day; the suspect god who
gives to his beloved in sleep* needs Apollo to speak for him, that Apollo who may well be
familiar with vapours and oracles, but has conquered them and has them serving in his
temple. Otherwise, imagination in Jung and Klages' sense would revert completely to
prehistory, moreover a romanticized, counterfeit prehistory. Therefore, only the daylight
opens up the wonderfully relevant material of night-dreams, of the archaic in general, and it
is this material only because and in so far as it is still itself utopian, transposed in a utopian
way. Regression therefore occurs artistically only with profit when something that has not
become, a future possible, is also still encapsulated in the archetype. Otherwise the treasures
which can be seen on the floor of night become chaff and withered pine-cones, like
Rbezahl's** gifts when day comes. But the daydream, and what it grasps, contains human
concerns instead of Medusas in the labyrinth. Daydreams have chosen the better part; so they
all advance together, though with so much variation of capability and quality, into the field of
anticipatory consciousness.
More on Inclination to Dream: the 'Mood' as Medium of Daydreams

Asleep, the body is in the dark, only awake do we sense it. It senses itself first in the feeling
of its state-of-being; therein only physical states become aware of themselves. And even they
then only become aware in a blurred and diffuse way, not yet referring to a particular part of
the body or to a particular kind of physical pain or enjoyment. There are middling, sick and
healthy states-of-being, feeling well and feeling ill, but they are all merely quite general; a
clear stomach-ache, a specific sensation of pleasure, on the tongue or localized in erogenous
zones, is immediately excluded from the above. And: the state-of-being is not, for example,
being in good or bad 'spirits', like the mood; since it is not a mixture, like the latter, of actual
drive-feelings or emotions. In fact, it only contains the cooking
*
Psalm 127, 2.
**
Rbezahl a legendary Silesian mountain spirit.
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of the bodily processes, particularly the gut-sensations and more or less subconscious
sensations of the circulation of the blood, but as yet no emotional feelings, with an ego
behind them. This distinguishes the more organic feeling of condition in the 'state-of-being'
from the far more ego-based feeling of 'mood'; thus there is the diffuse sense which
announces the feelings of organs on the one hand, and the diffuse sense that conveys
emotional feelings on the other, which a person always first gets into, when in unsettled
spirits. The state-of-being is like a roaring which, like every other noise, arises out of a
confusion of many naturally given sounds in an irregular sequence. The mood is like the
confusion of sounds from an orchestra which plays bits of individual passages
simultaneously before the beginning of a piece of music, not natural sounds, but sounds
which have a musical, composing ego behind them. The mood does not have such a muffled,
subterranean 'ground tone' either, as the state-of-being does, but its own 'ground tone' is
undulating, like weather, atmospheric, it can move between extremes (like 'exulting to the
heavens, gloomy as death'),* which the state-of-being does not know so close together. And
furthermore, every mood shows a peculiar expanse, which is reminiscent of the spreading of
perfumes. Th. Lipps emphasized precisely this expanse which is foreign to the state-of-being
of the body; he notes in the case of 'cheerfulness', for example, 'the perceptible spreading of
the pleasure of an experience into a more or less expansive mood embracing the whole of
psychological experience' (Leitfaden der Psychologie, 1903, p. 271). Or in a more recent
description (which at any rate is not crawling with the fashionable existentialist mood-
obsession la Bollnov):** 'The spiritual mood is the relatively persistent atmospheric basis of
our feeling of life, from which the changing perceptions are raised with particular colouring,
by which, however, our ideas and our behaviour are also permeated' (Lersch, Der Aufbau des
Charakters, 1948, p. 41). On account of this atmospherically wide, and at the same time
diffuse collective phenomenon, the feeling of mood spreads out even beyond the ego, to
which it is primarily attached. A room, a landscape appear to have a 'mood', and even here
the more distinctly, the more indistinct, i.e. more diffuse the transmitted emotional state
looks. So bright midday is little suited for this, the early morning is better, it is most at home
in the evening; the stormy mood is wellknown (which the first bolt of lightning disperses).
Simple, great objects like the sea are worse suited for it, those which cannot be surveyed are
*
Klrchen in Goethe's play 'Egmont' 3, 2 (1788).
**
Otto Friedrich Bollnov, b. 1903, German philosopher and education theorist.
Page 105
better, like the forest. Here, however, we must never forget that the breadth of mood, which
itself moves outwards so strongly, even as an extroverted feeling for nature never appears
divided up, but remains in an undulating generality. It is an essential feature of the mood that
it appears total only when it is diffuse; it never consists of a dominant, overwhelming
emotion, but of an itself wide mixture of many emotional feelings which have not yet been
settled. This in fact makes it into a phenomenon which so easily becomes iridescent, this at
the same time causes it still on the other side of the confusion of sounds before the
beginning of a piece of music, and also completely without intensive density to spin out
and deform so easily as merely impressionistic experience-reality (Debussy, Jacobsen).
Heidegger also hails from this impressionistic thereabouts, in so far as he describes it and at
the same time succumbs to it. But here, within this dull dimension, Heidegger has the so to
speak tautological advantage of having noticed 'that existence always already has a mood', in
the sense of an original explanation of how one is and one feels. The original aspect is
according to this idea not a perceiving Finding-Oneself-in-a-State but rather a mood-laden
Being-in-a-State: 'What we indicate ontologically by the term state-of-mind is ontically the
most familiar and everyday thing: mood, mood-ladenness' (Sein und Zeit, 1927, p. 134). But
Heidegger has not got beyond the dull, depressingly stagnant, even shallow dimension that
he has uncovered. State-of-being and mood remain unseparated here; thus, in this
undifferentiated animal surge, shallowness prevents any intimation of the darkness of the real
immediate existere which in no way brings its being before it as There (darkness of the lived
moment, of which more later) even in the mood. Thus the interested depressing element
obstructs all brightening tendencies of the mood, to reproduce instead only the dejection:
'The often enduring, evenly proportioned and pale moodlessness, which should not be
confused with a bad mood, is so far from being nothing that precisely within it existence
becomes wearisome to itself. Being has become manifest as a burden. . . . And there again an
elevated mood can relieve the manifest burden of existence; the possibility of mood also
reveals, even though relieving it, the burdensome character of existence' (l.c., p. 134). Not the
misery of all mankind, but solely that of the unilluminated hopeless petit bourgeoisie strikes
us when we come to this sentence in Heidegger, concerning the 'abysses' of this kind of state-
of-mind: 'The deep boredom, swirling to and fro in the abysses of existence like a silent fog,
draws all things, people and oneself together in a remarkable indifference. This boredom
reveals That-Which-Is in the whole' (Was
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ist Metaphysik? 1929, p. 16). Here then from the mood, because it announces itself solely as
a mood of expiring life, i.e. here: of a declining class, the wishful character is completely
missing, without which even this diffuseness of emotions, as one of emotions, cannot exist;
unless, as Heidegger must himself say, it is 'moodlessness'. What is missing is precisely the
colour for waking dreams, with which the mood can picture its blue hour, without it of course
becoming uninteresting in existential-ontical terms and sinking down in existentialist-
ontological terms into nihilism. Not every possible everyday, not even every one which has
already appeared historically, is endowed with 'pale moodlessness', let alone with the
boredom which the 'That-Which-Is in the whole' supposedly reveals; rather, this everyday
mood essentially, if not solely, belongs to the mechanized capitalist enterprise. And even
within this enterprise there exists, apart from the moodlessness, even alongside the
undoubted burden of such an existence, that confusion of sounds of living drive-feelings
which actually first pictures 'mood' and in which the inclination to dream, one to waking
dreams, only now finds its medium.
Because the sleeper's body is in the dark, its state-of-being is also missing. And this is even
more true of the mood, which presupposes the ego, it belongs to the blue hour, not to the
black one. It also demands relaxation, certainly, though of a kind which is not seeking
slumber, but rather an excursion. This state of mood, particularly inclined to the blue, has
previously been disregarded in relation to the daydream; we must now make up for this. The
pale moodlessness itself may not yet be dreamy, even the dejected mood, the confusion of
unpleasurable emotions, is not light enough as a medium to allow daydreams to develop
straight away. However, the continual propensity towards the better in the ground tone of all
expectant emotions is all the more inclined to relieve this dejected mood and to escape into
an elevated one. And precisely at this point of transition, between gloom and cheerfulness,
the medium exists in which waking dream images develop most comfortably. Escape and
inclination, emotions of rejection and devotion are simultaneously mixed in this bright-dark
mood, and in this way form the aura in which each embarkation for Cythera takes place.
Whether it is minor or grand, a nervous or a considered departure, whether Cythera consists
in a mere improvement of situation or in something unheard-of till now, whether it is for next
to nothing or not for all the world: this of course depends not on the mood, but on the
strength and the content of the emotions of inclination which arise out of it, on the status and
concreteness of the imagination
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which visualizes the fulfilment of their intention for these emotions. But bright-dark mood
remains in every blue light, distant light of this kind clings for a long time to the waking
dream, and thus also extends a long way into the actually shaped waking dreams, negatively
as well as positively. Otherwise there would not be in them that weather-like quality which is
not just confined to Impressionism, to this phenomenon of mood which is relatively of the
most comfortable kind, that is, of a weakly shaped and weakly committing kind. Otherwise
there would not be the lyricism which also accompanies rigidly shaped daydream images,
wherever they are still situational. In daydream-works, bright-dark mood is therefore not only
confined to softness la Debussy or Jacobsen. It also fills such sustained and martellato
emotional picture music as that of Brahms (fourth symphony, particularly the last
movement), rather than softness it causes the rough and sharp quality here. Mood only
recedes in a decisive situation and in a representation which can accordingly make itself
appear free of atmosphere. Not merely the impressionistic and the older sentimental mood
then recedes, the kind whose iridescence never goes beyond a mixture of broken-off
emotions and blurred outlines, but also the atmosphere of sharpness, together with the whole
romanticism of this medium clears, opens a view on to what is decisive and no longer so
situational. This always happens where a situation driven to its conclusion in the artistic
waking dream, or at least a situation which has been brought to a standstill by taking a
stance, refuses the situational itself. This is also the case, in a strikingly weatherless way, in
all art that has been striven for and which is without unrest, without the pathos of movement
and time, that is, in that art which seeks to be hard and crystalline. Around a Cythera like
Egyptian relief, Byzantine mosaic or even merely Alfieri's classicism, there is no longer so
much mood as around Gothic, Baroque or even merely around Byron's stormy world.
Nevertheless, mood as pathos still underlies these too; even Egyptian art contains unrest, in
that it pacifies it, in fact, qua its wishful dream, by seeking to be a single stone requiem. So
mood still lies at the feet even of the intended anti-mood of a work of art, because of the
atmospheric quality of the imagination. This daydream water belongs to every daydream,
imaginative dream, even if, in its ultimately achieved dryness, it leaves this water. Thus it is
confirmed: the bright-dark mood provides the medium in which all daydreams begin, even
those with hardness, and especially those with arousing blue (azure).
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More on the Expectant Emotions (Anxiety, Fear, Terror, Despair, Hope, Confidence)
and the Waking Dream
The drive-feelings themselves are of course no longer so mood-based, do not remain so.
They soon clearly raise themselves from this general way of feeling in the shape of 'sheer'
envy, 'open' hatred, 'complete' trust. Cheerfulness, for example, this general carefree feeling
of life, is a mood; but keenly flashing pleasure is an emotion. And the emotions do not only
emerge out of the diffuse, but also out of the relatively unrelated. Therefore, even when the
mood-based medium disperses, the waking dream continues to resound; but now as one
which has predominantly been driving in the medium of expectant emotions. These, a quite
special type of emotions, have been promoting the waking dream in the mood-medium
anyway; so they appear here again, as those which are differentiated from the filled emotions
by their strongly anticipating intentional direction (cf. Vol. I, p. 74). The intention in all
expectant emotions is one that points ahead, the temporal environment of its content is future.
The more imminent this future is, the stronger, 'more burning' the expectant intention as
such; the more extensively the content of an expectant intention affects the intending self, the
more totally the person throws himself into it, and the 'deeper' it becomes a passion. Even
expectant intentions with a negative content as regards self-preservation, like anxiety and
fear, can likewise become passions, no less so than hope. They then seem 'exaggerated' to the
unengaged observer, and are so in pathological cases; occasionally, of course, simply lack of
awareness of the real situation causes them to appear 'exaggerated', 'enlarging' their object.
But even then the expectant emotion extends beyond its 'founding' idea-content; the
expectant content shows a greater 'depth' than the given idea-content in each case. Every fear
implies, as a fulfilment correlate, total destruction such as there has not yet been before, hell
let loose; every hope implies the highest good, bliss let loose such as there has not yet been
before. This ultimately distinguishes expectant emotions from the filled ones (like envy,
greed, admiration), which are always only 'founded' by known material and at most intend an
'unreal' future of their Object, that is, one that can be imagined exactly, objectively
containing nothing new. The intentional contents of the filled emotions lie, as Husserl
wrongly says of all emotions, in a 'set horizon', the horizon of memory idea, as opposed to
that of hope idea, the forward-reaching, i.e. real imagination, and the possible 'real' future of
its Object. At the
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same time there is always of course, even in the remembering idea, qua intention, an
expectation at work, and Husserl himself states, quite unexpectedly: 'Every originally
constituting process is animated by protentions which emptily constitute and collect what is
coming as such' (Zur Phnomenologie des inneren Zeitbewutseins, 1928, p. 410). However,
these 'protentions' have in memory and in the emotions 'founded' by it already received what
is theirs, they only have a 'horizon directed towards the future of what is re-remembered',
which, with its unreal future, is in fact 'set horizon'. Whereas the expectant emotions, and the
real imaginative idea which shows them their Object in space, at the same time possess this
space as decided temporal space, that is, with the unweakened temporal material in time that
is called real future. Accordingly, every expectant emotion, even if it should only intend
unreal future in the foreground, becomes capable of a rapport with the objectively New. This
is the life which the expectant emotion implicitly communicates to the thus anticipatory
waking dreams.
Every drive-feeling that is not merely mood-based refers to a something that is external to it.
But the inner surge is of course abandoned in this process with varying speed or force. The
first and fundamental negative expectant emotion, anxiety, begins as the most mood-based
and undefined. An anxious person never sees defined in front of him or around him the
something from which the feeling drifts towards him; this feeling is tremulous, not only in its
physical expression, but also in its Object. Freud primarily traced anxiety, as we have seen,
back to the act of birth, to the first constriction (angustia) in breathing, and to the first
separation from the mother. Every later feeling of anxiety accordingly brings this primal
experience of trepidation and abandonment alive; reacting to all situations of danger, even
fear of death, is thus supposed to be merely subjective and therein regressive. But with the
existing social conditions which may by themselves copiously stimulate fear of life and
death, or even produce them, the negative content in this relation is completely omitted here,
i.e. that which objectively arouses anxiety, without which anxiety could not constitute itself
at all. Heidegger, on the other hand, does not make his anxiety regressive, but neither does he
process beyond it to equally original positive expectant emotions without which anxiety as
such could not exist, just as a valley could not exist without a mountain. Instead, Heidegger
makes anxiety into the simple, undifferentiated 'Thusness' in everything, the existential 'basic
state-of-mind', and in a way which really does subjectively individuate each man, leading
him back to himself as
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solus ipse. Anxiety thus accordingly reveals to man 'his most characteristic Being-in-the-
world'; but the About Which, 'about which anxiety is anxious, is Being-in-the-world itself'
(Sein und Zeit, 1927, p. 187). And this About Which is basically the same thing into which
anxiety dissolves itself, namely nothingness, the 'It was nothing'; being itself 'hangs over into
nothingness'. Thus anxiety here confronts us most immediately and par excellence with
nothingness as the basic fund of the Being-Uncanny, of the Being-Subject-to-Death of all
Being-in-the-World. The 'basic state-of-mind' of anxiety reveals precisely this abyss,
according to Heidegger; hence also 'the constant, although mostly concealed trembling of
everything existing' per se. Heidegger, with much intentional immediacy of experience (mere
experiencing), but also with, it can be said: much cheap emotion-seeking, together with an
inordinate amount of mere interpretation of the meaning of words, with which philosophy
feels ashamed in front of philology and gains nothing in the process beyond metaphysical
dilettantism Heidegger thus reflects and, with his ontology of anxiety, clearly only makes
absolute the 'basic state-of-mind' of a declining society. From the standpoint of the petit
bourgeoisie, he reflects the society of monopoly capitalism, with permanent crisis as its
normal condition; the only alternatives to permanent crisis are war and war production. What
was for primitive man still the 'Not-at-home' in impenetrable nature, has become for the
unsuspecting victims of monopoly capitalism their society, the gigantic alienated enterprise
into which they are placed. Heidegger however with a sociological ignorance which
matches his metaphysical dilettantism makes this anxiety into the basic state-of-mind of
man in general, including the nothingness into which he is supposedly always, everywhere
and irrevocably thrown. All that remains of Heidegger's anxiety-'hermeneutics' is at best a
kind of familiarity, acute in the petit bourgeoisie, with anxiety as unsuspectingness. 'The fact
that the threatening is nowhere, characterizes the About Which of anxiety' (l.c., p. 186); in
fact it is from the outset expectation of something negatively undefined. Because what causes
and establishes anxiety can come from all sides, its most revealing manifestations were fear
of ghosts and nocturnal horror. And both have been replaced by those monsters and
nightmares walking in the flesh today, but working in the darkness. So naturally anxiety does
not yet clearly refer to its external something, in contrast to the second negative expectant
emotion, fear: with its sudden concentrated mode, fright, and its intensified concentrated
mode, terror. The threat here at least comes out of a weather-corner which is known from
previous experience; or even:
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that which stimulates fear is spatially so visible that we can be prepared for the way it strikes,
if not actually for its arrival. If the About Which of fear emerges completely and moreover
suddenly, and terror arises, with the weaker degrees of fright, then the suddenness of these
emotions must not blind us to the fact that they too are also those of expectation, although
possibly (by no means always) of an expectation that is itself first born in statu nascendi of
its Object. Without expectation, nothing could instil terror, nothing make us numb with
fright; like a sniper's bullet, an event which is completely disparate to the expectant
intentions arouses no emotion at all. It does cause numbness, blindness (as long as the event
is survived), that is, bodily sensations which are also appropriate to fright, as to a shock, but
it does not cause the actual mental feeling of terror or fright which always presupposes
expectant intention of what has happened. After all, this expectation itself so little excludes
the surprising feature of its Object that the emotional character of the surprising feature, both
of the negatively and positively surprising ('miraculous') feature, does not appear at all
without being prepared for by an expectation. The activated expectation of the terrible is of
course brief; if it is prolonged, like fear, but with the complete certainty (temporal
inevitability, familiarity of content) of its Object, then the most extreme, hardest borderline
mode of fear appears, the absolutely negative expectant emotion: despair. And only this, not
anxiety, really refers to nothingness; anxiety is still questioning, hovering, still determined by
mood and by the undetermined, unresolved element of its Object, whereas despair itself has a
definitive quality in its frame of mind, and besides this definitive element, has something
absolutely defined about it in its Object. It is expectation as eliminated expectation, that is,
expectation of something negative about which there is no longer any doubt; with despair,
the series of negative expectant emotions ends. All their waking dreams (only terror has no
time to form one) ultimately revolve around something negatively unconditional: the
infernal.
In complete contrast there now appear in and behind all this the positive expectant emotions.
Of course their number is much smaller, up till now there has not been so much cause for
them. There are only two of them: hope, which wrecks fear, and confidence, which
corresponds to despair. Hope, as a gathering emotion, still has a mood-based element in
common with anxiety: not as the homeless element of the nocturnal, but rather as the
dawning-decanted element of the auroral. This is described with particular accuracy in the
echo or reflection of the landscape in Thomas Mann's 'Death in Venice', as the ineffably
sweet blooming of the reddening dawn with
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all its arpeggio ante lucem shining from afar. But hope stands also as one of the most exact
emotions above every mood; because it is not very changeable, but very characteristic in its
intention, and above all something which befits neither the mood nor even the negative
expectant emotions capable of logical and concrete correction and sharpening.
Consequently, hope is not only the opposite concept to anxiety, but also, regardless of its
emotional character, to memory; that is, a relation to a purely cognitive process and system of
ideas which befits no other emotion. And its relation to anxiety, even to the nothingness of
despair, is of such determined power that it can be said: hope drowns anxiety. No 'existential
analysis' of hope will ever be able to reveal the latter as a 'forerunning determination to die',
provided that the analysis really is one of existere and not corrumpere. Instead, hope has
projected itself precisely at the place of death, as one towards light and life, as one which
does not allow failure the last word; thus it definitely has the intentional content: there is still
rescue in the horizon. 'Where there is danger, rescue also grows', this line of Hlderlin's*
indicates simply the positive dialectical turning point for which fear of the place of death
disappears. In such a way that the uncertainty of the outcome remains, just as with fear, but
an uncertainty that, unlike fear, does not border on passive care, on bearing a burden of care,
on the night where nothingness is, but on the day which is the friend of man. Danger and
faith are the truth of hope, in such a way that both are gathered in it, and danger contains no
fear, faith no lazy quietism. Hope is thus ultimately a practical, a militant emotion, it unfurls
banners. If confidence emerges from hope as well, then the expectant emotion which has
become absolutely positive is present or as good as present, the opposite pole to despair. Like
the latter, confidence is still expectation, that is, eliminated expectation of an outcome about
which there is no longer any doubt. But whereas the expectant intention in the emotion of
despair only appears as a corpse, in confidence it gives and yields itself up like a wise virgin,
who, in going into the chamber of the bridegroom, offers up as well as gives up her intention.
Despair touches almost completely that Nothing which all the negative expectant emotions
are approaching; confidence, on the other hand, has in its horizon almost that All to which
the weakest hope, even that transposed by unreal future, essentially refers. Despair
transcends, in that its Nothing defeats the intention in the certainty of extinction, confidence,
in that its All allows the intention to enter into the certainty
*
From Hlderlin's 'Patmos', 1802.
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of salvation. Whereas therefore the negative expectant emotions and their utopian images
ultimately intend the infernal as their unconditional element, the positive expectant emotions
likewise inevitably have the paradisial in the unconditional element of their ultimate
intentional object. Thus: if the mood is the general medium of daydreaming, then the
expectant emotions (including the extension which they can build on the filled emotions, on
envy or respect for example) give the direction of daydreaming. They give the line along
which the imagination of anticipatory ideas moves, and along which this imagination then
builds its wishful road, or even (in the case of negative expectant emotions) its unwishful
road. The wishful road with the landscape it aims for is no richer as a road of hope, but
noticeably more lovely and more lively than the unwishful road, or road of fear; at least
among peoples who are striving from the darkness into the light. Both future-orientated
intentions, that of expectant emotions and that of expectant ideas, accordingly extend into a
Not-Yet-Conscious, that is, into a class of consciousness which is itself to be designated not
as filled, but as anticipatory. The waking dreams advance, provided they contain real future,
collectively into this Not-Yet-Conscious, into the unbecome-unfilled or utopian field. Its
composition, which is in the first instance psychological, must now be investigated; certainly
cum ira et studio, with partiality for the already understood forward imagination, for the
object-based Possible in psychological approaches to it. For only in the discovery of the Not-
Yet-Conscious does expectation, above all positive expectation, attain its proper status: the
status of a utopian function, in emotions as well as in ideas and in thoughts.
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15
Discovery of the Not-Yet-Conscious or of Forward Dawning. Not-Yet-
Conscious as a New Class of Consciousness and as the Class of Consciousness
of the New:
Youth, Time of Change, Productivity. Concept of the Utopian Function, its
Encounter with Interest, Ideology, Archetypes, Ideals, Allegory-Symbols
The cistern contains, the fountain overflows.
William Blake
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H P D\ KDYH EHHQ P RYHG UHQDP HG RU GHO
HWHG 9HULI\ W
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Peculiar to the soul is the common spirit that grows.

Heraclitus
The Two Edges

The inward glance never sheds equal light. It is sparing, only ever illuminating a few parts of
us. We are not conscious of what is not struck at all by the ray of attention. We are partly
conscious of what is only struck obliquely, to a decreasing or increasing extent, according to
the degree of attention. The conscious field is so narrow, and on all sides it shades off into
darker edges and dissolves. Even before a mental event is forgotten, in fact even without it
being forgotten, much in it is not conscious. A pain may remain unfelt, an external
impression unexperienced, although they are definitely present psychologically. They lie
below the threshold, either because the stimulus is too weak to be perceived, or because our
attention is occupied with other things, and hence distracted, or because repetition deadens
even powerful stimuli. So even in the conscious field, quite apart from forgetting, there are
already various darker patches which are not conscious or only weakly so. The actual edges
of consciousness do not of course lie in present experiencing, which is merely weakened.
They are rather to be found where the conscious fades, in forgetting and
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in the forgotten, where what has been experienced sinks below the edge, below the threshold.
And what is more, they are also to be found in a different form on the opposite side to
forgetting, where something not previously conscious dawns. Here too there is an edge, a
threshold in consciousness, in this case an upper one, pushed forward a greater or lesser
distance, beyond which what is happening psychologically is not very lucid. Beneath the
threshold of fading, yet also above the threshold of dawning, there is relatively unconscious
material, the attentive glance must first make an effort, often a painful effort to focus on it. It
is certainly capable of being preconscious, both in the depths of the no longer perceptible and
especially where new material rises which has never occurred to anyone. Both can be fetched
from beyond their edges, and to a greater or lesser extent elucidated.
Double Meaning of the Preconscious

Mental life is always framed both by evening and morning. The night-dream moves in the
forgotten and repressed, the daydream in what has never been experienced at all as present.
For roughly two hundred years, what lies outside the conscious field has generally been
called the unconscious. It was a great discovery that mental life does not coincide with
consciousness. Unconscious, of course, wherever thought of as capable of consciousness,
does not mean completely unconscious of itself, like a stone for example, but rather
preconscious. But this is how the psychologically unconscious has been understood and is
still understood today, merely as something that lies beneath consciousness and has dropped
out of it. The unconscious lies according to this interpretation in the sediment; it begins
backwards from an increasingly diminished consciousness. The unconscious here is therefore
exclusively No-Longer-Conscious; as such it populates solely the moonshine landscape of
cerebral loss. Accordingly, even when psychoanalysis calls it preconscious, it is not a newly
dawning consciousness with new content but an old one with old content that has merely
sunk below the threshold and may cross it again by a more or less straightforward process of
being remembered. Thus the unconscious for Freud is solely the forgotten (for him the
preconscious proper, which is normally capable of easily returning to consciousness) or the
repressed (for him the unconscious proper, the 'not merely descriptively but also dynamically
unconscious', which is not capable of easily
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returning to consciousness). Admittedly the later Freud does stress that apart from the
forgotten and repressed unconscious there is a third kind, namely an unconscious 'in the ego
itself'. 'Even a part of the ego, God knows how important a part of the ego, can be
unconscious, certainly is unconscious'; however, Freud immediately continues: 'If we find
ourselves thus compelled to posit a third non-repressed unconscious, then we must concede
that the character of unconsciousness loses some of its meaning for us' (Das Ich und das Es,
1923, p. 17). It loses some of its meaning because this third unconscious (Freud surprisingly
cites even significant intellectual production as a manifestation of this) does not fit into his
scheme of repression. But this touches on that preconscious which does not suit Freud's
system at all, the preconscious in its other meaning, over on the other side, in which no
repressed material, but rather something coming up, is to be clarified. The night-dream may
refer to the No-Longer-Conscious, it regresses towards it. But the daydream is carried on to
something which is new at least for the dreamer, and probably even on to something in itself
new, in its objective content. Thus in the daydream the crucial definition of a Not-Yet-
Conscious reveals itself, as the class to which this daydream belongs. A final psychological
definite feature of the daydream arises here, and it is a question of clarifying it. Up till now it
has remained completely beyond conceptual reach, there is as yet no psychology of the
unconscious of the other side, of forward dawning. This unconscious has remained
unnoticed, although it represents the actual space of receptivity of the New and production of
the New. The Not-Yet-Conscious is admittedly just as much a preconscious as is the
unconscious of repressedness and forgottenness. In its way it is even an unconscious which is
just as difficult and resistant as that of repressedness. Yet it is by no means subordinated to
the manifest consciousness of today, but rather to a future consciousness which is only just
beginning to come up. The Not-Yet-Conscious is thus solely the preconscious of what is to
come, the psychological birthplace of the New. And it keeps itself preconscious above all
because in fact there is within it a content of consciousness which has not yet become wholly
manifest, and is still dawning from the future. Possibly even content that is only just
objectively emerging in the world; as in all productive states which are giving birth to what
has never been there. The forward dream is disposed towards this, and Not-Yet-Conscious, as
the mode of consciousness of something coming closer, is charged with it; here the subject
scents no musty cellar, but morning air.
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Not-Yet-Conscious in Youth, Time of Change, Productivity

All fresh strength necessarily contains this New, and moves towards it. Its best places are:
youth, times which are on the point of changing, creative expression. Any young person who
feels some hidden power within him knows what this means, the dawning, the expected, the
voice of tomorrow. He feels called to something that is going on inside him, that is moving in
his own freshness and overhauling what has previously become, the adult world. Bold youth
imagines it has wings and that all that is right awaits its swooping arrival, in fact can only be
established, or at least set free by youth. With puberty begins the mystery of women, the
mystery of life, the mystery of knowledge; how many unexplored shelves the young reader
sees shining in front of him. The green years are filled with forward dawning, they consist
chiefly of not yet conscious states. These are certainly threatened in young people, between
the ages of twenty-five and thirty. But what has survived of youth till then will always
survive in people who are not infected by and in league with the putrefaction of yesterday
as something warm, bright and at least comforting kept in view. The voice which calls for
things to be different, to be better, to be more beautiful, is as loud in these years as it is
unspoilt, life means 'tomorrow', the world 'room for us'. Bold youth always pursues the
melodies from its dreams and books, hopes to find them, knows the hot dark roaming
through field and town, waits for the freedom which lies before it. It is a longing out of and a
looking out of the prison of external compulsion which has become stifling or appears
stifling, but also out of the prison of its own immaturity. Longing for life as an adult drives us
on, but this life is to be completely transformed. If youth occurs in revolutionary times, that
is, during a time of change, and if it is not duped into screwing its head back, as so often
happens today in the West, then it really does know what the forward dream is all about. The
dream then passes from vague, mainly private premonition to a more or less socially
sharpened, socially mandated premonition. The broadest example of this was once provided
by the Russian Narodniki, who went among the Russian people to fight with them for the
overthrow of Tsarism, with sentimental or angry red dawn. Here the conversations of young
unmatriculated women and of male students utopianized on the dusty boulevards of Russian
provincial towns. And later in the big cities, with increasing socialist clarity, united with the
workers, the red dawn which lay in consciousness and above
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the time made solid headway. For more than half a century before the October Revolution,
even the Russian popular novel was continually portraying youth which had time of change
in mind. Germany had its revolutionary students in the Sturm und Drang,* in the Vormrz,**
and it has them today, with the goal in their sights, in the new Republic;*** in all these, youth
and movement forwards are synonymous. During these times and whenever they are topical,
there is not merely a physiological feeling of spring in the air, but more than this: changing
times are sultry, a thundercloud seems to be pent up within them. Hence categories of
weather or birth have always been applied to them: calm before the storm or March in history
or, in its strongest and most concrete form: a society pregnant with a new one. Times like
ours understand the state of change well; even its enemies, the fascists in Italy and Germany,
were only able to continue to deceive by masquerading as revolutionaries, marasmus in the
guise of spring sunshine. The times of change are themselves the youthful times in history,
i.e. objectively they stand at the gates of a new society which is coming up, just as youth
feels subjectively that it stands on the threshold of a hitherto unopened day in life. So far the
Renaissance has been the most easily surveyable example of such a change, especially on the
ideological and cultural side. Here more clearly than almost anywhere else there is, in the
first shift of feudal society towards the modern bourgeois one, departure and expectation,
Not-Yet-Consciousness as conscious premonition. Incipit vita nova, at the time this also
designated psychologically the aurora quality of the age: the still progressive entrepreneur
emerged, and with him the feeling of individuality; the consciousness of the nation appeared
over the horizon; individuation and perspective entered into the feeling for nature and the
picture of the landscape; the distant earth itself opened up and revealed new continents; the
ceiling of the heavens cracked, leaving a clear view of infinity. All the testimonies from the
period of change in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries proclaim a very powerful
preconscious here, one which created space and went beyond the previously posited Pillars of
Hercules. A total renewal of art, life and science began, or seemed to begin; this three-
quarters-of-an-hour-before-day still appears, rather late, but eloquently enough, in Bacon's
'Novum Organum':
*
A period of revolutionary literary activity, principally in drama, during the second half of the
eighteenth century.
**
A period of political ferment in Germany leading up to the revolutions of March 1848.
***
Bloch means the German Democratic Republic here of course, not the Federal Republic.
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'Then let others consider what may be hoped for from men who enjoy abundant leisure, from
united labours, and the succession of ages, after these suggestions on our part . . . Lastly,
though a much more faint and uncertain breeze of Hope were to spring up from our new
Continent, yet we consider it necessary to make the experiment, if we should not show a
dastard spirit.'* The air of such historical springs is buzzing with plans which are seeking to
be realized, and with thoughts in the stage of incubation. Prospective acts are never more
frequent or more common than they are here, the anticipatory element in them is never more
contentladen, the feeling for what is coming closer never more irresistible. All times of
change are thus filled with Not-Yet-Conscious, even overfilled; a Not-Yet-Conscious which
is carried by a rising class. The expression of this state which recaptures the experience of the
Renaissance is the monologue in Goethe's Faust, here too satiety, waking dream, dawn-red
are the ingredients of the onward. And likewise such periods are working on problems which
have barely emerged in embryonic form in existing reality. Thus the Renaissance, just as
later the genius period** in Germany, excavates the developing tendencies of the epoch,
places them in early morning light, new daylight. In such periods man distinctly feels that he
is not an established being, but one which, together with his environment, constitutes a task
and an enormous receptacle full of future.
How much more so creative work itself is preceded by dawning, and how peculiarly it stands
within it. Intellectual productivity, creation proves to be particularly full of Not-Yet-
Conscious material, that is, of youth that potentiates itself in creative work; here too, youth is
presupposed and constantly active. Gifted youth has a beginning which easily gets lost, as in
the whispering reeds in Lenau:
At the water's edge I think
I can hear your soft voice call me
From across the pool, and sink
With your lovely melody.
*
Bacon, Novum Organum, Aphorisms 113 and 114.
**
The cult of genius in the Sturm und Drang period.
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As it progresses, youth acquires the gratitude of becoming, and the birthgiving wondrous
image of this which is to be formed, as in Goethe's 'Prologue in the Theatre':*
Then give me once again the time,
When I was still becoming strong,
When welling springs of bubbling rhyme
Supplied a constant stream of song,
When mist concealed my world from view,
The bud still promised wondrous hours
And I could pluck the thousand flowers
That richly in each valley grew.
Youth remains in the same place during production, even after this production has finished,
and even after the work is complete it feels unguaranteed boldness or bold anticipation; as in
Klopstock's ode 'To Friend and Foe', thirty three years after he had begun the 'Messias':**
The hot soul of the youth was thirsting
After immortality!
I woke, and I dreamed
Of the bold voyage on the ocean of the future!
Thank you once again, my early mentor, for showing me

How terrible it is there, my guiding spirit.
Your golden rod pointed the way! Tall-masted, full-rigged works
of poetry
And yet sunken wrecks frightened me!

...
I became serious, fell into melancholy, absorbed myself

In the purpose, in the hero's dignity, in the basic tone,
The restraint, the stride, strove, led by my knowledge of the soul,
To fathom: what might the poem's beauty be?
I flew and hovered among the monuments of the fatherland,

Searched for the hero, did not find him; until at last
*
In Goethe's 'Faust', 18491.
**
The 'Messias' was probably begun sometime between 17458, though Klopstock in his dotage, in a letter
to Herder in 1799, claimed it went back sixty years.
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I sank weary, then as if awoken from slumber, suddenly

Saw it blaze around me as if with lightning-flame!
And the light of youth, productive light, which can even find affinities in ancient events, as if
they were not ancient at all, but new proclamations, keeps the morning in the world awake
even in times of darkness in Hlderlin's great hymn to Ex oriente lux,* to the new and vocal
day:
Then, as if from the superbly tuned organ
In the sacred hall,
Pouring in from the inexhaustible pipes,
The prelude, waking, of the morning begins,
And all around, from chamber to chamber,
The refreshing, melodic stream runs,
Filling the house with excitement
Right into the cold shadows.
But now awakened, now ascending,
The choir of the parish answers
The sabbath sun, so the word
Came to us out of the East.
And on the cliffs of Parnassus and on Cythera I hear,
O Asia, the echo from you, and it breaks
On the Capitol, and hurtling down from the Alps
She comes to us,
A stranger, awakening,
The voice that shapes humanity.
Productivity thus does not cease to awake as it is awoken by the spur of the compulsion to
speak. This compulsion really takes hold when the vision hovering ahead, that would have to
be formed, conceals itself, when it even seems to be flirting with the idea of retreat. When
work perhaps flees from its doer before the breakthrough of a new assault, because it so
urgently craves for him; when the theme of work is reified into a wavering, whispering, itself
hesitant entity and seems to reproach the compulsion to speak for its dilatoriness. But anyone
whose destiny is bound to a star, says Leonardo, does not turn back, and the moral of
productivity proves itself by completing everything that has been kindled, by bringing to
light in pure and concise form the contours of the content hovering ahead. All the more so
when youth, time of change, productivity simultaneously
*
Hlderlin's 'Am Quell der Donau', 1801.
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coincide in talents which get off to a felicitous start. As was the case in the young Goethe, in
his Prometheus fragment, in the vast intention-dimension in 'Faust' and even in the 'Urfaust',*
but also still from the same source in the most confident of all statements (from 'Wilhelm
Meister's Apprenticeship'): 'Wishes are presentiments of the abilities which lie within us,
precursors of what we will be capable of achieving.' Then the prospective acts work and
succeed through the powerful expectation which has gained power over itself; through the
affinity to the star which still lies below the horizon; through the strength to explore the
untrodden, which prompts Dante to say: 'L'acqua che io prendo giammai non si corse'** (the
water that I hold has never been crossed before). This last motto is ultimately the one which
best unites youth, time of change and productivity at a single stroke, not with arrogance, but
with a description of what occurs in the process of creation, what has to occur.
Further Thoughts on Productivity:

Its Three Stages
So much for the great unrest when it covers itself with forward dreaming. An active unrest,
with its new origin opposed to rigidity, developing full of premonition. Even in the unusual
form in which it appears, this premonition is the feeling for what is on its way. When it
becomes creative, it combines with imagination, particularly with that of the objectively
Possible. This premonition with its potential for work is intellectual productivity, understood
here as work-forming. More specifically, productivity extends threefold into the unarrived,
growing in three directions: as incubation, as so-called inspiration, as explication. All three
belong to the ability to travel forward beyond the previous edges of consciousness. In
incubation there is a powerful intending, it aims at what is sought, what is dawning, on the
advance. Mists are the best times for sowing, even psychologically, only things must not just
rest there; there is even a stage of darkness, but with an intensive propensity to clear. This
state of propensity is in itself already a contradiction which seeks to resolve itself; it is the
untenable state, as fearful as it is happy, of not being what our nature most genuinely strives
to be, and of being precisely what it not yet is. Also caught in this contradiction is the more
developed propensity
*
The early draft of Goethe's 'Faust', 17725.
**
Paradiso ii, 7.
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or fermentation in which the already more contoured expression and form is prepared and
concocted. At any rate, expectation is always present here, no matter with how large or small
a charge the three-quarters-of-an-hour before-day appears. This incubation is usually further
followed by abrupt clarification in a flash; it comes as if from outside or, falsely interpreted,
as if from above. That is why the expression inspiration came to be used to describe this; it
indicates the abruptness, the illuminating and inspiring stroke, the sudden insight. The
incubation which had a speechless quality about it, and which can sometimes produce from
sheer profusion a kind of emptiness of consciousness, this sealed character now dissolves. In
simpler cases the solution can come about through an invasion of ideas which merely
surround or proclaim the central thought; sometimes they also follow after the central
thought has appeared. Its very appearance comes in an overpowering way and seems to be so
clearly the solution of the problem, as if no problem had existed at all during the incubation
and the process of brooding. Even the most intense concentration dissolves which had
marked the sealed character of the last stage, and which in the print of Drer's 'Melencolia' is
a stone sphere lying in the room, i.e. the condensed intellectual symbol of the brooding mind.
The solution springs up in a process seemingly so unmediated, that is, without consciousness
of the long-fermenting incubation period, that the inspiration, along with the elation of
release, easily brings with it, or rather has brought with it, the marvellous feeling of a
magical gift. But the vision which comes with it is in every case combined with euphoria,
with the greatest buoyancy, although both the magic-archaic and the transcendental
interpretations have to be discarded, as just so much musty consecration. The productive
creator is no shaman, nor is he a psychological relic from primeval times; he is neither a
sooty flame from this abyss, but nor is he, no matter what Nietzsche may coquettishly have
wished to remind us, a mouthpiece of higher powers. This transcendental mythicization of
inspiration, as if it descended from above, really is without substance; it is superior to the
magic-archaic version only in so far as it does at least attempt to do justice to the
transcendere, that is: the surpassing expanding element in intellectual creation, and does not
distort this creation into a sinking down, into a language of the night. The fact that no archaic
regression takes place here in the act of productivity precisely demonstrates the constant
experience of light that is associated with inspiration. This experience is wholly lucid in most
cases and discernible at the peak of consciousness, most notably in the case of Descartes
when he discovered the principle of cogito ergo
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sum: 'On the loth of November 1619 when the light of a wonderful discovery broke in on
me.' But where does the kindling of this light take place, when neither shamanistic notions
from below, nor enthusiastic notions from above, have provided anything more than
superstitious explanations? The kindling place of inspiration lies in the meeting of a specific
genius, i.e. creative propensity with the propensity of a time to provide the specific content
which has become ripe for expression, forming and execution. Not only the subjective, but
also the objective conditions for the expression of a Novum must therefore be ready, must be
ripe, so that this Novum can break through out of mere incubation and suddenly gain insight
into itself. And these conditions are always socio-economic and of a progressive kind:
without the capitalist mandate, the subjective mandate towards cogito ergo sum would never
have found its inspiration; without an incipient proletarian mandate, the discovery of the
materialist dialectic would have been impossible or would have remained merely a brewing
aperu, and neither would it have struck like lightning into the no longer naive popular soil.
Likewise, the breakthrough, the sudden powerful burst of light that often occurs in the
individual of genius, obtains both the material which sparks it off and the material which it
throws light on solely from the Novum of the time content itself which is forcing its way into
thought. This is the case, of course, even when, as so often, the receptivity of a time does not
itself stand at the peak of that time, let alone of its further ramifications, its continuing
tendencies and latencies. Even then the inspiration comes from the mandate of the time
which perceives itself in the individual of genius and reveals itself in harmony with his
propensity, potentiates itself with his potential. The mystery of the world which advances as
our task in time and is advanced in front of great talent is powerful enough to keep those
called upon to articulate it charged with incubation, but not yet powerful enough to trigger
off the shot of each possible, socially imminent mode of illumination. When this world
mystery is merely seen in isolation, without a concrete relationship to time, even in the
greatest talents only that narrow pass of incubation is formed which Hegel, looking back at a
slack period in his early days, describes at one point as follows: 'I know from my own
experience this mood of the mind or rather of reason, once it has plunged with interest and
with its premonitions into a chaos of appearances and . . . inwardly certain of its goal has not
yet reached the clarity and detail of the whole . . . Every man probably has one such turning-
point in his life, the nocturnal point of the concentration of his being' (Briefe von und an
Hegel I, 1887, p. 264). And as
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for the necessary concurrence with the historical kairos* as a constitutive property of genius
as a whole, the Hegelian Rosenkranz remarked most pertinently with his master in mind:
'Unlike talent, genius is not great through formal versatility, although it can possess this, but
through the fact that it accomplishes what is objectively necessary in a particular sphere as its
individual destiny. That is precisely why it has its true measure only in historical
development, because it must be directly above and beyond everything given and must
elaborate for its own private satisfaction those elements for which, according to the objective
course of things, the time has come. Within the confines of this task it rules with demonic
power, beyond them it is powerless, and while it can develop in various ways, it cannot
create the new' (Psychologie, 1843, p. 54f.). And how splendidly this definition would have
applied to Marx, at that time in 1843, a young genius who, as few others could, began to
accomplish the objectively necessary in a particular sphere as his individual destiny, and who
experienced the inspirational breakthrough of his work as no other could in fully grasped
concurrence with the socio-historical tendency of his time. Thus inspiration as a whole,
whenever it is work-forming, emerges from the meeting of subject and object, from the
meeting of its tendency with the objective tendency of the time, and is the flash with which
this concordance begins. Then the kindling which is thoroughly immanent occurs; inspiration
is thus the explosion of light in each tendency-latency being itself, in each case produced by
its strongest consciousness. The clear idea of the work now surfaces in the author, and as
before in incubation, in the present state of inspiration it is by no means complacent, but
instead drives on ahead, and, from the flash which revealed the new landscape, has to enter
into the topography of that landscape.
That which was revealed by the initial unrest and its premonition is finally carried out here.
This happens in the final act of productivity, in the agonizing, blissful work of explication.
Genius is hard work, but of a kind which never wants to allow the elaboration to grow stale
or to be anything less than a constant obsession. There must be no break here, either between
vision and work or between work and vision: 'The first light', says Van Gogh, 'in which the
kindling impression lay, must itself have begun to share in the act of painting.' Genius is thus
the specific hard work of leading the visionary moment of light towards its expression, so
that the mastered material adds not only strength but also depth to
*
Kairos transliterated from the Greek: occasion, opportunity, the right time.
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what was planned. In accordance with the true observation in Schopenhauer's statement:
'Talent resembles a marksman who hits a target which the others cannot reach; genius
resembles one who hits a target so far away they are not even able to see it.' It is this very
truth that also cancels out the fundamentally false definition that Schopenhauer expressed
elsewhere, according to which genius is a purely static world-eye, and hence can by no
means be hastening ahead. But precisely because genius looks beyond each existing horizon,
hits a distant target, it is not a contemplative-static world-eye, but a pioneer on the borders of
an advancing world, and even a most important part of the world which is only now being
formed. Psychologically, genius is the appearance of a particularly high degree of Not-Yet-
Conscious and of consciousness capability, ultimately then the power of explication of this
Not-Yet-Conscious in the subject, in the world. The degree of gifted genius is determined by
the wealth of its Not-Yet-Conscious material, i.e. of its mediated being-beyond what has
previously been consciously given, what has previously been explicated and finally formed
in the world. It is not yet necessary at this point to distinguish between artistic and scientific
genius; since the motto in Dante 'L'acqua che io prendo giammai non si corse' is
psychologically true both of artistic and scientific works of note. Forming of the previously
not yet formed, this criterion for works of genius, is the same in art (the figurative depiction
of a real preappearance) and in science (the conceptual depiction of the tendency-latency-
structure of the real). The explications in art and science, of course, even at these contrasting
levels of objectivity, still have the fact in common that they each find themselves in the
process of objectivity itself and, in so far as they contain sufficient genius, they stand at its
Front. Genius, as the most advanced consciousness and tutor of this consciousness, for this
very reason is also the highest sensitivity to the crucial moments of change in time and its
material process. It is the power and ability to stand at the peak of this time and to inform it
knowingly about the landscape and the horizon of this process-epoch. Therefore it is not
completely unjust of Carlyle to celebrate the word of the genius as nothing less than the
password to the premonition of the age: 'It is ever the way with the Thinker, the spiritual
Hero. What he says, all men were not far from saying, were longing to say. The Thoughts of
all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought; answering to it, Yes, even
so!'* Even if this yes often only comes in the next generation or even later, the powder
*
Carlyle, 'Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History'.
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for the shot still lay ready prepared, and the publicity of the time simply did not hear the shot,
precisely because it went off on the horizon of that time. And what is most clearly
demonstrated in the explication of a previously Not-Yet-Conscious is: the Not-Yet-Conscious
as a whole is the psychological representation of the Not-Yet-Become in an age and its
world, on the Front of the world. The making conscious of the Not-Yet-Conscious, the
forming of the Not-Yet-Become, exists only in this space, a space of concrete anticipation,
only here is the volcano of productivity to be found pouring out its fire. Mastery in the work
of genius, a mastery which is foreign to what has normally become, is also comprehensible
only as a phenomenon of the Novum. Every great work of art thus still remains, except for its
manifest character, impelled towards the latency of the other side, i.e. towards the contents of
a future which had not yet appeared in its own time, if not towards the contents of an as yet
unknown final state. For this reason alone great works have something to say to all ages, a
Novum pointing onward in fact, which the previous age had not yet noticed; only for this
reason does a fairytale opera like 'The Magic Flute', but also a historically localized epic like
the 'Iliad', possess so-called eternal youth. Therefore: explications which have become works
of genius have not only completely expressed their own day, but the permanent implication
of the plus ultra also circulates in them. Its place, the place of the Not-Yet-Conscious, is here
least of all to be found in the territory of the subconscious, the region into which what has
already been conscious, already experienced and appeared material has simply submerged.
Its place is on the Front, where genesis continues, and where, being the proper genesis, it is
still only now in the process of beginning with the beginning. The waters of oblivion flow in
the underworld, but the Castalian spring* of productivity rises on Parnassus, a mountain.
Thus productivity, although it comes from the depths, is working for the very first time in the
light and is continually positing a new source, namely one at the peak of consciousness. It is
fitting that there is blue above this peak, the opposite colour to Orcus, the dark and yet
transparent nimbus around all real explication This blue, as a colour of distance, likewise
designates in a graphically symbolic way the future-laden aspect, the Not-Yet-Become in
reality, to which significant expressions, precisely because they are advancing, ultimately
refer. The darkness forwards, because it is clearing, is in its expression also assigned to that
brightest consciousness in which the day has not given up the reddening dawn but is
precisely growing dawn.
*
In Greek mythology, a spring sacred to the Muses.
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Different Kinds of Resistance Which the Forgotten and the Not-Yet-Conscious Offer to
Illumination
The problems of penetrating the backward or forward disposed darkness are always of a
different order. Certainly, in remembering, as in premonition which has a potential for work,
the threshold of consciousness is moved. But in the one case it is a matter of lowering it so
that forgotten or repressed material can cross it, in the other case a border is shifted upwards.
Certainly too, in both cases, something blocks itself off against becoming conscious, a
resistance asserts itself against the displacement of the threshold. But this resistance is still
different in character, according to whether repressed material is to be remembered or
intuitive material to be formed. Psychoanalysis has long been trying to identify such
resistance in its subconscious region: as one of reluctance to unpack repressed material again.
The repressed material itself is here supposed to have resulted from the fact that a struggle
had arisen against the underlying mental process or event becoming conscious. Thus the
process remained or became unconscious, merely sending a neurotic symptom of itself into
consciousness; but this symptom is always regarded as a sign that a process has not been
lived through to the end, that it has been broken off, that the patient has not come to terms
with something in himself. And the same struggle which has made a person ill again opposes
the effort to raise repressed-subconscious material into consciousness during analytical
treatment; this is precisely the resistance of the No-Longer-Conscious to its becoming
conscious. In short, a clearly manifest will founds the resistance here; if this will is broken,
then the forgotten material supposedly emerges without further ado. And this will is regarded
as a purely negating will, which is why Freud also says: 'Repression is the early infantile
stage of condemnation.' The same motives which allowed the old trauma to become
embedded place themselves in the way of the attempt to make it conscious. And above all: if
the repressed material comes to light all the same, then it is redundant dbris which is only
now properly forgotten, that is to say, overcome.
The unwillingness is of a completely different kind, however, where the journey is forwards
into the darkness. The resistance to material becoming conscious in the area of the Not-Yet-
Conscious rarely or never displays neurotic features. It displays them only when a
discrepancy between power and will arises in the willingness to produce; though, as is
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well-known, this discrepancy does create one of the acutest forms of suffering. Even then,
however, a self-blocking is definitely lacking in the will towards illumination itself, of the
kind, that is, which appears in the subject during the mere recovery of something repressed,
that is, on the march into the No-Longer-Conscious. A resistance in the subject of the
production-will to this will and its contents, or even to the success of the journey into the
Not-Yet-Conscious and to its treasures: unwillingness of this kind does not occur at all in the
producer. He leaves that instead to the receivers of his work, to the so often blocking
receptivity, i.e. to that which used to be called the resistance of the uncomprehending world.
But the psychology of producing itself reveals no sign of inner resistance to the acts of
illumination under discussion here; instead, the resistance which belongs to production and is
endemic to it is not present in the human subject at all. It is to be found instead in the matter
treated by the subject and is only mirrored by the specific difficulties of explication. It is to
be found in the hazardous straits of the Novum, in the still inchoate, utterly habit-free
character of the new material. In fact, even the mere receptivity-resistance, when it forms a
block against works of genius, completely fails to understand them or is simply irritated by
them, ultimately derives, in spite of the added resentment which belongs to the realm of
psychoanalysis, from a disinclination towards the difficulty of the factually New; yet even
here the resistance inherent in the illumination of the Not-Yet-Conscious is finally identified
as that of the still unchannelled material. All beginnings are difficult* in an area like this, all
the more difficult in fact because the newness into which the productive pioneering effort
goes is essentially also a newness of the matter in and for itself which is coming up. It is
therefore for this reason alone that the new truths, those of the objectively New, emerge so
hesitantly in their articulation and always only as astra per aspera. Thoughts only happily
coexist as long as they are plans or sketches, but one step further and the concrete difficulty
of the work begins. Even where sufficient ability is present and precisely when it is, the
difficulty is after all responsible for the many repulsed expeditions in the studio, in the
laboratory, in the study, the countless battlefields without victory or where victory is
postponed. Thus, not repressed material at all, but rather the difficulty of the path is the thing
in the Not-Yet-Conscious, Not-Yet-Become which causes productivity trouble. The reasons
for this lie exclusively in the terrain of the matter, itself a terrain which
*
A German proverb.
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is not yet enclosed, let alone rounded off; in short, the upper threshold has its own guardians,
and they lie in the material.
The block that operates in this way first and always appears as a historical one. More
precisely as a social one; even when that which is to be expressed or to be known is actually
by no means new itself. When therefore only a new piece of knowledge is to be acquired and
not also knowledge of the factually New, i.e. of what is only now factually coming up. There
is thus in history a socio-economic barrier to vision, it cannot be scaled by even the most
daring mind. Many anticipations, previsions entered existing consciousness and were
emphasized, illuminated by that consciousness itself in the Not-Yet-Conscious; however, the
social barrier prevented their being carried out. Thus, first-rate researchers, because of their
social and historical standpoint, often did not appropriate even half the wisdom of Minerva
(as the ancients themselves called this resistant material). No Greek mathematician would
have understood differential calculus, not even Zeno, close though he came to it. The
infinitesimal, the variable quantity, lay totally beneath the horizon of Greek society; only
capitalism caused what was previously fixed and finite to enter such a state of flux that rest
could be conceived as infinitesimal movement, and non-static notions of quantity conceived
at all. It is also relevant here that the notion of work was alien to Greek slave-owning society,
even in epistemological terms and especially in those terms. It constantly stressed knowing
merely as a receptive looking, never as an activity; easily though it could have suggested
itself to the Stoics, for example, with their 'subjective factor'. Not all insights and works are
possible at all times, history has its timetable, the works that transcend their time often
cannot even be intended, let alone carried out. Marx stressed this with the statement that
humanity always only sets itself tasks which it can solve. The tasks which transcend their
time are concretely insoluble even where, by way of exception, they may be set in abstract
terms. But even this barrier is ultimately founded solely in the historical state of the material,
above all in its own processive, unfinished state, itself existing in difficulty, Front and
fragments. This is true even where only new knowledge but not yet knowledge of anything
factually new is fragmenting; and all the more true where, as in the case of the concept of
work, the whole matter bourgeois society still lies under the horizon. Here too, the thing
which ultimately determines the productivity-resistance remains the hazardous straits of the
matter itself, remains the sealedness, clearing only sparingly, of the Novum in the overall
process, which proceeds as world. The by no means fundamental, but rather historically
temporary
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resistance in this is still noted even where it is claimed that it has been overcome, namely
through courage. As in the marvellously anti-agnostic vision of Hegel's: 'The sealed nature of
the universe contains no power which could offer resistance to the courage of knowing, it
must open up before the latter and reveal to it its riches and its depths and allow them to be
enjoyed' (Werke VI, 1840, p. xl). It is noticeable that the word resistance is also present here,
although it is very far from dealing with Objects of a subconscious. Instead the sealedness of
an entire universe is cited, and this precisely in proportion to the unrestrained courage of
knowing. The resistance of object-basedness to the subject-object relationship of knowledge
is all the greater where there is no universe which is panlogical and thereby at the same time
closed, as there is in Hegel. Where an unfinished process is pending, which is furthermore
not signed with such a familiar name as Spirit, associated with every idealistic professor. In
complete contrast, the vehicle of the process is matter, and is an entity that in no way actually
compounds the subject with the object, like the so-called World Idea, except in the wake of
hard work sharpened by the very difficulty of the resistance. The still sealed nature of the
universe which, precisely as matter, still lies in an unfinished process of its objectifications,
can least of all be mirrored or declared as something already complete, let alone
extravagantly clear as daylight. That which has still not become, still not been achieved, is a
wilderness of its own, comparable in danger to the untrodden wilderness, but superior to it in
its unarrived possibilities. This Not-Yet-Become, Not-Yet-Achieved in the object thus founds
the last resistance, it is clearly of a completely different type to that of repressedness or of
concealed availability. The world-mystery itself does not lie in a kind of cosmo-analytic
rubbish pit, but in the horizon of the future to be attained, and the resistance which it offers to
its being opened is not that of a sealed chest, as in demonic treasure-myths, guarded by dogs
with malicious eyes, but the resistance here is that of fullness which is still itself actually in
process, and not yet manifest. Significantly, this means that objective idealism, even
spiritualism, generally undertook to define its essence behind appearance by virtue of the
false equation: Thinking = Being, as if it were only geographically in a different place,
whereas Marx, who certainly could not be suspected of 'agnosticism', already speaks of the
'realm of freedom' almost only privatively in a negative sense, namely as the mere non-
existence of the characteristics of the class society, or at most in the deeply remote, still
completely hovering meaning of a 'naturalization of man, humanization of nature'. The so-
called character of the
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universe is therefore still inherently sealed in the sense of: Not-Yet-Appearance of itself; the
fact that this is its own task-nature makes it difficult. In order to remove what is difficult, not
only knowledge is necessary in the sense of an excavation of what was, but knowledge in the
sense of a planning of what is becoming; knowledge is therefore necessary which itself
decisively contributes to this becoming, becoming which changes for the good. Revolution
and genius inspire confidence in the fact that this difficult heliotropic business was not in
vain or will not have been in vain; despite the resistance in itself or in the sour dough which
the world is.
Epilogue on the Block which has Prevented the Concept of the Not-Yet-Conscious for
So Long
With particular difficulty the inward glance sheds light on itself. There is a separate
resistance in the general factual resistance here; mental life seems fleeting, shadowy. How
long it took for people even to begin to notice that this life takes notice of itself, i.e. is a
conscious life. And subconscious mental processes have only been named as such for little
more than two hundred years. There may possibly be some excuse for this in the fact that the
subconscious processes are not automatically submitted to our notice, that they are only
deduced from symbols, that they contain forgotten content. But it seems more difficult to
understand, after the conscious and the subconscious have finally been noted, that the Not-
Yet-Conscious has been disregarded for so long. Because it is not first excavated by the act of
memory, but is a separate act which is immediately given to itself, i.e. intuitively, apart from
the content that occurs within it. Nevertheless, the floating, open, visualizing aspect of these
events was portrayed, as we have seen, as if it too was merely subconscious; and in fact: it
has remained hidden in this darkness until the present day. As is well-known, unconscious
processes in general were first identified in psychological terms by Leibniz, by a very
roundabout route. Not just observation, but also theory effected the discovery; observed
material to some extent served as an example later to illustrate the theory. One of Leibniz's
basic principles was that of the unbroken coherence of the world; this lex continui tolerates
no interruption, no empty space, anywhere. If there does seem to be one, however, then in
reality it is occupied by the imperceptibly smallest something, something beginning and
growing; differential calculus
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expresses this infinitesimal something mathematically as a moment of motion. But just as

there are the smallest impulses of motion, so too there are those of the intensity of conception
in consciousness graded according to its clarity and lucidity: these are the 'petites perceptions
insensibles'. And as examples of these, Leibniz cites the smallest perceptions, which because
of their weakness remain imperceptible or unconscious, but in adequate numbers, such as in
the sound of waves or the buzz of voices, definitely become conscious. So they must also
have been present beforehand in the mind, hence they must be forgotten ideas which enter
into consciousness when sufficiently amplified. The petites perceptions are immediately
singled out by Leibniz as a great discovery in the preface to the 'New Essays': 'In a word,
these imperceptible perceptions are of just as great importance in the theory of the intellect as
the imperceptible bodies are in physics; and it is equally unreasonable to reject either one of
them on the pretext that they fall outside the realm of our senses.' Thus the notion of the
unconscious is born out of the lex continui, indeed it can be said cum grano salis: out of
differential calculus, as its counterpart in the mind. At the same time, however, the notion of
the unconscious which has thus been acquired is totally subordinated to that of existing
consciousness. As soon as it is noted, unconscious material is branded subconscious. The
petites perceptions are always outbidden, even dispersed, by the consciousness that has
already been achieved in man; consequently, after attaining clarification, they occur as
elements of creation, not giving birth again, as it were, to anything beyond themselves.
Nevertheless, something other than existing consciousness had been demonstrated in the
mind by the hero of the Enlightenment himself, even if only as moonlight in the ancestral
hall of consciousness.* Sheer consciousness was now no longer regarded as the essential
feature of the human intellect; the previously so paradoxical notion of unconscious mental
activity began. And, more importantly, the peculiar hiding-place of the Not-Yet-Conscious in
this darkness began, the subordination of the Not-Yet-Conscious to a past, brooding
moonshine-world: this mask of the Not-Yet-Conscious now emerged. Undergoing curious
pseudo-morphoses, only now discernible as such, first in the Sturm und Drang, then in
Romanticism. Fifty years after the death of Leibniz, with the posthumous appearance of his
'New Essays', this key notion of the petites perceptions echoed in the early throes
*
Bloch is punning here on the double meaning of 'Ahnen', which means both 'premonition' and
'ancestors'.
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of that bourgeois revolution which then never came in Germany. While for the Sturm und
Drang the unconscious remained something completely submerged, lay at the mere
beginning of the history of the mind, it still appeared welling and bubbling up within it. Thus
the unconscious no longer remained infinitesimal like the smallest impulses, nor meagre like
the petites perceptions, but all the mists of the north and of prehistory swirled around in it,
both Fingal's cave and Macbeth's heath, both The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry and Strasbourg
cathedral seemed to find a place in it. For all its dull fugginess, the unconscious had the
primal voice, fervour, youth, the wild, impetuous spirit of creative genius. Dawning therefore
also appeared in the Sturm und Drang, which of course largely belongs to the Enlightenment,
to be endowed with future for the first time, and also to be aware of the fact in the night-wind
of prehistory: 'Who can expect', exclaims Hamann, magus of this whispering Enlightenment,
'who can expect to take proper ideas from the present, without knowing the future? The
future determines the present and the latter the past, just as the intention determines the
nature and use of the means.' And Hamann goes on to say, with reference to Ezekiel 37, 16:
'The field of history has thus always appeared to me like that wide field full of bones, and 10!
they were very dry. Nobody except a prophet can prophesy upon these bones that sinews and
flesh will grow on them and skin will cover them.' And also, when it came to the rule, this
pride of rationalistic consciousness, it was above all the extinguished element, that which has
become and is dead, that was rejected, as opposed to bursting forth or nature always forcing
its way to the surface like a spring. Nevertheless, even this still remained mixed to numbing
effect with regressio, with the moonshine of Ossian,* with moss-covered monuments and
heroes' graves. Germany's unreadiness for a bourgeois revolution and the resulting opaque
thwartings of progressive revolutionary reason thus ultimately made original genius more
into a messenger from primeval times than from the future. This sort of thing intensified in
the really strange complexities of Romanticism. The welling of the spring was certainly lively
here, and extraordinary things seemed to be under way, but the feeling of a lost yesterday
opposed it with a force which the Sturm und Drang would not and could not recognize. This
force was supplied by the reactionary mandate, directed against the bourgeois revolution,
which increasingly determined German
*
The verses of Ossian, a legendary warrior, were composed by James Macpherson (173696). Herder
and Goethe believed the verses to be authentic and translated from them.
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Romanticism and thwarted the undeniably progressive tendencies which were nevertheless
present. In a way which can hardly be recaptured any more, the Romantic was enslaved by
the past, and was so with a lex continui which true to the reactionary mandate preferred
to raise nothing but knights' castles in the magic moonlit night. The historical was
increasingly associated with the archaic, and this in turn with the chthonic, so that the core of
history soon came to look like the core of the earth itself. This enshrined feeling, this
incestuous phenomenon of the desire to return to the womb of night and the past, culminates
late, in Bachofen, the teacher of matriliny, but with grave-love for chthonic Demeter herself.
Even psychologically, in keeping with this nocturnal vision, everything good and
premonitory is drawn to the nocturnal pole of consciousness: creation has a native affinity
with drive and instinct, with atavistic clairvoyance and the whispering of the abyss; for the
Romantic, nothing half as familiar dwelt on the day side, or even on the form and fulfilment
side. All productivity, especially the expectation which paradoxically characterizes so much
of Romanticism, lost itself here in antiquarian images, in the past, in the immemorial, in
myth, as a stance against the future, which increasingly comes to be regarded merely as
chaff, emptiness, wind. It is therefore not surprising if youth and productivity here reversed
all consciousness of their Not-Yet-Conscious even to the point of ancestor worship: the other
explosive force, apart from productivity: the grasped time of change, was missing. Nor is it
surprising if the nevertheless powerfully vague mood of expectation in the Restoration world
of Romanticism was never elevated beyond the level of an Advent in which Vineta bells*
ring out, the bells of a sunken city. Grres, the renegade with the Phrygian cap, expressed
this pathos of the past most passionately: 'That past world was so rich, it is sunk, the waters
have passed over it, here and there the ruins still tower, and whenever the murky depths of
time clear, we see its treasures on the sea-bed. We look down from a great distance into the
wondrous abyss, where all the secrets of the world and life lie hidden, but have we succeeded
in fathoming the root of things which lies hidden in God? Our gaze penetrates the depths,
mysteries beckon us from afar, but the current surges upwards and throws the diver out into
the present' (Mythengeschichte, 1810, p. 599f.). Significantly, this upward surge leads only
with regret into the present, and the future is nowhere to be seen at all. There are of course
mysteries of
*
Vineta: a tenth-century Viking city, possibly located on the Baltic Sea island of Wollin, supposedly
engulfed by a flood or an earthquake, often referred to in sagas and legend.
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distance, they are the most compelling for the Romantic, but they lie almost exclusively in
the abyss, the distance is and remains primal Beenness. Undoubtedly, German Romanticism
this cannot be stressed often enough in view of the antiquated, abstract way it has been
underestimated also had a progressive character; precisely its instinct for what is bubbling
up, becoming, growing, is relevant here, the famous 'historical sense' which first created
whole disciplines like legal history and German studies; especially the patriotic element must
not be forgotten, and corresponding to it the feeling for all great national achievement in
world literature. As the Wartburgfest of 1817 alone shows,* there is definitely also a
revolutionary Romantic component in German Romanticism: while even the most
passionately utopianized red dawn is shot through here time and again with the above-
mentioned night-thoughts of an antiquarium, with the projection of an overprized past even
into the newness of the future. And it is almost solely outside Germany, in English and
Russian Romanticism, neither of which stood beneath such a reactionary star, but beneath the
wildly remembered star of the French Revolution, in Byron, in Shelley, in Pushkin, that the
true feeling of homeland commensurate with man becomes explosive and future-laden, and is
not sought by sinking back into the past. But this was anomalous in Germany; a
revolutionary Romanticism was not yet distinctive enough to be a match for Romantic
reaction. Even Jean Paul, who cannot really be classed as a Romantic anyway, the most
exuberant and uninhibited creator of waking dreams, whose liberalism was beyond question,
and whose dawn-red language, if it is steeped in night, then in Midsummer night, even he
subordinated hope, which is constantly present in his work, to memory, or ultimately settled
it there. So even Jean Paul, the creator of the most beautiful wishful landscapes shimmering
ahead, finally sought the light, as soon as he was not creating it but rather reflecting on it,
only in the past, not in the future. 'For this very reason every remembered life gleams in the
distance like an earth in the heavens, that is, the imagination condenses the parts into a closed
serene whole. Of course, it could equally well form a gloomy whole; but it places Spanish
castles in the air full of torture chambers only in the future, and only Belvederes in the past.
Unlike Orpheus, we gain our Eurydice by looking back, and lose her by looking forwards'
(Vorschule der sthetik, 7). Thus Romanticism, with its promise of a land beneath the
well** in the petites perceptions, seduced the Not-Yet-
*
Wartburgfest: a student festival on the Wartburg on the 18th October 1817 in memory of the
Reformation and of Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Leipzig, 1814.
**
Cf. Grimm's fairytale 'Frau Holle'.
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Conscious time and again. The vision of the utopian condition, the yield of its content, thus
encountered the most powerful block, for all the expectation which pervaded Romantic
feeling, in anamnesis, a re-remembering which is virtually an invocation.
And this did not remain the only block, as Freud later demonstrated with his exclusively
subconscious dream. Probably few ages have felt so inescapably the transition to a becoming
different, to something coming up, as the present one has. But the bourgeoisie reacts all the
more sheepishly and blindly to this, shows no interest at all or only a hostile interest in the
reflection of tomorrow. For this bourgeoisie, coming events merely cast their shadow,
nothing but shadow; capitalist society senses itself negated by the future. More than ever the
bourgeoisie lacks the material incentive to separate the Not-Yet-Conscious from the No-
Longer-Conscious. All psychoanalysis, with repression as its central notion, sublimation as a
mere subsidiary notion (for substitution, for hopeful illusions), is therefore necessarily
retrospective. Admittedly, it developed in an earlier age than the present one, around the turn
of the century it took part in a so-called struggle against the conventional lies of a civilized
mankind. Nevertheless, psychoanalysis developed in a class which was superannuated even
then, in a society without future. So Freud exaggerated the dimensions of the libido of these
parasites and recognized no other onward, let alone upward drive. Nor any other dreams than
those which the Lord, now called Eros, gives his beloved in sleep. And the longer time went
on, the more readily the thoroughly self-interested mistrust of the future was intensified by
the bourgeoisie's new supply of anxiety and old supply of resignation. And it is precisely this
which characterizes the barrier which, as we have seen, even in Freud's case, obstructs the
notion of a Not-Yet-Conscious, and obstructs forward dawning. Hence the totally inevitable,
totally regressive proposition: 'The repressed is for us the model of the unconscious' (Das Ich
und das Es, 1923, p. 12). The barrier finally became absolute in so-called depth psychology;
where in other words psychoanalytical regression became ideologically useful for the Blood
and Soil humbug. C. G. Jung's notion of the unconscious consigned itself all the more
completely to the cellar of consciousness, since it is only there that the opium with which
Fascism stupefies utopia can be smoked. Jung also interprets what is beginning to dawn in an
utterly archaic and occult fashion, analogous to the prophetic sleep in the temple. Even the
'inconscient suprieur', even the so turgidly expressed 'prospective tendency of subliminal
combinations' is thus, in the manner understood above, wholly subordinated to regression.
The passage in Jung in which 'an idea prefiguring
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the future is and remains archaized thus, is revealing enough for the history of obstructed
Novum-psychology to warrant quoting at length: 'Psychoanalysis works backwards like the
study of history. Just as a large part of the past is so remote that our knowledge of history no
longer reaches it, so a large part of unconscious determination is also inaccessible. But there
are two kinds of things history does not know, namely what is hidden in the past and what is
hidden in the future. Both could perhaps be reached with a certain probability, the former as a
postulate, the latter as a historical prognosis. In so far as tomorrow is already contained in
today, and all the threads of the future are already in place, a more profound knowledge of
the present could make possible a more or less far-reaching and certain prognosis of the
future. If we apply this line of reasoning . . . to the psychological sphere, the same thing must
necessarily follow; just as memory traces which have long since sunk below the threshold are
still demonstrably accessible to the unconscious, so are also very fine subliminal forward
combinations, which are of the very greatest significance for future events in so far as these
are determined by our psychology. But just as the study of history scarcely concerns itself
with future combinations, which are rather the object of politics, so psychological future
combinations are also scarcely material for analysis. They would have to be objects of an
infinitely sophisticated psychological synthesis, capable of following the natural currents of
the libido. We cannot do this, but the unconscious can because that is where it occurs, and it
seems as if from time to time in certain cases significant fragments of this work are revealed,
at least in dreams, which would explain the prophetic significance of dreams long claimed by
superstition. The aversion of exact scientists today to these trains of thought, which can
hardly be termed fantastic, is merely an overcompensation for man's millennial, all too great
inclination to believe in soothsaying.' (Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, 1925, p. 54f.).
This is all that Jung can find to say on the subject of the mental representation of what is
coming up. Utopian consciousness is presented as an Egyptian book of dreams. Only the
archaic unconscious, in deepest darkness, carries out here the so-called future combinations;
but if the slightest area of this darkness comes to light, then it is to the light which ultimately
displays regressio. Precisely in the historical context of the petites perceptions, the archaizing
of the unconscious recalled again here sounds another warning. The barrier in front of the
Novum in the great progressive work of Leibniz becomes a guillotine for the Novum in the
final bourgeois psychology of the unconscious. As now becomes completely clear, even in
the times
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when bourgeois psychology flourished, they did not note, or at least not unmistakably, the
New as a class of consciousness. Leibniz placed the accent on the advance of consciousness,
but the petites perceptions in which the seeds lay were exclusively underneath already
acquired consciousness, show therefore the precise historical topology to which the
preconscious was confined until Freud. Even the construction of wishful dreams which the
modern age has developed: the social utopias and those of a technologically controlled world,
even these anticipations were unable to develop, in the philosophical consideration they were
given from More, Campanella, Bacon to Fichte and beyond, either a psychology of their
expanding daydreams, or an epistemology of their possible-real place in the world. The
reason in this case certainly does not lie in a self-interested mistrust of the future, but, as it
were, in a uninterested mistrust, under the continuing spell of static living and thinking. In
addition, the consciousness of the rising bourgeoisie had not yet sufficiently escaped from the
concept of a pre-ordained, ultimately finished world (ordo sempiternus rerum); continuing
feudal statics inhibited the concept of newness. It inhibited it in the work of Leibniz, it
inhibited and perverted it even in the most decisive of all previous expositions of becoming
and philosophies of process such as Hegel's. Even the famous passage on process from the
'Phenomenology of Mind' must be seen as similarly constricted: 'But just as a baby's first
breath, after a long period of silent nutrition, breaks the gradualness of merely continuing
growth a qualitative leap and the baby is now born, so the developing mind matures
slowly and silently towards a new form, dissolves one particle after another of the
construction of its previous world, its shakiness is only suggested by isolated symptoms; the
frivolity and the boredom which make inroads into the existing mentality, together with the
vague premonition of something unknown, herald the fact that something else is in the
offing. This gradual crumbling, which did not change the physiognomy of the whole, is
interrupted by the opening up, a flash which all at once erects the structure of the new world'
(Werke II, 1832, p. 10). The reflex of the French Revolution is unmistakable here, as in the
leaping character of the Hegelian dialectic in general; yet the whole thing is equally
conceived as finished simultaneity, as memory. The flash of the new beginning is here also
merely opening up, where the closedness of what is opening up has long since been decided.
It is therefore trapped in a circle without an opening out on to the as yet unarrived. The
enormous enterprise has already entered perpetual retirement, the rest of finished
achievement: 'The phenomenon is the arising and passing away which does not itself arise
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and pass away but is in itself and constitutes the reality and movement of the life of truth . . .
Stored up in this movement as a whole, conceived as rest, is that which distinguishes itself
within it and gives particular existence, one which remembers, and this existence is the
knowledge of itself' (Werke II, p. 36f.). The utopian hiddenness which certainly exists in
embryo or In-itself, and which bursts through again at every stage of the Hegelian process, is
accordingly revealed by the totality of comprehended manifestations to date. Plato's theory,
according to which all knowing is merely anamnesis, a re-remembering of something seen
before, this knowledge, solely geared to Been-ness, was thus reproduced over and over again;
this ideologized once and for all the block against the being sui generis of a Not-Yet-Being.
Precisely the continuing statics of what is reactionary and in need of rest, this finally settled,
enclosed anamnesis-world here accomplished what in periods of decline is accomplished by
the horror of the unknown that is in the offing.
No new tone-composer of the old kind, however new he appears, is free of this block. Not
even where, as in Bergson, there is an attempt to single out exclusively, all too exclusively,
this very newness. Bergson says at one point, in his 'Introduction to Metaphysics', that the
great insights had previously been regarded as if they illuminated point for point a logic
which had long been preformed in things, 'just as at an evening celebration one gradually
lights the circle of gas-lamps which already outline the contours of a ornament'. But what
then claims to be Novum in Bergson: anti-repetition, anti-geometry, lan vital and intuition
flowing with the stream of life all this vitality is impressionistic, and liberal-anarchistic, not
anticipatory. Bergson's lan vital is a 'continually modifying change of direction, as in a
curve for example'; the so-called intuition enters into this continuously surprising mode, but
without ever meeting the actual Novum for sheer aimless infinity and incessant
changeability; where everything ought to be constantly new, everything remains just as it
was. Therefore everything is in fact pre-arranged even in Bergson's stream of surprise, and is
frozen into a formula, into that equally dead antithesis to repetition which reduces the New to
a merely endless, contentless zigzag, to that coincidence made absolute, in which neither
birth nor explosion, nor a venturing beyond, fruitful in terms of content, the previously
Become occur. Bergson opposes the process-idea directed towards a goal, but he does not
oppose it because the goal has already been agreed, so that the said process at the highest
level almost looks as if it has been rigged, instead he eliminates any and every trace of the
onward, the
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Where To and any openly pursuable goal whatsoever. So that the alleged Novum does not
look any different than it does in anamnesis, that is, having always been, always phoenix,
always spellbound return to the unchangeable which is here called changeability. Overall,
therefore, the astonishing fact remains almost everywhere that the dawning sticks fast in the
Fixum, ultimately unnoted or clogged with What Has Been. A vast mental realm of the Not-
Yet-Conscious, one that is constantly travelled, has so far remained undiscovered, or its
discoveries have remained unnoticed. Similarly, a vast physical realm of the Not-Yet-
Become, which forms the correlate of the Not-Yet-Conscious, remained stationary, and the
closely related real categories: Front, Novum, Objective Possibility, which are inaccessible to
anamnesis, remained without a theory of categories in the world before Marx. The epigone is
always only found on the passable roads which productivity has built and embellished before
him, but in the notation of the New, previous productivity also behaved as if it only
recognized epigonism. The decline of the bourgeois class sealed this aversion to the concept
of aurora far beyond Romanticism, which had itself been so reactionary. And as we are
now in a position to say only experience of the modern age, as a positive age, that is to say:
as the affirmation of its oncoming content, allows us to describe a state of consciousness
which, just as it was always hidden, fulfils the potential of youth, of times of change, of
cultural production. Only our present age possesses the socioeconomic prerequisites for a
theory of the Not-Yet-Conscious and whatever is related to it in the Not-Yet-Become of the
world. Marxism, above all, was first to bring a concept of knowledge into the world which no
longer essentially refers to Becomeness, but to the tendency of what is coming up; thus for
the first time it brings future within our theoretical and practical grasp. Such recognition of
tendency is necessary to remember, to interpret and to open up even the No-Longer-
Conscious and the Become according to its possible continuing significance, i.e. its
undischargedness. Marxism thus rescued the rational core of utopia and made it concrete as
well as the core of the still idealistic tendency-dialectics. Romanticism does not understand
utopia, not even its own, but utopia that has become concrete understands Romanticism and
makes inroads into it, in so far as archaic and historical material, in its archetypes and works,
contains a not yet voiced, undischarged element. The most advanced consciousness thus
operates even in memory and oblivion not as in a sunken and hence closed space, but in an
open space, that of process and its Front. But this space is exclusively filled up with forward
dawning, even in its examples from
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continuingly significant past; it is filled with the vitality, capable of being both conscious and
known, of a Not-Yet-Being. Where Romanticism, in its archaic, historical aspect, was drawn
down into solely antiquarian welling, into false depths, utopian consciousness lays bare even
what is coming up in the old, and all the more so in the imminent itself. It discovers the real
depths on the heights, that is on those of its brightest consciousness, where something still
brighter is dawning.
Conscious and Known Activity in the Not-Yet-Conscious, Utopian Function

The forward glance in question here is discriminating, not gloomy. It requires from the outset
that premonition is sound, and not dim like something kept in the cellar. Something which is
not at all disposed to make itself conscious in its half-light, even though it may be directed
towards morning. As there was no science, hysterical and superstitious elements also
accumulated here. Nervous states like clairvoyance, second sight and so forth, were
described as premonition, in fact, as dim premonition. But these are aberrations, into which
genuine premonition, as goes without saying, neither can nor will descend. Even assuming
that so-called second sight does occur, a poky atmosphere clings to it, even a proximity to
convulsions and other not exactly hopeful gifts. Such things belong to that morbid sensitivity
(the sensitivity of a wound) which in legitimate cases only senses in advance a sudden
change in the weather, but here supposedly senses major fires or deaths. And it is in keeping
with the very subconscious, sunken, atavistic, exhausted nature of this kind of premonition
that it always only refers to something that has already happened a thousand times before,
and that will happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, again and again. Somnambulary
presentiment in general may at best be a decayed remnant of animal instinct, but the instinct
is utterly stereotyped; its actions, though appropriate down to the finest detail, immediately
become absurd as soon as the animal, confronted with a new situation, has to sniff out in
advance what has never been there before. Egg-laying, nest-building, migration are
performed by instinct, as if precise 'knowledge' of the future existed, but this very future is
one in which only the million-year-old destinies of the species occur. It is an automatic future
with old contents, and consequently, since nothing new occurs in it, the false one mentioned
above. Many aspects of bodily instinct still seem obscure, research
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into signal systems is not yet complete, the life of the driving images in instinct, if there is
one, is undeciphered, together with the sense of bearings which it provides for the drives. But
however far the threshold of human premonition is lowered, it will scarcely be able to
recapture the activity which in the animal instinct of pre-caution seems to possess past,
present and future still completely ravelled up together, and which relatively controls them
according to the business of the species. Nevertheless, it is absolutely certain here, as also in
the prophesying found in folklore, that the future is a totally false one, a repetition, a pre-
ordered piece in a circle that is always the same. Instinct-future and the related future of
atavistic premonition always starts and picks up the same thing on the same level, over and
over again, whenever it begins. Productive premonition, even in the form of so-called
intuition, is thus something completely different from instinct that has become conscious of
itself. It does not remain dim and poky, not in the least fuggy, it exists from the beginning in
strength and health. It is openly conscious of itself, precisely as a Not-Yet-Conscious,
demonstrates in its alertness the desire to learn, shows the capacity to be circumspect in its
foreseeing, to have circumspection, even foresight in its fore-sight. Since genuine
premonition begins with youth, time of change and production, it is automatically at home in
human dealings of the most upright kind, not in animal, let alone parapsychological ones.
The German peasants of 1525, the masses of the French and Russian Revolutions, certainly
also had, alongside their slogans, driving images, as it were, of revolution; there was a sense
of bearings in 'a ira'.* But these driving images were attracted and illuminated by a real
future place: by the realm of freedom. The so-called power to foresee deaths or even winning
lottery-numbers is obviously of a less productive order. One of the greatest somnambulists,
the seer of Prvost, says in the account Justinus Kerner published of her at the time (Reclam,
p. 274): 'For me the world is a circle, I was able to move back and forth around this circle and
see what had been and what was coming.' The Romantics, and even Hegel, knew and valued
premonition solely in this atavistic, superstitious sense, which has become totally trivial
today. The only sense they have is for an old world in which the only novelty is the cock-
crow which summons back to the graveyard and itself belongs to the realm of ghosts. There
is understandably not a single
*
'a ira!': a song of the French Revolution.
'Ah! a ira, a ira, a ira,
Les aristocrates la lanterne!'
Page 144
word in any of these wheezing diaphragm-prophets from the sibyl to Nostradamus, when
they proclaim 'the future', which transcends available knowledge and which does not merely
rearrange it. Whereas Bacon, for example, no prophet, but a discerning utopian, saw in his
'New Atlantis' amazingly genuine future. And this solely by virtue of his sense, which makes
itself thoroughly conscious, for the objective tendency, objectively real possibility of his age.
After all, the forward glance becomes all the stronger, the more lucidly it makes itself
conscious. The dream in this glance seeks to be absolutely clear, and the premonition, the
correct one, seeks to be quite plain. Only when reason starts to speak, does hope, in which
there is no guile, begin to blossom again. The Not-Yet-Conscious itself must become
conscious in its act, known in its content, as the process of dawning on the one hand, as what
is dawning on the other. And so the point is reached where hope itself, this authentic
expectant emotion in the forward dream, no longer just appears as a merely self-based mental
feeling, as described in chapter 13, but in a conscious-known way as utopian function. Its
contents are first represented in ideas, and essentially in those of the imagination. In
imaginative ideas, as opposed to those remembered ones which merely reproduce past
perceptions and thereby shade off more and more into the past. And even these imaginative
ideas are not ones which are merely composed of existing material, in arbitrary fashion
(stony sea, golden mountain and so on), but extend, in an anticipating way, existing material
into the future possibilities of being different and better. So that the thus determined
imagination of the utopian function is distinguished from mere fantasizing precisely by the
fact that only the former has in its favour a Not-Yet-Being of an expectable kind, i.e. does not
play around and get lost in an Empty-Possible, but psychologically anticipates a Real-
Possible. At the same time, this lends a new clarity to the so often stressed distinction of the
waking dream as really possible anticipation: utopian function is not present at all in mere
wishful thinking or only flickers up. In the figure of Ulrich Brendel in 'Rosmersholm', Ibsen
has movingly portrayed a mere and hence fruitless planner. On a very much lower level, not
at all movingly, Spiegelberg in 'The Robbers'* belongs to the utopian-swaggering brigade to
which Marquis Posa also belongs on an incomparably higher level, by virtue of an all too
great, solely abstract-postulative purity.**
*
Schiller's play 'Die Ruber', 1781.
**
In Schiller's play 'Don Carlos', 1787.
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Pure wishful thinking has discredited utopias for centuries, both in pragmatic political terms
and in all other expressions of what is desirable; just as if every utopia were an abstract one.
And undoubtedly the utopian function is only immaturely present in abstract utopianizing,
i.e. still predominantly without solid subject behind it and without relation to the Real-
Possible. Consequently, it is easily led astray, without contact with the real forward tendency
into what is better. But at least as suspicious as the immaturity (fanaticism) of the
undeveloped utopian function is the widespread and ripe old platitude of the way-of-the-
world philistine, of the blinkered empiricist whose world is far from being a stage, in short,
the confederacy in which the fat bourgeois and the shallow practicist have always not only
rejected outright the anticipatory, but despised it. Indeed this confederacy from an aversion
to all modes of what is desirable, primarily to those which drive forward finally, as was
only logical, even added nihilism to its repertoire. So that this very nihilism was able to
come up with anti-utopian statements like the following: 'In wishes existence projects its
being into possibilities which not only remain unseized when provided, but whose fulfilment
is not even considered or expected(!). On the contrary: the predominance of being-in-
advance-of-oneself in the mode of mere wishing entails a failure to understand factual
possibilities . . . Wishing is an existential modification of comprehending self-projection
which, addicted to thrownness, merely continues to indulge in possibilities' (Heidegger, Sein
und Zeit, 1927, p. 195). This sort of thing, purely applied to immature anticipating,
unquestionably sounds like a eunuch accusing the infant Hercules of impotence. We do not
need to emphasize that the genuine struggle against immaturity and abstraction, in so far as
they adhered to the utopian function or potentially still adhere to it, has nothing in common
with bourgeois 'realism', and is also on its guard against practicism. But what is important is
the fact that the hope-charged imaginative glance of the utopian function is not corrected
from a worm's-eye view, but solely by the real elements in the anticipation itself. That is,
from the perspective of that solely real realism which only is so because it is fully attuned to
the tendency of what is actually real, to the objectively real possibility to which this tendency
is assigned, and consequently to the properties of reality which are themselves utopian, i.e.
contain future. And the thus denoted maturity of the utopian function never led astray
denotes not least the sense for tendency in philosophical socialism, in contrast to the bad
'sense for fact' in empirically side-tracked socialism. The point of contact between dreams
and life, without which dreams only
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yield abstract utopia, life only triviality, is given in the utopian capacity which is set on its
feet and connected to the Real-Possible. And which in fact tendentially transcends what
exists in each respective case, not only in our nature, but in that of the entire external world
of process. Thus the only seemingly paradoxical concept of a concrete utopia would be
appropriate here, that is, of an anticipatory kind which by no means coincides with abstract
utopian dreaminess, nor is directed by the immaturity of merely abstract utopian socialism.
The very power and truth of Marxism consists in the fact that it has driven the cloud in our
dreams further forward, but has not extinguished the pillar of fire in those dreams, rather
strengthened it with concreteness. In similar fashion, therefore, the consciousness-knownness
of the expectant intention must prove itself as the intelligence of hope in the midst of the
immanently ascending, materially-dialectically transcending light. Thus the utopian function
is also the only transcendent one which has remained, and the only one which deserves to
remain: one which is transcendent without transcendence. Its support and correlate is process,
which has not yet surrendered its most immanent What-content, but which is still under way.
Which consequently is itself in a state of hope and of object-based premonition of the Not-
Yet-Become, in the shape of a Not-Yet-Become-Good. Consciousness of the Front provides
the best light for this, utopian function as the comprehended activity of the expectant
emotion, of the hope-premonition, maintains the alliance with all that is still morning-like in
the world. Utopian function thus understands what is exploding, because it is this itself in a
very condensed way: its Ratio is the unweakened Ratio of a militant optimism. Therefore: the
act-content of hope is, as a consciously illuminated, knowingly elucidated content, the
positive utopian function; the historical content of hope, first represented in ideas,
encyclopaedically explored in real judgements, is human culture referred to its concrete-
utopian horizon. The docta spes combine* operates on this knowledge as expectant emotion
in the Ratio, as Ratio in the expectant emotion. And predominant in this combine is no longer
contemplation, which for centuries has only been related to What Has Become, but the
participating, co-operative process-attitude, to which consequently, since Marx, the open
becoming is no longer sealed methodically and the Novum no longer alien in material terms.
Subsequently, the theme of philosophy has stood solely in the topos of an unfinished law-
governed field of becoming in depicting-intervening consciousness and in the world
*
Bloch is using the word 'combine' in the economic sense here.
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of knownness. This topos has only been discovered by Marxism through science precisely
with the development of socialism from utopia to science.
More On the Utopian Function:

The Subject in It and the Counter-Move to the Badly Existing
But without the strength of an I and we behind it, even hoping becomes insipid. There is
never anything soft about conscious-known hope, but a will within it insists: it should be so,
it must become so. The wishful and volitional streak vigorously bursts out within it, the
intensive element in venturing beyond, in acts of overhauling. Walking upright is
presupposed, a will which refuses to be outvoted by anything that has already become; it has
its preserve in this upright posture. This characteristic point on which the subject can stand
and from where it reacts is abstractly described by stoic self-confidence as follows: if the
world caves in, I will stand firm amidst the falling rubble. The point is abstractly described in
a different way in the transcendental ego of German Idealism, from the perspective of
assumptions no longer proud of virtue, but proud of intellect. Here self-confidence has
changed into an act of cognitive production; and even as early as Descartes, cognition
appears in places as manufacture, namely of its Object. The assumptions proud of intellect
were of course incurably inflated, with the illusion of their absolute power of making;
intellect definitely does not dictate the laws of nature. Nor is the world of this
epistemological idealism by any means a utopian one; on the contrary: the ambition of the
transcendental ego was predominantly to produce the existing world of laws itself, the world
of mathematical-scientific experience. Nevertheless, the transcendental ego of Kant and
Fichte knew how to postulate morally beyond a bad existent, even if only, corresponding to
the German misery,* in an abstract way, lacking content. Kant, who on almost every point is
not to be confused with neo-Kantianism, constructed, as a postulate at least, a more beautiful
world, in Goethe's phrase, one of spontaneity of the will, which was neither satisfied by
mechanistic experience based on the existent, nor destroyed by it. Thus though thoroughly
impaired by abstractness there is in stoic self-confidence, and much more immediately in
German Idealism itself, the indication of the
*
Bloch uses Heine's expression to describe the political and historical experience of Germany, often
contrasted with the progressive, revolutionary history of France. There are also echoes of 'The Poverty
of Philosophy' (1847), Marx's reply to Proudhon's 'The Philosophy of Poverty'.
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characteristic point from which the subject reserves for itself the freedom of a counter-move
contradicting the badly existing. In spite of the still abstractly formal indication of such a
subjective factor, the latter was nevertheless clearly identified; at that time it stood
philosophically for the citoyen. Thus every bourgeois-revolutionary call in Germany, from
the Sturm und Drang to the so-called People's Spring of 1848, is still connected with the ego
of idealism. Whereas in real terms, not merely in the mind, and also totally free of incurably
idealistic inflatedness, a subjective factor was only grasped through socialism, namely as
proletarian class-consciousness. The proletariat grasped itself as the actively contradictory
contradiction in capitalism, and therefore as the one which causes the most trouble for what
has become bad. In equally real terms, the subjective factor against all abstractness and the
corresponding boundless spontaneity of consciousness has mediated itself with the
objective factor of the social tendency, of the Real-Possible. Thus the activity of knowing-
best turned into that something more which consciously continues, guides and humanizes the
path on which the world has set out, its 'dream of the matter', as Marx puts it. The objective
factor alone is not sufficient for this; instead, the objective contradictions are constantly
provoking interaction with subjective contradiction. Otherwise the ultimately defeatist heresy
of an objectivist automatism develops, according to which the objective contradictions are
alone sufficient to revolutionize the world permeated by them. Both factors, the subjective
and the objective, must rather be understood in their constant dialectical interaction, one
which cannot be divided or isolated. While the element of human action must certainly also
be preserved from isolation, from the evil of putschistic activism as such, which just charges
out, and whose excessively subjective factor thinks it can skip over the objective economic
laws. But no less harmful is social-democratic automatism as such, superstitious belief in a
world which becomes good of its own accord. It is therefore impossible to get by without the
subjective factor, and it is just as impossible to suppress the deep dimension of this factor,
precisely that of the counter-move to the badly existing, the mobilization of contradictions
which occur in the badly existing, for the purpose of undermining it completely, bringing
about its collapse. But that is precisely why the deep dimension of the subjective factor is in
its counter-move, because the latter is not only negative but equally contains within it the
forward surge of an achievement which can be anticipated and represents this forward surge
in the utopian function.
The question is now, whether and to what extent the anticipating counter-move coincides
with a merely embellishing one. Especially when
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the merely embellishing element, although it definitely does highlight things, has for the
most part no counter-move in it at all, but merely dubious polishing of what exists. And with
a by no means revolutionary mandate behind it, but with an apologetic one, one which is
supposed to reconcile the subject with what exists. This purpose is fulfilled above all by
ideology in periods of a class society which are no longer revolutionary, although still rising,
because they still further the development of the forces of production. The highlighting of
what exists then occurs as an illusory, at best premature harmonization, and it is surrounded
by nothing but smoke or incense of false consciousness. (The rotten ideology in the declining
periods of a class society, especially that of the late bourgeoisie of today, does not of course
belong here at all; since it is already known false consciousness, and therefore deception.)
Furthermore, however, there are in ideology certain figures which condense, perfect and give
significance to what exists which are known as archetypes when mainly referring to
condensing, as ideals when mainly referring to perfection, as allegories and symbols when
mainly referring to significance. The embellishment of what exists, which is intended in so
many different ways in all this, is nevertheless not an embellishment of the badly existing,
and it is not consciously, i.e. deceitfully, trying to divert attention from the latter. Rather,
what exists is completed here, though in a largely idealistic-abstract way and never in a
dialectically explosive and real way, yet so that a characteristic, an inauthentic anticipation of
a better world is not lacking: an anticipation in space so to speak, not or only inauthentically
in future and time. And now the question has become more concrete: whether and to what
extent the anticipatory counter-move coincides with a merely embellishing one. Since in
ideology, in a different way in archetypes, different again in ideals, and again in allegories
and symbols, there is of course no counter-move, but rather a transcending of what exists
through its embellishing, condensing, perfecting or signifying exaggeration. And this again is
not possible without a distorted or displaced utopian function, just as it is not possible
without an irregularly perceived 'dream of a matter' on the leading edge of what exists. But
then the original and sustained concrete utopian function must also be discoverable in these
inauthentic improvements, at least in places, and it must be possible to confront the not
wholly irredeemable distortions and abstractnesses. The respective conditions of production
explain how the respective ideologies and other inauthentic improvements came about, but
the respective confusions in the Humanum of the respective conditions of production made a
borrowing from the
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utopian function necessary in order to be able at all to make the completions mentioned
above together with their cultural surplus. Ideologies as the ruling ideas of an age are, in
Marx's striking phrase, the ideas of the ruling class; but since even the latter is self-alienated,
ideologies also incorporated, apart from the interest in presenting the well-being of one's own
class as that of humanity as a whole, that yearning and overhauling image of a world without
alienation, that above all passes for culture in the bourgeoisie, and that showed the utopian
function at work partly also in that class which otherwise felt happy in its alienation. It is
obvious that this function truly, indeed almost entirely, animated the still revolutionary
ideologies of such classes. Without the utopian function, no spiritual surplus at all is
explicable over and above what has been attained and thus exists, however full this surplus
may be of appearance instead of pre-appearance. Therefore, every act of anticipating
identifies itself to the utopian function, and the latter seizes on all possible substance in the
surplus of the former. Even, as will be shown, on that contained in previously progressive
interest, in ideologies which have not completely passed away with their society, in
archetypes which are still encapsulated, in ideals which are still abstract, in allegories and
symbols which are still static.
Contact of the Utopian Function with Interest

A cool glance does not prove its worth by understating. Rather it wants to correct things and
can do so, does not want to lose its own sense of proportion. It dispels the deceptive feelings
and words, wants to see ego, striving, impulse naked, but not of course cut up and divided.
Certainly, the economic impulse in the totally crooked business-life of today has descended
to a purely despicable level, and all that remains intact is ruthless nastiness. The greed for
profit here overshadows all other human inclinations, and unlike the desire to kill, does not
even pause occasionally. And likewise it is true that even in earlier, comparatively more
honest ages of capital, profit interest was not exactly composed of the noblest human
impulses. On pain of being ruined, a powerful selfishness was always at work in the
economic struggle. If this stimulus had let up, if altruistic motives had taken its place, then,
as Mandeville's Fable of the Bees so cynically and truthfully demonstrated, the whole
capitalist machinery would have ground to a halt. And yet, would it not often at least have
been slowed down, among a considerable majority of employers at that time, if the egotistical
impulse had presented itself so nakedly? If it had not
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pretended even to itself, on a purely inward level, that is, distinct from conscious brutality,
something more noble, more communal, and dreamed it up in a subjective way that was not
entirely false? These fictional bees must therefore not blind us to the nature of the real
egoists, a nature which even had to make altruistic excuses and protestations to itself in order
to make so-called honest profit in an honourable, ostensibly philanthropic way. Thus Adam
Smith's selfish system distinctly incorporated features of an even inwardly false
consciousness; and these were not, as they so often are in Calvinism, crafty and twisted, but
subjectively honest and polished. They were features of conviction, of clear conscience, of
the respectable businessman and employer, showing how he actually believed in honest
profit, how he above all felt himself to be a kind of benefactor to consumers, in the game of
supply and demand. That is, of course, to those wealthy consumers through whom the
surplus value extorted from the workers can be made into money by selling the product of
their labour. But their clear conscience bolstered itself up with the fact that capitalist interest
was continually supposed to address itself to the interest of the customer, to its satisfaction.
The clear conscience of mutual advantage was further enhanced by the fact that all human
beings were regarded as free traders with increasing powers of exchange, whose evident self-
interest balanced itself out in the overall benefit thus produced. With all this, the capitalist
economy appeared the only natural one, discovered at last, of which Smith expressed his total
approval, in a manner as ponderous as it was utopian. The interest itself was therefore
influenced in a utopian way, or rather the false consciousness of it, which was in fact
extremely active. Without this embellishment the exploitation among the great sharks, totally
unencumbered by bourgeois morals, would undoubtedly have continued as before, the
gentlemen of the East India Company had no place for a utopian function in their business, it
would only have damaged it. But the average businessman in manufacturing industry, even
in the incipient industrial revolution, still needed and cultivated a belief in the greatest
possible happiness of the greatest number, he needed it as a link between his egotistical
impulses and those pretended, dreamed-up impulses specifically noted by Smith as being
benevolent. All the more so as cynical selfishness was ascribed to nobility, chiefly to the
lechers in its ranks (cf. the contemporary novels of Richardson). Whereas the rising
bourgeois citizen needed 'virtue' in order to earn money all the more zealously from others,
as if he were earning it for those others. And when it came to the last fight of all against
feudal restraints, the bourgeoisie, not a very heroic class,
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had to boost itself in a particularly strong utopian fashion. Otherwise they would not have
done any fighting themselves, which was actually partly the case, but would have let the men
from the suburbs do all their fighting for them. Otherwise they would not have felt a
credulous affinity with the Gracchi* and with Brutus, which was actually again partly the
case, during the courtship leading up to the bourgeois freedom of 1789. Therefore the rising
class, which was economically due, needed even inwardly a far-reaching passion in the
confused feelings of that time, in order, as Marx says, 'to hide from themselves the content of
their struggles with its bourgeois limitations'. This was blatant self-deception, the private
businessman who supported human rights, the abstract idea of the citoyen as a moral person,
were not seen through, could not yet be seen through at that time. Yet this kind of self-
deception also contained an anticipatory element, it even showed particularly humanitarian
features, although they were abstractly expressed, employed in an abstract and utopian way.
And in fact not everything about its interest was deception; otherwise one could not refer in
socialist terms to the businessman who supported human rights and was not only orientated
towards the private sector, let alone to the citoyen. What the citoyen promised is a promise
which can certainly only be kept in socialism. All the same, it can be kept, so there was at
that time a surplus, contributed in a utopian fashion, in bourgeois striving itself. The social
mentality which is morally abstracted in the citoyen, i.e. which had become divorced from
real individual people, must first be united with their own energies, which are no longer
bourgeois individualistic ones. All the same, this mentality, called 'virtue' in those days, did
still exist, it existed in this case as one which not only acted as a boost, but also as a surplus;
how else could someone like Jefferson be revered, let alone the genuine Jacobins? So
another, sustainable trend, one going beyond the progress which was to be directly
encouraged, could operate even in the impulse, if it was a progressive one for its time. It can
be morally inherited, in the same way as the shaped surplus in actual ideological
consciousness, a surplus which has been turned into works, can be culturally inherited. Good
things, indeed the best, have been desired repeatedly in the past, and mostly it remained at
that. But precisely because this desire was one which never reached its goal, on those points
where it does not coincide with the attainable that is now due, in this case therefore with
capitalist society, it carries on along the path of liberation. Utopian function
*
Tiberius Gracchus (d. 133 B.C.) and his younger brother Gaius (d. 121 B.C.) made use of the concilium
plebis to oppose the power of the Senate in Republican Rome.
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tears this part away from deception; it thus enables everything philanthropic to feel a growing
mutual affinity.
Encounter of the Utopian Function with Ideology

A keen glance does not simply prove its worth by seeing through things. But also in the way
it does not see everything as if it were as clear as crystal. Since not everything is as perfectly
clear as that, in fact there is sometimes a process of fermenting, of self-forming at work, to
which precisely the keen glance does justice. This unclosed aspect appears in its broadest and
most hybrid form in ideology, in so far as this ideology is not exhausted merely by the
connection to its time. Nor by the mere false consciousness about its time which has
accompanied all previous cultures. Certainly, ideology itself stems from the division of
labour, from the separation of physical and mental work which occurred after primitive
communes. Only after that could a group which had the leisure to develop ideas deceive
themselves and especially others by means of these ideas. So, since ideologies are always
originally those of the ruling class, they justify existing social conditions by denying their
economic roots and disguising exploitation. This is the picture in all class societies, most
clearly in that of the bourgeoisie. Here there are admittedly three phases in the ideological
formation of these societies with very different status, with a different mandate to the mental,
all too mental superstructure: the preparatory, the victorious, the declining. The preparatory
phase of an ideology helps its own, not yet secured substructure by opposing its fresh
progressive superstructure to the rotten superstructure of the previous ruling class. The class
which then itself comes to power instigates the second ideological phase, by securing
(through the omission, partly also through the more or less classical 'equilibration', of
previous revolutionary impulses) its own substructure which has meanwhile come into
existence, fixing it politically and legally, and dressing it up politically, legally and
culturally. Securing and embellishment are supported by an achieved, although only
temporary harmony between forces and conditions of production. The declining class then
instigates the third ideological phase by sweetening the rotten stench of the substructure
while the credulity of the false consciousness almost totally disappears, and the deception is
almost completely conscious and even by phosphorescently renaming night as day, day as
night. Thus the economic substructure in class society is certainly shrouded in the mist of an
interested false consciousness, no matter whether its illusion subdivides in terms of content
into fiery, classical or decadent, into ascent, blossoming,
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or cosmetic application. In short, since no exploitation can afford to be seen naked, ideology
seen from this side is thus the sum of the ideas in which a society has justified and
transfigured itself with the help of false consciousness. But then again: whenever we think of
culture, does not another side of ideology appear which is already recognizable in the
composition, so different morally and as regards content, of the three phases? This is
precisely the side which does not fully coincide with merely false consciousness and with the
apologetics of a mere, historically discarded class society. Seen from the critical side, Marx
says strikingly in 'The Holy Family': 'The ''idea" always blundered whenever it differed from
"interest"', and with this remark he takes up the self-examination of bourgeois society that
had begun in French materialism, which first demonstrated, in the work of La Bruyre, La
Rochefoucauld, and particularly of Helvtius, that evident personal interest was the basis of
all this morality. But Marx goes on to say in the same passage: 'On the other hand, it is easy
to understand that every massive, historically successful "interest", when it first enters on the
world stage, goes far beyond its real thoughts in its "idea" or "conception" and becomes
confused with human interest per se.' This results in illusion or 'what Fourier calls the tone of
every historical epoch'. Yet, because this illusion possibly also contains, apart from the
enthusiastic flowers with which a society garlanded its cradle, those artistic creations which,
as Marx reminds us, citing the Greeks, in the 'Introduction to the Critique of Political
Economy', 'are regarded in certain respects as norms and unattainable models', the problem of
ideology is broached from the side of the problem of cultural inheritance, of the problem as
to how works of the superstructure progressively reproduce themselves in cultural
consciousness even after the disappearance of their social bases. The very difference in
content of the three phases cannot be suppressed here, not even when the continuing tua res
agitur* is by no means confined to the rising revolutionary epoch of one of the previous class
societies. In fact, it is precisely then that the actual phenomenon: cultural surplus under
discussion here, dwelling on the other side, becomes all the more apparent. For this
phenomenon, that of developed and also future-orientated art, science and philosophy,
confronts us much more abundantly in the classical epoch of a society than in its
revolutionary epoch, where of course the directly utopian impetus against what exists,
beyond what exists, is stronger. And the
*
'Nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet'. Horace, Epistles, I. 18, 84. 'It is your concern when
your neighbour's house is on fire.'
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blossoms of art, science, philosophy, always denote something more than the false
consciousness which each society, bound to its position, had of itself and used for its own
embellishment. Rather, these blossoms definitely can be removed from their first socio-
historical soil, since they themselves, in essence, are not bound to it. The Acropolis of course
belongs to slave-owning society, Strasbourg cathedral to feudal society, yet, as we know,
they did not disappear with their social base, and they carry with them nothing deplorable, in
contrast to the base, in contrast to the conditions of production at the time, however
progressive they may have been. The great works of philosophy do of course contain more
time-bound, and thus transitory material, due to the respective social barriers to cognition.
However, because of the height of consciousness which distinguishes them and which
permits a glance far into future, essential material, these works too, especially these,
demonstrate that genuine classicism which does not consist in rounding off, but in eternal
youth, with constantly new perspectives in it. In the case of the 'Symposium', the 'Ethics' and
even 'The Phenomenology of Mind', only the illusory problems and the ideology of particular
place and time have sunk away and been discarded, whereas the Eros, the substance, the
substance as subject stand in the midst of all changes as variations of the one goal. In short,
these great works are not deficient as on their first day, nor glorious as on the first day: but
instead they shed their deficiency and their first glory while being capable of a later glory, in
fact a final one to which they can intend. The classical element in every classicism equally
stands before each age as revolutionary Romanticism, i.e. as a task that points the way
forward and as a solution that approaches from the future, not from the past, and, itself still
full of future, speaks, addresses, calls us on. But this, together with more modest things, is
only the case because ideologies seen from this side are not exhausted with the false
consciousness of their base, nor with the active work for their respective bases. No search for
the surplus is possible in false consciousness itself, as carried by the ideology of class
societies, none is necessary in the ideology of socialist revolution, in which no false
consciousness at all participates. Socialism, as the ideology of the revolutionary proletariat, is
only true consciousness at all with reference to the comprehended movement and the
apprehended tendency of reality. But rather, the following statement by Marx (to Ruge,
1843) holds good for the relation of this true ideology to the anticipatory element in the false,
though here not merely false consciousness of the earlier ideology: 'Our motto must therefore
be: reform of consciousness not through dogmas, but through analysis of mystical
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consciousness which is still unclear to itself. It will then become apparent that the world has
long possessed the dream of a matter, of which it must only possess the consciousness in
order to possess it in reality. It will become apparent that it is not a question of a great
thought-dash between past and future, but of the carrying through of the thoughts of the
past.' Even the class ideologies, within which the great works of the past lie, lead precisely to
that surplus over and above the false consciousness bound to its position, the surplus which is
called continuing culture, and is therefore a substratum of the claimable cultural inheritance.
And now it becomes clear that this very surplus is produced by nothing other than the effect
of the utopian function in the ideological creations of the cultural side. Indeed, false
consciousness alone would not even be sufficient to gild the ideological wrapping, which is
what in fact happened. Alone it would be incapable of creating one of the most important
characteristics of ideology, namely premature harmonization of social contradictions. And
ideology is even less conceivable as the medium of continuing cultural substratum without its
encounter with the utopian function. All this obviously ventures beyond both false
consciousness and the strengthening, even mere apologetics of the respective social
substructures. Therefore, without the utopian function, class ideologies would only have
managed to create transitory deception, not the models in art, science and philosophy. And it
is this very surplus which forms and preserves the substratum of the cultural inheritance, as
that morning which is not only contained in the early day, but on a higher level also in the
midday of a society and partly even in the twilight of its decline. All previous great culture is
pre-appearance of something achieved, in so far as it could still be built up in images and
thoughts on the panoramic heights of time, and thus not only in and for its time.
Without doubt, the dream of a better life is very broadly perceived through all of this. Or,
which comes to the same thing, utopian, apart from the usual purely pejorative sense, is used
not only in the above anticipatory sense, but as function also in a comprehensive sense. It
thus emerges that the breadth and depth to which the utopian extends is at first, even in a
historical respect, not confined to its most popular manifestation the utopia of an ideal
state. Correspondingly, the dream of a better life stretched far beyond its social-utopian
parent company, namely into every kind of cultural anticipation. Every plan and every
creation that was pushed to the limits of its perfection had touched on utopia and gave, as
mentioned above, precisely the great cultural works, which had a more and more progressive
influence, a surplus over and above their mere ideology
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there and then, and consequently nothing less than the substratum of cultural inheritance.
The broadening of a previously so narrowly conceived power of anticipation was begun in
Ernst Bloch's 'The Spirit of Utopia', in 1918, and, moreover, with witnesses, ornaments and
figures which had previously been dealt with totally outside a Not-Yet-Arrived in reality,
although they belong to this and are occupied with its articulation. The parasitic enjoyment of
culture reaches an end through insight into the more and more adequate trend towards our
becoming identical and through commitment to this; cultural works open up strategically.
The question now remains, of course, whether and how far the expression utopia and its
attack can or should also be applied, without superfluous misunderstanding, to intentions and
interest which are by no means those of the past. But which lie completely current and new
within the development which has occurred, of socialism from utopia to science. Of course,
the history of terminology contained several such examples of the broadening of a previous
meaning of a word, with the partial removal of the negative meanings which adhered to it;
the word romantic is a relevant example here. A still greater differentiation was undertaken
between the meanings of the concept of ideology itself; on the basis of this differentiation,
Lenin was able to call socialism the ideology of the revolutionary proletariat. And yet in
general, the power of anticipation, which we called concrete utopia above (as distinct from
the utopistic and from merely abstract utopianizing), with its open space and its object which
is to be realized and which realizes itself forwards, has still remained completely untouched
by the terminological correction and broadening which the romantic, for example, underwent
in 'revolutionary Romanticism', and the ideological underwent in 'socialist ideology'.
Although, of course, above all in the areas of technological, architectural or geographical
utopias, but also of all those which ultimately revolved and are revolving around the
'Absolute', the 'authentic' core of our wanting, the category: utopian function is dominant
factually and therefore in a conceptually apposite way. Naturally, with knowledge and
removal of the finished utopistic element, with knowledge and removal of abstract utopia.
But what then remains: the unfinished forward dream, the docta spes which can only be
discredited by the bourgeoisie, this seriously deserves the name utopia in carefully
considered and carefully applied contrast to utopianism; in its brevity and new clarity, this
expression then means the same as: a methodical organ for the New, an objective aggregate
state of what is coming up. Thus all great cultural works also have implicitly, though not
always (as in Goethe's 'Faust') explicitly, a utopian
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background understood in this way. They are now, from the point of view of the
philosophical concept of utopia, not an ideological prank of a higher kind, but the attempted
path and content of known hope. Only thus does utopia fetch what is its own from the
ideologies and explain the progressive element which continues to be historically effective in
the great works of ideology itself. There is a spirit of utopia in the final predicate of every
great statement, in Strasbourg cathedral and in the Divine Comedy, in the expectant music of
Beethoven and in the latencies of the Mass in B minor. It is in the despair which still contains
an unum necessarium even as something lost, and in the Hymn to Joy. Kyrie and Credo rise
in the concept of utopia as that of comprehended hope in a completely different way, even
when the reflection of mere time-bound ideology has been shed, precisely then. The exact
imagination of the Not-Yet-Conscious thus completes the critical enlightenment itself, by
revealing the gold that was not affected by aqua fortis,* and the good content which remains
most valid, indeed rises when class illusion, class ideology have been destroyed. Thus
beyond the end of class ideologies, for which it could only be mere decoration up till then,
culture has no other loss than the business of decoration itself, of falsely concluding
harmonization. Utopian function tears the concerns of human culture away from such an idle
bed of mere contemplation: it thus opens up, on truly attained summits, the ideologically
unobstructed view of the content of human hope.
Encounter of the Utopian Function with Archetypes

A deep glance proves its worth by becoming doubly profound. Not only downwards, which
is the easier, more literal way of getting to the bottom of things. But rather there is also a
depth upwards and forwards which takes up into itself profound material from below.
Backwards and forwards are then as in the movement of a wheel, which simultaneously dips
and scoops. Real depth always occurs in double-edged movement: 'Sink then! I could also
say rise! It's all the same', Mephisto shouts to Faust.** He even shouts it where a delight in
something that has long since ceased to exist, in Helen of Troy, is to begin. And not only
Mephisto shouts
*
Nitric acid. Used to separate gold and silver in gold-silver alloy, since silver dissolves in it, but gold
does not. Hence pure gold.
**
'Faust', Part II, 6275.
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this, the intriguer, the dangerous master of double-edged meanings, a double meaning itself
shouts through Mephisto: that of the equally archaic and utopian relations between images.
Thus utopian function very often has a double profundity, that of submersion in the midst of
that of hope. Which can only mean that the groundwork for hope is partly done in the archaic
frame here. More precisely, in those archetypes which still arouse consternation and which
have possibly been left over from the age of a mythical consciousness as categories of the
imagination, consequently with a nonmythical surplus that has not been worked up. Hope
consequently has to make utopian provision not only for ideologies which continue to have
significance, but also for those archetypes which contain material which has still not been
worked out. It therefore has to forge them into utopia, just as, mutatis mutandis, significantly
progressive ideology is forged into it. It is clear here that this can be achieved not only from
below, by sinking, but essentially from above, from the overall perspective of climbing.
Because we find repeatedly: that which is exclusively repressed downwards and to be found
in the subconscious is in reality only the soil from which night-dreams emerge and
occasionally the poison which causes neurotic symptoms: this below can largely be resolved
into the known, is not ascending forward dawning, therefore has at bottom only a tedious
latency. Whereas that which is hoped for and imagined contains the possible treasure from
which the great daylight fantasies are derived, those which do not become obsolete for a long
time; this forwards and above can never be resolved into the already Known and Become,
and therefore has at bottom an inexhaustible latency. When Faust, with the magic potion of
youth, sees Helen in every woman,* Helen the archetype of beauty is moving wholly out of
the archaic here; this archetype is moving upwards even in the archaic. But: it can only be
invoked from the utopian standpoint; and only from the overall perspective of climbing, not
in pure submersion, can affinitive utopian material possibly become visible in archetypes.
That which is still Eurydice, not yet lived out herself, in the Orcus of What Has Been, is
found by Orpheus alone, and it is Eurydice for him alone. Only this utopian aspect of some
archetypes makes their fruitful quotation possible, glancing forwards not backwards; as has
already been seen in the apparent merging of dream-games and in the dissolution of this
appearance. All such rationalisms
*
Mephisto in Goethe's 'Faust', in the witches' kitchen, Part I, 26034:
'When you have drunk this magic potion
Soon you'll see Helen in every woman.'
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based on the Mothers,* seen as still giving birth, show a light falling in from utopia, even in
Romanticism with its nostalgic grave- and underworld-lamp. The peculiarly brooding
element in archetypes, particularly this element, shows their unfinished nature; but the
warmth produced by the maturing process is not located in regressio. The archetypes
themselves have already been mentioned above, in connection with C. G. Jung, but this arch-
reactionary, in whose work, moreover, the archaic appeared like Timbuktu in Zurich, merely
invoked the whole phenomenon falsely, purely as gloom. The expression archetypos itself is
first found in the work of Augustine, still as an explanatory paraphrase of Plato's Eidos, that
is, of every generic form, but in fact it was only Romanticism that applied the classical
expression to a categorial stock of a pictorially objective kind, breaking through and
illuminating by means of certain, as it were, compressed events. Thus in the work of Novalis,
Romeo and Juliet become the archetype of young love, Anthony and Cleopatra that of more
mature, more interesting love; Philemon and Baucis, together with their hut, are visualized as
the tableau of age-old, elapsed marriage. What is decisive, according to Novalis, is the
extraordinary harmonization of all elements in these archetypes, in the case of Philemon and
Baucis it extends 'to the ham which hangs well-smoked in the chimney'. But far more
decisive was the peculiar nimbus that was added to the agreement of these elements, a
nimbus like that around landscapes with successful architecture of the situation and its
significance. The attention that was beginning to be paid to similarities in the material of
fairytales, in conflict-types, in rescue-types, in recurring 'motifs', did much to point to the
existence of archetypes; comparative literary history revealed a wealth of such elements.
Thus it is the extremely impressive motif of recognition (anagnorisis), for example, which
archetypally unites such diverse material as Joseph and his Brothers in the Bible and the
meeting of Electra and Orestes in Sophoclean tragedy. Above all, mythology seemed to
contain all basic situations and their possible combinations; this is, of course, a wild
exaggeration wholly in accordance with a reactionary element in Romantic archaism, but the
studies of the history of myths by Karl Philipp Moritz, and especially Friedrich Creuzer, do
indeed contain a wealth of archetypes through their attempt to categorize 'motifs'. These
archetypes appear here as symbols; Creuzer in particular already unmistakably separates their
archetypicality into four aspects: into 'the momentary, the total, the unfathomable aspect of
their origin, and
*
The archetypes of creation in Goethe's 'Faust', Part II.
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the necessary'. And he explains the momentary and also pictorially laconic aspect
beforehand, by means of an archetype: 'That arousing and at the same time startling element
is connected with another quality, with brevity. It is like a suddenly appearing ghost or like a
flash of lightning which abruptly illuminates the dark night, a moment which claims our
whole being' (Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Vlker I, 1819, p. 118, 59).
Creuzer called such laconicisms symbols in the Romantic sense, since they were
manifestations of an idea; it would have taken only a little less hypostasis of an already
eternally translucent idea to see the archetypes also in the form of an allegory, not just in that
of a symbol. After all, allegories, in their true form, that is, before the classicism of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, are by no means concepts dressed up in sensory form,
and therefore what we so readily call frosty and abstract. Rather, they also contain in the
Baroque period, and in a different way in the Middle Ages archetypes, in fact the majority
of archetypes, namely those of transitoriness and its multiple guises. It is precisely in the
allegory that the wealth of poetically working archetypes first opens up, of those which still
lie in the Alteritas of worldly life, whereas the symbol is consistently assigned to the Unitas
of a meaning, and therefore also essentially forms the religious archetypes, or rather,
religiously forms the archetypes. Thus Bachofen, a greater Creuzer and accomplished
mythologist, both discovered and first attempted to arrange the system of archetypes among
ancient peoples completely inside the sphere of religion. It appeared in hetairan, matrilinear,
patrilinear series: in the hetairan ornaments of reeds and swamp, in the matrilinear ones of
ear of corn and earth cave, in the patrilinear ones of laurel and the circle of the sun; an
equally socio-historical and natural mythical order was thus supposed to emerge in the
archetypes as a whole. Though this does not mean that apart from the hypothetical division
of the three series they were catalogued in a more comprehensive way, either in their
allegorical form and relation, or in their religious-symbolic one. Nevertheless, precisely from
the work of Romanticism, the following became clear, crucial in terms of utopia: despite
their original Augustinian consonance with prototypes in the sense of Platonic Ideas,
archetypes have little or nothing in common with these and their pure, ultimately even
transcendental idealism. They are, as already emerges from the above examples, essentially
situational condensing categories, especially in the realm of poetically depictive imagination,
and not, like Platonic Ideas, generically hypostasized. The archetypes of Romanticism or
rather: as interpreted by Romanticism, were connected with the Platonic Ideas only
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through so-called re-remembering, even though in a way which also indicates their
differences from unchangeable ideas. Re-remembering, anamnesis, was in Plato that of the
pre-worldly state where the soul found itself in a prototypal heaven; re-remembering in
Romanticism, however, moves historically, goes back into primal periods within time itself,
becomes archaic regression. Though the fact that this was possible, even if it shows no
proximity whatsoever to the Platonism of heavenly ideas, does show a misunderstandability
particularly exploited by Romanticism of archetypes in their relation to the utopian
function. Those archetypes merely held back in regression transform utopia into a backward-
looking, reactionary, ultimately even diluvial one. They are then more dangerous than the
usual smoke-screen of ideology; for while the latter merely diverts attention from recognition
of the present and its real driving force, the archetype, spell-binding backwards and held in a
backward spell, additionally prevents openness to the future. By no means all archetypes are
capable of utopian treatment anyway, even if this is genuine, and not reactionary utopianism
as it often is in Romanticism. Through the pathos of the merely archaic the whole sphere is
missed which is often so actively, and, on a grand scale, luminously powerful, in poetry and
also philosophy. As noted above, only those archetypes in which something not worked out,
relatively unexpired and undischarged still circulates are capable of utopian treatment.
Significantly, it was precisely expired feudal archetypes that were most popular in the
regression which corresponded to political reaction, just as if the archetype, the token, by
which, as Romanticism said, all things poetical always recognize themselves in life that has
grown older, was solely surrender to the past and not also (like the storming of the Bastille)
an emblem of the future, in genuine utopian function.
Therefore another separation begins here so that true friends recognize each other and stay
together. Only the utopian glance can find this material which has an elective affinity with it,
it has an important office to perform here, instead of the bare capitalist murder of ornaments
even in thought. The rotten archetypes must first be separated from those which are really
undischarged in utopian terms, namely by assigning the former to totally obsolete What Has
Been. But clearly, existing archetypes of the situation of freedom or of luminous happiness
are not bound to this sort of past material, they have escaped it and are at least extra-
territorial to it. This is not the place to survey the archetypes, they belong, as we will later
have to demonstrate, to a new part of logic, to the categorial table of the imagination. They
are to be found, as we have seen, in all great literary works,
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myths, religions, and in fact: they belong by virtue of their undischarged part alone to a truth,
to a cloaking depiction of utopian tendency-contents in the real. An archetype with
undischarged tendency-latency beneath the cloak of fantasy is the Land of Cockaigne, is the
fight with the dragon (St George, Apollo, Siegfried, St Michael), is the winter demon who
tries to kill the young sun (Fenriswolf, Pharaoh, Herod, Gessler). A related archetype is the
liberation of the virgin (innocence in general) whom the dragon holds captive (Perseus and
Andromeda), is the time of dragons, the dragon-land itself, when it appears as the necessary
space which precedes the final triumph (Egypt, Canaan, the kingdom of Antichrist before the
beginning of the New Jerusalem). An archetype of the highest utopian order is the trumpet
signal in the last act of 'Fidelio', concentrated in the Leonora overture, which heralds the
rescue: the arrival of the Minister (he stands for the Messiah) embodies the archetype of the
vengeful, redeeming apocalypse, the old thunderstorm and rainbow archetype. Indeed, there
is an archetype of an age-old, but here quite concretely related kind even in Marx's statement:
'When all internal conditions have been fulfilled, the day of German resurrection will be
heralded by the crowing of the Gallic cockerel.' We notice, purely immanent in these
examples, that the utopian dimension of archetypes ultimately cannot be fixed at all in terms
of the archaic, but rather it wanders highly suitable through history. And, above all, these are
not all archetypes of archaic origin, many of them appeared aborigine only in the course of
history, such as the dance on the ruins of the Bastille a new arresting prototype, separated
from the archaic circles of the Blessed by entirely new contents. Its music is Beethoven's
Seventh Symphony, and therefore not one which would have been in tune with fields of
asphodel, nor with orgiastic festivals of spring and Dionysus. Even archetypes of clearly
archaic origin have repeatedly derived refreshment and variation from historical
transformations: even the trumpet signal in 'Fidelio' would hardly have its piercingly genuine
effect without the storming of the Bastille, which forms the model and the continual
background for the music of 'Fidelio'. Through it the thunderstorm and rainbow archetype, to
which the signal and the rescue refer, first acquired a completely new origin: it stepped out of
astral myth into revolutionary history; although an archetype, it now seems to lack any trace
of the archaic. Thus, in the end, not all archetypes are merely condensed images of archaic
experience; time and again a shoot has sprouted from them that augments the existing
contents of the archetypes. All the more so when the utopian incursion occurs into both the
age-old and the
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historically fresh archetypes, the refunctioning which is expert at liberating archetypally

encapsulated hope. If archetypal material was totally regressive, if there were no archetypes
which themselves reach for utopia, while utopia reaches back to them, then there would be
no pioneering literature, committed to light, with ancient symbols; imagination would be
exclusively regressio. Progressively determined it would have to guard against all images,
even allegories and symbols, which stem from the old mythical ground of imagination, in
each case it would only have technical school intellect in its favour, and therefore, as the
latter is dreamless, against it. But the Magic Flute to take a fantasy-piece that is
unquestionably humanizing uses almost nothing but archaic allegories and symbols: the
guide and priest-king, the kingdom of night, the kingdom of light, the ordeal by water and
fire, the magic of the flute, the transformation into a sun. Nevertheless, all these allegories
and symbols, among them some in whose sacred halls no philanthropy had ever previously
been sung, have shown they can be used in the service of enlightenment, in fact, they found
their true home in Mozart's fairytale music, in an undemonic temple. Thus productive utopian
function also draws images from the What Has Been which is not obsolete, in so far as they
are capable of future, in a double-edged sense, despite all the spell in them, and it makes
them suitable for the expression of What Has Still Not Yet Been, of sunrise. Thus the utopian
function discovers not only the cultural surplus belonging to it, it also fetches back from the
double-edged archetypal depths an element of itself, an archaically stored anticipation of still
Not-Yet-Conscious, Not-Yet-Achieved material. To use a dialectical archetype itself: the
anchor which sinks down to the bottom here is simultaneously the anchor of hope; what is
sinking down contains what is rising up, can contain it. And the same double nature
designated by all this, that which is capable of utopia, ultimately shows itself and proves its
worth whenever archetypes clearly turn into object-based ciphers, which they have in any
case copied from nature. This is so in numerous condensed sayings (still waters run deep, it's
lonely at the top), in the thunderstorm-rainbow archetype, and also in the light and sun
imagery of the Magic Flute. Archetypes of this type are not at all formed merely out of
human material, neither out of the archaic, nor out of later history; but rather they
demonstrate a bit of the double inscription of nature itself, a kind of real cipher or real
symbol. A real symbol is one where the thing signified is still disguised from itself, in the
real object, and not just for the human apprehension of that thing, for example. It is therefore
an expression for that which has not yet become
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manifest in the object itself, but rather is signified in the object and through the object; the
human picture of the symbol is only a representative depiction of this. Lines of movement
(fire, lightning, sound-figure and so on), forms of well-defined objects (palm shape, cat
shape, human face, Egyptian crystal style, Gothic forest style and so on), indicate these real
ciphers. A sharply delineated part of the world thus appears as a symbol group of an object-
based kind whose mathematics and philosophy are still both equally undeveloped. So-called
morphology is only an abstract caricature of this; because real ciphers are not static, they are
figures of tension, they are tendentious process forms and, above all in fact, on this path,
symbolic ones. Things like this border on the problem of an object-based utopian theory of
figures, and therefore ultimately on the forgotten (Pythagorean) problem of a qualitative
mathematics, of a renewed qualitative philosophy of nature. Here, however, it is already clear
that even object-based archetypes, turned into real ciphers which are to be found in the
enormous antiquarium of nature, and nearer at hand in the formed works of man, are only
elucidated by utopian function. Archetypes, of course, always have their nearest existence in
human history; namely in so far as archetypes are what they can be: concise ornaments of a
utopian substance. Utopian function tears away this part from the past, from reaction, and
also from myth; every refunctioning occurring in this way demonstrates the undischarged
aspect of archetypes changed to the point of recognition.
Encounter of the Utopian Function with Ideals

An open glance proves its worth by turning towards itself. A goal hovers before it which has
rarely been lost sight of since youth. Since it is not to hand, but demands or shines, it acts as
a task or as a target. If the goal seems to contain not just something desirable or worth
striving for, but something absolutely perfect, then it is called an ideal. Every goal, whether
attainable or unattainable, whether crackpot or objectively meaningful, must first be
imagined in the mind. But the ideal as imagined goal is distinguished from an ordinary
imagined goal precisely by its emphasis on perfection; it cannot be made to settle for
anything less. Active striving and desiring are otherwise abandoned, or they are empirically
and shrewdly diverted, if the imagining of empirically compelling counter-reasons penetrates
the imagined goal. On the other hand, the ideal as imagined goal acts as such unremittingly, a
decision of the will directed towards
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it is irrevocable. It is so even when it is not implemented; because the non-implementation,

precisely because of its factual irrevocability, is accompanied by guilty conscience, at least
by the feeling of renunciation. The Object* of the imagined ideal, the ideal Object, thus acts
as a demanding one, seemingly as if it had its own desire, which is decreed to man as
obligation. The ordinary imagined goal and that of the ideal display the character of a value,
and mere illusion of value is to be found in both cases. But whereas this illusion can be
empirically corrected in ordinary imagined goals, this is considerably more difficult in the
case of ideals, precisely because of their reified demands. If an Object appears as one which
is ideal, then the only way of breaking its demanding, sometimes enchantingly demanding
spell is through catastrophe; and even then this is not always a cure. There is the misfortune
of an idolatry of love which continues to cast its spell even on the object which has been seen
through; illusionary political ideals occasionally continue to have an effect even after an
empirical catastrophe, as if they were genuine. A peculiar power thus emanates from the
formation of ideals, one which intersperses the, as it were, bright and fully-fledged
conviction of the ideal as perfection with very much darker impulses. So that formation of
ideals, seen from its unfree and illusionary side, is able to contain a tremendous amount of
false consciousness, archaic subconsciousness. This sort of thing has already appeared in
connection with repression in the Freudian sense, and differently in connection with Adler's
psychology of power, concerning the over-compensatory formation of the guiding ideal. In
Freud, the super-ego is the source of the formation of ideals, and the super-ego itself, with all
the threat, the obligation that radiates from it, is supposed to be the father continuing to exert
an influence. The ego stands in the same relation to the super-ego as that of a child to its
parents; their commands have remained effective in the ideal ego, in every ideal command in
general, and now, as conscience, exercise moral censorship. This theory of ideals therefore
led exclusively backwards to the father, and, with sufficient excavation, back into the
patriarchal-despotic age as a whole. Accordingly, all non-threatening, all shining features of
the ideal are left out in Freud, and this ideal is wholly confined to the moral sphere. Adler's
theory of over-compensation seeks to explain these truly shining features, at the same time it
is directed towards the past,
*
Bloch begins to use the more concrete 'Gegenstand' here, alongside the more philosophical 'Objekt'.
Both can only be translated by the English 'object', but we have indicated the difference by capitalizing
the former.
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towards the previous 'Tom Thumb situation', only with regard to what the guiding-ideal may
overcome. The guiding or personal character-ideal is not supposed to be a remembered,
enforced goal here, but one which is chosen relatively freely: people finalize themselves by
changing from the character-mask to the ideal-mask, in order to achieve the feeling of
superiority. Once again, of course, according to this theory, all ideal images are confined to
moral and ultimately to personally vain ones; more objective ideals, artistic ones for
example, are totally missing. Even alternative ideals of the correct life-style which extend
from pre-capitalist times, such as loneliness or friendship, such as vita activa or vita
contemplativa, have no place in this pure psychology of competition. Likewise, ideal
situations and ideal landscapes, when limited to purely personal guiding images, remain
uncomprehended and homeless. Thus Freud and Adler identified only the oppressive spell
which can underlie the formation of ideals: the father-spell in Freud, and at least the spell of
inferiority in Adler. Neither is the march-route open which leads from here both to the
surplus qualities and to the surplus images. Everything remains in the sphere of obligation,
the goal-image imagined by wanting-to-become is mostly endured rather than hoped for.
But the will which gazes up at towers, and also climbs them, is never exhausted by this. The
formation of ideals is by no means restricted to obligation and spells, it has its freer, brighter
side as well. Even if this brighter side also displays strong negative aspects: those of
substitution, overblownness, abstractness, which were joined in the nineteenth century by the
mendacity of the ideal, these are certainly not connected with the dark or sinister elements of
the formation of ideals. Not with obligation from above, with spells, pressure of the super-
ego, turning against the human creature as such; what is seductive here is rather perfection
itself, floating high above our heads. The free characters of the daydream reveal themselves
on this brighter side, particularly the journey to the end, where things really do go on forever.
Even if a real journey to the ideal is not undertaken at all or only remains in its picture, as
embarkation for Cythera, a moreover purely erotic ideal, an end is always intended, and
always as Perfectum. Perfection then is not merely easier to feel, it is also more inviting to
think about than middling cultural categories. Thus the ideal was much more clearly
conceptualized than ideologies (which goes without saying because of the interested cloaking
character of ideology), but also more clearly than archetypes. Up to now there has been no
classification and table of archetypes, but there have been several of the ideal; and they go
right down to terms like: ideal housewife, ideal Bach baritone and the
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like, they go right up to the ideal of the highest good. There are guiding ideals of the right
life, sharply contrasting ones, there is a value estimation theory, richly nuanced from the
Sophists and Socrates right down to Epicurus and the Stoics, a theory of criteria for the ideal.
In Kant, who calls the philosopher himself a teacher of the ideal, and philosophy a course of
instruction in the ideal, the ideal appears from all sides in fact, those of pressure and of final
directing unity and of hope. This ideal appears again as pressure, even attack, in the
categorical imperative of moral law: the dignity of man, which demands respect in this law,
conflicts with all natural impulses. But then the ideal appears in Kant as the final directing
force in such a way that the latter does not itself demand, but on the contrary is itself
demanded, and in the postulating trinity of the Unconditional: freedom, immortality, God.
The ideal equally appears as hope, namely as the truly highest good of practical reason; this
is then supposed to be the combining of virtue and bliss, the (admittedly always only
approximative) realization of a kingdom of God on earth. Then the ideal appears again in
Kantian aesthetics: as that of a natural perfection, therefore without the highest good, but
with the most instructive contrast to the moral pressure-ideal. Kant turns away from this in
art, just as in art moral Being Obliged in general always becomes silly: there is a thundering
ethics, but corresponding to it only a schoolmasterish aesthetics. Kant does not want this,
the artistic genius for him is not at odds with his natural motivating force, as the moral man
is. On the contrary, genius 'gives the rule' precisely 'as nature', genius is an 'intelligence
which acts just like nature'. And all embellishments in accordance with the aesthetic ideal are
defined as 'the perfect embodiment of an idea in an individual phenomenon'. Thus precisely
in Kant, the formal, but thereby particularly abstract-radical teacher of the ideal, perfection
bursts out in so many different forms, corresponding to its various faces, those of spell and
those of starlight above all, as a hope for the future. His aesthetic version, the 'perfect
embodiment of an idea in an individual phenomenon', passes, moreover, from a formal
idealism straight into an objective one. Thus this concept of the ideal ultimately comes close
to the Idea, which was taken by Aristotle from Plato's generic form above the phenomenon
into goal-form or entelechy within the phenomenon. This entelechy, which does not perfectly
reveal itself because of impeding secondary causes in individual things, is made visible for
Aristotle by sculpture, and also by literature. Aesthetic ideal representation thus becomes one
which both captures imitatively and embellishes in accordance with entelechy, i.e. which
shows what ought
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to happen according to the nature of the matter; hence the famous Aristotelian statement that
drama is more philosophical than the recording of history. It is ultimately this character of
perfection, driving to an end, of the aesthetically ideal which in Schopenhauer and Hegel can
be linked with Kant's 'perfect embodiment of an idea in an individual phenomenon'. With a
large Aristotelian component in Schopenhauer: 'Now according to whether the organism
more or less succeeds in overcoming those deeper levels of natural forces expressing
objectivity of the will, it becomes the more perfect or more imperfect expression of its idea,
that is, stands closer to or further from the ideal to which in its particular genre beauty is
appropriate.' And further, clearly touching on the idea of a utopian function (in the static
limited character of the genre): 'Only thus could the Greek genius find the prototype of the
human form and set it up as a canon of the school, as sculpture; and also, only by means of
an anticipation of this sort is it possible for us all to portray the beautiful where nature has
really succeeded in individual instances. This anticipation is the ideal; it is the idea in so far
as at least half of it is known a priori and becomes of practical use to art, in that this idea
approaches in a complementary way what is given a posteriori by nature' (Werke, Grisebach,
I, p. 207, 297). For Hegel, ideals in general can only occur in art and not in the rest of reality,
least of all in political and social reality; here they are for Hegel, in so far as he is a
Restoration philosopher,* solely chimeras of an imaginary perfection. Whereas art as a
contemplative structure has absolutely nothing but ideals as its substratum, oriental-symbolic,
classical Greek, western-romantic (honour, love, loyalty, adventure, faith). And their
aesthetic manifestation is most definitely reminiscent of Aristotle, of entelechy: 'The truth of
art must therefore be no mere correctness to which the mere imitation of nature confines
itself, but the exterior must harmonize with an interior that harmonizes with itself and,
precisely by means of this, can reveal itself as itself in the exterior. By now leading back
what has been stained by contingency and externality in the rest of existence to this harmony
with its true concept, art casts everything aside which does not correspond to that concept in
the phenomenon, and brings forth the ideal only through this purification' (Werke XI, p.
199f.). Clearly, the ideal is definitely not regarded here as indifferent towards reality in
general, nor as cheap gloss (which asserted the fraudulent contrast between poetry and prose,
ultimately between culture and civilization). But a stronger
*
Restoration: again Bloch means the period of the restoration of the French monarchy after 1814.
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degree of reality itself is meant, of the respective perfection which is in real terms intended in
phenomenal process, even if this layering in Hegel is never permitted to be that of a Not-Yet-
Become in real terms. Nevertheless, wherever no super-ego, wherever no backward father-
spell or even fixed images of a merely imitative over-compensation are about their business,
the ideal manifests much more genuine anticipation than most archetypes. And the utopian
function in the ideal thus becomes not so much the blasting open as the correction of this
ideal: by means of a mediation with concrete movements towards perfection in the world,
with material ideal tendency.
Beyond this, of course, only grand words remain, inwardly and all the more so outwardly,
known by heart. Obligation, demand, pressure are part of the ideal as spell, but as noted
above: overblownness, non-binding abstractness, unhistorical statics threaten it in its freedom
and intended perfection. And on top of this came the sheer lie added by the nineteenth
century the true, the good, the beautiful as bourgeois clichs. In the commercial councillor's
wife Jenny Treibel, ne Brstenbinder,* Fontane portrayed a bourgeois woman with ideals
who is a cut above all her own kind. Even above her whole environment: 'They liberalize and
sentimentalize constantly, but that is all farce; when they have to lay their cards on the table,
then the call is: gold is trumps and that's that.' In most of his dramas, Ibsen is passionately
keen to show how professed bourgeois ideals and bourgeois practice no longer have anything
in common with one another at all. 'The Doll's House', 'Ghosts', 'The Wild Duck', are nothing
but variations on the theme of clich ideals; and it would not have taken much to work up
these deeply serious, almost tragic plays into comedies. Gregers Werle in 'The Wild Duck' is
precisely the Don Quixote of bourgeois ideals, in the midst of a degenerate bourgeois world,
and the cynicism of Relling when he calls these ideals not merely lies, but life-lies necessary
to the average person, is by no means merely cynical, he is simply calling the Sunday
swindle of the late-bourgeois ideal by its proper name. With the limitation that Ibsen himself
still believes and wants to believe in bourgeois ideals, and tries to portray them in his dramas
after 'The Wild Duck' in such a way that they are immune to Relling's criticism. There was
no new world either in Fontane or in Ibsen, instead the old one was immanently
*
Commercial councillor was an honorary title formerly conferred on German financiers and
industrialists. In his novel 'Frau Jenny Treibel', Theodor Fontane (181998) implies the class
aspirations of his central character in her names. Her maiden name means 'brushmaker', her married
name 'Treibel' suggests 'treiben', as in 'Handel treiben', 'to do business'. 'Frau Jenny Treibel' appeared in
1892.
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denounced, with its discrepancy between theory and practice, with its deeply ingrained
hypocrisy. A critical realism is sufficient to see through this, no research into ideology, let
alone utopian function is necessary. But the latter is necessary, with apprehended material
tendency, so that the ideal is not seen to be at one with its overblown bourgeois existence; so
that it really may be rescued from its whole previous mode of existence, from abstractness,
from statics. First from abstractness, the detached, poorly general, feebly hovering kind. It is
essentially formal, the content has stolen out of real life, or stands directly opposed to it in
the empty, grand words. Since the ideals were thus not mediated with any tendency,
abstractness was joined by undialectical statics. Both increase the illusion of value; it is now
supported by an attitude which places the ideals in the silver cupboard for our eternally
unchanging edification. Abstractness and statics together then constitute the so-called ideal
principles, as targets for words, not for actions. This kind of formality flourishes chiefly in
England and, deteriorating into a religion of dead slogans, in North America. The American
Declaration of Independence and then the American Constitution contained their rights of
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their principles of liberty, justice, morality and law,
still seen from the standpoint of the citoyen (not of course forgetting the less Bengal-lit
principle of property, as the basic principle). But now all this is trapped in inert air, and the
only real basic principle, the economic one, because of the formal abstract-statics of the other
principles, permits any opportunism of content, above all in the case of liberty. Such an ideal
neither can nor wants to stand out theoretically against this opportunism of its content, which
can go as far as total inversion; it cannot do so because of its misleading formal generality, it
does not want to do so because of its languid inertia. And how great this powerlessness was
in Germany especially, in Luther's Germany of double-entry book-keeping or the dualism of
works and faith. In Calvinistic countries the ideal at least remained a verbal and formal-
democratic target for modes of action which were soon abandoned; hypocrisy develops as a
tribute of vice to virtue. In Germany, however, what is ideal stood so high above the world
that it did not come into any contact with it at all, apart from that of eternal distance. This
target became stars which were too far away to be reached, that is, stars of velleity, not of
action. Out of this arose the phantom of mere endless approach to the ideal or, which comes
to the same thing, of its transposition into eternal striving towards the ideal. The world thus
remained in a bad way, moral ideals hung in the heavenly distance, aesthetic ideals were not
even sought
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after, but were merely enjoyed for their splendour. So easy is the leap from endless desire to
mere contemplation: for even the eternally approximative is contemplation, only disturbed by
the constant illusion of action, by acting for the sake of acting, ut aliquid fieri videatur. Even
if a concrete sense of the ideal did emerge in Germany, as far as its realization was concerned
it was certainly only the reverse side of endless non-realization, namely total peace in the
world; as in Hegel. Here the endless aspect of the approach to the ideal does admittedly
disappear, but so does every approach through the works of man to the ideal in general. The
world-process as such becomes the self-realization of the ideal aims posited within it, and
man is a mere accessory, ultimately even, as a philosopher, a mere spectator of ideals which
are supposedly realized in any case. All this therefore keeps the ideal impotent, no matter
whether in endless approach or in far too much overlapping with the world as a supposed
ideal world. In both, statics of the ideal predominates with an in itself already finished
perfection; and it is precisely against this finished aspect that utopian function has to prove
its worth here. But this probation is different from that through archetypes, it is much more
related to the material, though it also contains much more fraternal strife. It is precisely this
intended perfection, its wholly admitted anticipation, which makes the ideal accessible to
utopian treatment. Archetypes have encapsulated the anticipating element, and it has to be
blasted out; whereas ideals reveal it abstractly or statically, and it only has to be corrected.
Archetypes very often reveal hope in the profound depths and these depths in the archaic,
they are then like the sunken treasures in myth itself which rise up and sun themselves on a
midsummer's day; whereas ideals reveal their hope from the beginning in the daylight, on its
upwardly curving dome. The renewal of most archetypes is supported by Mrike's quiet line
about Orplid: 'Ancient waters rise rejuvenated around your waist, child!'; whereas the
appearance of an ideal is supported by the distinct daylight cry from Browning's 'Pippa
Passes': 'Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing,/Whence earth, we feel, gets steady
help and good / . . . All shall be mine!' There are certainly also archetypes which do not
dwell in the profound depths, dancing on the ruins of the Bastille provided the strongest
example of this, and conversely an archetype like the mother-image in Isis-Mary is at the
same time a deeply rooted ideal. But on the whole, the ideal lives purely on the Front, so
much so that its image of fulfilment appeared too distant, rather than too sunken. It is no
accident that the abstract utopias, as abstract, but equally as utopias, are essentially filled
with ideals and considerably less with archetypes, even
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with those which have straightforward revolutionary meaning. The lonely island where
Utopia supposedly lies may be an archetype, but more strongly at work within it are the ideal
forms of perfection which is striven for, as either free or ordered development of the content
of life. Utopian function therefore has to prove itself through the ideal basically along the
same lines as through utopias themselves: along the lines of concrete mediation with material
ideal-tendency in the world, as noted above. That which is ideal can by no means be
instructed and corrected by mere facts; on the contrary, it is part of its nature to exist in a
state of tension with mere factual Becomeness. And yet that which is ideal, if it is worth
anything, has contact with the process of the world, of which so-called facts are reified-fixed
abstractions. It has in its anticipations, if they are concrete, a correlate in the objective hope-
contents of the tendency-latency; this correlate makes possible ethical ideals as models,
aesthetic ones as pre-appearances which point to something that is possibly becoming real.
Such ideals, corrected and aligned by utopian function, are then collectively those of a self-
and world-content developed in terms adequate to man; thus they are which may finally
summarize and simplify the whole nature of ideals here all variations of the basic content:
highest good. Ideals relate to this supreme hope-content, possible world-content, as means to
an end; there is therefore a hierarchy of ideals, and a lower one can be sacrificed to a higher
one, because it is resurrected anyway in the realization of the higher one. For example, the
supreme variation of the highest good in the socio-political sphere is the classless society;
consequently, ideals like freedom and also equality act as means to this end, and derive their
value-content (one which in the case of freedom has been particularly ambiguous) from the
highest good in socio-political terms. In such a way that it does not merely determine the
content of the ideals as means, but also varies them according to the requirements of the
supreme end-content, and where necessary temporarily justifies the deviations. Equally, the
supreme variation of the highest good in the aesthetic sphere is immanent pre-appearance of
a humanely perfect world: consequently, all aesthetic categories bear relation to this goal and
are its variations as l'art pour l'espoir. And more audibly than in the case of archetypes,
there resounds in the ideal the answer of the subject to bad Becomeness, the tendential
answer against what is insufficient, for what is humanely appropriate. Thus when Marx says
the working-class has no ideals to realize, this anathema certainly does not apply to the
realization of tendentially concrete goals, but only to that of abstractly introduced goals, of
ideals which have no contact with history
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and process. Through Marx and Lenin, socialism has itself become a concrete ideal in each
further stage to be pursued, an ideal which, through its systematically mediated solidity,
spurs us on not less but more than the ideal which was abstract. And precisely the highest
political ideal: the realm of freedom, as political summum bonum, is so little alien to
consciously manufactured history that, as a concrete realm, it constitutes the finality of that
history, or the last chapter of the history of the world. Because an anti-summum-bonum or
In-Vain, the equally possible alternative, would not be the last chapter of this history, but
rather its deletion, and not finality, but exit to chaos. In process, there is either death without
hinterland despite human work, or there is, by virtue of human work, realism of the ideal in
its operation tertium non datur. But the activity and the separate ideal of the freedom of the
utopian function consists in objectively signifying and setting free the not yet become 'Being
as Ideal' (highest good) which develops with real possibility in dawnings, on the Front of the
process-world.
Encounter of the Utopian Function with Allegory-Symbols

There still remains the engaged glance which clearly proves its worth even through what is
not yet clear. The latter is here that not yet clear element which not only signifies its own
matter, but also at the same time another matter within it. When this element appears in
literary language, the words can certainly be sensuous and immediate, but they echo as in a
great hall. Even the proverb offers itself as multi-layered and significant, in so far as it is
capable of becoming metaphorical, in fact prefers to be so. 'Still waters run deep', this is thus
already an allegorical statement, and it is heightened in great literary metaphors. 'Poems are
painted windowpanes', this great metaphorical phrase of Goethe's splendidly conveys the
dark-brightness of signifying its own matter and at the same time another within it. Such a
phrase is a perfect allegory, though as such itself again tainted with the not yet clear element
of itself, which again is why no allegory can be perfect. For it is equivocal by definition, i.e.
the Object from which it takes its illuminating metaphor (here: the painted windowpanes) is
itself by no means unequivocal. It contains several meanings within it, even those which do
not relate to poems as comparisons, and above all it points further beyond itself, even in the
poem-relation, in the transparency-relation, between darkness and light. So no allegory is
perfect;
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if it was, if its extended relation was not one which repeatedly sends us shooting off in all
directions, but also along the same lines, to other things, then this kind of statement would
not be allegorical but symbolic. It would be so even though the then attained perfection still
remains one of what is factually not yet clear, namely one of the cloaked in the apparent, of
the apparent as something still cloaked. In this sense, compared with the symbolic, allegory
possesses a kind of wealth of vagueness; thus, in fact, its type of metaphor is inferior to the
unwavering, yet at the same time still hovering type of the symbol and of its unified point of
reference. Of course, this must not be confused with the other value-distinction between the
allegorical and the symbolic, which has been drawn in a fundamentally false way for little
more than a hundred years. According to this, the allegorical merely consisted of concepts
which are dressed up or decorated in sensory form, whereas the symbolic in fact, was
simply always based on so-called immediacy. Or as Gundolf subsequently put it so foolishly,
on the subject of Goethe whom he had Georgianized:* the young Goethe had expressed his
'original experiences' symbolically, whereas the older Goethe had only been able to convey
his so-called mere 'formative experiences' allegorically. This value distinction is not only
pointless in Goethe's case, it also follows the whole conventional fallacy concerning
allegories which has been committed since Romanticism. By virtue of the semi-allegories
defused by reason, indeed mere abstract illustrations, which in the Rococo and Louis Seize
period (as figures of virtue, of truth, of friendship and so on) were the only aspect of the
phenomenon of allegory that remained in consciousness. The Romantic devaluation of
allegories which related to this lacked the experienced knowledge of real allegory: that of the
Baroque, with its orgy of emblems, that of the Middle Ages, that of early Christian patristics.
Allegory in its heyday was by no means a dressing up of concepts in sensory form, a
decoration of abstractions, but in fact the attempt to convey a thing-meaning through other
thing-meanings, and furthermore on the basis of the opposite of abstractions: namely on the
basis of archetypes, which unite the respective metaphorical components in their meaning-
content. And likewise it is archetypes which found the resonance of meaning, though the
binding and central one, in the symbol-metaphor: not as archetypes of On The Way and
transitoriness, but of a strict Absolute or final sense. Clearly therefore, this last-mentioned
value-distinction between allegory and symbol, the only legitimate one,
*
After the manner of the poet Stefan George.
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cannot be confused with that between decorated abstractions, even of the most fixed kind,
and incarnate theophanies; their difference of status is rather one within the same field of
archetypes itself. The distinction has already been made above (cf. p. 161) that allegory
contains the archetypes of transitoriness, which is why its meaning is always directed
towards Alteritas, whereas the symbol remains consistently assigned to the Unitas of one
sense. And in the problem that now arises of an encounter of utopian function with allegory
and symbol, the category of the cipher must be stressed in both, as the formed meaning,
occurring even in real terms in objects, of the allegorical or symbolic dimensions combined
in the archetype. Accordingly, allegory through respective detail provides a cipher on to a
sense which is likewise still spread out in detail (multiplicity, Alteritas) and is to be found in
transitoriness and fragmentation. Whereas the symbol through respective detail provides a
cipher on to a unity of sense transparently appearing in detail (multiplicity, Alteritas); it is
thus focused on the unum necessarium of an arrival (landing, gathering), no longer on
temporariness, equivocalness sent hither and thither. This intention towards an arrival thus
makes the symbol binding, in contrast to allegories, which shift as they flourish and are at the
mercy of the continuing uncertainty of the path. Which ultimately means that allegory is
essentially at home in art which is rich in figures and in polytheistic religions, whereas the
symbol essentially belongs to great simplicity in art and to heno- and monotheistic religions.
Anticipation has something to announce in both, because in both it announces itself. This is
simultaneously something sealed that reveals itself and something revealing, opening, that
still seals itself up, because especially in the symbol the time is not yet ripe, the process
has not yet been won, the matter pending within it (the sense) has not yet been produced and
decided. Thus there is an encounter, founded in the substance itself, of utopian functions with
allegory and symbol; it is the objective signification itself in which the utopian function here
encounters itself. To repeat: every metaphor that remains in multiplicity, Alteritas, represents
an allegory, as it does in the following: 'The oak stood in its misty shroud/a giant towering to
the skies/where darkness from the bushes glowered/with hundred black and gloomy eyes.'* If
however the metaphor expresses unity, central things in general, if it converges towards these
with an unquestionable certainty which is beginning to appear, even though it is still
*
From Goethe's poem 'Willkommen und Abschied' a later version of 'Es schlug mein Herz . . . ', 1771.
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cloaked, then symbolism is achieved unequivocally, as it is in the following: 'Above all

summits there is peace.'* And the form of both is that dialectical form which Goethe called, in
a phrase which itself has a dialectical tension, 'a public mystery', precisely as a still
continuing merging of what is opened and what is cloaked, what has not yet been removed
from the cloak. But in such a way that in all genuine, i.e. also objectively accurate
allegories, especially symbols the 'public mystery' is not only one for human interpretation,
owing to inadequate powers of comprehension for example, but equally constitutes real
qualities of meaning in the outside world independent of human beings; hence the tendency-
forms of the characteristically typical which signifies itself in its respective appearances,
hence the whole dialectical experiment of the world with forms of existence (with figures) on
its still latent central figure. It is also instructive to compare this really public element of a
mystery with Goethe's so realistic world-opening: the entelechies developing in the shape of
life in the world are all so many living, object-based existing allegories and symbols. Thus
this cipher also exists in reality; not merely in allegorical and symbolic designations of this
reality: and such real-ciphers exist precisely because the world-process itself is a utopian
function, with the matter of the objectively Possible as its substance. The utopian function of
humanly conscious planning and change here represents only the most advanced, most active
outpost of the aurora-function circulating in the world: of the nocturnal day in which all real-
ciphers, i.e. process-forms still occur and are located. The allegorical formation of figures,
the symbolic formation of goals, thus in fact show everything transitory as a metaphor,** but
as one which is a separate real path of meaning. Every apt metaphor is therefore at the same
time one depicting reality, to the same extent as it is full of objective utopian function in the
direction of its meaning, and is full of real-cipher in the form of its meaning. And the symbol,
in final contrast to the allegory, proves its worth from this standpoint as an attempted
transition from metaphor to equation, i.e. to the attempted identity of inwardness and
outwardness. And it is in fact part of the honesty of the statement itself that the unum
necessarium (highest good) of such an identity-content has always first appeared in the voice
of a Chorus Mysticus, and not yet with that adequate predication, object-based
successfulness, which is the frontier-goal and the final task of world enlightenment. Longing,
anticipation,
*
From Goethe's poem, 'Wanderers Nachtlied', 1780.
**
Cf. Lines from the Chorus Mysticus at the end of Goethe's 'Faust', Part II, 121045.
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distance, still continuing cloakedness, these are determinations in the subject and the object
of the allegorical-symbolic. They are determinations of a by no means permanent kind, but
tasks directed towards the growing illumination of what is still indeterminate within it, in
short, towards the growing resolution of the symbolic. But it is precisely realistic tendency-
knowledge, with the conscience of latency within it, which has to do justice to what is termed
a public mystery.
16
Utopian Image-Trace in Realization Egyptian and Trojan Helen
But does the deed come, as the sun comes from the clouds,
From the thought perhaps, spiritual and ripe?
Does the fruit follow, as from the grove's
Dark leaf, the silent script?
Hlderlin
Dreams Want to Drift

How long does it keep on pointing only forwards in us? Wishing does want something, is not
just anyhow, only rarely torments empty. If it hurries to land however, does the drive which
is working within it arrive? The drive perhaps can surprisingly be gratified for a time, as any
craving can to begin with. Nothing is of more indifference to the sated man than a piece of
bread, nothing is more out-of-date to the curious man than the newspaper he has just read.
Behind this, however, everything rises again, there are, beginning with hunger, wishes that
are never cooled. And the images which even a self-gratifying wish has visualized
occasionally hang in the air, as if they could not condense and fall. The wish and will
towards them lives on, they themselves live on. Not even everything in fulfillable dreams
always arrives when they land on level ground; often a trace remains. It is airy, windy even,
but is stronger than flesh, is nevertheless noticeable. A man awaits a girl, the room is full of
tender unrest; the last light of evening is in it, heightens the tension. If, however, the girl he is
hoping for crosses the threshold and everything is all right, everything is there, then hoping
itself is no longer there, it has vanished. It no longer has
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anything to say and yet it still carried something with it which does not make itself known in
the existing pleasure. Complete congruence has rarely, probably never, entered. In the dream
of something, before the heart refreshes itself, things were better or appeared to be so.
Non-Satisfaction and What Can Lie within It

It is not always possible even to pluck a Now that has come. The flesh can be weak, but there
is often a more sophisticated reason. All the more dubiously in fact, even in a good situation,
if too many dreams are added beforehand, too many overhauling dreams. Then the
imagination has used up the material of the imminent experience for itself, in love as in every
kind of debut. Stendhal's essay 'On Love' achieves its famous diagnosis of the fiasco from
this premise. According to Stendhal, immediate happiness occurs only where a man
possesses a woman without delay, that is: in the moment of desiring her. Certain happiness in
love is then only guaranteed 'if a lover has not yet had time to long for the woman and to
work on her in his imagination'. In fact, Stendhal does not even need the full play of the
imagination to explain a remaining behind reality; he ventures the proposition: 'As soon as a
single grain of passion comes into the heart, there is also a grain, a possibility of fiasco.' And
further, with dangerous, unnerving creation of stage-fright: 'The higher a man's love is, the
more he must force himself before he dares to touch his loved one intimately. He imagines he
will anger a being which appears to him as something divine, which inspires in him both
boundless love and boundless respect . . . Thus the soul is filled with shame and preoccupied
with overcoming this shame; the road to bliss is blocked.' We may compare with this the
reluctance of Romantic poets to allow their heavenly images of femininity to fall into
experience, to see them fall, especially in E. T. A. Hoffmann. The Romantic hatred of
marriage derives not least from a stock of dreams which becomes inexhaustible and reified:
'The magic is destroyed', exclaims an artist in Hoffmann's 'Fermate' with over-sexual fiasco
in mind, 'and the inner melody, which otherwise announces marvellous things, becomes a
row over a smashed soup-dish'. The same tragi-comedy is suggested in a conversation of the
conductor Kreisler with the princess in Hoffmann's 'Kater Murr'; Kreisler praises the 'real
musicians' who do not want to make love like the good people who desecrate dreams in their
marriage-bed. However, in order that the artists do not appear
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either as eccentric or even as incapable of love, Kreisler compares them to minnesingers,

courtliness, the cult of the Virgin and continues on the subject of the 'real musicians': 'They
bear their chosen lady in their hearts and want nothing more than to sing, to write, to paint in
her honour, in short, in their most exquisite Courtoisie, they are comparable to the gallant
knights. In fact, several husbands have experienced the end that comes with realization, even
if they were no Kreislers; this happened to a real composer, and moreover one of the most
Romantic, Hector Berlioz, in exactly the way Kreisler envisaged. There was even a stage
available here on which the idol shone with double radiance: Berlioz fell in love with a
young English actress who portrayed Shakespeare's maidens and noble women. This Juliet,
Ophelia, Desdemona enhanced her brilliance by rebuffing all approaches and consequently
became all the more destructively radiant for Berlioz. Fearing that the desperate lover might
take his life, his friends Chopin and Liszt spent a whole night searching the plain of St
Quentin in the direction of which Berlioz, quite out of his mind, had been seen rushing off.
However, some years later, when the now famous composer succeeded in winning his
beloved, when his idol became his wife, the previously so violent love collapsed with its
realization (which may have brought more than just 'smashed soup-dishes' with it). Madame
was no match for the dream-image which she had infused into a young man from the stage.
Experience was not forbearing with hope, but this hope was not forbearing with experience
either; and the latter became exaggeratedly disappointing.
First Reason for Disappointment:

Happiness is There Where You Are Not;* Second Reason:
Dream Rendered Independent and the Legend of the Double Helen
The first underlying factor here is that the Here and Now stands too close to us. Raw
experience transposes us from the drifting dream into another state: into that of immediate
nearness. The moment just lived dims as such, it has too dark a warmth, and its nearness
makes things formless. The Here and Now lacks the distance which does indeed alienate us,
but makes things distinct and surveyable. Thus, from the outset, the immediate
*
G. P. Schmidt von Lmbeck, 'Des Fremdlings Abendlied', and in Schubert's 'Wanderer'.
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dimension within which realization occurs seems darker than the dream-image, and
occasionally barren and empty. Even if boundless imagination has not washed away the soil
on which the realization stands, if the meeting with reality also takes place, even then the
paradox can occur that the dream appeared firmer or at any rate brighter than its realization.
The shining cloud settles around us as a grey mist when it comes nearer; the distant blue of
the mountains vanishes completely when we reach them. Tamino in the 'Magic Flute', a
fairytale opera, supposedly sees Pamina in the courtyard of Sarastro's castle exactly as she
looks in her picture. Yet, despite his happy cry: 'It's her!', the question arises whether it really
is her, whether the feeling expressed in Tamino's nostalgic song 'This likeness is enchanting',
whether this utopian imagination, with its imago, has found and could find its fulfilment in
such a perfect original. We may compare with this image-blue two tests which, as in the case
of Berlioz, have taken place, have happened in life, and in fact to such diverse personalities
as the distraught lyric poet Lenau on the one hand, the vain and strict Christologian
Kierkegaard on the other; but it was the same catastrophe with the mirage. Lenau travelled to
America, desiring not least to have the image of his bride more intensely present through
separation than if he had her beside him; he returned home dissatisfied with the mere image,
his desire for the original reinforced, but then he wrote the following poem entitled 'Change
of Longing':
Yet how long that journey seemed to me,
how I longed to return so fearfully
from the wide and foreign wastes of foam
to the dear and distant coast of home.
Welcomed by the land I longed to reach,

jubilant I sprang at last upon the beach,
like the evergreen dreams of younger days
home's familiar trees greeted my gaze.
Purer than ever rang the bird-song here,

sweet and intimate upon my ear;
gladly, after the pains of being apart,
I'd have taken every stone there to my heart.
You instead I found, and on a dying beat

all my joy sank down there at your feet,
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in my heart all there was to be found

was the hopelessness of love unbound.
O and how I long again in fear to ride

out upon your murky swirling tide!
How I wish I were forever on the wild sea
with your image alone for company!
So much for Lenau and his incapacity for real reunion: Pamina crumbled immediately here at
close quarters. This kind of love has the solemn vanity of being in love with itself; it is a feast
that can never experience a Monday. For exactly the same reason, Kierkegaard, the all too
absolute lover, also remained on the high seas with the image alone for company.
Kierkegaard broke off his engagement with his fiance Regine Olsen, Regine took one of her
previous admirers as a husband, and Kierkegaard wrote in his diary: 'Today I saw a pretty
girl and was not interested. No husband can be more faithful to his wife than I am to her.'
And he continued, in the adopted mask of the lecher and equally that of the ascetic: 'She has
grasped the point well that she has to marry.' There is the craziest criss-crossing of
Platonisms here: there is the love-ideal of the troubadour and the ascetic love of the Virgin,
but there is also the removal of Pamina to an image-horizon as her idea-based home. The
Platonist, even the homo religiosus Kierkegaard does not always deny himself the present,
but he confines himself to the absolute, just as the absolute reserves the present for itself: 'For
with regard to the absolute, there is only one time: the present; the absolute does not even
exist at all for anyone who is not contemporary with it.' Consequently, according to
Kierkegaard, not only is the unconditional present of love very difficult to attain, but also,
wholly in keeping, that of Christian imitation, Christian love: 'There have been no Christians
since the days of the Apostles.' The fact that here, both in the relationship to the so-called
absolute and especially to our neighbour, nothing more than horizonless inwardness
appeared: this deep loss does not dispel the power of Kierkegaard's aporia concerning
realization. Present means probation here, and, in Kierkegaard, it suits the reactionary
mandate in Romanticism to represent the probation precisely before high ideals, i.e. those
that are sometimes uncomfortable for existing society, as being as difficult as possible. In
relation to the society of his time, Kierkegaard's ideals were certainly only paradoxical and
anything but revolutionary: nevertheless, this probation scruple made absolute does suit very
well not
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even in a paradoxical way the reactionary defeatism concerning the (abandoned) ideals of
the formerly revolutionary bourgeoisie itself. Thus the bourgeois 'resigned' himself to paying
lip-service to liberty, equality, fraternity; but in this way social democracy, by 'idealizing' its
supposed socialism to the extreme, also avoided the realization of a society in which people
again with absolute idealization would supposedly have to become angels and, more
significantly, would already have had to act like angels previously. And yet there is also real
seriousness concealed in the continuing brilliance of the great image confronted with the
Here and Now of its content; otherwise this seriousness could not be misused. That which is
realized immediately, perfectly, with skin and hair, with flesh and bones, that which leaves
no trace in the midst of our prehistory, of our sphere of being which has still developed so
little towards complete Being-Here, is also hardly likely to appear as the right thing
immediately to the scheming realist, whom no absolute demand makes bankrupt. This is in
fact the unromantic trace and core in Kierkegaard, even in Lenau's so eccentric, in fact
defeatist and impotent scrupulousness, a trace which elsewhere precisely caution notices in
hope. Hence hope makes us mistrustful justly and with precision, in fact with the highest
kind of conscience: that of the goal of every realization that offers itself all too plumply;
apotheoses are also always flat and decorative to a consciousness that does not esteem
Kierkegaard's abstract radicalisms. Even such a perfect music of fulfilment as that which
resounds in Beethoven's 'Fidelio' when Leonora takes the chains off Florestan, even this
unearthly happy music does not mediatize the previous music of hope. 'A brilliant rainbow
shines before me which brightly rests upon dark clouds above' this earlier song of
Leonora's has a special kind of happiness about it, even though it comes out of the middle of
the night. 'Come, o hope, do not let the last star of the weary pale, illuminate my goal, no
matter how far, love will not fail' the music of this pure prayer to hope does not completely
pale before the fulfilled jubilation with which the opera 'Fidelio' closes and releases us. Of
course, Leonora's aria of hope has none of the depth which subsequently appears at the
moment of realized hope, at the moment when the chains are taken off, in the almost
stationary mysticism of this moment, but it does nevertheless retain an unsunken rainbow,
with a space which seems open. Thus nearness makes things difficult; hope, at least the
presentiment of the imminent entrance of what has been hoped for, often still appears easier,
even more filling than this nearness.
Secondly, the all too distantly drifting and resonating flight makes things
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difficult here. It is the life in the dream that has become independent, a life that longingly
augments itself. This life will not die of fulfilment, does not want to quit its long-familiar
stage without leaving a trace. Not even when dream-content and fulfilment appear to be as
congruent as is humanly possible; even then something which has become an idol does not
withdraw as a matter of course. In fact, the anomaly is possible that the idol posits itself as
solely real, and then the fulfilment itself acts as a phantom. The motif of this rendered
independence, which is not normal and yet threatens every wishful-image, is conceived in the
legend of the Egyptian Helen. A drama by Euripides deals with this peculiar, in fact
essentially fragmentary material; the material subsequently deserved a Shakespeare, but did
not even find a Hebbel.* Eventually, Hofmannsthal did base an opera libretto on it, which is
of little significance without Strauss's music,** and an essay as well. The myth itself is one of
the most true-to-life, even most important, which is to be found on the utopia-reality road.
Hofmannsthal tells us the following about it: 'We are in Egypt or on the island of Pharos
which belongs to Egypt, before a king's castle. Menelaus appears, alone on the return journey
from Troy. His ship has been drifting for months, blown from shore to shore, continually
driven away from home. He has left behind Helen, the wife he has won back, in a concealed
bay with his warriors; he is looking for advice, for help, an oracle which will instruct him
how to find the way home. Then from the colonnade of the castle Helen approaches him,
not the beautiful, all too notorious one whom he has left behind on the ship, but a different
one, and yet the same. And she claims to be his wife the other one left behind on the ship is
nobody, means nothing, a phantom, a delusion, put into Paris' arms at the time by Hera (the
protectress of marriage) to fool the Greeks. Ten years of war have been waged for the sake of
this phantom, tens of thousands of the best men have fallen, the most flourishing city in Asia
has been reduced to ashes. But meanwhile she, Helen, the only real one, carried across the
sea by Hermes, has been living here in this royal castle.' So she has lived purely, secluded,
faithfully, the most beautiful woman, but one who knows nothing of Paris, the Helen without
Trojan war, not the monstrous cocotte, not the idol who was present during all the fighting,
not the prize of victory. The change is too abrupt, the withdrawal of the idol too extensive for
Menelaus to be able to believe
*
Freidrich Hebbel, 181363, German dramatist.
**
Richard Strauss' opera 'Die gyptische Helena'.
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it immediately, in fact to want to believe it. Ten years' fixation on the Trojan Helen stand in
the way of the Egyptian one; even Euripides has Menelaus say in similar vein: 'I trust the
weight of sufferings endured more than I trust you!' Menelaus turns to go, but then a
messenger comes from the ship and reports that the being that had been taken for Helen had
dissolved into fiery air on the ship. After which as little doubt about the mere phantom-
existence of the Trojan cocotte remains as about the reality of the Egyptian woman of virtue:
the former a streak of fiery air (but still glowing as it vanishes, perishes), the latter a
corporeal entity, solely real. In fact, in Euripides, Menelaus has to accept this explanation and
takes the Egyptian and not the Trojan Helen home with him, to the royal court at Sparta
where she is also depicted by Homer in the fourth canto of the Odyssey. Not greatly admired
or admonished, but as an aristocratic lady of the manor reigning in peace, whose mind is
hardly troubled by any memory of Troy. Except by a brief and smiling memory, by a
memory which is not so much expressed with flippancy as with detachment (Od. IV. l. 145):
Menelaus' wife mentions that the Acheans had to besiege Troy because of her enticing dog-
gaze ( ) (the bitch is an old allegory for the hetairan). Elsewhere she
pretends to have wept over the misery that she has caused and lays all the blame on
Aphrodite who abducted her (ll. 25164) quite distantly, just as if she had been the
Egyptian Helen all along. Thus far everything appears to be all right, not only on the ship but
also in Sparta; Menelaus is envied his great goddess of love, he is congratulated on having a
wife who has remained virtuous. While at the real heart of the matter the following has taken
place: the Trojan or dream-Helen has the advantage over the Egyptian one that she has been
inhabiting a dream for ten years, in fact has fulfilled the dream as a dream figure. In fact,
the later real fulfilment can match this only with difficulty, or at least not completely: the
luminous trace of the dream remains, a streak of fiery air remains, the mirage becomes
independent. Because the object of the real fulfilment was itself not present during the
adventures, in contrast to the dream-object; the realized represents a very late acquaintance.
Only the Trojan, not the Egyptian Helen followed the colours, has absorbed the longing of
ten utopian years, the bitterness and the love-hatred of the cuckold, the many nights far from
home, the rough field-camp and the sweet foretaste of victory. Precisely because of this the
balance easily shifts: the airy siren in Troy, with whom a world of guilt, suffering, but above
all hope is associated, remains almost the real object in this curious aporia, reality almost
becomes a phantom.
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Quite apart from the cocottish glamour of the Trojan Helen, the Egyptian one does not have
the utopian glamour of the Trojan one in her favour, she did not go along with the longing of
the voyage, the adventures of the campaign, the wishful image of conquest; consequently the
Egyptian reality as such appears to be of lesser dimensions. At least the destruction of the
imagination by realization (even if by its own realization which fulfils it) creates deficiency
symptoms in the latter case which reduce consciousness of the realization itself, where they
do not in fact make this relative itself. The Egyptian Helen can have many names her
Euripides problem, which does not only appear in literary and antiquarian contexts, is
consequently representative. It is to a great extent threatening, as reification of the goal-
dream, or at least as the continuation of this goal-dream which has become like reality. In
each fulfilment, in so far and in as much as this is even possible totaliter, there remains a
peculiar element of hope whose mode of being is not that of the existing or currently existing
reality, and which is consequently left over together with its content. However, of course: it
is, if it is not abstract but runs along the concrete line of extension of what it has overhauled,
never quite outside the objectively possible in reality; instead this Trojan Helen-like element
is also provisionally dotted in outline in Helen. Otherwise it would not have found any space
in her at all, and no credibility for the universally desired object, the goal of the struggle. And
furthermore: the imago which can be kindled on an object, as one which continues to hover
towards attainment, is also not in the air, but possibly in the real-utopian possibility of the
object itself which points even further. Only there can the full congruence of intention-
content and content of attainedness be latent, that is, the identity of the identical and of the
non-identical (the latter understood here as intention-distance, as hope-distance). Rest,
however, is the day when the Egyptian Helen also contains the glamour around the Trojan
one.
Objection to the First and Second Reason:

Odyssey of Quiescence
But dreaming in no way wants to point forwards continually. The drive behind it is definitely
not sated by purely pictured material. Even dreaming itself does not aim at dream in such a
way that it only takes pleasure in images. In waking dreams people enjoy instead the
imagination of how it would be if there were something like what is dreamed, that is, if it
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were to become real. Thus even subjectively there is a counterweight to the reification of the
dream and to the hoping which does not arrive itself in arrival, but rather, in the double sense
of the word, remains behind. The counterweight is posited in the That of the intending, in the
wish and will to become real itself. The dream as such does not realize itself, that is a minus,
but flesh and bones are added to it, that is a compensating plus. There are also well-known
cases where what is wished for, when it appears, may not only surprise us by the force of its
landing, its quiescence, its realization, but even by a certain surplus of content which was not
dreamed. The blossom as such may no longer be in the fruit, but then the fruitful as such was
not in the blossom either; and the previous dream-road can appear shorter than the real road
which is now being trodden. Thus the darkness of the Here and, Now, even the loss of the
dream-colour itself, are sometimes overemphasized, as if neither were present. As if there
were already fulfilment toto coelo, experienced as present, in the existing aggregate state of
being real. Hope then apparently no longer needs to be disappointed by privation, any more
than experience needs to lack forbearance with hope. The feeling of first love is relevant
here, when all buds burst, the feeling of thrilling encounter, enthusiastically experienced time
of change, time of greatness. In this context the testimony of Gottfried yon Strassburg
concerning Isolde is still noteworthy, i.e. present, in fact reminding us of Helen, the most
beautiful of women:
This madness I have now forsaken, by Isolde it was taken,
so henceforth I might not fancy that I saw the sun rise from Mycenae.
Such splendour never dawned in Greece so clear, it first dawns here!
We may take the liberty of applying this consciousness of Gottfried's also to his other
Greece, to a work-based super-Greece of his time, for example to Strasbourg cathedrah: its
inscription in the mind of the contemporary onlooker. Pride in works in general is capable of
great presence, in the spirit of the producer, on the day of completion, when the sun for
which a vigil is so often kept rises like a crown. This moment appears most clearly, endlessly
anticipated and yet succeeding in the end, in Klopstock, after the completion of the Messias:
I have reached the goal, the goal! and feel where I am
My whole soul is alive! It will be thus (I speak humanly
Of divine things) for us one day, you brothers of the Man
Who died and rose again, on our arrival in Heaven!
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All this seems like historical presence of mind per se, like quiescence, which nevertheless
seems to contain the whole of the previous odyssey. Klopstock's comparison itself points to
that strongest example of landing which was mythically described in the unio mystica: no
expectation remains behind in the face of it, no intention persists, not even that of the sursum
corda, and definitely no distance.
And yet even here a trace emerges again in the long run, one that has never disappeared.
Since all these contacts are not yet such, even the glance at them is still merely preview, even
the feeling that they arouse, merely presentiment. Little more repose is achieved through this
than the darkness of the Here and Now together with the loss of the dream-colour being
briefly over-emphasized in what is reached. Even in such culminations, however
Klopstockian, all that remains objectively justified is after all only Faust's presentiment of a
supreme moment. It remains the journeying odyssey, and thus an odyssey of quiescence
cannot yet succeed, with identity of its arrival and its journey-content. The presentiment
itself, which is thoroughly related to attainability and arrival, is of course extremely
important; since corresponding to it is the That-tendency, aimed at realization and positing
realization, of the waking dream and its anticipatory perfection. In no way does the so-called
endless approach to the ideal smuggle itself in again here, that kind of scruple which is not
really serious about realization. However, the opposite to the endless approach is not in fact
sheer presence, not the claimed total successfulness of the arrival in the goal, but rather the
opposite is the finiteness of the process and of the consequently at least surveyable
anticipation distance to the goal. This genuine presentiment, that is, one which implies an
attainable final state, undoubtedly fills most broadly, most democratically, and most
humanely the immense moments of the happily begun, then victoriously celebrating
revolution. But again only, and here precisely only in such a way that it does not rest on the
laurels of the present, but that instead, in the still so pressing achievement of victory, this
victory is properly grasped as task and thus the happy present is simultaneously grasped as
pledge for the future. Revolutions realize the oldest hopes of mankind: for this very reason
they imply, demand the ever more precise concretion of what is intended as the realm of
freedom and of the unfinished journey towards it. Only if a being like utopia itself
(consequently the still completely outstanding kind of reality: successfulness) were to seize
the driving-content of the Here and Now, would be the basic state of mind of this driving:
hope, also be totally included in the successfulness of reality. Until this possible fulfilment
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the intention waking-dream-world is in progress; no part payment allows it to be forgotten.

No making absolute of a mere presentiment may allow us to forget the mindfulness in this
intention. For it is the mindfulness of the basic content in our driving, a content which has
not yet entered into our consciousness at all, let alone into successfulness, which, for
precisely this reason, still lies in utopia. The highest conscientiousness of this mindfulness is
set down in the words of the psalm: 'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning.'* Even without religious accents, even without contrasting accents towards a so-
called exile of existence, a realization has never yet been made absolute without a final part
of its waking dream being left over, and therefore moved on further beyond the attained to its
possible Being-even-better. A new peak appears behind the previously attained one: this plus
ultra consequently does not let the realization weaken, but makes it sharper towards its
purpose. Anyway the duration, the non-renunciation of the image of hope, have their origin
in the enduring problem: realization and in the reasons for this problem itself.
Third Reason for Utopian Trace-Images:

The Aporias of Realization
Even in the entrance of something there is still a something which remains behind itself. The
doer and the doing of the work of realization are not completely carried out, they live on to
themselves. They remain absent from the deed which frees itself from them, as the tool
remains absent from the finished machine or the poet from his poem. And in every
fulfilment, even in the one which seems, so to speak, similar to the point of confusion to the
goal-image, there lies an unfinished piece of work of the active element which becomes a
burden on the weakness of the realization, the quantitative as well as the qualitative
weakness. From the quantitative weakness derives the compulsive will to continue work
endlessly; against this will the Roman counsel is issued: manum de tabula. ** From the
qualitative weakness derives the decision to begin even a finished work from the very
beginning again, in accordance with an image of perfection which has grown up alongside
the growing work itself and thus seems to be doubly unrealized. Therein lies the cause of a
fiasco and of an Egyptian Helen problem in this sphere too. Hoffmann's fantasy-piece 'Ritter
Gluck' allows the composer of the 'Armida' (or the madman who wants to embody him) to go
around even after his death
*
Psalms 137, 5.
**
'Hands from the writing tablet'.
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'somewhat diminished' so that he can play 'Armida' again, 'to a higher degree, as it were', can
play it as if it came 'out of the kingdom of dreams'. The quantitative and most definitely the
qualitative deficit in the act of realization itself has hardly been thought through
philosophically until now: and this in spite of the overwhelming internal, external experience
of it. One reason for this lies in the fact that human activity as such only became conscious of
itself at a late stage. Work was the business of slaves and manual workers, thought took only
brief notice of its completion, realization. Creating and knowing were considered in antiquity
as pure depicting of something given, passive looking is dominant, the work merely traces
over it. Even in the ethical sphere: according to Socrates no-one can do wrong voluntarily,
knowledge of the good inevitably posits the doing of it. Thus there is here neither a defiance
of what has been morally demonstrated nor a will towards it; the realizing is so passive and
therein so apparently self-evident that it is not even named, let alone thought. This minimal
regard for the separate, active act of realization did not change fundamentally either when in
more recent times the homo faber, the maker, the entrepreneur, producer were thoroughly
reconsidered philosophically. In fact, since the act of generation was exclusively rationalized,
i.e. was understood as a purely logical action, the rationalistic, if not panlogical ideology
supplied a further motive as regards the non-reflection of the realization. At that time, in
rationalism, after many re-qualifications of this 'construction', world-formation itself
ultimately developed out of the idea of generation, understood initially purely in
mathematical terms, which only posits and defines formal objects. It is still a predominantly
formal world-formation, i.e. orientated towards mathematics, as in Kant, where reason makes
the world of experience. Then generation became experimental in terms of content,
orientated towards artistic production; as in Schelling, in that spontaneity here not only
dictates nature's laws, but as nature productive with consciousness creates nature, i.e.
animates it to become free and sends it into its separate development. And generation finally
became completely experimental in terms of content in Hegel, orientated towards history and
its genesis, in that here all the form-contents of the world were supposed to arise dialectically
out of 'sound, continually governing reason'. This is therefore in nuce the classical-idealistic
notion of generation, of origin, of reality-formation, and evidently it does not do much more
justice to the problem of realization, although this was seen, than antiquity did. Because even
here realization does not appear as a separate act, it simply appears as an automatically
unfolding logos. The cognition-ground remains the same as the real-ground; because the real-
ground is itself only a logical-
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panlogical one, one inside the world-thought of which the whole world ultimately consists in
Hegel. And above all: the ancient passivity of realizing is not abandoned despite the homo
faber and his philosophy: the pan-logos repeatedly ties generating into a mere process of
revelation. This means: to contemplative thinking as a whole (and all idealistic thinking is
contemplative) realization remains mere 'embodiment' of a goal-idea, an automatically
existing and a finished one, so to speak, which is simply clothed with flesh by the doer or
creator. The realization comes out of the logical consistency of the matter itself here; it
comes out of this even in the only thinker who, although he lived in antiquity, did at least
make realization into a category, even if not into a problem: in Aristotle. He saw the various
disruptions of Realization,* and yet despite this he entrusted it, in fact in a particularly whole-
hearted way, to the idea which had become 'entelechy', as its most characteristic concern.
According to Aristotle, realization is solely self-realization of the form-idea or entelechy
which is inherent in things; the entelechy is thus itself the energy (or the actus) towards its
Realization. However, a not so logical element manifests itself in the first thinker of
realization as well: in fact a not so logical element which attempts to do justice from afar to
the disruptions, perhaps even aporias of realization. Aristotle lays the existing unfinished
piece of work of realization which remains behind the entelechy to the charge of
mechanical matter, in so far as this despatches 'disrupting subsidiary causes' into the
entelechetic purpose-causes. In this way what is not defined, what is contingent in nature
arises, together with capricious fate in the sphere of intentional occurrence, of history. An
idea which does at least confront the problem, even though it is an idealistic idea, and how
close Goethe's notion in Faust is to it: 'The finest things the spirit could receive,/By strange
and stranger matter are besieged;' ** How close to it even Hegel's notion is, despite all its
confinement of non-panlogicality to nature: 'This contingency is greatest in the realm of
concrete structures which, however, are only directly concrete as natural things . . . Nature is
powerless to keep conceptual definitions merely abstract and to expose the elaboration of the
particular to external definability' (Enzyklopdie, 230). And yet even here the problem of
realization proves not to be posed in terms of and within itself, rather it is shifted on to a
scapegoat: on to mechanical matter or, in Hegel, on to the Being-besideitself of the whole of
nature itself, as the 'unresolved contradiction'.
*
Bloch uses two terms for 'to realize' here, 'verwirklichen' and 'realisieren'. We have indicated the latter
and its compounds by capitalizing it.
**
'Faust', Part 1, 6345.
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But do not the doer and the doing besiege each other in a strange and stranger way? This is a
thought which would like to get to the still dark heart of the process of realization as such.
That is why, finally, we cannot leave memories from the history of philosophy concerning
Realization and its weakness without a gesture in the direction of the later Schelling, who
was the only philosopher who did in fact wish to tear the problem of Realization away from
total rationalism, though instead he consigned it to incurable mythology: the mythology of
the Fall of Man and of the fall of Lucifer. According to the later Schelling, its quod or its
That-existence and entry-origin do not at all follow from the quid or the rationally graspable
essence of a matter. Instead: the becoming real of the idea is, in its immemorial origin,
particular will, a 'falling away from the idea', and indeed a will which already occurs in God
himself, in the fathomless ground or non-ground of the divine ground. Schelling's work
'Philosophy and Religion' thus combines the logos as creator and places a kind of original
crime, the dark-evil particular will, at the source of being: 'In a word, there is no constant
transition from the absolute to the real, the origin of the world of the senses is only
conceivable as complete breaking-away from absoluteness, by means of a leap' (Werke VI, p.
38). Thus Schelling in fact transferred realization on to a separate sheet from that written on
by the idea; it ceases to be a mere manifestation-function of the objectively logical. The price
that was paid for this reference of the logical to something volitional and That-intensive was
of course that the realization was both housed in mythology and literally sent to the devil
inside this mythology. To which must be added: not only the irrational first impetus given to
the world, but also every individual realization in the world generates, according to
Schelling, nothing but discord and irregularity, abortion, illness and death, since it runs on
from that irrational impetus. So this is how far Schelling tore the realizing element and the
idea apart, and how senselessly and totally he made the aporias of realization itself absolute
to the point of insolubility. And neither did Schelling dissolve the traditional connection of
Realizing with a finished, merely to be manifested idea. The connection was only expressed
as a negative one: the evil particular will realizes what is opposed to the good universal will.
Open horizon is not granted here either to the Realization factor or to its goal-image, any
more than it is in the optimists of the incarnation. These then are the reasons why the
quantitative and qualitative weakness of realization is still really uninvestigated. Obviously,
its aporias from the unfinished piece of work to the still present non-congruence
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of even the best realization with the goal-image cannot be investigated at all outside the
context of the utopia problem. All the less so since such varied utopian elements are left over
in realized material and re-emerge afterwards, pursuing new goals.
We said that even in the entrance of something there was still something that remains behind
itself. Something about it darkens and cannot completely free itself from this Not, this Not-
there in the midst of the immediate nearness of occurrence. We have already identified above
the dimming of the just lived moment, and precisely this dimness makes it difficult, in the
most immediate way, to experience something that has entered wholly as such. At the same
time, however, this most immediate thing in itself is nothing other than the driving force, the
That-factor, consequently the intensive aspect of the realizing element itself. And this
realizing element still stands squarely in the Not-Having of its act and content; the darkness
of the just lived moment illustrates precisely this Not-Having-Itself of the realizing element.
And it is in fact this still unattained aspect in the realizing element which primarily also
overshadows the Here and Now of something realized. Therein therefore lies the ultimate,
the principal solution of the Not-, Not-Yet-Carpe diem, definitely without romanticisms:
what is realized is brilliant and slightly in shadow at the same time, because in the realizing
element itself there is something that has not yet realized itself. The unrealized Realizing
element brings its own most peculiar minus into the plus of the Realization as soon as the
latter occurs. This is the primary reason why, as Goethe says, nearness makes things difficult;
also why a fulfilment which appears to be sufficiently perfect rebus sic stantibus still equally
brings a melancholy of fulfilment along with it. And why the preceding goal-image, with its
utopianly anticipated substance, may not enter completely into the fulfilment, and thus,
driving on further, often even driving on into senselessness, is left over. After all, the wish-
or goal-content itself did not lie in the nearness which belongs to the attainment of the goal;
precisely the far goal-content was still outside the darkness of the just lived moment on
account of its distance, on account of its being kept away from the Here and Now. When,
however, what has been utopianly anticipated moves into what is realized, it also
simultaneously moves up into the shadow of that most central immediacy which, being that
of the realizing element, is itself not yet cleared. From this primary reason, at the same time
in a wider context, the whole twilight follows in which the process of realization also still lies
and must lie, which is the process of history. Since it is still an undecided process, on account
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of its not yet realized driving- and origin-content, its outflow can just as easily be Nothing as
All, just as easily total In-Vain as total success. And just as, cheeringly, there is a sudden
flash of the possible All in this so dark-bright dappled world, so too, threateningly,
darkenings of the possible Nothing loom. Though far from being the case that Being is
centred in death, there is still a hint of negation circulating in the air, without any joking,
even without automatic negation of negation. Every mortal danger belongs to it and every
individual death, the millions of young people who fell in the World Wars belong to it and
the pervasive imbecility which has learnt nothing from them. These are the delays or
frustrations which interrupt the conditions of positive realization; also, since the Not in the
Not-Having-Itself of the realizing element can equally lead to the non-realization of the
essential tendency-content, and ultimately Realization-content, this threatening circulation of
In-Vain and Nothing already generates the disruption, otherwise expressed as the resistance
in the material, otherwise expressed as the gigantic sleep of stupidity or disparateness in the
so hazardous straits of our process-world. This circulation of Nothing is what Aristotle
wrongly laid to the charge of mechanical matter. What Schelling even wished to displace as
old Satan from reason and to place in the primal ground of the world. Both were looking for
a scapegoat for imperfection in their completed world, that is, a world already statically
defined to an end. Conversely, insight into process as something undecided with Nothing or
All in its real end-possibility needs no scapegoat, either with regard to the existing
unfinished piece of work or to the not wholly redeemed goal-image in its best conceivable
fulfilment. Instead: not yet emerged realizedness of the realizing element and closely
associated with it not yet discovered, positively manifested, realized Absolute and Essence,
these are the elements in the aporias of realization. Only if a Being were like utopia, if
consequently the still completely outstanding kind of reality of successfulness had made the
driving-content of the Here and Now itself radically present, would the basic stock of this
driving: hope be wholly included as such in the realized reality. The content of what has been
realized would then be the content of the realizing element itself, the What-Essence
(quidditas) of the solution would be precisely the opened That-ground (quodditas) of the
world. The Essence most highly qualified matter has not yet appeared, therefore missing
represents its not yet manifested Absolute in every, previously successful appearance. But the
world makes space even for this missing, on the Front of its process the goal-content itself is
in fermentation and real possibility. Concretely anticipatory consciousness is directed
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towards this state of the goal-content, it has its openness and positiveness within it.
17
The World in Which Utopian Imagination Has a Correlate Real Possibility,
the Categories Front, Novum, Ultimum and the Horizon
The critic can therefore latch on to any form of theoretical and practical consciousness and develop true
reality out of the separate forms of existing reality as their obligation and their final purpose . . . It will then
become apparent that the world has long possessed the dream of a matter, of which it must only possess the
consciousness in order to possess it in reality.
Marx, letter to Ruge, 1843
I am convinced that the world-spirit gave the age the command to advance; such a command is obeyed; this
entity moves irresistibly forward like an armoured, tightly-closed phalanx with the same undiscernible
movement with which the sun moves, through thick and thin; countless light troops are flanked around it, for
and against, most of them have no idea what it is about and are run through the head, as if by an unseen
hand. The best bet, however, is to keep a close eye on the advancing giant.
Hegel, letter to Niethammer, 1816
Man Is Not Solid

To think oneself into what is better, this proceeds at first only inwardly. It indicates how
much youth there is in man, how much lies in him that is waiting. This waiting will not go to
sleep, however many times it has been buried, even in a desperate man it does not stare into
complete nothingness. Even the suicide still flees into negation as into a womb; he expects
rest. Even disappointed hope wanders around agonizing, a ghost that has lost its way back to
the cemetery and clings to refuted images. It does not perish through itself, but only through
a new form of itself. The fact that we can thus sail into dreams, that daydreams, often of a
completely uncovered kind, are possible, indicates the great space of the still open, still
uncertain life in man. Man spins out wishes, is in a position to do so, finds a wealth of
material for them, even if it is not always of
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the best, most durable quality, in himself. This fermenting and effervescing above the
consciousness that has become is the first correlate of the imagination, a correlate which to
begin with is merely inward, in fact only located within itself. Even the silliest dreams
nevertheless exist as foam;* daydreams even contain a foam from which a Venus has
sometimes risen. The animal knows nothing of this kind; only man, although he is much
more awake, wells up utopianly. His existence is less solid as it were, although, compared
with plants and animals, he is much more intensely present. Human existence has
nevertheless more fermenting Being, more dawning material on its upper edge and hem.
Something has as it were remained hollow here, in fact a new hollow space has only just
developed. Dreams drift in it, and possible things circulate inwardly which can perhaps never
become outward.
Much in the World Is Still Unclosed

Of course, nothing would circulate inwardly either if the outward were completely solid.
Outside, however, life is just as little finished as in the ego which is working on this outside.
No thing could be altered in accordance with wishes if the world were closed, full of fixed,
even perfected facts. Instead of these there are simply processes, i.e. dynamic relationships in
which the Become has not completely triumphed. The Real is process; the latter is the widely
ramified mediation between present, unfinished past, and above all: possible future. Indeed,
everything real passes over into the Possible at its processual Front, and possible is
everything that is only partially conditioned, that has not yet been fully or conclusively
determined. Here we must of course distinguish between the merely cognitively or
objectively Possible and the Real-Possible, the only one that matters in the given context.
Objectively possible is everything whose entry, on the basis of a mere partial-cognition of its
existing conditions, is scientifically to be expected, or at least cannot be discounted. Whereas
really possible is everything whose conditions in the sphere of the object itself are not yet
fully assembled; whether because they are still maturing, or above all because new conditions
though mediated with the existing ones arise for the entry of a new Real. Mobile,
changing, changeable Being, presenting itself as dialectical-material, has this unclosed
capability of becoming, this Not-Yet-Closedness both in its ground and in its horizon
*
Bloch is alluding to the German saying 'Trume sind Schume' (Dreams are just foam).
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So that we may deduce from this: the really Possible of sufficiently mediated, i.e.
dialectically, materialistically mediated newness gives utopian imagination its second, its
concrete correlate: one outside a mere fermenting, effervescing in the inner circle of
consciousness. And as long as the reality has not become a completely determined one, as
long as it possesses still unclosed possibilities, in the shape of new shoots and new spaces for
development, then no absolute objection to utopia can be raised by merely factual reality.
Objections to bad utopias can be raised, i.e. to abstractly extravagant, badly mediated ones,
but precisely concrete utopia has in process-reality a corresponding element: that of the
mediated Novum. Only this process-reality, and not a fact-basedness torn out of it which is
reified and made absolute, can therefore pass judgement on utopian dreams or relegate them
to mere illusions. If we give every mere factuality in the external world this critical right,
then we make what is fixedly existing and what has fixedly become into absolute reality per
se. It becomes clear, however, even merely within the vastly altered reality of today, that the
restriction to the Factum was hardly a realistic one; that reality itself is not worked up, that it
has something advancing and breaking out at its edge. Man today is thoroughly acquainted
with the frontier-existence outside the previous expectation-context of Becomeness. He no
longer sees himself surrounded by ostensibly completed facts, and no longer considers these
as the only Real; devastatingly, possible fascist Nothing has opened up in this Real, and
above all, finally feasible and overdue, socialism. A different concept of reality to the narrow
and ossified one of the second half of the nineteenth century is thus overdue, a different one
to that of the positivism to which the idea of process is alien, and of its counterpart: the non-
committal ideal world of pure appearance. Sometimes the ossified concept of reality even
penetrated Marxism and consequently made it schematic. It is not sufficient to speak of
dialectical process and then to treat history as a series of sequential Fixa or even closed
'totalities'. A narrowing and diminishing of reality threatens here, a turning away from
'efficacity and seed'* in reality; and that is not Marxism. Rather: the concrete imagination and
the imagery of its mediated anticipations are fermenting in the process of the real itself and
are depicted in the concrete forward dream; anticipating elements are a component of reality
itself. Thus the will towards utopia is entirely
*
From Goethe's 'Faust', Part I, 384:
'All efficacity and seed explore
and rummage round in words no more.'
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compatible with object-based tendency, in fact is confirmed and at home within it.
Militant Optimism, the Categories Front, Novum, Ultimum

Precisely the defeated man must try the outside world again. That which is coming up is not
yet decided, that which is swamp can be dried out through work. Through a combination of
courage and knowledge, the future does not come over man as fate, but man overcomes the
future and enters it with what is his. However, the knowledge needed by courage and above
all decision cannot have the most common mode of previous knowledge: namely a
contemplative mode. Because merely contemplative knowledge necessarily refers to what is
closed and thus to what is past, it is helpless against what is present and blind to the future. In
fact, it appears to itself all the more as knowledge, the further back its objects lie in what is
past and closed, the less therefore it contributes to the process of something being learnt for
the present and future from history, a history that occurs in tendency. The knowledge
necessary for decision accordingly has a different mode: one which is not merely
contemplative, but rather one which goes with process, which is actively and partisanly in
league with the good which is working its way through, i.e. what is humanly worthy in
process. It goes without saying that this mode of knowledge is also the only objective one,
the only one which reflects the Real in history: namely the events produced by working
people together with the abundant interweaving process-connections between past, present
and future. And knowledge of this kind, precisely because it is not merely contemplative,
thoroughly mobilizes the subjects of conscious production itself. Since it is not quietism,
even in relation to discovered tendency, it does not revere that banal, automatic progress-
optimism per se which is only a reprise of contemplative quietism. The optimism is this
reprise because it also disguises the future as past, because it regards the future as something
which has long since been decided and thus concluded. Confronted with the future-state
which stands like an agreed consequence in the so-called iron logic of history, the subject can
just as easily lay his hands in his lap as he once folded them when confronted with God's
will. In similar fashion, for example, by leaving capitalism to function to its conclusion, it
was appointed as its own grave-digger, and even its dialectic appeared to be self-sufficient, to
be autarkical. All this is fundamentally false, however,
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in fact so patently just new opium for the people that, cum grano salis, even a dash of
pessimism would be preferable to the banal, automatic belief in progress as such. Because at
least pessimism with a realistic perspective is not so helplessly surprised by mistakes and
catastrophes, by the horrifying possibilities which have been concealed and will continue to
be concealed precisely in capitalist progress. Thinking ad pessimum, for every analysis
which does not make it absolute again, is a better travelling companion than cheap credulity;
it thus constitutes the critical coldness precisely in Marxism. For every changing decision,
automatic optimism is not much less of a poison than pessimism made absolute; since, if the
latter quite openly serves shameless reaction, which calls itself by its own name, with the aim
of discouraging, then the former helps shamefaced reaction with the aim of fostering winking
connivance and passivity. Thus, rather than false optimism, the only thing that is assigned
in order to foster true optimism to the knowledge of decision, to the decision of attained
knowledge, is once again the concretely and utopianly comprehended correlate in real
possibility: comprehended as one in which of course it is by no means already the night to
end all days, but just as little in the sense of non-utopian optimism already the day to end
all nights.* The attitude towards this undecided material, which can however be decided
through work and concretely mediated action, is called militant optimism. Through this, as
Marx says, no abstract ideals are realized, but rather the repressed elements of the new,
humanized society, that is, of the concrete ideal, are set free. It is the revolutionary decision
of the proletariat which today commits itself to the final struggle of liberation, a decision of
the subjective factor in alliance with the objective factors of economic-material tendency.
And it is not as if this subjective factor, that of realization and of changing the world, were
any other than a material activity; it is such, even if, as Marx stresses in the first thesis on
Feuerbach, as the active side (generation, productivity, spontaneity of consciousness), it has
certainly been developed primarily from idealism and not from (mechanical) materialism.
And once again it is not as if even for one moment the activity which is part of changing the
world, i.e. of militant optimism, could really intervene or bring about lasting change without
being allied with real, present tendencies; because if the subjective factor remains isolated,
then it simply becomes a factor
*
Bloch is playing on a German saying 'It is not yet the night to end all days', an English equivalent of
which would be 'We are not yet out of the wood'.
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of putschism, not of revolution, of Spiegelbergian forays,* not of the work. If, however, there
is insight into the consequences of the decision and it is precisely the knowledge in the
decision which guarantees this insight then the power of the subjective factor cannot be
estimated highly or even deeply enough, precisely as the militant function in militant
optimism. Concrete decision in favour of the victory of light in real possibility is the same as
countermove against failure in process. Is the same as the countermove of freedom against
so-called destiny which has been removed from process and which counteracts it through
stagnation and reification. Is the same as the countermove against all these deadly
manifestations from the family of Nothing and against the circulation of Nothing, the other
alternative to real possibility itself. Is thus ultimately the countermove against the pervasive
ruin of pure negation (war, advent of barbarism), so that, by redirecting this destruction on to
itself, the negation of the negation may also find space here and the dialectic actively
triumph. Concrete decision is always in conflict with statics here, yet precisely because it is
not putschism, but rather, being militant, is equally founded optimism, it lives in peace with
process which brushes death-statics itself the wrong way. Man and process, or rather: subject
and object in dialectically materialist process, consequently both stand equally on the Front.
And there is no other place for militant optimism than the place which the category of Front
opens up. The philosophy of this optimism, that is, of materially comprehended hope, is
itself, as the trenchant knowledge of non-contemplation, concerned with the foremost
segment of history, and is so even when it concerns itself with the past, namely with the still
undischarged future in the past. Philosophy of comprehended hope thus stands per
definitionem on the Front of the world process, i.e. on the so little thought-out, foremost
segment of Being of animated, utopianly open matter.
Not everything that is well-known is also known, least of all when freshness is present. Thus
along with the concept of the Front the so closely related concept of newness is also in a
parlous state. The New: it circulates in the mind in first love, also in the feeling of spring; the
latter has nevertheless hardly found a single philosopher. It permeates, though it is forgotten
time and again, the eve of great events, together with a highly characteristic mixed reaction
of fear, being armed, confidence; it founds, in the promised Novum of happiness, advent
consciousness. It runs through the expectations of almost all religions, in so far as primitive,
even ancient oriental future
*
Spiegelberg: the unscrupulous marauder in Schiller's 'The Robbers'.
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consciousness can be properly understood at all; it pervades the whole of the Bible, from
Jacob's blessing to the Son of Man who makes everything new, and to the new heaven, the
new earth. Nevertheless, the category Novum has not been described anything like
adequately enough, and found no place in any pre-Marxist world-picture. Or if it did seem to
find it, as in Boutroux* or above all in the Art Nouveau or secession philosophy of Bergson,
then the New was simply considered from the point of view of senselessly changing fashions
and celebrated as such; all that resulted from this was the different rigidity of a surprise that
is always the same. This kind of thing has already been made clear in the case of the block
which has obstructed the concept of the Not-Yet-Conscious for so long; in such a way that
the dawning, the Incipit vita nova, also repeatedly remains a Fixum in the so-called
Philosophy of Life. Thus the concept of the New in Bergson simply appears as abstract
contrast to repetition, in fact often as merely the reverse side of mechanical uniformity; at the
same time it was attributed to every moment of life without exception, and was consequently
devalued. Even the duration of a thing, the dure which is imagined as being fluid, is based
by Bergson on continual difference; supposedly because in truly unchanged persistence the
beginning and end of this state would be indistinguishable, would objectively coincide, and
consequently the thing would not have duration at all. And the Novum as a whole in Bergson
is not elucidated by its path, its explosions, its dialectic, its images of hope and genuine
products, but in fact repeatedly by the contrast to mechanism, by the contentless declaration
of an lan vital in and for itself. Great love for the Novum is active, great inclination towards
openness leaps to the eye, but the process remains empty and repeatedly produces nothing
but process. In fact, the eternal metaphysical vitality theory ultimately achieves a mere frenzy
instead of the Novum, precisely because of the constantly required change of direction,
required for its own sake; so it is not the curve praised by Bergson that develops with this
change, but rather a zig-zag in which from sheer opposition to uniformity there is only
the figure of chaos. Consequently, the abstractly understood Futurum also ends in a l'art pour
l'art of vitality which Bergson himself compares to the rocket or 'to an immense firework
which continually shoots out new bursts of fire' (L'Evolution cratrice, 1907, p. 270). Here
too we must emphasize: there is absolutely no genuine Novum in Bergson; he has in fact
only developed his concept from sheer excess into capitalistic fashion-novelty and thus
stabilized it; lan vital and
*
mile Boutroux, 18451921, French philosopher of science.
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nothing more is and remains itself a Fixum of contemplation. The social reason for Bergson's
pseudo-Novum lies in the late bourgeoisie, which has within it absolutely nothing new in
terms of content. The corresponding ideological reason ultimately lies in the old, laboriously
reproduced elimination of two of the most essential qualities of the Novum in general:
possibility and finality. In both, Bergson sees the same schematics of deadening reason
hostile to change which he sees at work elsewhere as spatialization, causality, mechanism.
The mighty realm of possibility thus becomes for him an illusion of retrospection: there is
no Possible in Bergson whatsoever, for him it is a projection which is sketched back into the
past by what is newly developing. In the Possible, according to Bergson, the just arising
Novum is only to be conceived as 'having been possible': 'The possible is nothing other than
the real plus a mental act which reflects the image of this real into the past, as soon as the real
has developed . . . The real welling-up of unforeseeable newness, not predesignated in any
possible, is however a real which makes itself possible, not a possible that becomes real (La
Pense et le Mouvant, p. 133). Bergson thus characteristically almost reproduces the anti-
possibility proof of the Megarian philosopher Diodoros Kronos, who was in fact himself
close to the Eleatic philosophers, the teachers of an absolute rest. And similarly, Bergson
closes his mind to the concept of the Novum by regarding finality simply as the establishing
of a rigid final goal, rather than as the goal-determination of the human will, which first seeks
precisely its Where To and What For, in the open possibilities of the future. Or rather: as the
goal-determination of a work, above all of a planning, which has stressed its Where To and
What For and goes about achieving it. Bergson, however, in equating all foreseeability with
static prediction, has not only ignored creative anticipation, this reddening dawn in the
human will, but the genuine Novum as a whole, the horizon of utopia. And the continually
stressed changeableness, boundlessness, hardly made Bergson's newness-universe into what,
with nevertheless unmistakable finality, he fantasized it to be: into 'the machine to produce
gods'. To sum up: appropriate to the Novum, so that it really is one, is not only abstract
opposition to mechanical repetition, but actually also a kind of specific repetition: namely of
the still unbecome total goal-content itself, which is suggested and tended, tested and
processed out in the progressive newnesses of history. Thus moreover: the dialectical
emergence of this total content is no longer described by the category Novum, but rather by
the category Ultimum, and with this of course the repetition ends. But it only ends by virtue
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of the fact that, to the same extent that the Ultimum represents the last, i.e. the highest
newness, the repetition (the unremitting representedness of the tendency-goal in all
progressively New) intensifies to the last, highest, most fundamental repetition: of identity.
And the newness in the Ultimum really triumphs by means of its total leap out of everything
that previously existed, but it is a leap towards the newness that is ending or identity. The
category Ultimum has not been left as unconsidered as that of the Novum; the idea of the
Last Thing has always been a subject of those religions which also set a time-limit to time,
and thus above all of Judaeo-Christian philosophy of religion. However, this categorial
treatment precisely indicated that the one which properly ought to precede it, that of the
Novum, was as good as absent. Because in the whole of Judaeo-Christian philosophy, from
Philo and Augustine to Hegel, the Ultimum relates exclusively to a Primum and not to a
Novum; consequently the Last Thing appears simply as the attained return of an already
completed First Thing which has been lost or relinquished. The form of this return
incorporates the pre-Christian form of the self-combusting and self-renewing Phoenix, it
incorporates the Heraclitean and Stoic doctrine of world-conflagration, according to which
the Zeus-fire takes the world back into itself and similarly, in periodic cycles, releases it
again. And in fact we may say: the cycle is the figure which the Ultimum attaches so firmly
to the Primum that it misfires logically and metaphysically within it. Of course, Hegel saw in
the Being-for-itself of the idea, which is its Ultimum and in which process dies away as in an
amen, the Primum of the Being-in-itself of the idea not only reproduced but fulfilled: the
'mediated immediacy' is attained in the Being-for-itself, rather than the unmediated
immediacy in the beginning of the mere Being-in-itself. But, as in every individual form-
epoch of the world process, and consequently also in its totality, this result nevertheless
remained a cyclical one here; it is the cycle, completely free of the Novum, of the restitutio in
integrum: 'Every part of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle which closes in upon
itself, . . . the whole thus presents itself as a circle of circles' (Enzyklopidie, 15). Likewise,
despite having been thought out more thoroughly, the Ultimum was also invariably defused
here, in that its Omega coils back into the Alpha again without the power of the Novum. In
the final analysis, this is also true where mechanically and materialistically the Alpha-Omega
has been secularized into a ball of vapour out of which the world emerges and into which it
disperses again. The original and the archetype of all this remains the Alpha-Omega in the
embracing ring of a primal being to which process
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returns almost as a prodigal son and undoes the substance of its Novum. These are all in fact
prison-formations against real possibility or a disavowal of it which seeks to visualize even
the most progressive historical product solely as the re-remembering or restoration of
something once possessed, primally lost. Consequently, as is evident precisely in the
Ultimum, in the case of this Novum, but also in that of all previous Novum, only antire-
remembering, anti-Augustine, anti-Hegel is philosophically appropriate, anti-circle and
denial of the ring-principle, that intended from Hegel and Eduard von Hartmann, in fact as
far as Nietzsche. Yet hope, which does not want to be just as far at any end as it was at the
beginning, does away with the sharp cycle. The dialectic which has its motor in unrest and its
goal-content, which in no way exists ante rem, in unappeared essence does away with the
dogged cycle. The tension-figures and tendency-forms, the real-ciphers in the world, even
these rehearsals on an as yet unsuccessful model, do away with the fundamentally sterile
cycle through their especially high percentage of utopia. The humanization of nature has no
parental home at the beginning from which it runs away, to which, with a kind of ancestor
cult in philosophy, it returns. In fact in process itself, still without the problem of the
Ultimum, a horde of real possibilities emerge which were not predicted of the beginning at
birth. And the end is not the bringing back, rather it is precisely as the impact of the What-
essence on the That-ground the blasting open of the primum agens materiale. In other
words: the Omega of the Where To explains itself not with reference to a primally been
Alpha, supposedly most real of all, of the Where From, of the origin, but on the contrary: this
origin explains itself first with reference to the Novum of the end, indeed, as an origin still
essentially unrealized in itself, it first enters reality with this Ultimum. The origin is certainly
the realizing element itself; and yet: just as there is still something immature and not yet
realized in the realizing, so the realization of the realizing, of the realizing element itself is
always only just starting to begin. In history it is the self-apprehension of the historical doer,
working man: in nature it is the realization of that which has been hypothetically called
natura naturans or subject of material motion, a problem which has hardly been touched on,
even though it is clearly connected with the self-apprehension of working man and lies along
the line of extension of Marx's 'humanization of nature'. The site for both kinds of self-
apprehension and their Novum, their Ultimum, is however located solely on the Front of the
process of history and is predominantly confronted with only mediated-real possibility. This
remains that which
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corresponds to exact anticipation, concrete utopia as objective-real correlate. In the same

sense that the concretely utopian is an objective-real degree of reality on the Front of the
occurring world, as Not-Yet-Being of the 'naturalization of man, humanization of nature'.
Correspondingly, the thus designated realm of freedom develops not as return, but as exodus
though into the always intended promised land, promised by process.
'What-Is According to Possibility' and 'What-Is in Possibility', Cold and Warm Stream
in Marxism
On the path to the New we must usually, though not always, proceed step by step. Not
everything is possible or can be implemented at any time, absent conditions not only hinder,
they also block. More rapid progress is of course allowed, even demanded, where the stretch
ahead shows no other dangers than over-anxiously or pedantically imagined ones. Thus
Russia did not first need to become fully capitalist before it could pursue the socialist goal
successfully. Even the complete technological conditions for the construction of socialism
could be made good in the Soviet Union, in so far as they had already been developed in
other countries and could be taken over from there. On the other hand, obviously, a path
which has never been travelled before can only be skipped or jumped over with some
failures. Because of course everything is possible for which the conditions exist in a
sufficiently partial form, but this is precisely why everything is still factually impossible for
which the conditions do not yet exist at all. The goal-image then proves to be subjectively
and objectively an illusion; the movement towards it then collapses; at best, if it makes
headway, as a consequence of the prevailing and determining socio-economic conditions, a
totally different goal is achieved from the one intended in this skipping over, abstract sense.
Of course, in the bourgeois ideal dream of human rights, from the outset the tendencies were
already active which subsequently ushered in the purest capitalism. But even here a city of
brotherly love hovered ahead anyway, a Philadelphia, particularly far removed from the real
Philadelphia which was on the agenda of economic history and consequently saw the light of
day. And nothing much more than a Philadelphia of that kind would have been the fruit of
the pure, the simply chiliastic utopias, if they had not collapsed but had reached the goal
according to the measure of the Possible at that time. The economic conditions which the
radical will towards the millennium from Joachim
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of Fiore to the English millenarians skipped over, and in fact had to skip over, would have
announced themselves anyway, even in what was attained itself: and, again by virtue of the
still imminent capitalist agenda, they would certainly not have been those which predestine
for the kingdom of love. All this has become completely comprehensible through the Marxist
discovery which shows that concrete theory-practice is most closely connected to the
explored mode of objective-real possibility. Both the critical caution which determines the
speed of the path, and the founded expectation which guarantees a militant optimism as
regards the goal, are determined through insight into the correlate of possibility. And in such
a way that this correlate, as it is now becoming possible to say, itself again has two sides, a
reverse side as it were, on which the measures of the respectively Possible are written, and a
front side on which the Totum of the finally Possible indicates that it is still open. In fact, the
first side, that of the existing decisively conditions, teaches conduct on the path to the goal,
whereas the second side, that of the utopian Totum, fundamentally prevents partial
attainments on this path from being taken for the whole goal and from obscuring it. Despite
all this it must be stressed: even this double-sided correlate: real possibility is nothing other
than dialectical matter. Real possibility is only the logical expression for material
conditionality of a sufficient kind on the one hand, for material openness (unexhaustedness of
the womb of matter) on the other. Already above, in the previous chapter (cf. p. 191), on the
subject of the 'disrupting subsidiary causes' during realization, a part of the Aristotelian
definitions of matter was enlisted. We mentioned that according to Aristotle mechanical
matter ( ) represents a resistance, and consequently the entelechetic tendency-
form cannot reveal itself purely. This is how Aristotle seeks to explain the many inhibitions,
chance thwartings, even the innumerable progress-torsos of which the world is full. In the
quoted passage, this definition of matter was designated as that of a scapegoat, and so it is, in
so far as it is made absolute and in so far as it supposedly serves to send matter to the devil
for the purpose of unburdening entelechy in general. But of course there is no mention in
Aristotle of any such In General, any such Making Absolute, rather for him matter is in no
way limited to the mechanical, and even this, from which stems, is in fact
assigned for the first time to the extremely extensive concept of or objective-real
possibility in Aristotle. This assignment now also opens up a new, not thwarting, but rather
determining meaning for the concept of inhibiting matter: is supplemented and
extended through ,
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i.e.: through What-Is according to possibility, according to the measures of possibility. Seen
from this side, matter is the site of the conditions according to whose stipulations entelechies
reveal themselves; thus does not only mean mechanics, but much more
extensively: continuous conditional connection. And only from this What-Is-according-to-
possibility does the inhibition ultimately originate which the entelechetic tendency-form
experiences on its path. The consequence also originates from here that the sculptor, working
under 'more favourable conditions', can create more beautiful bodies than the physical ones
that are born, and that a poet removes contingency and narrowness from the path of his
creations, transposes them, as Aristotle says in his 'Poetics', from the or each
individual thing into the or the richer possibilities of a whole. But all this would
not have been possible if Aristotle and this is of central importance had not already also
distinguished the other side, the front side of possibility-matter, in fact recognized it as the
side completely free of inhibitions; matter is not only , according to
possibility, and therefore the respectively conditioning element according to the given
measure of the Possible, but it is , What-Is-in-possibility, therefore the in
Aristotle admittedly still passive womb of fertility from which all world-forms inexhaustibly
emerge. With this last definition precisely the friendly, if not the hope-side of objective-real
possibility opened up, however long it took for it to be comprehended; the utopian Totum is
implied in the . To repeat and sum up, What-Is-according-to-possibility in matter
precedes the critical consideration of what is respectively to be attained, What-Is-in-
possibility in matter precedes the founded expectation of attainability itself. And since the
passive was deleted from the latter definition in the pantheistic school of the Aristotelians,
since the no longer appeared as undefined wax on which the form-entelechies
imprint themselves, the potential of matter ultimately became birth and grave and new place
of hope for the world-forms in general. This development of the Aristotelian concept of
matter runs through the peripatetic physicist Strato, the first great Aristotelian commentator
Alexander of Aphrodisias, the oriental Aristotelians Avicenna, Averros and his natura
naturans, the neo-Platonizing Aristotelian Avicebron, through the Christian heretical
philosophers of the thirteenth century Amalrich of Bena and David of Dinant, right down to
the world-creating matter of Giordano Bruno (cf. here Ernst Bloch, Avicenna und die
Aristotelische Linke, 1952, p. 30ff.). In fact even the substratum, giving birth to itself, of the
Hegelian world-idea, this idea which moves away
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so soon from matter, nevertheless contains a large part of matter-potentiality, which has
become potent. On this point Lenin, in his 'Philosophical Notebooks', particularly notes the
statement from Hegel's Logic: 'That which appears as the activity of form is furthermore also
the separate motion of matter itself.' There are several such statements in Hegel, also in his
History of Philosophy (Werke XIII, p. 33), concerning the Aristotelian concept of
development, where he at least equates his idea of Being-in-itself with the Aristotelian
. And the supposition is justified that without this legacy of Aristotle and Bruno,
Marx would not have been able to set much of the Hegelian world-idea on its feet in such a
natural way. Nor would the dialectic of process have been rescuable from the so-called
world-spirit in materialistic terms and become ascertainable in matter as a law of motion.
Thus, however, a very different matter from the mechanical clod appeared, the matter of
dialectical materialism, one in which dialectic, process, expropriation of expropriation,
humanization of nature are in no way just external epithets, let alone tacked on. So much here
for the correlates to critical consideration of the attainable, to founded expectation of
attainability itself within the overall correlate: real possibility or matter. Coldness and
warmth of concrete anticipation are pre-figured in this, are related to these two sides of the
real Possible. Its unexhausted fullness of expectation shines upon revolutionary theory-
practice as enthusiasm, its strict determinations which cannot be skipped over demand cool
analysis, cautiously precise strategy; the latter indicates cold, the former warm red.
These two ways of being red always go together of course, yet they are distinct from each
other. They are related to one another like that which cannot be deceived and that which
cannot be disappointed, like acerbity and belief, each in its place and each employed towards
the same goal. In Marxism, the act of analysing the situation is entwined with the
enthusiastically prospective act. Both acts are united in the dialectical method, in the pathos
of the goal, in the totality of the subject-matter treated, yet the difference of view and
situation is plain to see. It has been recognized as one between the respective condition-
exploration according to the stipulations of the Possible, and the prospect-exploration of
What-Is-in-possibility. Research which analyses conditions does equally show prospect, but
with its horizon as a limiting one, that of the limited Possible. Without such a cooling down
Jacobinism or even totally extravagant, most abstractly utopian fanaticism would emerge.
Thus lead is here poured into the shoes of overhauling, skipping over, flying over, because
experience shows that the real itself has a heavy gait and seldom consists of wings.
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But the prospect-exploration of What-Is-in-possibility goes towards the horizon, in the sense
of unobstructed, unmeasured expanse, in the sense of the Possible which is still unexhausted
and unrealized. Only then of course does prospect in the authentic sense result, that is,
prospect of the authentic, of the Totum of what is occurring and what is to be pursued, of a
not only respectively prevailing, but overall historical, utopian Totum. Without such a
warming up of the historical and especially of the currently practical conditional analysis, the
latter is subject to the danger of economism and of goal-forgetting opportunism; the latter
avoids the mists of fanaticism only in as far as it gets bogged down in the swamp of
philistinism, of compromise, and finally of betrayal. Only coldness and warmth of concrete
anticipation together therefore ensure that neither the path in itself nor the goal in itself are
held apart from one another undialectically and so become reified and isolated. And the
conditional analysis on the whole historical-situational stretch emerges both as an unmasking
of ideologies and as a disenchantment of metaphysical illusion; precisely this belongs to the
most useful cold stream of Marxism. Through it Marxist materialism becomes not only the
science of conditions, but at the same time the science of struggle and opposition against all
ideological inhibitions and concealments of the ultimately decisive conditions, which are
always economic. To the warm stream of Marxism, however, belong liberating intention and
materialistically humane, humanely materialistic real tendency, towards whose goal all these
disenchantments are undertaken. From here the strong appeal to the debased, enslaved,
abandoned, belittled human being, from here the appeal to the proletariat as the turntable
towards emancipation. The goal remains the naturalization of man, humanization of nature
which is inherent in developing matter. This final matter or the content of the realm of
freedom first approaches in the construction of communism, its only space, has never before
been present; that is beyond doubt. But it is also beyond doubt that this content lies within the
historical process, and that Marxism represents its strongest consciousness, its highest
practical mindfulness. Marxism as a doctrine of warmth is thus solely related to that positive
Being-in-possibility, not subject to any disenchantment, which embraces the growing
realization of the realizing element, primarily in the human sphere. And which, inside this
sphere, signifies the utopian Totum, in fact that freedom, that homeland of identity, in which
neither man behaves towards the world, nor the world behaves towards man, as if towards a
stranger. This is the doctrine of warmth in the sense of the front side, the Front of matter,
hence of forward matter. The path then opens up
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within it as function of the goal, and the goal opens up as substance in the path, in the path
explored towards its conditions, visualized towards its opennesses. Matter is latent in these
opennesses according to the direction of their objective-real hope-contents: as the end of self-
alienation and objectivity encumbered with alien material, as matter of Things For Us. On the
path towards this, the objective surpassing of what currently exists in history and world
occurs: this transcending without transcendence, which is called process and is accelerated
on earth so forcefully by human work. Forward materialism or the warmth-doctrine of
Marxism is thus theory-practice of reaching home or of departure from inappropriate
objectification; through it the world is developed towards the No-Longer-Alienation of its
subjects-objects, hence towards freedom. Undoubtedly only from the vantage point of a
classless society does the goal of freedom itself come clearly into our sights as definite
Being-in-possibility. Nevertheless it is no great distance from that self-encounter which has
been sought in images under the name of culture; with so many ideologies, but also with so
many kinds of pre-appearance, anticipations in the horizon. The means by which man first
became human was work, the basis of the second stage is the classless society, its framework
is a culture whose horizon is surrounded purely by the contents of founded hope, the most
important, the positive Being-in-possibility.
Artistic Appearance As Visible Pre-Appearance

We say of the beautiful that it gives pleasure, that it is even enjoyed. But its reward does not
end there, art is not food. For it remains even after it has been enjoyed, even in the sweetest
cases it hangs over into a land which is 'pictured ahead'. The wishful dream goes out here
into what is indisputably better, in doing so, in contrast to most political wishful dreams, it
has already become work-like, a shaped beauty. Only: is there anything more in what has
been shaped in this way than a game of appearance? Which may be extremely ingenious but,
in contrast to the childlike, does not prepare for anything serious, nor signifies it. In aesthetic
ringing or even jingling* is there any hard cash, any statement which can be signed? Paintings
prompt us less often to this question, since paint only stands in sensory certainty and is
otherwise more weakly burdened with the claim to truth than the word. Since the word not
only serves literature,
*
Here Bloch is playing on the old German expression 'in klingender Mnze': 'in coin of the realm'.
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but also truthful communication; language makes us more sensitive to the latter than paint,
even than drawing. All good art, of course, finishes its materials in shaped beauty, renders
things, people, conflicts in beautiful appearance. But what is the honest status of this finish,
of a ripeness in which only invented material ripens? How do things stand with a richness
which communicates itself in a merely illusionary fashion, as mere appearance to the eye or
to the ear? Conversely, how do things stand with Schiller's nevertheless prophetic statement
that what we experience here as beauty will one day approach us as truth? How do things
stand with Plotinus' statement, and then Hegel's, that beauty is the sensory manifestation of
the idea? Nietzsche, in his positivist period, sets against this assertion the much more
massive one that all poets lie. Or: art makes the aspect of life tolerable by throwing the veil
of impure thought over it. Francis Bacon sees the golden apples in silver bowls as really not
that far from being an illusion, they belong to the idola theatri that have been handed down to
us. He compares the truth to the naked bright daylight in which the masks, mummeries and
resplendent features of the world do not appear half so beautiful and magnificent as in the
candlelight of art. According to this, all artists are from beginning to end in league with
appearance, they have no inclination towards truth, but just the opposite inclination. In the
whole of the Enlightenment there are premises for this antithesis between art and truth, and
they have made artistic imagination an object of suspicion from the factual standpoint. These
are the empirical objections to the insidious gloom, to the golden mist of art, and they are not
the only ones which derive from the Enlightenment. For alongside them stand the rational
objections which of course originally belong to the Platonic conceptual logos and to its
especially celebrated, especially radical hostility to art, but which made themselves
fashionable again as objections to art in the trend towards calculating reason in the new
bourgeois age. Even where the specific hostility to art, described by Marx, of capitalism in
the nineteenth century (with l'art pour l'art as the counterblow and with the Goncourts'
declaration of war on 'the public') could not yet make its presence felt. Even the droll inquiry
of that French mathematician is relevant here who asked after listening to Racine's
'Iphignie': 'Qu'est-ce que cela prouve?'* Droll and fetishistically pedantic though this
question looks, it still stands as a purely rational question in a separate and great school of
alienation from art, equal to that of the empirical school. The aesthetic dimension is
conspicuously absent in all the great systems of reason of
*
'What does that prove?'
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the new rationalist age; the ideas which inhabit it are not considered worthy of the least
scientific discussion. Predominantly only technical aesthetic theories, albeit of a significant
kind, chiefly concerning poetics, blossomed in French classical rationalism, and only the
mathematical side of music was of interest to Descartes. Otherwise we do not know either in
Descartes or even in Spinoza that there is an art in the ordered connection of ideas and things.
Even the universal philosopher Leibniz at best only cited a few examples from art, such as
those concerning the harmony-enhancing effect of shadows and dissonances, because such
examples were serviceable for something much more important: for the proof of the best of
all possible worlds. In Leibniz the harmoniously beautiful is in fact a kind of hint of a
scientifically recognizable world-harmony, but it is only a confused hint, and the truth can
thus dispense with it. Consequently the aesthetics of rationalism began in a very strange way
when it was finally made into a philosophical discipline very late by Baumgarten,* the
follower of Wolff;** in fact it began with a decidedly low opinion of its Object, indeed with
apologies for its existence. The aesthetic Object was solely the so-called lower cognitive
faculty at work in sensory perception and its ideas. And though beauty also represented
perfection in this area, it was not comparable in terms of value with the complete clarity of
conceptual cognition. The rationalist debasement of art thus lines up with the empirical
positivist kind after all; but the list of enemies is still not complete. Indeed, hatred of art
only becomes totally glaring when it derives not from reason but, often conversely, from
belief, at least from the positing of something spiritually true. Then a storm of iconoclasm
breaks out in this case not against the golden mist of art, as was usual in the empirical and
ultimately also in the rationalist approach, but against the mainland of art, i.e. against the
over-accentuated appearance within it. Beauty, the verdict reads here, seduces us to the
superficial, falls for the hollow exterior and thus diverts from the essential nature of things.
'What good is there in imitating the shadows of shadows?' asks Plato, already making his
conceptual logos almost clerically curt. On the other hand: 'Thou shalt not make unto thee
any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth
beneath, or that is in the water under the earth',*** commands the fourth commandment in the
Bible and gives the cue for the iconoclasm of the invisibility of Yahweh, of the banning of all
idolatry.
*
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, 171462.
**
Christian Wolff, 16791754, philosopher of the German Enlightenment.
***
Exodus 20, 4.
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Art in general thus becomes gleaming, ultimately luciferian fulfilment which stands in the
way of the true undissembling kind, indeed which denies it. This is hostility to art in its
religious and spiritual form; what corresponds to it in morality is, not without reason, the
turning away from the all too great visibility of 'works', the turning towards the invisible,
genuine dimension of 'convictions'. Puritanism in this extensive sense (reaching back as far
as Bernard of Clairvaux) finally culminated in Tolstoy's monstrous hatred of Shakespeare, of
the lascivious work of beauty in general. Even in Catholicism a horror pulchri led, under
Pope Marcellus, to the planning of a ban on elaborate church music, and this horror, applied
to what is visible, gave to Protestantism the bare God who wishes to be worshipped in moral
belief, in the word that is the truth. Thus the claim to truth comes out against beauty in so
many different forms, empirical and rationalist, spiritual and religious. And however much
these different claims to truth (for subjectively the spiritual was one as well) were at variance
with themselves and in extreme conflict with one another, they are nevertheless united in the
will towards a seriousness opposed to the game of appearance.
This has always affected artists too, precisely because they themselves were serious. They
themselves felt committed to the question of truth, because they did not want to be game-
players, either immured or decadent ones. How amply the beautiful seeks also to be
pictorially true in the descriptions and stories of great realistic writers. Not only in terms of
sensory certainty, but also in terms of broadly revealed social contexts and natural processes.
How legitimate Homer's realism is, a realism of such exact fullness that almost the whole of
Mycenean culture can be visualized from it. And admittedly not a French mathematician, but
Alexander von Humboldt, the naturalist, tells us of the Book of Job, Chapter 37: 'The
meteorological processes which take place in the cloud cover, the formation and dispersal of
the vapours during various wind changes, their kaleidoscope of colours, the generation of
hail and of rolling thunder are described with individual graphicness; many questions are also
raised which our modern physics is able to formulate in more scientific terms, but not to
solve satisfactorily' (Kosmos II, Cotta, p. 35). Such precision and reality is undoubtedly
peculiar and essential to all great literature, often also in decidedly spiritualreligious
literature, as in the imagery of the Psalms. And the demand of significant realism to which all
surface, but also all extravagance is alien, this glory in Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Keller,
Tolstoy, is so greatly recognized in art (at least in the novel in recent times), if not actually
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fulfilled at high points, as if there had never been a mistrust born of the love of truth towards
the Magister Ludi and his box of tricks. And yet artists, however concrete they are, have not
settled the aesthetic question of truth; at best they have extended it in a desirable and
significant way and made it more precise. For precisely in the realistic work of art we see that
as a work of art it is still nevertheless something other than a source of historical and natural
historical knowledge, or even insights. It is characterized by exquisite words which do after
all also exaggerate what is so tellingly described by them beyond its given station, it is
characterized above all by fantasizing, which bustles around between characters and events
with a degree of licence highly alien to science. Fantasizing and in addition, in both senses of
the word, art-fullness, by means of which invented material fills up the gaps in what has been
concretely observed and rounds the plot into well-curved arches. An appearance of rounding,
over-rounding, is in any case unmistakable even in the most realistic artistic creations,
particularly in artistic novels. And great appearance has a quite 'surpassing' effect in those
works of art which do not offer themselves primarily as realistic, either because they
consciously romanticize alongside or beyond available existence, or because, far beyond a
mere 'subject', they fructify myth, which is the oldest sustenance of art anyway. Giotto's
'Raising of Lazarus', Dante's 'Paradiso', Heaven in the final part of Faust: how do these stand
beyond all detailed realism in relation to the philosophers' inquiry after truth? They are
undoubtedly not true in the sense that the knowledge we have acquired of the world is true,
but then what does the enormous wonderment at the after all inseparable form-content of
these works mean, in a legitimate, world-related manner? Thus, astonishingly, although on a
completely different level, the 'Qu'est-ce que cela prouve?' of that French mathematician
becomes irrefutable, even without mathematics and completely without drollery. In other
words: the question as to the truth of art becomes philosophically the question as to the
possibly available depictability of beautiful appearance, as to its degree of reality in the by no
means single-layered reality of the world, as to the location of its object-correlate. Utopia as
object-determination, with the degree of existence of the Real Possible, thus encounters in
the shimmering phenomenon of art a particularly fruitful problem of probation. And the
answer to the aesthetic question of truth is: artistic appearance is not only mere appearance,
but a meaning, cloaked in images and which can only be described in images, of material that
has been driven further, wherever the exaggeration and fantasizing represent a significant
pre-appearance, circulating
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in turbulent existence itself, of what is real, a pre-appearance which can specifically be

represented in aesthetically immanent terms. What habitual or unblunted sense can hardly
still see is illuminated here, in individual processes as well as social and natural ones. This
pre-appearance becomes attainable precisely because art drives its material to an end, in
characters, situations, plots, landscapes, and brings them to a stated resolution in suffering,
happiness and meaning. Pre-appearance is this attainable thing itself because the mtier of
driving-to-the-end occurs in dialectically open space, in which any Object can be
aesthetically represented. Aesthetically represented, this means: immanently more achieved,
more thoroughly formed, more essential than in the immediate-sensory or immediate-
historical occurrence of this Object. This thorough formation remains appearance even as
pre-appearance, but it does not remain illusion; instead, everything that appears in the artistic
image is sharpened or condensed to a decisiveness which the reality of experience in fact
only seldom shows, but which is most definitely inherent in the subjects. Art clearly indicates
this with founded appearance, in the theatre regarded as paradigmatic institution. It remains
virtual, but in the same sense as a reflection is virtual, i.e. reproduces an Object outside itself
with all its dimensions of depth on the reflecting surface. And the preappearance, in contrast
to religious pre-appearance, remains immanent despite all transcendence: it expands, as
Schiller in fact defined aesthetic realism using Goethe as an example, it expands 'nature,
without, going beyond it'. Beauty, even sublimity are thus representative of an existence for
Objects which has not yet become, of thoroughly formed world without external chance,
without unessentiality, unrenderedness. The motto of aesthetically attempted pre-appearance
runs along these lines: how could the world be perfected without this world being exploded
and apocalyptically vanishing, as in Christian-religious pre-appearance (cf. also: Ernst
Bloch, Geist der Utopie, 1923, p. 141). Art, with its formations which are always individual
and concrete, seeks this perfection only in these formations, with the Total as penetratingly
viewed Particular; whereas religion, of course, seeks utopian perfection in totality and places
the salvation of the individual matter completely in the Totum, in the: 'I make all things
new'.* Man is supposed to be born again here, society transformed into Civitas Dei, nature
transfigured into the celestial. Whereas art remains rounded, when 'classical' it loves the
coastal trip around the given, even when it is Gothic, despite all venturing beyond, it has
something balanced, homogenized in
*
Rev. 21. 5: 'Behold, I make all things new'.
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it. Only music works explosively, occurring in open space, for which reason this art always
carries something eccentric in it compared with the other arts, just as if it were only
transposed on to the level of the beautiful or the sublime. All other arts pursue the
representation of the pure carat in individual figures, situations, plots from the world, without
exploding this world; hence the perfect visibility of this pre-appearance. Thus art is non-
illusion, since it works along a line of extension from the Become, in its formed, more
commensurate expression. This goes so far that a writer from antiquity, Juvenal, in order to
express all the possible horrors of a storm, calls the storm 'poetica tempestas'. This goes so
deep that Goethe, in his commentary on Diderot's 'Essay on Painting', posits concentration as
realism, against merely reproductive naturalism: 'And thus the artist, grateful to nature, which
also produced him, gives her a second nature in return, but one that is felt and thought and
humanly perfected.' This humanized nature is however at the same time one that is more
perfected in itself; not of course in the manner of sensory appearance of an idea which is
finished anyway, as Hegel teaches, but rather in the direction of increasingly entelechetic
expression, as Aristotle states. In fact, precisely this entelechetically or, as Aristotle also says,
typically resolving force is powerfully remembered afresh in Engels' statement that realistic
art is representation of typical characters in typical situations. Whereby the typical in Engels'
definition obviously does not mean the average, but the significantly characteristic, in short,
the essential image of the matter, decisively developed through exemplary instances. Along
this line, therefore, lies the solution of the aesthetic question of truth: Art is a laboratory and
also a feast of implemented possibilities, together with the thoroughly experienced
alternatives therein, whereby the implementation and the result occur in the manner of
founded appearance, namely of worldly perfected pre-appearance. In great art, exaggeration
and fantasizing are most visibly applied to tendential consistency and concrete utopia.
Though whether the call for perfection we can call it the godless prayer of poetry
becomes practical even only to a small extent and does not merely remain in aesthetic pre-
appearance is something which is not decided in poetry, but in society. Only controlled
history, with an incisive counter-move against inhibitions, with active promotion of
tendency, can help essential material in the distance of art to become increasingly also
appearance in the dealings of life. This is then of course the same as iconoclasm that has
become correct, not as destruction of artistic images, but as a breaking into them for the
purpose of fructifying what is possibly contained in them, not only typically,
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but paradigmatically, i.e. in exemplary fashion. And wherever art does not play itself out into
illusion, beauty and even sublimity is that which mediates a premonition of future freedom.
Often rounded, never closed: this life-maxim of Goethe's is also that of art with the accent
of conscience and substance ultimately on the unclosed.
False Autarky;
Pre-Appearance As Real Fragment
Often rounded: it does not suit a beautiful image to present itself as incomplete. What is
unfinished is external to it, does not belong to it, and the artist who has not finished what he
had to do is unhappy about it. This is quite correct and obvious, in so far as and as long as it
is merely a matter of sufficient strength of form. The source of artfulness is the ability which
understands and thus totally wants to acquire its subject-matter. But of course, precisely for
the sake of non-isolated acquisition, the threat of that artfulness must also repeatedly be
noted which arises not out of ability but out of the share of mere appearance which even
preappearance has. The appeal of pleasing perception and its representation, however
imaginary what is represented may possibly be, is enough to satisfy mere appearance. Indeed,
the imaginary or what has become imaginary can lend mere appearance a particularly
decorative roundedness, one in which the seriousness of the subject-matter hardly disturbs,
let alone interrupts, the beautifully coherent game. Precisely because mere appearance lets
images live alongside each other so easily, so unreally, it guarantees that pleasing superficial
coherence which shows no interest and presence whatever of a subject-matter beyond sheer
illusion. The lack of belief in the represented subject-matter can even be a help to the smooth
illusion, even more so than scepticism. This showed itself in Renaissance painting with
regard to the gods of antiquity, in depicting whom the painter did not need to fear he had not
behaved sufficiently discreetly towards the sacred; the same thing showed itself a little later
in mythologically rounded poetry. Cames in the 'Lusiads' has his goddess Themis say quite
ironically and yet in the most luxuriant verse that she herself and Saturn, Jupiter and all the
other gods that appear are 'vain creatures of fantasy born to mortals out of blind madness,
only serving to lend charm to the song'. Through the use of beautiful appearance
mythological substance was indeed held in memory here, in fact introduced into the possible
allegories of a pre-appearance, but by means of that finished fullness especially invited
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by appearance which is never interrupted. And finally, a further invitation to this comes from
the side of immanence without an exploding crack, which surrounds all art, not just the art of
classical antiquity or that imitating classical antiquity. Precisely the art of the Middle Ages
provides many examples of a rounded-off satisfaction of an aesthetic kind, despite its
religious-transcendental conscience. Gothic art contains this conscience, but there was
equally a curious harmony in it which derived from classical Greek balance. The early
Lukcs observed quite acutely, if somewhat exaggeratedly: 'So a new polis arose from the
church . . . , the ladder of the earthly and heavenly hierarchies from the crack. And in Giotto
and Dante, in Wolfram* and Pisano, in Thomas Aquinas and St Francis the world became
round again, surveyable, the abyss lost the danger of its actual depth: but without losing any
of its blackly shining strength, all its darkness became pure surface and thus fitted smoothly
into a closed unity of colours; the cry for redemption became dissonance in the perfect
rhythmical system of the world and made a new balance possible, but no less colourful and
perfect than that of the Greeks: that of inadequate, heterogeneous intensities' (Die Theorie
des Romans, 1920, p. 20f.). German secessions of Gothic art like that of Grnewald are of
course unaffected by this kind of perfection. However, this hypostasis of the aesthetic
confronts us in an even more closed fashion, though by no means in classical strength, from
the Middle Ages, which remained determined by the Mediterranean. And there is within it an
equilibrium and a finished coherence which is not only idealistic, but ultimately derives from
great Pan, this primal image of all rounding. Pan is the one and all of the world which had
also been revered as that whole which lacks nothing. Hence the ultimate seduction to nothing
but rounding, but hence also Greek balance as secularized form of the totally pagan, i.e.
crackless world-picture: the astral myth. In this myth the cosmos really was 'decoration', i.e.
evenly beautiful; it was something ceaselessly circling within itself and hen kai pan a circle
itself and not an open parabola, a sphere and not a process-fragment. Thus it is not without
reason that art is very often pantheistically disposed in this all too rounding form, and not
without reason that, conversely, a system formulated in a finished way appears pleasantly
beautiful even in extra-artistic occurrence. The pleasure in sensory appearance, in the living
mantle of divinity, certainly contributes to this pantheistic trait, but the seductive pull
towards it is
*
Wolfram von Eschenbach, fl.c. 120020, wrote 'Parzival', the greatest German romance of the Middle
Ages.
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even stronger from the harmoniously undisturbed coherence, the 'cosmos' even without
'universe'. All these are therefore the various reasons why a veritable art-fullness, an autarky
of apparent enclosedness can also exist in a work of art, which, because it is excessive and
immanent, at first masks the pre-appearance. But equally, and this is precisely the crucial
difference and the crucial truth, all great art shows the pleasant and homogeneous aspects of
its work-based coherence broken, broken up, leafed open by its own iconoclasm, wherever
immanence is not driven to closedness of form and content, wherever it still poses as
fragment-like. Here completely incomparable with the mere contingency of the
fragmentary in the avoidable sense another hollow space of a factual, highly factual kind
opens up, with unrounded immanence. And it is precisely in this space that the aesthetic-
utopian meanings of the beautiful, even the sublime make their presence felt. Only what is
broken into pieces in the all too stilled work of art, mixed with the atmosphere of the gallery,
one which has become a mere objet d'art or, to put it a much better way: the itself already
shaped openness in great artistic creations gives the material and the form for a cipher of the
authentic.
Never closed: thus precisely the all too beautiful breaks into life when the varnish cracks.
When the surface pales or darkens, as in the evening when the light falls obliquely and the
mountains emerge. The shattering of the surface and furthermore of the merely cultural-
ideological context in which the works have stood exposes depth wherever it exists. What is
meant here is not the sentimental ruin nor that kind of torso which, as so often with Greek
statues, holds the figure together more tightly and produces greater block unity and plastic
rigour. This sort of thing can of course be improvement of form, but not necessarily the
intensification of the cipher which is what matters here. This only occurs through the fissures
of disintegration, in the quite specific sense which disintegration possesses concerning the
objet d'art and as transformation of the objet d'art. In this way, instead of ruin or torso, a
belated fragment arises, one which can do better justice to the depth contents of art than the
completedness which the work sought to manifest there and then. Every great art, even one
as inherently so completely closed as that of Egypt, thus becomes a belated fragment, by
disintegrating into essentiation; because the utopian ground opens up in which the work of art
had been registered. Although the acquisition of the cultural heritage always has to be
critical, this acquisition contains, as a particularly important factor, the self-dispersal of what
has been made into the museum-bound objet d'art, but also of the false enclosedness which
the work of art sought to have there and then and which further intensifies
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in museum-bound contemplation. The insular quality cracks, a series of figures full of open,
experimental symbolic formations opens up. All the more so when the phenomenon of the
belated fragment combines with that created in the work of art itself: not in fact in the usual,
flat sense of the fragmentary as that which could not be done or that which remained by
chance unfinished, but in the concrete sense of that which, at the highest level of mastery, is
unclosed, of that which is transformed through utopian pressure. This is the case in great
Gothic art, sometimes also in the Baroque, which despite all the power of the work, indeed
because of it, had a hollow space and behind it a fertile darkness. Thus precisely fully-
executed Gothic, despite Pan's presence here too, executes a fragment composed of central
un-finish-ability. Peculiar, if then fragments arise even in the usual sense of brokenness, and
yet in the unusual, though solely legitimate sense of an appearing Ultimum only hinted at.
This is so in the work of Michelangelo, who left more fragments behind than any other great
master, and in fact remarkably in his most characteristic concern, in his sculpture and not in
his painting. Since in the latter he finished everything he began, whereas with statues and
also in architecture he set a disproportionately large amount of half-completed work on one
side, never turned to it again and left it behind. Vasari gave art history the signal to wonder at
the meagre amount of totally finished material in Michelangelo's work and to wonder all the
more since the enormity in the intended goal nevertheless corresponded so completely to the
power and nature of this genius. But what offered resistance to artistic rounding, artistic
completion here was precisely the corresponding element to enormity in Michelangelo
himself, was the agreement between an overpowerful nature and the overpowering character
of a task in such a way that no work executed could satisfy this adequation, so that in fact
completion itself, driven so deeply into the Absolute, becomes a fragment. This kind of
fragment is then nothing less than an ingredient of the un-temple-like, of the unharmonized
cathedralic, is the conscience: Gothic even post festum. The depth of aesthetic completion
brings the very dimension of the uncompleted into play: to this extent even the non-
fragmentary, in the usual sense, in Michelangelo, the figures on the Medici tomb as much as
the dome of St Peter's Basilica, stretches into that excessive measure which is the measure of
the Ultimum in art. Hence finally the legitimately, namely materially fragmentary quality, in
all works of this ultimative kind, in the West-stlicher Divan,* in Beethoven's last quartets,
*
A cycle of later Goethe poems inspired by intensive reading of Persian poetry in 1814 when the poet
was already sixty-five.
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in Faust, in short, wherever unfinishability lends greatness in finishing. And if we look for
the reason, which in ideological terms most definitely continues to operate, for such internal
iconoclasm in greatly completed art and precisely in this, then it lies in the pathos of path and
process, in the eschatological conscience that came into the world through the Bible. Totality
in the religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom is solely of a totally transforming and
exploding kind, is utopian; and, confronted with this totality, not only our knowledge, but
also the whole of what has previously become, to which our conscience refers, then appears
as unfinished work. As unfinished work or objective fragment precisely also in the most
productive sense, not only in that of creatural limitation, let alone resignation. The 'Behold, I
make all things new', in the sense of apocalyptic explosion, is written above this and
influences all great art with the spirit after which Drer named his Gothic creation
Apocalypsis Cum Figuris. Man is still not solid, the course of the world is still undecided,
unclosed, and so also is the depth in all aesthetic information: this utopian factor is the
paradox in aesthetic immanence, the most fundamentally immanent paradox in this
immanence itself. Without such potency for the fragment, aesthetic imagination would of
course have sufficient perception in the world, more than any other human apperception, but
it would ultimately have no correlate. For the world itself, just as it is in a mess, is also in a
state of unfinishedness and in experimental process out of that mess. The shapes which this
process throws up, the ciphers, allegories and symbols in which it is so rich, are all
themselves still fragments, real fragments, through which process streams unclosed and
advances dialectically to further fragmentary forms. The fragmentary holds good for the
symbol too, although the symbol does not refer to process, but to the unum necessarium
within it; but precisely because of this reference and because of the fact that it is only a
reference and not an arrival, the symbol also contains fragment. The real symbol itself is in
fact only one because, instead of being disguised merely to the observer and inherently clear,
it is precisely not yet inherently manifest. This therefore constitutes the meaning of the
fragment, seen from the perspective of art, and not only from that of art; the fragment lies in
the subject-matter itself, it still belongs, rebus sic imperfectis et fluentibus, to the subject-
matter of the world. Concrete utopia as object-determination presupposes concrete fragment
as object-determination and involves it, even though certainly as an ultimately revocable
fragment. And therefore every artistic, and especially every religious pre-appearance is only
concrete on the basis and to the extent that the fragmentary in
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the world ultimately presents the layer and the material for it to constitute itself as pre-
appearance.
It Is a Question of Realism, Everything Real Has a Horizon

To stick to things, to sail over them, both are wrong. Both remain external, superficial,
abstract, and being immediate, cannot get away from the surface. Sticking keeps to it
anyway, sailing over has it in its own unruly inner dimension as well as in the other, merely
evaporated dimension of immediacy to which it escapes. Nevertheless, of course, sailing over
belongs to a higher human type than taking things as they are. And above all: sticking to
these things remains flat even when it is considered, that is, empiricist, whereas enthusiasm,
when it is considered, can most definitely stop being bottomless. The flat empiricist and the
effusive enthusiast are constantly surprised by the flow of the real, which neither of them
grasp, but the former, as a fetishist of so-called facts, remains obstinate, whereas the fantast
is possibly teachable. In the world only reification, which keeps a firm hold on individual
moments of process and anchors them as facts, suits the empiricist, and he stands and falls by
it. Whereas sailing over is itself at least in motion, i.e. in an attitude which need not
fundamentally remain unmediable with real motion. In creation, sailing over has art on its
side, albeit with much appearance, much dubious escape to a downright intentionally untrue
dream-appearance. But the concrete correction of sailing over opens up in art, and not only in
art, images, insights, tendencies which occur simultaneously in man and in the object
assigned to him. Precisely this concrete dimension does not rise from the perspective of
grovelling empiricism and the naturalism that corresponds to it in aesthetic terms, which
never advances from the establishment of what is factual to the exploration of what is
essentially happening. Whereas imagination, as soon as it appears concretely, knows how to
visualize not only sensory abundance, but also the mediation-relations in and behind the
immediacy of real experience. Instead of the isolated fact and the superfcial context of
abstract immediacy which is likewise isolated from the whole, the relation of appearances to
the whole of their epoch and to the utopian Totum located in process now emerges. Art
becomes knowledge with the help of imagination of this kind, namely through telling
individual images and overall pictures of a characteristically typical kind; it pursues the
'significant aspect' of appearances and executes it. Science, with the help of imagination of
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this kind, grasps the 'significant aspect' of appearances through concepts, which never remain
abstract, never allow the phenomenon to fade, let alone be lost. And the 'significant aspect' is
in art and science the particular aspect of the general, the respective instance for the
dialectically open context, the respective characteristically typical figure of the Totum. And
the actual Toturn, this dimension in which even the epochally grasped whole of all epochal
moments is itself again a moment, shows itself precisely in broadly mediated great works
only on the horizon, not in an already thoroughly formed reality. Everything living, says
Goethe, has an atmosphere around it; everything real in general, because it is life, process,
and can be a correlate of objective imagination, has a horizon. An inner horizon, extending
vertically as it were, in the self-dark, an external one of great breadth, in the world-light; and
the regions behind both horizons are filled with the same utopia, are consequently identical in
the Ultimum. Where the prospective horizon is omitted, reality only appears as become, as
dead, and it is the dead, namely naturalists and empiricists, who are burying their dead here.
Where the prospective horizon is continuously included in the reckoning, the real appears as
what it is in concreto: as the path-network of dialectical processes which occur in an
unfinished world, in a world which would not be in the least changeable without the
enormous future: real possibility in that world. Together with that Toturn which does not
represent the isolated whole of a respective section of process, but the whole of the subject-
matter pending in process overall, hence still tendential and latent. This alone is realism, it is
of course inaccessible to that schematism which knows everything in advance, which
considers its uniform, in fact even formalistic, stencil to be reality. Reality without real
possibility is not complete, the world without future-laden properties does not deserve a
glance, an art, a science any more than that of the bourgeois conformist. Concrete utopia
stands on the horizon of every reality; real possibility surrounds the open dialectical
tendencies and latencies to the very last. By these the unconcluded motion of unconcluded
matter and motion is, in that profound phrase of Aristotle, 'uncompleted entelechy' is
arch-realistically pervaded.
18
The Layers of the Category Possibility
How often something presents itself in such a way that it can be. Or even in such a way that
it can be different than it was before, which is
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why something can be done about it. But this itself would not be possible without Possible
within and in front of it. There is a wide field here and it must be investigated more than ever
before. Already the fact that a Can-Be can be said and thought is by no means self-evident.
There is still something open here, it can be meant differently than it was before, can be
rearranged, connected differently, changed in moderation. Where nothing more can be done
or is possible, life stands still. 'Now everything, everything must change',* how else would
this decidedly youthful exclamation itself be possible? Certainly, there is much that is vague
in the merely Possible, much that is slippery too, not only what is fluid or that which keeps
things fluid. But just as man is mainly a creature who enters into the Possible and has it in
front of him, he also knows that this does not coincide with vagueness, that precisely his
open character is definitely nothing arbitrary. Can-Be also has laws, even in the mere play of
words and especially in the seriousness that soon enters. And the available substance which
has so much airiness in it is at the same time one of the heaviest and demands to be treated
strictly. Otherwise above all the different layers of the Can-Be do not become visible.
The Formally Possible

First, of course, much too much can just be said without thinking. Everything can be spoken
in theory, words can be senselessly strung together. Constructions are possible such as:
'something round or'; 'a person and is'. Apart from the fact that they are sayable, there is
nothing possible in them at all; they are meaningless nonsense. The case is different however
with statements which are not nonsensical, but run counter to sense, where the listener at
least shakes his head in disbelief. Namely when the statement directly contradicts itself, as in
the concept 'round square' or in the judgement: 'He is boarding a ship that had sailed.' A
meaning like this which directly contradicts itself in its characteristics or its predicate is
absurd, but definitely not nonsense, rather in fact countersense. The latter is, in contrast to
merely sayable nonsense, definitely something conceptually possible, a formal Can-Be;
because everything is conceptually possible which can in any way be conceived as standing
in relation. In fact even
*
Cf. Uhland's 'Frhlingsglauben', 1812:
'The gentle breezes have woken,
Now everything, everything must change.'
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relations whose parts are related not only absurdly, but totally disparately to one another still
represent, even though they are disparate, a formally describable relation, namely in fact a
disparate one, and belong to what is conceptually possible. Such as the statements 'irascible
triangle' or 'well-read chain-bridge' or 'the horse that is thunder' and other incompatible things
besides. Such exaggeration shows at the same time how boundless the merely conceptually
possible can be. For even the relation in the statement that there is no relation whatsoever
between things had an unfruitful place in what is conceptually possible. Just as there can be
fullness in thinking due to imprecision, bad fullness in other words, there is also bad
openness in what is conceptually possible. And this alongside the good kind, which reveals
itself above all in the formal Can-Be of the Self-Contradicting.
The Factually-Objectively Possible*

Much too much can therefore still not only be said, but also thought. That is why the Can-Be,
which can be encountered not only in thinking but also in cognition, looks much more
definite. This Possible is not boundless, but a respectively nameable one and one that can be
indicated by degrees in proportion to the known conditions. But since such namings and
degrees initially only express degrees of knowing and cognition, not degrees of the inner
conditional maturity of the fact-based Object* itself, the Possible is still not a strictly fact-
based one here, but a factual one, i.e. a cognitive, fact-suited one. Thus it presents itself as
statement of caution, then as one of grounded opinion, of grounded assumption of its
capability-of-being, in short as factually-objectively grounded possibility. It is the grounding
which stands here for the condition or the real ground, in such a way however that the
grounding, that is, the condition existing according to cognition for an affirmative, factually
valid statement itself does not exist in a complete form. Everything is conceptually possible
where
*
In this section Bloch uses the concepts 'sachlich', 'sachhaft' and 'sachgem' for possible attitudes to
'die Sache', i.e. the real matter, the real state of affairs. We have translated these as 'factual', 'fact-
based', 'fact-suited'. Uniform with these are the concepts for possible attitudes to 'das Objekt', the object
'objektiv', 'objekthaft', 'objektgem', which we have translated consistently as 'objective', 'object-
based' and 'object-suited'.
**
Bloch once again distinguishes between the more philosophical 'Objekt' and the more concrete
'Gegenstand' here. We have indicated 'Gegenstand' and its compounds with a capital.
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anything at all can be conceived as standing in relation, but over and above this it is true of
all further kinds of the Can-Be: the Possible is partially conditioned material, and it is
possible only as such. We must keep to the thus given definition from here on, as it contains
the criterion for the Possible in all its variations. In other words: every Possible beyond the
merely conceptually possible signifies an openness in consequence of a not yet completely
sufficient, and hence more or less insufficiently existing conditional ground. Because only a
few but not all conditional grounds exist, the Real cannot yet be indicated from the thus
Possible, so the old scholastic principle holds: a posse ad esse non valet consequentia.* But
now back to the factually Possible itself which is in question here. It is likewise partial
conditionality, but, in more precise terms, solely factually-partial knowledge-cognition of
conditionality. This conditionality is partial and must be so because a total mustering of the
conditions would make the occurrence of an event no longer merely supposable, more or less
probable, i.e. factually possible, but unconditionally certain. Thus it is unfair, in full
knowledge of the fully available conditions, still to bet on the occurrence of an event; thus
with such knowledge in one's pocket it is cowardly or stupid still to play Fabius Cunctator.**
The factually-objective Possible (and incidentally also the fact-based object-based Possible
and the really Possible, of which more later) is stated in a hypothetical judgement or, in cases
of even less certainty, in a problematic judgement. The hypothetical judgement is
distinguished in this relation from the problematic one in that it presupposes not yet
confirmed initial propositions, whereas the problematic judgement, which in its form
conceals the initial propositions: 'it could rain today', 'Leukippos did perhaps exist', 'cosmic
rays possibly emanate from a star-cluster in the Milky Way' presupposes other unknown
initial propositions apart from the not yet confirmed ones. The problematic judgement is
therefore the authentically developed judgement of possibility as a factually modal
determination: P is assigned to S in the mode of the Can-Be. A special case that is relevant
here is further represented by the inauthentic, in fact false judgements of possibility; they are
those of knowledge which is insufficient not in terms of research but only of reception.
Previously, this false factual Can-Be has hardly been separated from the genuine kind, and
*
There is no necessary development from potential to being.
**
Fabius Maximus (Cunctator) (d. 203 B.C.), the Roman Consul and Dictator who saved Rome from being
conquered by Hannibal by evasive tactics, avoiding direct confrontation in battle. Hence the term 'Fabian
Policy' which Bloch is referring to here.
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yet the difference, which is so important for the status of the possible, leaps to the eye. A
false modal judgement is this for example: 'Water can be broken down by electric current.' In
reality, however, water is always broken down by electric current (as long as no new,
possibly disturbing conditions exist). Likewise the knowledge of this process is completely
grounded, all conditions for it exist; consequently the above-mentioned content of the
judgement is unquestionable. The only thing that is not so unquestionable is the state of
knowledge of the consciousness which receives the proposition, and only in this
psychological-pedagogical respect, external to logic, is the cited judgement modally formed,
modally disguised. Factually, it is a categorical or assertive judgement through and through,
not a hypothetical or problematic one. Which is why therefore only non-pedagogical
statements, only research-statements in which a non liquet of the knowledge-conditions for
the categorical or assertive form exists are genuine factually-modal statements. Factually-
objective possibility thus always designates the degree of scientific-objective groundedness
according to the incomplete scientific knownness of the factually existing conditions.
Thus the judgement is left in the balance here, is only more or less distanced from the
question. Or rather the affirmation and denial of the judgement remains in the balance, i.e.
the bare judging or the qualitative judgement of a judgement. And only in this judgement of a
judgement does the factually Possible exist, and most decidedly in this of course; it begins to
exist in it before it goes on to become depictive. Factual possibility is thus already in the
assumption or the suppositions which lead to the formulation of questions concerning
scientific or socio-historical given facts. The supposition anticipates in a problematic
judgement the principal condition or a group context of conditions on the basis of which the
Object of examination can be clarified in its real ground and accordingly understood in the
course it takes. This methodological supposition guides the formulation of questions and the
variations of the conditions of scientific experiments, but it also provides the peculiar
estimate, i.e. what has been called the temporary, the working hypothetical image of a
particular matter. The expression working hypothesis of course contains a dubious element
within it, in that it was flogged to death by the late-bourgeois relativists; so let us use the
older and more solid expression: heuristic principle. Such a principle is at work for example
in hypothetical simplification or in a hypothetical analogy to what is already better known,
with which the exploration of confused or complicated phenomena of a socio-historical
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kind may first be approached. The formulation of the question of this factually Possible in
methodological use is confirmed or not confirmed by inductions which are made in the
direction of the supposed conditional context. Though, of course, however comprehensive it
is, an induction can never express its result other than in a judgement of factually-objective
possibility once again. For even the most complete induction cannot be a total one, i.e. a
knowledge of all conditional elements as the same in all regions of space, or even remaining
the same in time. Thus in inductive confirmation of a methodological supposition there is
also still that trace of a factually Possible, of a not totally Certain, which in graduated
stages up to 'astronomic certainty' is called comparative probability. And what of
deduction, the supposedly always settled large form of an exhaustively sufficient, essential-
general conditional ground? It is true that it not only reveals the particulars of inductive
empirical knowledge as moments of a total context, from this generality of the particular, it
also seeks, in a traditionally extreme claim, to derive the cognition of these particulars with
necessity, consequently not with partial but total conditionality. This quite clearly in the first
mode of the first conclusion figure: Caius is necessarily mortal by virtue of his being a man.
The middle term of being a man produces here the completely sufficient 'essential ground' of
being mortal; thus there arises what Aristotle calls a perfect conclusion, that is in fact: a
conclusion of necessity. 'Perfect I call a conclusion which, in order for its necessity to be
clear, needs no further definition beyond the premises' (Aristotle, Prior Analytics, Chapter 1):
factual capability-of-being thus gives way to factual inevitability-of-being. However, the
thus asserted impossibility of the capability-of-being-other, let alone of the capability-of-
being-opposite, is only to be found in areas of the highest abstraction which have been made
artificially pure, and even there only when limited to what can be derived from axioms or to
that which is dominantly contained in theorems. The axioms (mathematical, logical, in
copied form even the earlier ones of Natural Right) are of course not posited arbitrarily, and
hence mere game-rules, as with incurable randomness much airily idealistic, supposedly
fact-free 'pure research' into mathematics asserts. Instead, the axioms definitely contain a
depiction of factual relations external to thought, although in the most abstractly abbreviated
and general form. However, they are limited to particular areas of their purely constructive
dominance, and these limits are above all fluid (we only need to think of the mere 'limited
case' of our Euclidean space and its axioms or of the changes in the proposition of
contradiction in
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elementary, as it were Euclidean logic, and then in dialectically developed logic). But then,
all these axioms still far from coincide with the 'essential ground' designated by Aristotle (the
active Totum of the matter, the 'entelechy'); they are kept much too abstract for that. And the
'essential ground' itself, for example the cited fact of Caius being a man as the middle term in
the first mode of the first conclusion figure: even the middle term of this being a man, in
which Aristotle wanted to perceive both the perfect logical cognitive ground and also the
inevitable real ground of being mortal, produces no necessity settled once and for all, in the
sense of strict deductive proof. Since even being human (like every other 'essential ground')
stands in process, and cannot therefore, in the strict sense, lend logical necessity even to such
an exceptionless phenomenon as mortality. Consequently, even in deduction, factually
Necessary only proves to be factually Possible, even though this is possibly of the smallest
degree. In general: the conditional initial propositions of concluding cognition, without
falling into a closed schematism estranged from the world, cannot be more complete than the
unenclosed Fact-based itself, which the Factual has to depict after its fashion, in concept,
judgement, conclusion. Even in the Factually-objective the area of the possible is, sui
generis, very large; it can belong here, opposed to bed of ease and fixed derivation, to the life
of research.
The Fact-Based Object-Suited Possible

So much for what remains open, that is so because it is not or not rigidly settled. This kind of
Can-Be thus reflects factual caution in judgements, mostly in the manner of a question still
resonating along with it, of a factual reservation. Differently constituted, however, to this
factually Possible is the fact-based Possible which now emerges; namely in so far as it does
not concern our knowledge of something, but this something itself, as something that could
become this or that. The fact-based Possible does not live on the insufficiently known, but on
the insufficiently emerged conditional grounds. It therefore does not designate a more or less
sufficient knowledge of conditions, but it designates what is more or less sufficiently
conditioning in Objects themselves and in their factual relations. Factual relation, that is the
'relating of matters-of-fact' as Objects of cognition; to the factual relation belong first the
kinds of having of Objective qualities and relationships, then of standing in Objective
relationships. Modal factual relations, as the Objects of cognition, therefore never coincide
with modal statements,
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as the mere procedures of cognition, of the kind represented by assumptions, suppositions,

the anticipating estimate, and inductively probable or even deductive conclusions. But in
fact: a still openly Possible arises even when there is otherwise sufficiently enclosed
knowledge of the existing conditions; consequently, the Possible appears here as Objective-
structural thus-relating itself. Here we enter upon the depictive layer of fact-basedness, of
object-suitedness, as distinct from mere factuality, objectivity. This also makes a distinction
necessary in the discipline in which the fact-based Possible is to be treated. Whereas
factuality only concerns cognition and therefore the concern of its objectivity is an
epistemological one, fact-basedness concerns the Object of cognition, which is not, according
to the neo-Kantians, cognition itself; the real concern of this object-suitedness is
consequently a categorically Object-theoretical one. The concept of Object theory first
appeared clearly in Meinong, but it was here purely related a priori to the supposedly
existence-free quality of an essence which was supposed to ghost around independently of
the existence or non-existence of Objects. Mathematics was regarded as a model of this
'existence-free knowledge' here, and especially in the later phenomenology of Husserl, even
if it was of course: a mathematics artificially removed from all its depictive real reference,
and incurably reified in its abstractness. And logic was well and truly reified here, in the
sense of a purely a priori 'description' of its acts, a purely a priori 'semantic analysis' of its
categories with 'bracketed existence'. Whereas Object theory that applies to reality is one in
which the a priori represents even less of a temptation than in epistemology. For although the
Objects and their factual relations must still be distinguished not only from the factual aspect
of the process of cognition, but also from the actual objects and their real relations, they
function precisely as the most faithful possible forms of realistic depiction. And the
precedence noted here of an Object theory over object theory thus contains no idealism,
because the researching-materialistic depiction itself belongs to the Object theory, is at work
only in the face of the object-based Real and not in it, and does not coincide with it. Further:
the depiction of the structural factual relations no longer belongs to the methodological
cognition-process, because it is a result of cognition, and it is such a result in that and in so
far as it is related, being object-suited, precisely to the real object. The form of the result of
cognition is the real definition, as the statement not merely of linguistic features, conceptual
characteristics, but of Objective-constitutive properties; and precisely this real definition,
being characteristically 'concise' and not spread out,
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represents the object considered from its structural Object-side. To give an example: the
socialist real definition of the nation depicts, without all the far-fetched foreign nationalistic
moustaches or even cosmopolitan great Chicagos, hotel sauces, levellings of today, precisely
the concise Object-side of the real, this means in fact: it makes the constitutive-real structure
in the object clear. The theory of Objects is thus the site of categories as the most general and
then characteristically typical modes and forms of existence. (If it were not this specific site
and on it, the theory of categories would coincide with the whole philosophy of the real and
the latter likewise with the theory of categories.) So now, within the thus constituted layer of
fact-basedness, of structural object-suitedness, the possibility in this layer must also be
distinguished separately and as separately determined. Important for this is the above-
mentioned distinction between Object and real object: the purely structural possibility of the
propensity to something is not yet the same as this real propensity itself, as the disposition in
all the richly interwoven, even richly disturbed, inhibited, and again victorious
metamorphoses of reality. The fact-based object-suited Possible, grasped and defined in
terms of Object theory, therefore definitely constitutes a separate differentiation in the
category of possibility and is not, for instance, a superfluous doubling of the object-based
real Possible. The fact-based Possible is the fact-based partially Conditional according to the
structural genus, type, social context and legislative context of the matter. Partially
Conditional appears here therefore as an openness strictly founded in the Object and thus
only communicated to hypothetical or problematic cognition, an openness of a more or less
structurally determined kind.
Two kinds of conditions appear here in all cases, internal and external ones. They interweave
in interaction, in such a way however that the individual character of both is thoroughly
preserved. But the fact-based merely Possible remains even if one of the two conditions, the
internal or the external, should almost be fulfilled. Thus a blossom can of course let the fruit
ripen within it with complete internal conditionality, but if the complete external condition of
good weather is missing, then the fruit is still merely possible. Conversely, an even more
reductive effect than the missing external condition is produced by the weakness of internal
conditions when there is a simultaneous abundance of external ones. Of course, humanity
always sets itself tasks it can solve, but if the great moment for solution is met by a faint-
hearted generation,*
*
'The great moment is met by a faint-hearted generation', from Goethe and Schiller's 'Xenien',
epigrams written mainly in 1796.
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then more than ever this solution is merely possible, i.e. only remains weakly possible. The
lack of revolutionary consequences that followed from the 9th November 1918 in Germany
provides an example of this, or, in another sphere, the unripened fruit of great German
painting after Drer, even though the external conditions still existed for it, however much
the circle of ideology and patronage was that of a small state.* The partial conditionality must
not therefore sink below a certain fraction in either of the two kinds of condition, otherwise
over-compensation by the other kind of condition is itself impossible. But the interweaving
remains of course, as becomes especially clear when the structure of the internal as well as
the external condition is more firmly grasped, i.e. with the removal of that equivocation
which has persisted for ages precisely in the Object-category of possibility. Possibility here
in fact means both internal, active capability and external, passive capability-of-being-done;
therefore, capability-of-being- other falls into capability-of-doing-other and capability-of-
becoming-other. As soon as these two meanings have been concretely distinguished, the
internal partial condition emerges as active possibility, i.e. as capacity, potency, and the
external partial condition as possibility in the passive sense, as potentiality. Both are in fact
interwoven: there is no working capability of capacity and its active 'propensity' without
potentiality in a time, environment, society, without the usable ripeness of these external
conditions. The political form of active possibility is the ability of the subjective factor; and
the latter least of all can act without interweaving, without interaction with the objective
factors of possibility, i.e. with the potentialities of that which can really happen or can at least
be arranged, according to the ripeness of the external conditions. But not as if the external
conditions themselves here fell out of possibility in its most significant sense, namely out of
openness here in a fatalizing way. On the contrary: if possibility as capacity is the capability-
of-doing-other, that which does not cancel but rather redetermines in all determinations, then
possibility as objective potentiality is the capability-of-becoming-other, that which cannot be
cancelled, but rather can be directed and re-determined in all determinations. And the latter
always with such interweaving that, without potentiality of the capability-of-becoming-other,
neither the capability-of-doing-other of potency would
*
Bloch is referring to 'Kleinstaaterei', the political division of Germany into small states which
pertained until the nineteenth century. This was the outcome of the Thirty Years War and the Treaty of
Westphalia in 1648. After 1848, with great foresight, Marx wrote: 'Unless radical elements unite
Germany by revolutionary means, Bismarck will unite it by reactionary Junker ones'. By 1871
Bismarck had done so.
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have space, nor, without the capability-of-doing-other of potency, would the capability-of-
becoming-other of the world have a sense which could be mediated with human beings.
Consequently even the Object category of possibility predominantly reveals itself as that
which it is not by virtue of itself, but rather by virtue of the supporting intervention of human
beings in what is still changeable: as a possible concept of salvation. It also revealed itself
partly, of course, as a possible concept of disaster,* precisely on account of the capability-of-
doing-other, but also on account of the capability-of-becoming-other within it, that no less
provides room for a change for the worse, commensurate with the precarious material which
can lie precisely in the changeability, and here therefore uncertainty of a situation. This
precarious material, as negative stock of fact-based possibility, extends from the accident that
can happen to us to the eruption of fascist hell, a possibility that was and still is concealed in
the final stage of capitalism. The disaster character of the Possible thus militates against the
above-mentioned salvation character, hope character of the Possible, which lies no less
powerfully in the changeability of a situation, here however not in its uncertainty, but in its
redeemability, positive revocability. This non-precarious, but beneficial element, as the so
highly positive other stock of fact-based possibility, extends from the stroke of luck which
can happen to people to the realm of freedom which develops as socialist possibility in
history and finally begins to become real. Everything which is thus capable of change
(fortuna vertit) admittedly always contains an element of chance, but again in a different
way. There is the merely singular and immediate aspect of an accident or a stroke of luck.
But there is also a capability-of-being-other which does not occur on the surface in this way.
Along these lines, Hegel distinguished with great vividness external contingency from
dialectically mediated change of process; he did this by limiting external contingency to
merely external necessity, in fact by declaring that they are identical. Consequently
contingency is seen by Hegel solely in the immediately concrete and not in the mediatedly
concrete, or in fact only on the edge of process: 'The immediately concrete is namely a host
of properties which are outside each other and more or less indifferent towards each other,
and towards which for this very reason simple subjectivity that exists for itself' (the incipient
centring aspect of process) 'is equally indifferent and leaves them to external and therefore
contingent determination' (Enzyklopdie, 250). This is contingency in the not at all
*
Bloch is punning on the German 'Heil' salvation, and 'Unheil' disaster.
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trustworthy sense, that which externally disperses and disturbs normal and typical
development more in previous history than in nature. But dialectically-mediated
unenclosedness, as the possibility structure of lasting process, has nothing at all in common
with poorly-mediated randomness. Though once again not as if that which is circulating in
the capability-of- being-other of the process is now the strict opposite of every kind of
chance and contingency. The enormous experiment of mediated capability-of-being- other in
process does not yet possess this opposite and still has neither the calm nor even a legal title
to possess it. Instead, there is at work in this capability-of-being-other of possibility once
again precisely that which we may call contingency at its highest level, with the character of
permanent, but in fact partial mediation. This kind of contingency, in the finally trustworthy
sense of the matter, means creative wealth of variability which is open to formations and
creations. This is a variability which is not external but mediated in a law-governed and fact-
based way, yet precisely one of unthwarted change of direction, above all of unexhausted
new formation. Here even a so-called contingency no longer coincides with merely external
necessity, but it forms, as a contingency which is dialectically mediated with the material of
law-based necessity, precisely the blooming, characteristic aspect, the ordered fullness of
development of the open world. Contingency of this kind is of course equally still situation-
based, but not in the sense of the precarious, it fulfils rather the mundus situalis of the
process which is giving birth to the New. The strict opposite of every contingency would
only be enclosed necessity no longer capable of variability, but not in need of it either. Only
this structurally enclosed necessity would be the fully Conditional per se, in which the
internal and above all the external conditions are not merely completely ripe, but coincide.
Though as yet no Objectivity has got to the bottom of the matter in this necessity to such an
extent that the Objectivity itself coincides with its total foundation; so that it would in fact be
structurally necessary. This coincidence was considered by Spinoza in his definition of God-
nature as the causa sui and with much greater hypostasis of logical identity by Anselm of
Canterbury in the self-foundation, the 'aseitas' (a se esse) of God. According to which the
most perfect being necessarily exists because it exists out of its own intrinsicality, and
consequently its essence also necessarily includes its existence, as its existence does its
essence. It is not necessary to affirm that such object-based notions do not exist beyond their
definition, unless in mere, more or less concretely anticipatable value-ideals of the perfect
coincidence of reason and manifestation. The framework
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of such a value-ideal is even outside and opposed to all theology the 'one thing which is
necessary', and therefore that which has traditionally been designated as the 'highest good'.
However, since rebus sic imperfectis even what is designated thus is still by no means real,
but at best in process, even this type of structural necessity exists once again only in
structural possibility. Though the latter now proves, with the horizon of the causa sui or
achieved identity of existence and essence, to be the most decisive category of salvation.
Since the ideal point where essential being and appearance coincide is always simultaneously
the absolute target point for the structural line of the humanely positively Possible.
The Objectively-Real Possible

The Can-Be would mean almost nothing if it remained without consequences. The Possible
only has consequences, however, in that it does not occur merely as formally permissible or
even as objectively supposable or even as open in an object-suited way, but in that it is a
future-laden definiteness in the real itself. There is thus real-partial conditionality of the
object which represents in the latter itself its real possibility. Thus man is the real possibility
of everything which has become of him in his history and, above all, which can still become
of him if his progress is not blocked. He is a possibility therefore which is not merely
exhausted like an acorn in the enclosed realization of the oak-tree, but which has not yet
ripened the whole of its internal and external conditions, condition-determinants. And in the
unexhausted whole of the world itself: matter is the real possibility for all the forms which
are latent in its womb and are delivered of it through process. In this most comprehensive
concept of real possibility, the dynamei on (Being-In-Possibility) is located, which Aristotle
himself defined as matter. For just as Heraclitus was the first to see the contradiction in
things themselves, Aristotle was the first to recognize possibility in real terms, in the world-
stock itself. From this point Real Possible becomes conceivable as substratum: 'Everything
that becomes in nature and art has matter, since everything that is becoming is capable
(dynaton) of being and not being, but this (what can and cannot be) is in every case matter'
(Aristotle, Metaphysics VII, 7). And it is instructive that that which reveals itself actively in
this potentiality: the self-realizing form (entelechy) which is still dualistically separated from
matter in Aristotle, recedes and itself becomes matter to the same extent that the
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concept of active potency accedes to that of passive potentiality. The ex contrario proof of
this is the struggle of strict Arab theists, the so-called Motakhalim (that is, teachers of the
word, of revealed faith) against the equation: real possibility = matter. To keep the
omnipotence of the highest form (of the divine actus purus) absolute, instead of the dynamei
on, they had to spread the wholly null void into a Primum before the world: God created the
world out of the void, did not evoke it from matter, from real possibility. Conversely, in
pantheistic-materialistic philosophers of the Middle Ages, for example in Avicenna,
Averros, Amalrich of Bena and David of Dinant, real possibility becomes matter for the
whole ground of the world, and the divine creative will is always a moment of matter; in fact,
God and matter become identical. Development in Averros is 'eductio formarum ex
materia', with the 'dator formarum' in the universe itself. Thus creation appears with the
omission of all dualism solely as self-movement, self-fertilization of the matter of God; this
matter contains the potentiality and simultaneously that potency immanent in it which makes
an extra-worldly mover superfluous. And this semi-materialism of real possibility increases
in line with the Renaissance in Giordano Bruno. In his work the world becomes totally the
realization of the possibilities which are contained in uniform matter and as this. Natura
naturans and natura naturata now coincide above and below 'in permanent, eternal,
generating, maternal matter'. The substratum real possibility thus becomes, in bold
extrapolation from Aristotle, at the same time the source, not only the vessel of forms: 'Hence
matter, which . . . always remains fertile, must have the significant prerogative of being
recognized as the sole substantial principle and as that which is and remains . . . That is also
why some of them, because they had perhaps considered the relationship of forms in nature,
as far as it could be discerned from Aristotle and others of a similar school of thought, finally
concluded that the forms were only accidents and determinations in matter and that therefore
the prerogative of being considered as actus and entelechy must also belong to matter'
(Bruno, 'Cause, Principle and Unity'). These are therefore the first consequences when real
possibility is taken as being so real that it simultaneously embraces the womb and generation,
life and spirit, united in matter. And the womb also continues to remain fertile, the tendency-
latency of that which can become in real terms is not enclosed in the material substratum.
This definition of the dynamei on is of course one which perished in merely mechanical,
mechanistic materialism. Matter as fullness first rightly had to shrink here, because
quantitative science showed no
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trace of it and because total mechanics was the best crowbar against otherworldliness. But
this shrinking was no less possible because Christian scholasticism had itself removed the
Aristotelian concept of matter and even the variously pre-Socratic one (to which Bruno
likewise refers) from the fecund region of the natura naturans. Which is also why the words
of the English naturalist John Tyndall may also apply to the mechanical = all too mechanical
concept of matter, above all to its deadening aftereffect in the previous century: 'If matter
comes into the world as a beggar, it is because the Jacobs of theology have robbed it of its
birthright.'* In any case, matter which is only understood mechanically subsequently became
a clod estranged from history, for which all of its real possibility has already become static
reality, in the sense of a beginning frozen to death from birth as it were. However, Aristotle's
definition which continues to have an effect, that of the dynamei on, a definition which has
become capable of mutation, enters itself mutatis mutandis into historical-dialectical
materialism. Subjective factor, ripeness of conditions, shift of quantity into quality, even
changeability: all these dialectically-materialist moments of development are without
substratum in a clod-matter. The dialectical element falls away from it, as a quantum which
is of course moved mechanically but also immediately mechanized, or remains an epitheton
ornans attached to it; transition from the realm of necessity into that of freedom only finds
land in unenclosed process-matter. Precisely the extremes which have previously been held
as far apart as possible: future and nature, anticipation and matter chime together in the
overdue groundedness of historical-dialectical materialism. Without matter no basis of (real)
anticipation, without (real) anticipation no horizon of matter is ascertainable. Real
possibility thus does not reside in any ready-made ontology of the being of That-Which-Is up
to now, but in the ontology, which must constantly be grounded anew, of the being of That-
Which-Is-Not-Yet, which discovers future even in the past and in the whole of nature. Its
new space thus emphasizes itself in the old space in the most momentous manner: real
possibility is the categorical In-Front-of-Itself of material movement considered as a process;
it is the specific regional character of reality itself, on the Front of its occurrence. How else
could we explain the future-laden properties of matter? there is no true realism without the
true dimension of this openness.
The Real Possible begins with the seed in which what is coming
*
The physicist John Tyndall (182093) was actually Irish.
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is inherent. What is prefigured in it drives on to unfold itself, but not of course as if it already
existed beforehand, boxed into the narrowest space. The 'seed' itself still awaits many leaps,
the 'inherent propensity' unfolds itself in the unfolding itself to ever new and more precise
beginnings of its potentia-possibilitas. The real Possible in seed and inherent propensity is
consequently never an encapsulated finished entity which, first existing in miniature, simply
has to grow out. Instead it proves its openness as really developing unfolding, not as mere
spilling out or folding out. Potentia-possibilitas repeatedly makes the initial root and Origo of
processively continuing appearance original on a new level, with newly latent content. Thus
the worker, this root of becoming human, is transformed throughout the whole of his further
history and develops more and more precisely within it. In fact we can say that even man
walking upright, this alpha of ours in which lies the propensity towards being completely
unbowed and hence towards the realm of freedom, itself moves repeatedly transformed and
more precisely qualified throughout the history of ever more concrete revolutions. Right up
to classless man, who in general represents the ultimately intended propensity-possibility of
history up to now. Hence the real Possible not only keeps the latter driving onwards, as
propensity towards its Real, but also, as the ever further developing ultimate Totum of this
propensity, has an essential relation to the reality which has already become. Thus the
previously Real is both pervaded by the constant plus-ultra of essential possibility and
illuminated by it at its leading edge. This illumination, a pre-appearing light on the horizon,
which has also been reflected in almost all social utopias in a more or less abstract way,
presents itself psychologically as wishful image forwards, morally as human ideal, and
aesthetically as natural object-based symbol. The wishful images forwards have as their
content the more or less grasped Possible of a better life in general; they are therefore
cheerful and prelusive. In the main, the ideals have as their content the more or less realized
Possible of an attempted perfect humanity, of perfect social conditions; they are therefore, in
their guiding images and guiding panels, galvanizing and exemplary. The undistorted and
unreified, beautiful human type and the classless relationship in which there is room for him
belong here. Finally, the symbols have as their content, most definitely in the main matter,
the Possible, which is always only realized in passing, of an unalienated identicality of
existence with essence in nature as a whole; hence symbols are engaged and profound. They
are, in contrast to ideals, cloaked, i.e. they mean their Own with particularly strong pathos of
'meaning', and do so because they do not
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have as their content a more or less realized Possible like ideals, but in fact have as their
content a Possible which is only realized in themselves in passing. And furthermore, above
all: this content therefore stands so much in the 'meaning' or as we may say more specifically
of symbols: in the 'cipher', because it is more central and consequently for the time being less
manifestable than the content of ideals. The respective carriers, existences of a symbolic
meaning are of course far more numerous, indeed almost more random than those of the
ideal, yet they are in return always related far more extensively in the whole of nature to what
is essential. And they are centrally related to it; which on the other hand constitutes the
difference of the symbol from the allegory, the simile of a thing with any number of other
things without the region of sheer diversity ever being left. The reference of the symbol,
however, is directed, as we have seen, precisely towards a uniformity of meaning; which is
also why, in contrast to the diverse reference of allegories, which is always ambiguous,
genuine symbols ultimately converge in their meaning, namely in the central aspect of their
meaning. The socially conditioned respective direction-line towards the central aspect has
varied in the history of the symbol which led for long stretches through religion but what
has not varied is the respectively and repeatedly intended basic relation of the symbol-simile
to an 'Unum Verum Bonum' of essence. However, because this very essence only lies in the
Possible which is realized in passing and cannot lie anywhere else, the symbolic and this is
now of crucial importance is still cloaked not only in its expression but, in all genuine
symbols, also in its content itself. Since the genuine symbolic content itself is still at a
distance from its full appearance, and it is therefore also in objectively-real terms a cipher. It
is precisely in the light of the real Possible that there thus occurs the overdue notation of a
real core in the concept of the symbolic, and therefore of a concept which had previously
been understood almost exclusively in subjective-idealistic terms, apart from one or two
objective-idealistic versions in Hegel's Aesthetics. In subjective-idealistic terms, because in
fact all symbol-content was portrayed only as content that was cloaked for limited human
reason, while the content was considered to be completely settled without any distance
from itself, radiant in transcendentally existing statics. On the contrary, however, the truth is
this: the symbolic communicates itself to its expression solely from the perspective of its
object-content, differentiates the individual symbols from the perspective of the objectively
real material, whose variously situated content of cloakedness, content of factual identity
they respectively depict as this cloaked and
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factually identical aspect. And it is solely this depictiveness of a real cipher, of a real
symbol, which finally lends symbols their genuineness. The genuineness of a convergence of
meaning which combines with the reality of this meaning in particular objects in the outside
world containing an especially high degree of latency. To this category belong symbols like
the tower, the spring, the evening breezes in Mozart's 'Figaro', as well as the snowstorm in
Tolstoy's 'Death of Ivan Illyich', the starry sky above the fatally wounded Andrei Bolkonsky
in Tolstoy's 'War and Peace', the high mountains at the end of 'Faust', and all symbols of
sublimity in general. Literature has understood the symbolic region of the real Possible more
clearly than previous philosophy owing to its figurative nature, but philosophy incorporates
this region with strictness of concept and seriousness of connections. But both realistic
literature and philosophy reveal that the world itself is full of real ciphers and real symbols,
full of 'signatura rerum' in the sense of things which contain a central meaning. In this
meaning-fulness they point in quite real terms towards their tendency and latency of 'sense',
of a sense which might one day possibly completely receive man and his concerns. The
partial conditionality, and hence possibility of the ripening of this propensity goes through all
examples which test humane sense in which the world is so rich. But in fact with greater or
lesser distance from the example, with greater or lesser Not-Yet of the full appearance, i.e.
with that distance which so variously presents only wishful images, ideals and symbols rather
than successful achievement. And which shows the essential Totum of the world in the heavy
process of its being raised, never as a result. If the distance is played down, then abstract-
infamous optimism arises; but if the distance is understood as the mediated perfectibility
which it is, with all the components of danger, then the opposite of infamy arises: militant
optimism. So much here for the real Possible and the essence within it in the propensity-state
of that perfectible element which receives man with a premonition of his future freedom.
According to the most concrete of all Marx's anticipations, the essence of the perfectible is
'the naturalization of man, the humanization of nature'. That is the abolition of alienation in
man and nature, between man and nature or the harmony of the unreified object with the
manifested subject, of the unreified subject with the manifested object. Such a perspective of
absolute truth, that means here, of complete real being in the Real itself and its breadth and
depth is unavoidable, on penalty of relativism without outflow opens up once again only
real-essential possibility, not yet the real-essential necessity which is only inherent in that
possibility itself.
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For this would be a necessity with totally sufficient, i.e. inescapable conditions for the
existence of essence, for the essence of existence. On this side of this extreme non-
contingency or situationlessness, real-essential necessity is also only possibility, in fact a
possibility with conditions which in reality hardly even partially exist. Lasting process, active
hope-image of a better world, mediated with tendency, galvanizing ideal, profound symbol,
these remain the real perspectives, themselves anticipatory, of real possibility the epitome
of the Front-dimensions.
Memory:
Logical-Static Struggle against the Possible
Easy to see how still many a new leaf can be turned over. A Not-Yet exists everywhere, so
much is not yet conscious in man, so much in the world has not yet become. But both kinds
of Not-Yet would not exist if it could not move in the Possible and turn towards its openness.
Even so, the Can-Be has still been astonishingly little thought through and come to grips
with. The category of the Possible, although so well-known and used every hour, has been a
logical problem. This category has so far remained perhaps the most uncertain of the
concepts which have been worked out philosophically in the course of the centuries and
honed to sharpness. Certainly, it is the one which has been least followed through in
ontological terms; hence it conventionally occurs almost exclusively in formal logic. Even
when the theory of categories deals with the Possible, it is predominantly designated only as
cognitive definition, not as object-definition. Of course, logicians like Joh. v. Kries, lesser
and greater epigones of the usual like Verweyen, and ultimately N. Hartmann, who even calls
himself an ontologist, have written diverse separate books on possibility. But since in these
latter epigones the Possible is only recognized as conceptual relationship, they have written
as good as nothing, that is, nothing real about it. In every case here, but no less in original
philosophers too, whom we will consider shortly, the conspicuous emptying of the Possible
occurs primarily through the failure to distinguish between still partial knowledge of the
conditions and partially existing conditions themselves. Thus the problematically wavering
judgement of an objectively decisive factual relation is repeatedly equated with the
assertively decisive judgement of an objectively wavering factual relation, i.e. of the
objectively existing possibility. The problematic judgement: 'It is possible that Louise is at
home' thus covers the assertive judgement: 'It is clear that in the foreseeable future
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it will be possible for a rocket to travel to the moon.' The difference between the first and the
second judgement clearly indicates, however, the not only logically, even psychologically
immanent character, but in fact the external worldly character of a large part of modality. If
the category of possibility is exclusively reduced to the mere knowledge-level of a
supposition, then objective possibility must of course evaporate subjectively and
idealistically in the external world. The Possible is then demonstrated away, as if no man had
ever exposed himself to the modal element of danger, as if he had never really escaped,
avoided or fallen prey to it. The Possible is then made into mere 'anthropomorphous
introjection', as if not all organisms, with their reflex and reaction apparatus, were geared to
an objectively real world of possibility; from the sea-anemone to the scenting deer, to the
circumspection of homo sapiens. The Possible is de-realized to the status of 'fiction', as if the
concept objective possibility did not fulfil the civil as much as the criminal law (liability,
impossibilium nulla obligatio, conditional clause, negligence and so on). Nevertheless, even
Sigwart, although he correctly defines mere possibility as something befitting the individual,
'in so far as it contains the partial ground of that which will be' (Logik I, 1904, p. 274), sees
in the Possible only an expression of subjective indecision or even the resignation of our
limited knowledge. Excess of problematic judgement-modality, underestimation of Object-
and object-modality consequently provide the first motive for the idealistic denial of real
possibility. But this is joined by a second motive for the denial of real possibility, and it is
also to be found in great thinkers, moreover in those who are at no point subjective and
idealistic. The block here is the same as the one which has also left the sister category of the
Possible: the New as yet not thought through. The block is the coastal trip, conditioned
according to class, around the given, indeed the past, is the aversion of static thinking to the
world-concept of active openness and blue. This aversion is even to be found in such
processive philosophers as Aristotle and Hegel, in spite of the enormous conception of a real
dynamei on in the former and of the real dialectic in the latter. The positing of a finished One
and All, of a universe in which all Possible is real (Nicholas of Cusa calls God 'possest',
perfected 'Could-Be', and even Giordano Bruno leaves no unrealized Possible in the totality
of the world): this static Positing has above all obstructed the space of the Open Possible.
Thus the categorial concept of possibility as a whole lies in almost pure virgin land; it is the
Benjamin among the great concepts.
It always appears to be what is fresh, what is coming, that is not supposed
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to be considered here. Even the Sophists, in whom everything firm began intellectually to
totter, drew nothing but derision from the Possible. So that everything and nothing is equally
possible, since, as Gorgias says, there is nothing at all, neither That-Which-Is-Nothing nor
That-Which-Is nor even anything in between, that can pass away or become, i.e. that could
relate as possible to one or the other. No more radical, but more central was the denial of the
Possible in the Megarian school, where it clearly also combined with the Eleatic theory of
immobile being. The Megarian philosopher Diodoros Kronos, characteristically extending
Zeno's demonstration of the non-existence of motion, invented his supposed proof of the non-
existence of the Possible. This supposed proof remained famous (under the name of
Kyrieuon) for centuries afterwards, both as supposed dialectical masterpiece, and above all in
fact on account of the interest which static thinking took in it (cf. Zeller, Sitzungsberichte der
Berliner Akademie, 1882, p. 151ff.). Diodoros formed a syllogism: nothing Impossible can
proceed from the Possible; but since a Possible that did not become real would allow
Impossible to proceed from it, namely another Is than the Is that is, this Possible is itself
impossible and the Real proven as the only Possible. Weak though this syllogism is, even the
Roman Stoics took it over; in Epictetus and in Marcus Aurelius it plays a significant role in
the satisfaction with the world-order free from possibility and full of necessity, and was
transmitted to the later amor fati by Cicero (De fato 6, 7). Denial of the Possible, neo-
Stoicism, and amor fati join hands in great affinity in Spinoza: to see sub specie aeternitatis
(Ethik II, Proposition 44, Addition 2) means by definition to see everything possible already
as necessarily real. Since from the point of view of Spinozistic eternity, because it coincides
with the unconditional reason-consequence relationship (as the mathematical Fatum of the
world), there is nothing partially conditional, that is, nothing possible any more. Which
excludes for Spinoza's God the choice between the infinitely numerous logical possibilities,
which a Leibniz of course still left spread out before his God (as realizer). Even inside the
existing world, as one which is realized by its creator out of infinitely many possible ones,
Leibniz still recognizes possibility as propensity, even though as one which cannot develop
anything that is in reality new either, i.e. anything not contained in the whole of the previous
world. And even if Leibniz, the only great philosopher of the Possible since Aristotle, also
gives space to an infinite number of other possible world-contexts, these 'primae
possibilitates' once again only live in the reason of the creator and not as possibilities still
capable of realization projecting into this world
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now realized for once. Spinoza, however, even decides, with all the fundamental force of
amor fati, against the possibilities in God: 'Things could not be created in any other way or in
any other order by God than they are created' (Ethik I, Proposition 33). This is therefore, with
regard to the Possible, Diodoros Kronos on a grand scale in metaphysics. And once again it
was not as if the distaste for the Possible ended here, this distaste also inhabited philosophies
which could quite openly pay homage to the Possible; as in Kant, or more concretely in
Hegel. Kant flaunted the ideal, Hegel progress in the consciousness of freedom; nevertheless,
the 'Critique of Pure Reason' stresses the Possible just as little as, mutatis mutandis, Hegel's
'Logic' and 'Encyclopaedia'. Thus Kant brings possibility (both that 'a priori to things through
concepts' and that 'which can only be taken from reality in experience') over on to the side of
pure forms of thought. Of course, all pure forms of thought or categories, hence even the
modal ones, constitute experience here, as the 'system of appearances' which has been
established through the categories, but as for the categories of modality (possibility, reality,
necessity) Kant urges decided caution precisely with regard to experience. Hence the
statement: 'The categories of modality have the special property that they do not in the least
enlarge, as determination of the object, the concept to which they are ascribed as predicate,
but only express the relationship to the cognitive capacity' (Werke, Hartenstein, III, p. 193).
Consequently, Kant does not recognize objectively-real Possible at all, objectively-real Real
is also only added to the modally Real through intuition and not in the least through
connection with an assertive judgement, and hence with a reality-judgement of modality.
Nevertheless, even if at the cost of dualism, Kant must make room for possibility, namely in
the peculiar area of thinking above recognizable experience, which belongs to moral 'reason'
and not to cognitive 'understanding'; which is therefore inhabited by the 'postulate' and by the
'ideal'. The postulate that was later so powerfully mobilized by Fichte: 'You can since you
ought to' means possibility as capacity, as potency. The ideal which in Kant is consistently
dominant, and abstractly even given precedence to politics: 'Extension of the domination of
moral freedom' means, on the other hand, possibility as potentiality of an, unfortunately
endless, approach to this ideal in history. But possibility understood in this way is not object-
based real possibility; there are no paths to it in the world of experience of transcendental
idealism. And in fact it is by no means separately distinguished even as possibility of
obligation, of postulate, of ideal; in the ahistorical field of vision of a 'consciousness
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in general' there was of course inclination, but no constitutive place for the future, for the
'hope of the future', as Kant said in the 'Dreams of a Spirit-Seer' (Werke II, p. 357). Thus not
only 'understanding' of the categories of experience, but also 'reason' as the 'mother of ideas'
restricted space for the Possible. And what is the ultimate status of possibility in Hegel, the
pronounced philosopher of (concrete) reason rather than (abstract) understanding? Hegel,
who is otherwise so objectively idealistic, surprisingly quotes with approval the passage from
Kant given above which keeps modality apart from the real object, an approval of Kant
which is in fact rare in Hegel. Concerning the Kant quotation he adds: 'In fact possibility is
the empty abstraction of the reflection-in-itself, that which was previously called the Inner,
except that now it is defined as the resolved, merely posited external Inner, and thus in fact
also posited as a mere modality, as insufficient abstraction, in more concrete terms belonging
only to subjective thinking . . . In particular, philosophy must not be concerned with showing
that something is possible, or that something else is also possible, or that something, however
one expresses it, is conceivable' (Enzyklopdie, 143). And even when Hegel understands
possibility not only as empty abstraction of the reflection-in-itself, but also as an In-itself-
moment of reality, that which he calls real possibility here is wholly surrounded by the circle
of reality that has already become: 'Hence that which is really possible can no longer be any
different; under these conditions and circumstances nothing different can follow' (Logik,
Werke IV, p. 211). Hegel is evidently also speaking here as an enemy of empty speculation,
of the idle rearrangement of history in accordance with what could have happened, of the
abstract ideal of 'the way a girl should be', of 'the way the State should be' and so on. But he
is also speaking as non-philosopher of the future, as cycle-dialectician of the past or, which
amounts to the same thing, of that which is eternally occurring, eternally returning in cycles,
in short, that reactionary element in Hegel is speaking here for which in any case philosophy
always comes too late to change. For which the thought, according to the preface to the
'Philosophy of Right', in any case only appears in the time 'after reality has completed its
formation process and has finished itself'. There is also an element of Diodoros Kronos in
this statement, on a scale that has become grand, this time as celebration of the past, the past
which supposedly encompasses the whole world. Precisely this pathos of statics, so
astonishing in the powerful dialectician, thus caused Hegel to neglect possibility or to
transpose it into that which is subordinately over and done with. The following proposition of
Hegel's, closing up
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process, is also relevant here: 'That which is internal is also externally available and vice-
versa; appearance shows nothing that is not in essential being, and there is nothing in
essential being which is not manifested' (Enzyklopdie, 139). Against this we could
admittedly set the earlier statement from the preface to the 'Phenomenology': 'It is . . . not
difficult to see that our time is a time of birth and transition to a new period. The mind has
broken with the previous world of its existence and imagination and is on the point of sinking
it into the past, and is about the work of reshaping it' (Werke II, p. 10). Thus the conclusion
from this statement, which Hegel simply did not draw, would then of course be this: where
there is a time of 'birth', there is also the womb of a real Possible from which it springs, and
where there is 'work of reshaping', the potency of the reshaping and the potentiality of what
can be re-shaped must be more than merely empty abstraction of the reflection-in-itself.
Likewise, the logic and ontology of the wide realm of the Possible has been stifled by the
static delusion that everything possible in the Real has already been thoroughly formed. That
consequently it is as unimportant as the ear from which the corn has emerged, or as chess-
pieces after the game is finished. The truth is however the Marxist one, contrasting with all
previous philosophy, that the point is to change the world as a correctly interpreted world,
that is, precisely as a dialectically-materialistically processive world, as an unenclosed world.
Changing the changeable world is the theory-practice of the realizably real Possible on the
Front of the world, of the world process. And at this end the real Possible, which is homeless
in every contemplative-static philosophy, is the real problem of the world itself: as the still
unidentical character of appearance and real essential being, ultimately of existence and
essence within it.
Realizing Possibility
Man is that which still has much before it. He is repeatedly transformed in his work and by it.
He repeatedly stands ahead on frontiers which are no longer such because he perceives them,
he ventures beyond them. The Authentic in man and in the world is outstanding, waiting,
lives in fear of being frustrated, lives in hope of succeeding. Because what is possible can
equally well turn into Nothing as into Being: the Possible, as that which is not fully
conditional, is that which is not settled. Hence, from the outset, if man does not intervene,
both fear and hope are equally
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appropriate when confronted with this real suspension, fear in hope, hope in fear. This is why
the Stoics wise or all too passively wise men advised that man should not settle in the
vicinity of circumstances over which he has no power. But since in man active capacity
particularly belongs to possibility, the display of this activity and bravery, as soon as and in
so far as it takes place, tips the balance in favour of hope. Bravery in this sense is the
counter-move to the negative possibility of the wrong path into nothingness. But it is only a
counter-move in that, unlike the rash, abstract heroic deed, it secures for itself the most
precise mediation with the given conditions. That is: mediates itself with the ripeness of these
conditions and with their content which is on the social agenda. Only this is practice
according to the respectively Possible in the field of the general possibility-being of
unenclosed history and world. Only practice of this kind can lead the matter pending in the
historical process: the naturalization of man, the humanization of nature, out of real
possibility into reality. A future land, like every Totum of the Possible, but it is full of
historically tendential mediation which can be pursued precisely. Just as time, according to
Marx, is the space of history, so too the future mode of time is the space of the real
possibilities of history, and it invariably lies on the horizon of the respective tendency of
world occurrence. That is, theoretically and practically: on the Front of the world process,
where the decisions are made, new horizons open up. And the process into this future is
solely that of matter which is concentrated and formed through to the end in man, its most
highly developed blossom.
What is ours and also what is not yet ours has this path ahead of it, it is rough and open. Men
and things are united in this track, in this way man and world are connected best. And, not
more than a few thousand years ago, the decisive blow was delivered by men, by means of
which what we call, in presumptuous, but only temporarily exaggerated fashion, world
history was opened up. Man and his work has thus become a decisive factor in the historical
world process; with work as a means of becoming human itself; with revolutions as the
midwives of the future society with which the current one is pregnant; with the Thing For Us,
the world as mediated homeland, towards which nature is in possibility which has hardly
even been entered upon, let alone exploded open. The subjective factor is the unenclosed
potency to turn things here, the objective factor is the unenclosed potentiality of the
turnability, changeability of the world within the framework of its laws, its laws which are
however also legally variable under new conditions. Both factors are always interwoven with
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one another in dialectical interaction and only the isolating overemphasis of the one (causing
the subject to become the ultimate fetish) or of the other (causing the object, in apparent self-
motivation, to become the ultimate Fatum) tears subject and object apart. Subjective potency
coincides not only with what is turning, but also with what is realizing in history, and it
coincides with this all the more, the more men become conscious producers of their history.
Objective potentiality coincides not only with what is changeable, but also with what is
realizable in history, and it coincides with this all the more, the more the external world
independent of man is also one which is increasingly mediated with him. There is certainly
also a realizing element, with wild efficacity and seed,* even great breadth, in the pre-human
and extra-human world. It is here, although with no or with weak consciousness, from the
same intensive root from which the humanly subjective potency then also sprang. But man as
a realizing element above all in so far as and after it is no longer endowed with false
consciousness concentrates even more certainly the central potency in the potency-
potentiality of processive matter. This central potency thus stands increasingly in the
possibility of itself increasingly meeting, meeting up with the driving core-interest of all
occurrence, this origin and content of final real possibility, of identifying it, and indeed of
making itself manifestly identical with it. However transfinite all alignments of this kind may
be, they nevertheless lie along the rigorous and consistent line of extension of what has been
designated as the conscious production of history contrary to unfathomed fate. So that in
fact the realization itself of what is realizing, i.e. the adequate manifestation of what is
forming history, stimulating process, as the core of real possibility, constitutes the both
remotest and yet positively deepest real possibility; with hardly even partially existing
conditions. Nevertheless, the whole of the conscious production of history is visible here:
grasped, achieved, extended causa sui in society and nature. Whereby the realization of what
is realizing, this final real possibility, is the same as the final real problem: to lift society and
nature on to their hinges. And precisely the world of this final real possibility, the world of
causa sui, which can at least be anticipated in terms of definition, presents itself in exemplary
form as: harmony of the unreified object with the manifested subject, of the unreified subject
with the manifested object. These are turned towards a near and distant future the basic
proportions of human development. However,
*
Cf. Goethe's 'Faust', Part I, 384.
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the hinge in human history is its producer working man, who is finally no longer
dispossessed, alienated, reified, subjugated for the profit of his exploiters. Marx is the
realized teacher of this resolution of the proletariat, of this possible mediation, which is
becoming real, of men with themselves and their normal happiness. However, the hinge in
the history of nature, which, in contrast to his own history, man of course influences but does
not make, is that agent of extra-human occurrence, still hardly mediated with us, indeed still
hypothetical, which is abstractly called natural force and was once called in untenably
pantheistic terms natura naturans, which can however be made concretely accessible the
moment the working man, this most powerful, highly conscious part of the universal material
agent, by no means separated from the rest of nature, begins to emerge from the semi-
incognito of his previous alienation. Marx is the essential teacher of this approaching
mediation with the production-centre of world occurrence in general, of the, as Engels puts it,
transformation of the supposed Thing In Itself into the Thing For Us to the extent of a
possible humanization of nature. Free people on free ground, grasped thus in a total way, this
is the final symbol of the realization of what is realizing and hence of the most radical
frontier-content in the objectively real Possible as a whole.
19
Changing the World or Marx's Eleven Theses on Feuerbach
Thinking ahead has long since been announced and there to be heard. Only cowards talk their
way out of everything, and liars remain general. Only they conceal themselves in baggy or
crazy garments, always try to be somewhere other than where we can catch them out. But
what is true can never be defined enough, even when and especially when the matter is still
dawning on our vision. Through this early feel for what is essential, even the nineteen-year-
old Marx was perfectly successful in formulating sharp central propositions in the surviving
letter to his father. This type wants to get to the heart of the matter from the outset, never
plays itself out into what is futile, discards it as soon as it recognizes it as such. Thus, with all
broadly perceived, carefully considered material that ensues, it is capable of being on the ball
again at any time, hitting home and scoring
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points. The grasped element that knows how to grasp itself in this fashion thus shows the
points along the way. With and through these the pull forwards now sharpens itself so that
even possible sidetracks may still serve it. Of course this directing quality is subsequently not
always as easy to survey as it is to quote, in its brevity. For significant brevity is coherent,
that is why it is the least quick to put itself into words.
Time of Drafting
Thus the understanding must repeatedly prove itself anew in such propositions. This nowhere
more freshly than in the terse collection of the most terse directions which are known as the
Eleven Theses on Feuerbach. Marx wrote them down in April 1845 in Brussels, most
probably in the burst of preparatory work for 'The German Ideology'. The theses were not
published until 1888 by Engels, as an appendix to his 'Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of
Classical German Philosophy'. Here Engels slightly edited Marx's occasionally sketchy text
for style, naturally without the slightest change of content. Concerning the theses, Engels
writes in the foreword to his 'Ludwig Feuerbach': 'They are notes for later elaboration, jotted
down quickly, definitely not intended for publication, but invaluable as the first document in
which the seed of genius of the new view of the world is set down.' Feuerbach had recalled
us from pure thought to sensory perception, from mind to man, together with nature as his
basis. As we know, this both 'humanistic' and 'naturalistic' rejection of Hegel (with man as
the main idea, nature rather than mind as primary) had a strong influence on the young Marx.
Feuerbach's 'The Essence of Christianity', 1841, his 'Provisional Theses for a Reform of
Philosophy', 1842, and even his 'Principles of the Philosophy of the Future', 1843, seemed all
the more liberating since even the left-wing school of Hegelians could not detach itself from
Hegel, in fact did not go beyond a merely internal Hegelian critique of the master of
idealism. 'The enthusiasm', says Engels in 'Ludwig Feuerbach', looking back at it around fifty
years later, 'was general: we were all momentarily Feuerbachians. How enthusiastically Marx
greeted the new interpretation, and how greatly despite all critical reservations he was
influenced by it, we can read in 'The Holy Family' (Ludwig Feuerbach, Dietz, 1946, p. 14).
The German youth of that time believed it could at last see land instead of heaven, human, of
this world.
Meanwhile Marx very soon detached himself from this all too vague
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humanness of this world. His activity on the 'Rheinische Zeitung' had brought him into far
closer contact with political and economic questions than the left-wing Hegelians, or even the
Feuerbachians enjoyed. This very contact increasingly led Marx from the critique of religion,
to which Feuerbach restricted himself, to the critique of the state, indeed already of the social
organization which as the 'Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of State', 18413, recognizes
determines the form of the state. In Hegel's distinction between bourgeois society and state,
emphasized by Marx, more economic consciousness was in fact already concealed than in his
epigones, even in the Feuerbachians. The separation from Feuerbach occurred with respect
and in the first place as a correction or even as a mere amendment, but the totally different,
social viewpoint is clear from the beginning. On 13th March 1843 Marx thus writes to Ruge:
'For me Feuerbach's aphorisms are only incorrect on one point, he refers too much to nature
and too little to politics. This is however the only alliance through which current philosophy
can become truth' (MEGA I, 1/2, p. 308). The 'Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts',
1844, contain another significant celebration of Feuerbach, admittedly as a contrast to the
woolgathering of Bruno Bauer; they praise above all among Feuerbach's achievements the
'foundation of true materialism and of real science, in that Feuerbach likewise makes the
relationship between ''man and man" into the fundamental principle of his theory' (MEGA I,
3, P. 152). But the 'Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts' are already a lot further beyond
Feuerbach than they declare. The relationship between 'man and man' in them does not
remain an abstract anthropological one at all, as it does in Feuerbach, instead the critique of
human self-alienation (transferred from religion to the state) already penetrates to the
economic heart of the alienation process. This not least in the splendid passages on Hegelian
phenomenology, in which the historically formative role of work is identified, and Hegel's
work interpreted in the light of it. At the same time, however, the 'Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts' criticize this work because it interprets human work-activity only as mental, not
as material. The breakthrough to political economy, i.e. away from Feuerbach's general idea
of man, is accomplished in the first work undertaken in collaboration with Engels, in 'The
Holy Family', likewise in 1844. The 'Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts' already
contained the sentence: 'Workers themselves are capital, a commodity (1.c., p. 103), whereby
nothing more of Feuerbachian humanness remains here than its negation in capitalism; 'The
Holy Family' noted capitalism itself as the source of this strongest and final alienation.
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Instead of Feuerbachian generic man, with his abstract naturalness which always remains the
same, a historically changing ensemble of social relationships now clearly appeared and
above all: one that is antagonistic in class terms. Alienation, of course, embraced both: the
exploiting class as well as that of the exploited, above all in capitalism, the strongest form of
this relinquishing of self, false objectification of self. 'But', states 'The Holy Family', 'the first
class feels happy and confirmed in this self-alienation, knows that the alienation is its own
power and possesses in it the appearance of a human existence; the second class feels itself
destroyed in alienation, perceives in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman
existence' (MEGA I, 3, P. 206). Which in fact showed the respective class-based methods of
production and exchange based on the division of labour, particularly the capitalist ones, to
be the finally discovered source of alienation. Marx was a materialist at the latest from 1843
onwards; 'The Holy Family' gave birth to the materialist interpretation of history in 1844, and
with it scientific socialism. And the 'Eleven Theses', produced between 'The Holy Family' of
1844/45 and 'The German Ideology' of 1845/46, thus represent the formulated departure from
Feuerbach, together with a highly original entry into a new original inheritance. Politically
empirical experience from the Rhineland period plus Feuerbach made Marx immune to the
'mind' and nothing but 'mind' of the left-wing school of Hegelians. The adopted standpoint of
the proletariat allowed Marx to become causally and concretely, that is, truly
(fundamentally) humanistic.
As is self-evident, the departure here is not a complete break. References to Feuerbach run
through large parts of Marx's work, even after the departure of the 'Eleven Theses'. Closest to
the abandoned land, if only for chronological reasons, stands 'The German Ideology' which
directly followed the theses. Many critical approaches of the theses return in it, although of
course the critique of Feuerbach and the murderous demolition of second-rate Hegelian
epigones are vastly different here. Feuerbach still belonged to bourgeois ideology, so the
analysis of its pseudo-radical manifestations of decay, such as Bruno Bauer and Stirner,* also
had to implicate him in 'The German Ideology'. But in such a way that in places the
philosopher himself supplied the handle of the logical weapon with which Marx also
intervened against him, but above all against the left-wing Hegelians. Consequently, 'The
German Ideology' fundamentally
*
Max Stirner, 180656, nom de plume of the German individualist philosopher Johann Kaspar
Schmidt.
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begins with the name of Feuerbach and criticizes, starting out from his critique of religion,
the simply inner idealistic 'conquering' of idealism. 'It has not occurred to any of these
philosophers to inquire about the connections of German philosophy with German reality,
about the connections of their critique with their own material surroundings' (MEGA I, 5, P.
10). However, Marx stresses on the other hand that Feuerbach 'is to be greatly preferred to
the "pure" materialists in that he realizes that man is also a "sensory object"'. In fact, the
recognition cited above indicates the importance of Feuerbach for the early development of
Marxism just as much as the critique of his abstract, ahistorical notion of the human being
indicates the un- and indeed anti-Feuerbachian character of fully developed Marxism itself.
The recognition states: without man equally being a 'sensory object', it would have been
much more difficult to have worked out human activity materialistically as the root of all
social things. Feuerbach's anthropological materialism thus marks the facilitated possible
transition from mere mechanical to historical materialism. The critique states: without the
concretization of what is human into really existing, and above all socially active men, with
real relationships to one another and to nature, materialism and history would have in fact
continually fallen apart, despite all 'anthropology'. In this connection, however, Feuerbach
always remains important for Marx, both as a transit point and as the only contemporary
philosopher of whom an analysis is at all possible, clarifying and fruitful. The basic thoughts
to which Marx critically reacts in this way, and via which he makes productive progress, are
essentially contained in Feuerbach's central work 'The Essence of Christianity' of 1841.
Feuerbach's 'Provisional Theses for a Reform of Philosophy' of 1842 and the 'Principles of
the Philosophy of the Future' of 1843 also come into consideration. The earlier writings of
the philosopher can hardly have been of any importance for Marx, since Feuerbach, at least
until 1839, was too unoriginal, and lay too much under the influence of Hegel. Only from
that time on did Feuerbach apply the Hegelian concept of self-alienation to religion. Only
from that time on did the earlier Hegelian say his first thought had been God, his second
reason, and his third and last was man. This means: just as the Hegelian philosophy of reason
had overcome church-belief, so philosophy now put man (with the inclusion of nature as his
basis) in place of Hegel. Despite all this, however, Feuerbach could not find the path to
reality; precisely the most important aspect of Hegel: the historical-dialectical method, he
rejected. It was only the 'Eleven Theses' that became signposts out of mere anti-Hegelianism
into reality which can be changed, out of the materialism of the base behind the lines into that
of the Front.
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Question of Grouping
How the theses should be ordered is both an old and a new question. For the way they stand,
for private reference, not intended for publication, they repeatedly overlap. They also present
the same content in another place, do not always make the reason for their division and
sequence evident. The requirements of teaching have thus occasioned various attempts to
rearrange the theses as they belong together and hence to divide them into groups. In doing
this, the attempt is sometimes made to let the sequence of numbers stand, just as if the
'Eleven Theses' could be subsumed one after the other, in a direct row. For example, such a
grouping which sticks to the numbers looks as follows: Theses 1, 2, 3 are under the heading:
Unity of Theory and Practice in Thought, Theses 4 and 5 under: Understanding of Reality in
Contradictions, Theses 6, 7, 8, 9 under: Reality itself in Contradictions, Theses 10, 11 under:
Location and Task of Dialectical Materialism in Society. This is the arrangement according
to figures; since there are several other such arrangements quite different in terms of content,
it shows how little instructive the mere place value of the numbers is here. Each of these
arrangements treats the order in too exalted a fashion on the one hand, in that they allow it to
remain eternally entrenched, as in the Twelve Table Law* or in the Ten Commandments,
while on the other hand they treat it in too lowly and formalistic a fashion, as if it was a
series of stamps. But numbering is not systematics, and Marx needs this substitute least of
all. Hence the theses must be grouped philosophically, not arithmetically, that is, the order of
the theses is solely that of their themes and contents. There is, as far as can be seen, still no
commentary on the Eleven Theses; only when there is one, arising out of the common cause
itself, does the continuously productive coherence of their brevity and depth also open up.
Then there appears: firstly, the epistemological group dealing with perception and activity
(Theses 5, 1, 3); secondly, the anthropological-historical group dealing with self-alienation,
its real cause and true materialism (Theses 4, 6, 7, 9, 10); thirdly, the uniting or theory-
practice group, dealing with proof and probation (Theses 2, 8). Finally there follows the
most important thesis, the password that not only marks a final parting of the minds, but with
whose use they cease to be nothing but
*
Twelve Table Law the earliest Roman legal code, coveting civil, criminal and religious law,
introduced in 451450 B.C.
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minds (Thesis 11). Strictly speaking, the epistemological group is opened by Thesis 5, the
anthropological-historical group by Thesis 4; since these theses describe the two basic
theories of Feuerbach which Marx relatively accepts, and which he goes on beyond in the
remaining theses of the respective groups. The basic theory adopted is the rejection of
abstract thinking in Thesis 5, the rejection of human self-alienation in Thesis 4. And
corresponding to the first basic feature of materialist dialectics, the depiction of which
announces itself here, between the individual theses within each respective group there is
free, complementary movement of voices; just as, between the groups themselves, continual
correlation is taking place, forming a coherent unified whole.
Epistemological Group:
Perception and Activity
Theses 5, 1, 3
It is recognized here that even when thinking we can only proceed from the sensory.
Perception, not the concept which is merely taken from it, is and remains the beginning
where all materialist cognition identifies itself. Feuerbach reminded us of this at a time when
every academic street-corner still resounded with mind, concept and nothing but concept.
Thesis 5 stresses this contribution: Feuerbach is 'not content' with cerebrality, he wants his
feet on the perceived ground. But Thesis 5, and then above all Thesis 1, both make clear that
with contemplative sensoriness, the only kind Feuerbach understands, his feet cannot yet
move and the ground itself remains unnegotiable. The person who perceives in this way does
not even try to move, he remains standing in a state of comfortable enjoyment. Hence Thesis
5 teaches: mere perceiving 'does not understand sensoriness as practical, as human-sensory
activity'. And Thesis 1 reproaches the whole of previous materialism for only understanding
perception 'under the form of the object', 'not however as human, sensory activity, practice,
not subjectively'. Hence it happened that the active side, in contrast to materialism, 'was
developed from idealism but only abstractly, since idealism obviously does not know real
sensory activity as such'. The inactive perception in which all previous materialism persists,
including that of Feuerbach, is thus replaced by the human activity factor. And this happens
even within the context of the sensory, i.e. immediate, fundamentally beginning knowledge:
sensoriness as knowledge, as real basis of cognition,
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is thus by no means the same as (contemplative) perception. The concept of activity which is
thus stressed by Marx in Thesis 1 in fact derives from idealistic epistemology, and not from
idealistic epistemology as such, but only from that developed in the new bourgeois age. For
this concept pre-supposes as a base a society where the ruling class sees or wishes to see
itself in activity, i.e. work. However, this is only the case in capitalist society in so far as
work, or rather: the appearance of work around the ruling class, in contrast to all pre-
bourgeois societies is here no longer a dishonour, but is respected. This results out of the
necessity of making profit, out of the forces of production being unleashed in this profit-
society. Work, which had been held in contempt in the ancient slave-owning societies, even
in feudal society with its system of serfdom (in Athens even sculptors were counted as
philistines), is obviously not reflected in the thoughts of the ruling class either, in total
contrast to the ideology of the entrepreneur, the bourgeois, the so-called homo faber. Whose
profit-dynamic, becoming free in the new age, forming the new bourgeois age, still by a long
chalk progressive, also certainly makes itself evident in the superstructure and activates the
base itself. Both morally, in the shape of a so-called work ethic, and epistemologically, in the
shape of a concept of activity, a work logos in cognition. The work ethic, preached
particularly by the Calvinists for the purpose of creating capital, this capitalist vita activa
contrasted with aristocratic idleness, and also with the vita contemplativa of a quiet, monkish,
scholarly existence. In parallel fashion, the work logos in cognition, this concept of
'producing' particularly exaggerated in bourgeois rationalism, differed from the ancient and
also scholastic cognitive concept of mere receiving: vision, visio, passive depiction. As it
survives contained in the concept of 'Theoria' itself, consistent with the original vision-sense
of the word. Even Plato is, cum grano salis, ultimately a receiving sensualist in this manner;
for however ideally and purely related to ideas his vision pretends to be, it is in fact still
essentially receptive vision, and the thought-process is consistently understood in keeping
with sensory perception. But then even Democritus, the first great materialist, who in fact
sets the tone until Marx, is likewise trapped in this work-shy ideology which does not reflect
the work-process. Even Democritus only understands cognition in passive terms; thinking,
through which for him the truly real is known, the real dimension of the atoms together with
their mechanism, is explained here solely by the impression of corresponding little pictures
(eidola), which detach themselves from the surface of things and flow into the person who is
perceiving and knowing. On
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the question of epistemological non-activity there is therefore no difference at all between

Plato and Democritus; both epistemologies are united by the slave-owning society, which
means here: the absence of despised work-activity in the philosophical superstructure. And
now: the paradox appears that rationalism, the idealism of the new age, which often distanced
itself far from Plato, reflected the work-process much more powerfully in epistemological
terms than the materialism of the new age, which never distanced itself very far from its
ancient progenitor Democritus. The calmly depicting mirror, this omission of the concept of
work, is thus, up to and including Feuerbach, materialistically more common than the pathos
of 'production', and especially of the dialectical reciprocal depiction of subject-object, object-
subject on to each other. Among the more recent materialists only Hobbes teaches rational
'production', with the principle which is valid until Kant: only such objects are knowable
which can be constructed mathematically. But greatly though Hobbes, with the help of this
principle, was able to define philosophy as theory of the mathematical-mechanical motion of
bodies, and therefore as materialism, for his part he just as little succeeded in getting beyond
the 'form of the object' criticized by Marx, namely beyond merely contemplative materialism.
Something different occurred within idealism when 'production' passed from geometric
construction into the real work-form of historical genesis. This was first decisively achieved
in Hegel; the 'Phenomenology of Mind' was the first work to discuss seriously the dynamics
of the epistemological concept of work, at least in historical-idealistic terms. This was also
far superior to the merely mathematical-idealistic 'production' pathos, which, in the case of
the great rationalists of the manufacturing period, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, had
influenced their semi- or total idealism. There is no better witness to this significance of
Hegel's Phenomenology, which was not in the least understood by Feuerbach, than Marx in
the 'Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts': Marx sees the greatness of the Phenomenology
precisely in the fact that it 'understands the essence of work and comprehends Objective man,
true because real man, as a result of his own work' (MEGA 1, 3, P. 156). This statement thus
best explains the deficiency mentioned above of merely perceiving materialism, up to and
including Feuerbach: previous materialism lacks the constantly oscillating subject-object
relation called work. Hence in fact it understands the Object, reality, sensoriness only 'under
the form of the object', omitting 'human-sensory activity'. Whereas Hegel's Phenomenology
occupied, as Marx says, 'the standpoint of modern political economy' (1.c., p. 157).
Feuerbach,
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however, still occupied in epistemological terms the standpoint of slave-owning society or

even of serfdom, on account of the non-active, still contemplatory element in his materialism.
At the same time Marx of course makes it clear that bourgeois activity is still not the
complete, right kind. It cannot be so precisely because it is only appearance of work, because
the production of value never emanates from the entrepreneur, but from peasants, manual
workers, ultimately wage-earners. And because the abstract, reified, confused circulation of
goods on the free market allowed nothing more than an ultimately passive, external, abstract
relationship to it. For this reason Thesis I stresses: even the epistemological reflection of
activity could only be an abstract one, 'since idealism of course does not know real, sensory
activity as such'. However, even the bourgeois materialist Feuerbach, who wishes to get away
from abstract thinking, who seeks real Objects rather than reified thoughts, omits human
activity from this real being; he understands it 'not even as Objective activity'. This is
strikingly elaborated in the introduction to the 'German Ideology': 'Feuerbach is speaking
specifically of the perception of natural science, he mentions secrets which only became
apparent to the eye of the physicist and chemist; but where would natural science be without
industry and trade? Even this 'pure' natural science of course receives its purpose and
material only through trade and industry, through sensory activity of men. The activity, this
continuing sensory working and creating, this production is so much the basis of the whole of
the sensory world that, even if it were interrupted for only a year, Feuerbach would not only
find an enormous change in the natural world, but very soon also miss the whole human
world and his own ability to perceive, indeed his own existence. Of course the priority of
external nature remains at the same time, and of course all this is not applicable to original
men, produced through generatio aequivoca; but this distinction only makes sense in so far as
man is regarded as being different from nature. This nature which precedes human society is
not incidentally the nature in which Feuerbach lives, not the nature which no longer exists
anywhere today except perhaps on one or two Australian coral islands of more recent origin,
i.e. does not exist for Feuerbach either' (MEGA 1, 5, P. 33f.). How crucially human work,
which precisely as an Object is completely homeless in Feuerbach, is emphasized in these
lines as an important, if not the most important Object in the world which surrounds men.
Accordingly, therefore, the Being that conditions everything now itself contains active men.
This has quite astonishing consequences, they make
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Thesis 3 above all especially important challenging not only Feuerbach, but also vulgar
Marxists. Two further concepts of the 'sensory world', a bad one and one that is often
misunderstood, are therefore worth noting in this truly Objective connection, they are most
intimately related to it. They concern, after all, the empiricist favourite children or even
trump-cards of that supposedly activity-shy perception which sees the 'circumstances' merely
as that which is standing around men. One is so-called givenness, a particularly object-based,
i.e. apparently materialistically related concept. However, apart from the fact that it is,
semantically, a changeable concept that would not be valid if there were no subject to which
alone something is given or can be given, there is in the world which constitutes the human
environment hardly anything given which is not equally something worked on. Hence Marx
speaks of the 'material' which natural science only receives through trade and industry. In
reality, only surface contemplation shows the given; after a little probing, however, every
Object of our normal environment reveals itself to be by no means sheer datum. It proves
itself instead to be the end result of previous work-processes, and even the raw material,
apart from the fact that it is totally changed, was fetched from the forest by work or hewn out
of the rocks or extracted from the depths of the earth. So much for the first passive trump-
card which is obviously not one at all, but only counts and wins the trick from the surface
standpoint. The second trump-card of supposedly activity-shy perception, however, does
employ a perfectly legitimate, in fact decidedly materialistic concept to begin with, namely
the primacy of being over consciousness. In epistemological terms this primacy expresses
itself as the external world which exists independently of human consciousness, in historical
terms as priority of the material base over the mind. But once again Feuerbach hardened this
truth one-sidedly, he exaggerated it mechanistically, in that he omitted activity here too.
Within the province of normal human environment, independence of being from
consciousness is by no means the same as independence of being from human work. The
independence of this external world from consciousness, its Objectivity, is instead so far
from being cancelled by the mediation of work with the external world that it is in fact
ultimately formulated by it. For just as human activity is itself Objective activity, i.e. does
not fall out of the external world, so the subject-object-mediation, in that it occurs, is likewise
a piece of external world. This external world also exists independently of consciousness in
that it does not itself appear under the form of the subject, but admittedly not only 'under the
form of the object' either.
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But in fact it represents the interacting mediation of subject and object, in such a way that
being does indeed determine consciousness everywhere, but once again historically decisive,
namely economic being contains an inordinate amount of objective consciousness. All being
is for Feuerbach, however, autarkical primacy, as purely pre-human base, natural base, with
man as blossom, but in fact simply as blossom, not as separate natural force. But the human
method of production, the metabolism with nature which occurs and is regulated in the work
process, even the relations of production as base, all this, illuminatingly, itself has
consciousness in it; likewise the material base in every society is again activated by the
superstructure of consciousness. Thesis 3 is especially informative concerning the interaction
in this being-consciousness relationship, despite the priority of economic being. But it is
information which gives no pleasure to vulgar materialism; it does however give human
consciousness the most real place in the 'circumstances', that is, precisely inside the external
world which it helps to form. Mechanistic environmentalism asserts 'that men are products of
circumstances and of education, changed men therefore products of other circumstances and
a different education'. Above this one-sided, often even very naturalistic theory of depiction
(milieu like soil, climate) Thesis 3 now posits the truth which is so superior to the previous
standard materialism, 'that circumstances are in fact changed by men, and that the educator
must himself be educated'. This does not of course mean that this change of circumstances
could now happen without reference to that objective lawfulness which also binds the
subject- and activity-factor. Rather, Marx is waging a war on two fronts at this point, he is
struggling both against mechanistic environmentalism, which ends in fatalism of being, and
against the idealistic subject-theory, which ends in putschism, or at least in exaggerated
activity-optimism. One passage in the 'German Ideology' thus thoroughly complements
Thesis 3, namely because it deals with the most salutary reciprocal movement of men and
circumstances, of subject-object mediation of a constantly interacting, constantly dialectical
kind. So that in history 'on every level a material result, a sum of productive forces, a
historically created relationship to nature and of individuals to one another is to be found,
which is passed on to each generation by its predecessor, a class of productive forces, capital
and circumstances which is indeed on the one hand modified by the new generation, but
which on the other hand also prescribes to it its own conditions of life and gives it a
particular development, a special character so that circumstances make men just as much as
men make circumstances'
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(MEGA 1, 5, p. 27f.). As stated above, the interaction between subject and object is
particularly emphasized in this passage, even with the audible precedence of the
circumstance-man-relationship over the reverse, in such a way, however, that man and his
activity always remain the specific part of the material historical base, indeed represent its
root, as it were, and also its capability for radical change. Even the idea (in theory) becomes a
material power, according to Marx, if it seizes the masses; how unequivocally the
technological-political changing of circumstances is such a power, and how clearly even the
subject-factor understood in these terms remains inside the material world. 'Das Kapital'
provides a final elaboration of Thesis 3, now committing man quite decisively to the external
world, in fact to nature: 'He sets in motion the natural forces pertaining to his physical nature,
arms and legs, head and hands, in order to acquire natural material in a form useful for his
own life. Because he acts on and changes nature outside himself through this movement, he
simultaneously changes his own nature . . . The earth is itself a working material, but
presupposes a whole series of other working materials before it can serve as working material
in agriculture, and an already relatively high development of working capacity' (Das Kapital
I, Dietz, 1947, p. 185, 187). Thus human activity with its consciousness is itself explained as
a piece of nature, moreover as the most important piece, in fact as radical practice precisely
at the base of material being, which again primarily conditions the consciousness that
follows. Feuerbach, who felt no revolutionary mission whatsoever and who also never got
beyond man as a nature-based generic being, had no appreciation whatsoever of this
increased primacy of nature, increased by human activity. This is ultimately the reason why
history does not appear in his purely perceiving materialism and why he does not manage to
get beyond the contemplative attitude. Thus his relationship to the object remains ancient-
aristocratic, in illogical contrast to the pathos of man which he put again only in purely
theoretical terms and as mere blossom of existing nature at the centre of his critique of
religion (and no other). He thus looks down on practice from on high, which he only knows
as a demeaning business: 'Practical perception is a dirty perception stained with egotism'
(Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums, 1841, p. 264). It is this passage to which Marx is
ultimately referring in Thesis 1 when he says that in Feuerbach 'practice is only understood
and fixed in its dirty-Jewish manifestation'. And how much arrogance of this kind there was
later when the 'perception' increasingly 'stained with egotism' was added ideologically to so-
called pure perception, then with a so-called truth
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for its own sake. How much 'equestrian science' then arose, high on its horse, au dessus de la
mle (apart from the dirt in itself); how much aristocracy of knowledge (without aristoi),
knowingly in league with dirty practice, restraining from the correct kind. With great
presentiment Marx already posited the pathos of 'revolutionary, practical-critical activity'
against such pure lack of understanding as Feuerbach's. Thus Marx emphasizes, precisely as
a materialist, precisely inside being itself, the subjective factor of production activity which
is, exactly like the objective factor, an Objective one. And this has powerful, and in fact also
anti-vulgar-materialistic consequences; they make this part of the Feuerbach Theses
particularly valuable. Without the comprehended work-factor itself the primacy of being,
which is in no way a factum brutum or given fact, cannot be comprehended in human history.
It most certainly cannot be mediated with the best aspect of active perception with which
Thesis 1 closes; with 'the revolutionary, practical-critical activity'. Working man, this
subject-object relation living in all 'circumstances', belongs in Marx decisively with the
material base; even the subject in the world is world.
Anthropological-Historical Group:
Self-Alienation and True Materialism
Theses 4, 6, 7, 9, 10
It is recognized here that as human beings we always proceed from alienation. Thesis 4 states
the theme: Feuerbach revealed self-alienation in its religious form. His work therefore
consisted in 'dissolving the religious world into its worldly basis. But', Marx continues, 'he
overlooks the fact that, after the completion of this work, the main task still remains to be
done.' Feuerbach, as Thesis 6 determines more precisely, had put religious existence on to a
worldly basis in so far as he dissolved it into human existence. This was an important
undertaking in itself, especially since it cast a sharp glance at the contribution of human
wishes. Feuerbach's 'anthropological critique of religion' derived the whole of the
transcendental sphere from wishful imagination: the gods are the heartfelt wishes
transformed into real beings. At the same time there arises through this wish-hypostasis a
doubling of the world into an imaginary and a real one; when man shifts his best being from
this world into a celestial other world. It is therefore necessary to remove this self-alienation,
that is, to fetch
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back heaven to men again through critical anthropology and by identifying its origins. Here,
however, the logical Marxist argument comes into force, which did not stop at the abstract
genus of man, which is quite unstructured in class and historical terms. Feuerbach, who had
reproached Hegel so strongly on account of his concept-reifications, does indeed localize his
abstract genus of man empirically, but only in such a way as to allow it to be inherent in the
single individual, free of society, without social history. Thesis 6 therefore stresses: 'But
human existence is not an abstract inherent in the single individual. In its reality, it is the
ensemble of social conditions.' Indeed, with his hollow arc between single individual and
abstract Humanum (while omitting society) Feuerbach is little other than an epigone of the
Stoics and of their after-effects in Natural Right, in the ideas of tolerance of the new
bourgeois age. Even Stoic morality had fallen back upon the private individual after the
decline of the Greek public polis: this was, Marx says in his doctoral dissertation, 'the good
fortune of its time; thus the moth, when the common sun has gone down, seeks the private
lamplight' (MEGA I, 1/1, p. 133). On the other hand, however, the abstract genus of man,
skipping all national social conditions, was supposed to assert itself in the Stoics as a sole
Universal over single individuals, as the place of the communis opinio, of the recta ratio for
all times, among all peoples: i.e. as the general human house, incorporated into the equally
general-good world house. Only this human house was not the vanished polis, but it was half
with assiduous ideology the Pax Romana, the cosmopolitan empire of Rome, and half
with abstract utopia a fraternal human league of enlightened individuals. Not without
reason, therefore, did the concept of humanitas arise as both a generic and value concept at
the court of Scipio the Younger, and the Stoic Panaitios was its author. With his abstract
genus of man Feuerbach then above all absorbed the neo-Stoicism which again with hollow
arc between individual and generality had emerged in the new bourgeois age. This
ultimately in the abstract-sublime concept of the citoyen and in the Kantian pathos of
humanity in general, which reflected the citoyen in a German and moral way. The individuals
of the new age are of course capitalists, not Stoic private pillars, and their Universal was not
the ancient oecumene which was supposed to eliminate nations, but with idealization
precisely of the ancient polis the generality of bourgeois human rights with the abstract
citizen above it, this moral-humanitarian generic ideal. Nevertheless, there are important
economically conditioned correspondences here (otherwise there would have been no neo-
Stoicism in the seventeenth and eighteenth
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centuries): here as there society is atomized into individuals, here as there an abstract genus
rises above it, an abstract ideal of humanity, humanness. Marx, however, criticizes precisely
this abstract above mere individuals, in fact defines human existence as 'ensemble of social
conditions'. That is why Thesis 6 is directed both against Feuerbach's ahistorical view of
humanness per se and connected with this against the purely anthropological generic
concept of this humanity, as a generality which unites the many individuals in a merely
natural way. Marx still definitely retains the value-concept of humanity of course; he does so
clearly in Thesis 10. The expression 'real humanism' with which the preface to the 'Holy
Family' begins is of course abandoned by the 'German Ideology', in connection with the
rejection of any trace of bourgeois democracy, with the gaining of the proletarian-
revolutionary standpoint, with the creation of dialectical-historical materialism. But Thesis
10 nevertheless states with all the value-accent of a humanistic opposition, of a 'real
humanism' therefore, which however is only valid and accepted to be valid as a socialist
humanism: 'The standpoint of the old materialism is bourgeois society; the standpoint of the
new materialism, human society or socialized humanity.' The Humanum therefore does not
always lie in every society 'as inner, silent generality which unites the many individuals in a
merely natural way', it does not lie in any kind of existing generality at all, it is to be found
instead in difficult process and gains itself only together with communism, as communism.
For this very reason, the new, pro-letarian standpoint, far from removing the value-concept of
humanism, in practice allows it to come home for the very first time; and the more scientific
the socialism, the more concretely it has precisely the care for man at its centre, the real
removal of his self-alienation as its goal. Certainly not, however, after Feuerbach's fashion,
as an abstract genus equipped with all too sublime humane sacraments per se. Marx therefore
incorporates the very motif of the epistemological Thesis-group into Thesis 9, this time
against Feuerbach's anthropology: 'The highest to which perceiving materialism can attain,
i.e. the materialism which does not comprehend sensoriness as practical activity, is the
perception of single individuals in ''bourgeois society".' A class barrier is thus finally noted,
the same barrier which blocked revolutionary activity in Feuerbach's epistemology, and now
blocks history and society in his anthropology. Marx's continuation of Feuerbachian
anthropology, as a critique of religious self-alienation, is therefore not only logically
consistent, but also a renewed demystification, namely of Feuerbach himself or of final,
anthropological fetishization. Thus
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Marx leads us from general-ideal man, via mere individuals, to the ground of real humanity
and possible humanness.
In order to do this, the glance at the processes which really underlie alienation was necessary.
Men double their world not only because they have an inwardly torn, wishing consciousness.
Rather, this consciousness arises together with its religious reflection from a much closer
split, namely a social one. The social conditions themselves are inwardly torn and divided,
show an Above and a Below, struggles between these two classes and hazy ideologies of the
Above, of which the religious is only one among many. To find this closer aspect of the
worldly basis was for Marx precisely the work whose main task still remained to be done,
itself a This World compared with the abstract-anthropological This World of Feuerbach.
Feuerbach, an undialectical stranger to history, had no eye for this, but Thesis 4 acquires it:
'The very fact that the worldly basis sets itself off from itself and fixes itself as an
independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the self-conflict and the self-
contradiction of this worldly basis. The latter itself must therefore first be understood in its
contradiction and then be revolutionized by eliminating the contradiction in practice. Hence
for example, after the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the
former must now itself be criticized and radically changed in practice.' In order to be truly
radical, i.e. according to Marx's definition: in order to grasp things by the radix, by the 'root',
the critique of religion thus requires the critique of the conditions which underlie heaven, of
their wretchedness, of their contradictions and their false, imaginary resolution of these
contradictions. Marx had already formulated this so forcibly and unmistakably in the
'Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right' of 1844: 'The critique of religion
ends . . . with the categorical imperative of overthrowing all conditions in which man is a
debased, an enslaved, a forlorn, a contemptible being' (MEGA I, 1/1, p. 614f.). Only after
this progressive critique, which is also progressive in practical revolutionary terms, do we
arrive at a situation which no longer requires any illusions, either as deception or even as
compensation: 'The critique has picked to pieces the imaginary flowers on the chain, not so
that man has to wear the dreary chain devoid of imagination, but so that he can throw off the
chain and pick the living flower' (1.c., p. 608). In order to do this, the earthly family must
first be discovered as the secret of the heavenly one, right down to that matured economic-
materialistic 'secret science' which then causes Marx to say in 'Das Kapital': 'Besides, little
familiarity is required with the history of the Roman Republic, for
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example, to know that the history of property forms its secret history' (Das Kapital I, Dietz,
1947, P. 88). Consequently, the analysis of religious self-alienation, in order for it to be a
truly radical one, fundamentally goes beyond ideologies to the closer role of the state, to the
very closest political economy and achieves here for the first time real 'anthropology'.
Achieves it as social-scientific basic insight into the 'relation of men to men and to nature'.
Since, as Thesis 7 stresses, 'the religious disposition is itself a social product', the act of
producing can and must not be forgotten over the product, as it is by the unhistorical,
undialectical Feuerbach. The following passage in 'Das Kapital' once more refers to this
ultimate half-measure, that is, untenability of Feuerbach's dissolution: 'It is in fact much
easier to find the earthly core of the nebulous shapes of religion through analysis than
conversely to develop deified forms from the respective conditions of real life. The latter is
the only materialistic and therefore scientific method. The defects of abstractly natural
scientific materialism which excludes the historical process can already be seen from the
abstract and ideological ideas of its spokesmen, as soon as they venture out beyond their
specialized field' (Das Kapital I, Dietz, 1947, p. 389). Furthermore the 'German Ideology'
states: 'In Feuerbach materialism and history completely fall apart', thus establishing the
basic difference between dialectical-historical materialism and the old mechanical kind:
'Whenever Feuerbach is a materialist, history does not appear in his work, and whenever he
takes history into account, he is no materialist' (MEGA I, 5, P. 34). Feuerbach himself had
claimed that he was a materialist looking backwards (i.e. regarding the basis of nature), but
an idealist looking forwards (i.e. regarding ethics and even the philosophy of religion).
Precisely the omission of society, history and its dialectic in Feuerbach's materialism,
precisely the feeling occasioned by this that life is missing in the old mechanical materialism,
which was the only kind Feuerbach knew, inevitably causes an idealism of an embarrassed
kind in this philosopher at the end of his philosophy. It revealed itself clearly in his ethics of
life, it shows itself in the hints of a certain Sunday-brotherhood sentimentality. Once again
the governing influence here is merely, as Thesis 9 says, 'the perception of single individuals
in "bourgeois society"', but once again even religion, which had ostensibly been disposed of,
makes itself apparent in Feuerbach, a religion which was merely derived anthropologically
by him, not socially criticized. This is evident in the way that Feuerbach does not actually
criticize the contents of religion, but essentially only their displacement into an other world
and thus the weakening of man and
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his This World. In so far as he consequently sought to remind 'human nature' of its
squandered wealth again, there are of course undoubtedly problems involved in this
reduction. Who would wish to underestimate precisely the depth of humanity, the humanity
of the depth in religion-charged art, in Giotto, in Grnewald, in Bach and ultimately even
perhaps in Bruckner? But Feuerbach, with unparalleled heart, soul brotherhood and melting
soul, makes out of all this almost a kind of non-denominational pectoral theology. Moreover,
he allows almost all the attributes of the father-god to remain, in the unavoidable emptiness
of his 'idealism forwards', as virtues in themselves so to speak, and only the heavenly god is
struck from the list. Instead of: God is merciful, is love, is omnipotent, works miracles, hears
our prayers all that can be said now is: mercifulness, love, omnipotence, working miracles,
hearing prayers are divine. Accordingly, therefore, the whole apparatus of theology remains
intact, it has just moved from its heavenly location to a certain abstract region, with reified
virtues of the 'natural basis'. In this way, however, the problem: humane legacy of religion,
which Feuerbach probably had in mind, did not arise, but religion came at a reduced price, to
suit a poorly demystified habitual embourgeoisement, which Engels correctly identifies in
Feuerbach's stale dregs of religion. Marxism, conversely, is no 'idealism forwards' even with
regard to religion, but materialism forwards, wealth of materialism without a poorly
demystified heaven which must be brought down to earth. The truly total explanation of the
world from within itself, which is called dialectical-historical materialism, also posits the
transformation of the world from within itself. Into an other world beyond hardship, which
has not the least in common either with the other world of mythology, or with its master- or
father-contents.
Theory-Practice-Group:
Proof and Probation
Theses 2, 8
It is not recognized here that thought is pale and feeble. Thesis 2 sets it above sensory
perception, with and in which it merely commences. Feuerbach had denigrated thought,
because it leads away from the individual into the general; this was evaluated
nominalistically. In Marx, however, thought definitely does not aim into the poorly general,
abstract, but just the opposite: it opens up precisely the mediated essential context of the
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appearance, one which is still sealed to the mere sensoriness in the appearance. Thus thought,
which Feuerbach only allows to be abstract, is concrete precisely when it is mediated,
whereas conversely, thoughtless sensory material is abstract. Thought must of course lead
once again to perception, in order to prove itself, as pervasive, in the latter, but even at this
end this perception is by no means the passive, immediate Feuerbachian kind. The proof can
instead only lie in the mediatedness of the perception, that is, solely in that sensoriness which
has been theoretically processed and has thus become Thing For Us. This is however
ultimately the sensoriness of theoretically mediated, theoretically acquired practice. So the
function of thought is, even more than sensory perception, an activity, a critical, insistent,
revealing activity; and the best proof is thus the practical testing of this deciphering. Just as
every truth is a truth for a certain purpose, and there is no truth for its own sake, except as
self-deception or whimsy, so too there is no complete proof of a truth from within itself as a
truth which merely remains theoretical; in other words: there is no theoretically-immanently
possible complete proof. Only a partial proof can be achieved purely theoretically, mostly
still in mathematics; but even here it proves to be only a partial proof of a specific kind, since
in fact it never gets beyond mere inner 'agreement', logically consistent 'correctness'.
Correctness is not yet truth, however, that is, depiction of reality and also the power of
intervening in reality according to the measure of its known agencies and laws. In other
words: truth is not a theory relationship alone, but a definite theory-practice relationship.
Thus Thesis 2 states: 'The question of whether Objective truth is appropriate to human
thinking is not a question of theory, but a practical question. In practice man must prove the
truth, i.e. the reality and power, the This-worldliness of his thinking. The argument about the
reality or non-reality of a thinking which isolates itself from practice is a purely scholastic
question.' That is, a school-bound question in the sense of a dosed thought-immanence
(including mechanical-materialistic thoughts); this contemplative boarding-school was the
space of all previous concepts of truth. With its theory-practice relationship, Thesis 2 is
therefore wholly creative and new; in comparison, previous philosophy really does appear
'scholastic'. Since, as observed above, either ancient and medieval epistemology did not
reflect activity, or on the other hand activity as bourgeois-abstract activity was not truly
mediated with its object. In both cases, in the ages of the ancient and feudal contempt for
work and in the age of the bourgeois work-ethic (without concreteness of work), practice,
both technological and political, was regarded at best
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as the 'application' of theory. Not as attestation that the theory is a concrete one, as in Marx,
not as the functional change of the key into the lever, of true depiction into intervention with
power over being.
Thus the right thought and doing what is right finally become one and the same. Activity and
partisan attitude are contained within it from the beginning, and therefore emerge again as
true conclusion at the end. The colour of the resolution is its own in this conclusion, not an
additional colour brought in from elsewhere. Every confrontation in the history of philosophy
confirms in this case the Novum of the theory-practice relationship as opposed to mere
'application' of theory. Even when a part of the theory was already aimed at practice: as in
Socrates, as in Plato when he tried to realize his utopian state in Sicily, as in the Stoics with
logic as mere wall, physics as mere tree, but with ethics as the fruit. As in Augustine, the
founder of the site of the medieval papal church, as at the end of the Middle Ages in William
of Occam, the nominalist destroyer of the papal church in favour of rising national states.
There was undoubtedly a social and practical mission behind all these, but the theory
nevertheless led its own abstract, practically unmediated separate existence. It only
condescended to 'application' to practice, like a prince to his people, at best like an idea to its
utilization. And even Bacon, in the sharp bourgeois-practical utilitarianism of the new age:
he did indeed teach that knowledge is power, he wanted to re-establish the whole of science
and to give it a new aim, as ars inveniendi, but, despite all opposition to purely theoretical
knowledge and contemplative cognition, science remains autarkical, and only its method is to
be changed. Changed in the sense of the inductive method, the methodically directed
experiment; the proof, however, does not lie in practice, this is rather regarded even here only
as the fruit and reward of truth, not as its final criterion and as demonstration. The various
'philosophies of action', which derived from Fichte and from Hegel, and then again, going
back to Fichte, arose in the left-wing school of Hegelians, have even less similarity with
Marx's practice-criterion. Fichte's 'active deeds' may itself have shown power and line on
important national political points, but ultimately it always proved ethereal. In the end, it
simply served not so much to better the world of the Not-I by processing it as to remove it
completely. All that was proved, so to speak, by this basically world-hostile 'practice' was the
in any case settled subjective starting-point of Fichtean ego-idealism, not however an
objective truth which first develops with and through the world. Hegel comes closest to a
premonition of a practice-criterion, and in fact characteristically on account of the
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relationship to work in his phenomenology. In addition, a transition occurs in Hegel's

psychology from 'theoretical mind' (perception, imagination, thinking) to the antithesis
'practical mind' (feeling, driving will, bliss), out of which then, synthetically, 'free mind' was
to result. Thus this synthesis proclaimed itself as the self-knowing will, as will which thinks
and knows itself, which ultimately, in 'the rational State', wants what it knows and knows
what it wants. Likewise the 'practical idea' is already classed above the 'idea of contemplated
cognition' in Hegelian logic, in so far as 'not only the dignity of what is general, but also of
what is simply real' is appropriate to the practical good (Werke V, p. 320f.). 'All this', notes
Lenin, 'in the chapter "The idea of cognition" . . . , undoubtedly means that in Hegel practice
is a link in the chain in the analysis of the process of cognition . . . Consequently Marx is
establishing a direct link with Hegel when he introduces the criterion of practice into
epistemology; see the Theses on Feuerbach' (Aus dem philosophischen Nachla, Dietz 1949,
p. 133). However, at the end of his Logic, just as at the end of his Phenomenology and of his
fully-developed system, Hegel leads the world (the Object, the object, the substance) almost
as far back into the subject as Fichte does; so that in the end, it is not practice which crowns
truth, but 're-minding', 'science of appearing knowledge' and nothing more. And also,
according to Hegel's famous statement at the end of the preface to his 'Philosophy of Right',
'philosophy always comes too late anyway. It only appears as the thought of the world in the
time after which reality has completed its formation-process and finished itself.' The closed-
circuit thinker Hegel, the antiquarium of what is unalterably already existing, thus ultimately
prevailed over the dialectical process-thinker Hegel with his crypto-practice. There is still
in order to measure the distance of Marx's doctrine of practice even in the immediate
environment of his youth the practice, soon also sharp practice of the left-wing Hegelians
and all that goes along with it. This was the 'weapon of criticism', the so-called 'philosophy of
action', when Marx was young. But what was at work here in fact was essentially only a
return from the objective idealism of Hegel to the subjective idealism of Fichte; Feuerbach
himself identified this in Bruno Bauer. This series of so-called philosophies of action began
with the otherwise not uninteresting work by Cieszkovski: 'Prolegomena to Historiosophy',
1838, a work which expressly presents it as necessary to use philosophy to change the world.
Thus in these 'Prolegomena' there are even appeals for rational research into the tendencies of
history: so that the correct course of action can be taken; so that not instinctive, but
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conscious actions form world history; so that the will is brought to the same peak to which
reason had been brought by Hegel; so that in this way a not only pre- but also post-theoretical
practice can gain space. This all sounds significant, and yet it remained only declaratory,
resulted in absolutely nothing even in Cieszkovski's other writings, in fact the 'interests of the
future' became more and more irrational and obscure in his work. Cieszkovski's rejection of
speculation became a rejection of reason, activity became an activity of 'active intuition', and
the whole will towards the future ultimately ended in a theosophy of Amen in the orthodox
church, published at the time of the 'Communist Manifesto'. In Marx's own circle there was
still Bruno Bauer's work of course, likewise a 'philosophy of action', even one of the Last
Judgement, but in fact the most subjective of all. When reactionary thinking under Friedrich
Wilhelm IV put this 'weapon of criticism' to the test, in Bruno Bauer it immediately retreated
into individualism, in fact into an egocentricity contemptuous of the masses. Bauer's 'critical
critique' was simply a battle in and between thoughts, a kind of l'art pour l'art-practice of the
arrogant mind with itself, and eventually Stirner's 'The Lone Individual and his Property'
developed from it. Marx himself has said the decisive thing about this in the 'Holy Family',
on his own account, as is evident, in the cause of genuine practice and its unmistakableness.
In the cause of revolutionary practice: beginning with the proletariat, equipped with the
fruitful aspect of the Hegelian dialectic and not with abstractions from the 'wilted and
widowed philosophy of Hegel' (MEGA I, 3, p. 189), let alone of Fichtean subjectivism.
Fichte, the virtuous man of wrath, did at least still have energetic directives in view, from the
'Closed Commercial State' to the 'Speeches to the German Nation', he philosophized the
French out of Germany; the 'critical critique', however, merely paraded in the Tattersalls of
self-importance. And, closer to Marx, even in the work of the thoroughly honest Socialist
Moses Hess action had a tendency to detach itself from social activity, to reduce itself to
reform of moral consciousness a 'philosophy of action' without developed economic theory
behind it, without a timetable of dialectically comprehended tendency within it. The concepts
of practice until Marx are therefore completely different from his theory-practice conception,
from the doctrine of unity between theory and practice. And rather than merely being glued
on to theory, in such a way that thought remains purely scientific and does not in the least
require 'application', in such a way that theory continues to pursue its own life and its
immanent self-sufficiency even in its proofs, according to Marx and Lenin, theory and
practice continually
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oscillate. Since both alternately and reciprocally swing into one another, practice presupposes
theory, just as it itself further releases and needs new theory in order to continue a new
practice. Concrete thought had never been valued more highly than it was here, where it
became the light for action, and never had action been valued more highly than here, where it
became the crowning of truth.
And warmth also definitely seeks to be inherent in thinking here, since it is helpful thinking.
The warmth of wanting-to-help itself, of love for the victims, of hatred of the exploiters.
Indeed these feelings bring partiality into play, without which no true knowledge combined
with good action is at all possible in socialist terms. But a feeling of love which is not itself
illuminated by cognition blocks the very helping action on which it would like to embark. It
is sated all too easily by its own excellence, becomes the haze of a new pseudo-active self-
confidence. In this case not a l'art pour l'art-critical self-confidence, as in Bruno Bauer, but a
sentimentally uncritical one which is stifling and vague. As in Feuerbach himself: he always
set his equivocation 'sensation' in place of practice. He defuses love into the general
emotional relation between I and You, he reveals the lack of any social cognition even here
by retreating to mere individuals and their eternally languishing relationships. He effeminates
humanity thus: 'The new philosophy is in relation to its base (!) itself nothing more than the
nature of sensation raised into consciousness it affirms only in and with reason what every
person the real person admits in his heart' (Werke II, 1846, p. 324). This statement is
from the 'Principles of the Philosophy of the Future', in fact it is the action-substitute from the
past, from a bourgeois-conformist, sanctimonious, indeed, very often, Tartuffishly sabotaging
past. From a past which, precisely because of its abstractly declamatory love of mankind,
does not in the least seek to change the world today for the good, but to perpetuate it in the
bad. Feuerbach's caricature of the Sermon on the Mount excludes all harshness in prosecuting
injustice, while including total laxness in the class struggle; for this very reason general
'socialism' of love recommends itself to all the crocodile tears of a capitalistically interested
philanthropy. Hence Marx and Engels: 'The kingdom of love was preached precisely as
opposed to bad reality, to hatred . . . But when experience teaches that this love has not
become effective in 1800 years, that it has not been able to transform social conditions, nor to
establish its kingdom, then it quite obviously follows from this that this love which has not
been able to conquer hatred does not supply the active energy necessary for social reforms.
This love gets lost
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in sentimental phrases through which no real, factual conditions can be removed; it makes
man lethargic with the enormous emotional pap on which it feeds him. Therefore deprivation
gives man strength; those who must help themselves, do help themselves. And that is why the
real conditions of this world, the sharp contrast in society today between capital and work,
between bourgeoisie and proletariat, as they appear in their most developed form in industrial
trade, are the other, more powerfully bubbling source of the socialist world-view, of the
desire for social reforms . . . This iron necessity creates a wide audience and active adherents
for socialist endeavour, and it will pave the way for the socialist reforms through
transformation of present conditions of trade sooner than all the love which glows in all the
hearts brimming with feeling in the world' (Circular against H. Kriege, a supporter of
Feuerbach, 11th May 1846). Since then, what Thomas Mnzer would not only have called
'contrived belief' but also 'contrived love', has spread in quite a different way than in
Feuerbach's relatively harmless time, among renegades and pseudo-socialists. Their
hypocritical love of mankind is however only the weapon of war of a much more total hatred:
namely of communism; and the newly contrived love is only there for the sake of the war.
Together with the mysticism which is not lacking even in Feuerbach, which here still at least
wished to be 'forward idealism', i.e. progressive, and which, in the formless roaring of the
fulfilment of its heart, of its God-the-Fatherliness made anthropological, had no worse
shortcoming than the poorly demystified, non-denominational philistinism mentioned above.
But the mysteries of today's profound babbling which is no longer even idealistic almost as
different from Feuerbach's mysticism as this was from the mysticism of Meister Eckhart
hide their heart up their sleeves, and instead of the empty rosy mist there is today a
nothingness exploited by the bourgeoisie. Thesis 8 says: 'All mysteries which lead theory into
mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the rational solution of this
practice.' Here of course a distinction is being made between two types of mysteries: namely
those which present what is unclarified, aporias, forest of uncomprehended contradictions as
still uncomprehended in reality, and those, called actual mysticisms, which are idolatry of
darkness for its own sake. But even things that are simply unfathomed, and especially the
misty-line in them, can lead into mysticism; for this very reason only rational practice is the
human solution here, and the rational solution only human practice, which keeps to humanity
(rather than the forest). And even the word mysticism is not used without reason by Marx on
the subject of
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Feuerbach, in fact it is used against the non-sword of abstract love which leaves the Gordian
knot alone. To repeat: Feuerbach's mysteries, the love-mysteries without clarity, certainly
have nothing in common with that which later emerged as rottenness and night-irratio;
Feuerbach lies instead on that German salvation-line which leads from Hegel to Marx, just as
the German disaster-line leads from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche and the consequences. And
love of mankind, in so far as it clearly understands itself as being directed towards the
exploited, in so far as it proceeds towards real knowledge, is undoubtedly an imperative
agent in socialism. But if the salt can lose his savour, how much more so the sugar its
sweetness,* and if Christians of feeling remain locked in defeatism, how much more so
socialists of feeling in pharisaical betrayal. Hence Marx also attacks in Feuerbach a
dangerous inflatedness, one which enjoys itself as it is, on the bottom line a pectoral practice
which achieves the opposite of what the altruism it preaches to and its ineffably universal
love intend. Without factions in love, with an equally concrete pole of hatred, there is no
genuine love; without partiality of the revolutionary class standpoint there only remains
backward idealism instead of forward practice. Without the primacy of the head to the very
end there are only mysteries of resolution rather than the resolution of mysteries. At the
ethical conclusion of Feuerbach's philosophy of the future both philosophy and future are
missing; Marx's theory for the sake of practice started both functioning, and ethics at last
becomes flesh.
The Password and Its Meaning

Thesis 11
It is recognized here that the future aspect is the nearest and most important. But not in fact
after Feuerbach's fashion, which never sets sail. Which contents itself from beginning to end
with contemplation, which leaves things as they are. Or even worse, which believes it cannot
help but rearrange things, but only in the book, while the world itself notices nothing of it.
One reason why it notices nothing of it is because the world can so easily be rearranged in
false representations that nothing real appears in the book at all. Every step outwards would
be damaging here to the
*
'Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned?' Luke 14, 34.
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neatly figured-out book living in its own nature reserve and would disturb the private life of
invented thoughts. But even the most authentic books and doctrines often show the typically
contemplative desire to be satisfied with themselves in their framed context, one successfully
achieved at last 'in terms of a work'. Consequently they even fear a change in the portrayed
world which might possibly arise out of themselves, because the work even if, like
Feuerbach's, it sets up principles of the future could then no longer hover through the ages
in such an autarkical manner. Especially if, as was again the case in Feuerbach, this was
supplemented by an intended or naive political indifference, the public was wholly confined
to the equally contemplative reader; his arms, his actions were not addressed. The standpoint
may have been a new one, but it remained a mere vantage point; conceptual invention thus
gave no instructions for real intervention. Hence, briefly and antithetically, Marx states the
celebrated Thesis 11: 'Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; but the
point is to change it.' A significant difference to every previous impetus to thought is thus
strikingly designated.
Short propositions, as we noted at the beginning, sometimes seem as if they can be assessed
more quickly than they in fact can. And with celebrated propositions there is sometimes the
problem that, very much against their will, they no longer stimulate reflection, or that we
swallow them too raw. Then from time to time they cause us difficulty, in this case difficulty
which is hostile to intelligence, at least alien to intelligence, and which could not be further
from the sense of the proposition. What exactly is intended by Thesis 11 then, how must it be
understood in Marx's invariably precise philosophical sense? It must not be understood or
rather: misused by mixing it in any way with pragmatism. The latter stems from a region
which is utterly alien to Marxism, from a region which is hostile to it, intellectually inferior,
ultimately downright disreputable. Nevertheless, 'busy bodies', * as they say in America, i.e.
bustlers, repeatedly subscribe to Marx's proposition, just as if it was American cultural
barbarity. Underlying American pragmatism is the view that truth is nothing more than the
commercial usefulness of ideas. Consequently, there is a so-called aha-experience of truth, as
soon and in so far as this is aimed at practical success and actually shows itself to be suitable
for bringing it about. In William James ('Pragmatism', 1907), the businessman, as 'American
way
*
Bloch is using the English expression here, but seems to have misunderstood its colloquial
application.
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of life', to a certain extent still appears to be generally human, is so to speak garnished in a

humanitarian way, even in an almost life-promoting and optimistic way. Both on account of
the pink packaging of American capitalism still possible at that time, and above all on
account of the tendency of every class society to present its special interest as that of the
whole of humanity. This is why pragmatism initially also professed to be the patron of those
various, interchangeable, logical 'instruments' with which the higher order of businessman
achieves almost 'humanitarian success'. But there is no more such a thing, even less such a
thing as a humanitarian businessman than there is such a thing as a Marxist playboy; thus
after James, pragmatism in America and in the whole of the world-bourgeoisie quickly
showed itself for what it is: the final agnosticism of a society stripped of any will towards the
truth. Two imperialist wars, the first generally imperialist war from 1914 to 1918, the second
partially imperialist war of the Nazi aggressors, made pragmatism ripe even for horse-trader
ideology. Now it is no longer a question of truth at all, not even as if it were at least an
'instrument' to be maintained; and the pink package of 'humanitarian success' completely
went to the devil who was in it from the beginning. Now ideas wavered and changed like
share prices, according to the war situation, the business situation; until finally the utterly
disgraceful pragmatism of the Nazis appeared. What served the German nation, i.e. what
served German capital finance, was right; what furthered the interests of life, i.e. maximum
profit, and what appeared to be useful for its purposes, was truth. These were therefore, in the
fullness of time, the consequences of pragmatism; and yet how harmlessly, indeed how
deceptively it may have also looked like 'theory-practice'. How speciously a truth for its own
sake was spurned here too, without saying that this was done on account of a lie for the sake
of business. How speciously concrete too was the demand here for the probation of truth in
practice, even in 'changing' the world. How great the falsifiability of Thesis 11 is then in the
heads of scorners of intelligence and practicists. Certainly, as far as practicists in the socialist
movement are concerned, in moral terms, as is self-evident, they do not have the least in
common with the pragmatists; their will is pure, their intention revolutionary, their goal
humanitarian. But by omitting the head here, and consequently nothing less than the whole
wealth of Marxist theory together with the critical appropriation of the cultural legacy within
it, there arises on the site of the 'trial and error method', of tinkering, of practicism, that cruel
falsification of Thesis 11 which is reminiscent of pragmatism in
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methodological terms. Practicism which borders on pragmatism is a consequence of this

falsification, one which is as always uncomprehended; but ignorance of a consequence is no
protection against stultification. The practicists, with at best short-term credit for theory,
especially complicated theory, create in the middle of the Marxist system of light the
darkness of their own private ignorance and of the resentment which so easily goes with
ignorance. Sometimes in fact not even practicism, i.e. still at least an activity, is necessary to
explain such alienation from theory; since the schematism of unthinkingness also lives from
its own, from inactive anti-philosophy. But it can thus refer even less to the most valuable
thesis on Feuerbach; misunderstanding then becomes blasphemy. It must therefore be
repeatedly emphasized: in Marx a thought is not true because it is useful, but it is useful
because it is true. Lenin formulates the same idea in the pithy dictum: 'Marx's doctrine is all-
powerful because it is true.' And he continues: 'It is the rightful heiress of the best that
humanity produced in the nineteenth century in the shape of German philosophy, English
political economy and French socialism.' And he states a few lines previously: 'The whole
genius of Marx consists in the fact that he gave answers to the questions which the
progressive thinking of humanity had already posed' (Lenin, Three Sources and Three
Components of Marxism). In other words: real practice cannot take a single stride without
having consulted theory economically and philosophically, a theory advancing with great
strides. Thus just as there has been a lack of socialist theoreticians, the danger has always
existed that contact with reality would suffer, a reality which is never to be interpreted
schematically and simplistically, where practice was otherwise supposed to succeed in
socialist terms. Even if these are open doors which the anti-pragmatism of the greatest
practice-thinkers, greatest in that they were the most reliable truth-witnesses, holds open,
they can still be closed again and again by an interested misinterpretation of Thesis 11. By
one which ironically enough believes it can detect in the highest triumph of philosophy
which takes place in Thesis 11 an abdication of philosophy, in fact a kind of non-bourgeois
pragmatism. Precisely that future aspect is poorly served here which no longer comes
towards us uncomprehended, but to which conversely our active knowledge comes; Ratio
keeps watch on this stretch of practice. Just as it keeps watch on every stretch of
humanitarian road home: against the irrational which ultimately also shows itself in any
practice devoid of concept. For if the destruction of reason sinks back into the barbaric
irrational, then the
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ignorance of reason sinks back into the stupid irrational; though the latter does not of course
shed blood, but ruins Marxism. Even banality is thus counter-revolution against Marxism
itself; since Marxism is the consummation (not the Americanization) of the most progressive
thoughts of humanity.
So much for false understanding, right at the end, where it surfaces. The false equally
requires elucidation precisely because Thesis 11 is the most important corruptio optimi
pessima. At the same time this thesis is the most succintly expressed one; so a commentary
here must go into the literal meaning much more than with the others. So what is the
significance of the wording in Thesis 11, what is its apparent contrast between knowing and
changing? There is no contrast; even the not contrary, but rather broadening particle 'but' is
missing in Marx's original (cf. MEGA I, 5, p. 535); there is just as little sign of an either-or.
And previous philosophers are reproached for the fact or rather: it is identified as a class
barrier in them that they have only interpreted the world in various ways, not however that
they have philosophized. But interpretation is related to contemplation and follows from it;
non-contemplative knowledge is thus now distinguished as a new flag which truly carries us
to victory. But as a flag of knowledge, as the same flag which Marx though with action, not
with contemplative quiet raised above his major work of learned research. This major work
is a clear directive for action, but it is called 'Das Kapital', not 'Guide to Success' or even
'Active Propaganda'; it is not a sort of recipe for a quick heroic deed ante rem, but stands in
the middle of the res, in painstaking examination, philosophizing contextual exploration of
the most difficult reality. With the course set towards comprehended necessity, towards
knowledge of the dialectical laws of development in nature and society as a whole. The
identification of the first part of the proposition thus pushes off from the philosophers who
'have only interpreted the world in various ways', and from nothing else; it does set sail, but
only on an extremely well thought-out voyage, as the second part of the proposition reveals:
on that of a new, of an active philosophy, one which, in order to achieve change, is as
inevitable as it is suitable. Undoubtedly Marx did direct harsh words against philosophy, but
not against contemplative philosophy per se, whenever it was important philosophy from a
great age. But precisely against a particular kind of contemplative philosophy, namely that of
the Hegel epigones of his time, which was in fact a non-philosophy. Hence,
characteristically, the 'German Ideology', which was aimed at these epigones, contains the
strongest polemical attack: 'We must set aside philosophy, we must jump out of
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it and, as ordinary people, apply ourselves to the study of reality, for which there is enormous
material even in literature, of which philosophers are of course unaware; and if we then come
across people like Kuhlmann or Stirner again, we find that we have had them ''behind" us and
below us for a long time. Philosophy is about as similar to study of the real world as
masturbation is to love-making' (MEGA I, 5, p. 216). The names Kuhlmann (a pietistic
theologian of the time) and especially Stirner show only too dearly to which address or kind
of philosophy this mighty invective was directed; it was directed at philosophical
windbaggery. It was not directed at Hegelian philosophy and other great philosophies of the
past, no matter how contemplative these were considered to be; Marx would have been the
last person to have missed a 'study of the real world' in the concrete philosopher Hegel, the
most knowledgeable encyclopedist since Aristotle. This kind of objection was raised to
Hegel by minds fundamentally different to Marx and Engels, the minds of the Prussian
reaction, subsequently of revisionism and similar 'political realists', as we know full well. Of
real previous philosophy, on the other hand, Marx speaks quite differently even in the
'German Ideology', namely in the sense of a creative real entry into an inheritance. Previously
the 'Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right' of 1844 had already clearly
established that philosophy could not be abolished without realizing it, could not be realized
without abolishing it. The former, with the accent on realization, is said for the 'men of
practice': 'Hence, quite rightly, the practical political faction in Germany demands the
negation of philosophy. Where it is quite wrong is not in the demand but in stopping at the
demand which in all seriousness it neither implements nor can achieve. It believes it can
achieve that negation by turning its back on philosophy and murmuring a few irritated and
banal phrases about it with its head turned away. The limitation of its field of vision does not
rank philosophy as well in the precincts of German reality or imagine it even under the
rubric of German practice and the theories that serve it. You demand that we should start
from real living seeds, but you forget that the real living seed of the German nation has until
now only proliferated beneath its skull. In a word: You cannot abolish philosophy without
realizing it.' The second, with the accent on abolition, is said for the 'theoreticians': 'The same
wrong, only with reverse factors, was committed by the theoretical political faction which
dates from philosophy. It saw in the present struggle only the critical struggle of philosophy
with the German world, it did not consider that subsequent philosophy itself belongs to this
world and is its, albeit ideal, completion.
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Critical of its adversary, it behaved uncritically towards itself, in that it began with the
assumptions of philosophy and either stuck at its given results or issued demands and results
of philosophy imported from elsewhere, although these assuming they are justified are
conversely only to be obtained through the negation of subsequent (!) philosophy, of
philosophy as philosophy. We will reserve a closer portrayal of this faction for the moment'
(it occurred in the 'Holy Family' and in the 'German Ideology', with the severest critique of
degenerate contemplation, of the critical 'repose of knowing'). 'Its basic defect can be reduced
to this: It believed it could realize philosophy without abolishing it' (MEGA I, 1/1, p. 613).
Marx thus gives both factions of the time an antidote for their behaviour, in each case a
reverse medicina mentis: he imposes greater realization of philosophy on the practical men of
that time, and greater abolition of philosophy on the theoreticians. However, even the
'negation' of philosophy (itself a very highly philosophically charged concept deriving from
Hegel) refers in a most explicit way here to 'subsequent philosophy', not to every possible
and future philosophy in general. The 'negation' refers to philosophy with truth for its own
sake, i.e. to autarkical-contemplative philosophy, to one which simply interprets the world in
an antiquarian way, it does not refer to one which changes the world in a revolutionary way.
Indeed, even inside the 'subsequent philosophy', which is of course so fundamentally
different from the Hegel epigones, there is, despite all the contemplation, so much 'study of
the real world' that even German classical philosophy does not figure in a totally impractical
way among the 'three sources and three components of Marxism'. The absolutely new aspect
in Marxist philosophy consists in the radical changing of its basis, in its proletarian
revolutionary mission; but the absolutely new aspect does not consist in the idea that the only
philosophy which is capable of changing and destined to change the world concretely is not
philosophy at all any more. Because it is so like never before, hence precisely the triumph of
knowledge in the second part of the proposition of Thesis 11, concerning the changing of the
world; Marxism would not be a change at all in the true sense if it were no theoretical-
practical primacy of true philosophy before and in it. Not least philosophy which, with
staying power, with full cultural inheritance, is well-versed in ultra-violet, that is: in the
future-laden properties of reality. Changing in the untrue sense is easy of course in many
ways, even without a concept; the Huns also changed things, change can also be brought
about through megalomania, through anarchism, even through the ravings of mental illness
which Hegel calls a 'perfect
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depiction of chaos'. But sound change, especially that into the realm of freedom, comes about
solely through sound knowledge, with ever more precisely mastered necessity. Out and out
philosophers have subsequently changed the world in this way: Marx, Engels, Lenin.
Practicists from the hollow of the hand, schematists with a horde of quotations, have not
changed it, and neither have those empiricists whom Engels called 'induction asses'.
Philosophical change is change with unstinting knowledge of its context; for if philosophy
does not represent a separate science above all other sciences, it certainly is the separate
knowledge and conscience of this Totum in all sciences. It is the progressive consciousness
of the progressive Totum, since the Totum does not itself stand as a Factum, but solely
circulates with the still Unbecome in the gigantic context of Becoming. Philosophical change
is thus a change according to the stipulations of the analyzed situation, of dialectical
tendency, of objective laws, of real possibility. That is why therefore in the end philosophical
change takes place essentially in the horizon of the future, which is generally incapable of
contemplation, incapable of interpretation, but is discernible in a Marxist sense. And seen
from this point of view, Marx also rose above the changing accents, cited above, which are
only placed antithetically: concerning realization or abolition of philosophy (realization
accentuated against the 'men of practice', abolition accentuated against the 'theoreticians').
The dialectical unity of correctly understood accents reads, at the end of the already quoted
'Introduction' (MEGA I, 1/1, p. 621), as is well-known: 'Philosophy cannot realize itself
without the abolition of the proletariat, the proletariat cannot abolish itself without the
realization of philosophy.' And the abolition of the proletariat, as soon as it is not only
grasped as a class, but equally, as Marx teaches, as the sharpest symptom of human self-
alienation, is undoubtedly a long act: a total abolition of this kind coincides with the final act
of communism. In the sense in which Marx expresses it in the 'Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts', with a perspective which is at home precisely in the philosophically most
extreme 'Eschaton': 'Only here for him (for man) has his natural existence become his human
existence and nature for him become man. Thus society is the perfect essential unity of man
with nature, the true resurrection of nature, the accomplished naturalism of man and the
accomplished humanism of nature' (MEGA I, 3, p. 116). The final perspective of changing
the world which Marx attempted to formulate shines here. Its thought (the knowledge-
conscience of all practice, in which the still distant Totum is mirrored) undoubtedly demands
just as much newness of philosophy, as it creates resurrection of nature.
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The Archimedean Point;

Knowledge Related Not Only to What Is Past, but Essentially to What Is Coming Up
To begin with the mind became so powerful, ultimately it becomes expert at being so. And
precisely because it has relinquished its earlier, often falsely sublime character. Because it
has become a truly political song, finally managed to get beyond contemplated and past
material to the present. To a present, furthermore, in those days, which did not countenance
the mind as ether, but rather used it as material power. To understand this, the point in time is
once again important when, with the other early writings, the 'Eleven Theses' emerged into
this powerful light. Marx wrote about it in the 'Communist Manifesto', 1848, that is, a short
time later: 'The communists are directing their main attention on Germany, because Germany
is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution and because it is achieving this radical change under
more progressive conditions of European civilization in general and with a much further
developed proletariat than England in the seventeenth and France in the eighteenth century,
and the German revolution can therefore only be the immediate prelude to a proletarian
revolution.' Hence the particular impetus, one not experienced by Feuerbach, which
immediately brought the new philosophy, in statu nascendi, on to the barricades. Already in
Thesis 4 the Archimedean point had been discovered from which the old world could thus be
lifted off its hinges and the new one on to its hinges, the Archimedean point in the 'worldly
basis' of today: 'The latter itself must therefore first be understood in its contradiction and
then be revolutionized by eliminating the contradiction in practice.' And so, what is it finally
that discovered the starting-point of the 'Eleven Theses', i.e. the beginning philosophy of
revolution? It is surely not the new, proletarian mandate alone, however decisively it tore
itself free from contemplation, did not take, let alone perpetuate things as they are. Neither is
it only the critically and creatively claimed inheritance of German philosophy, of English
political economy, of French socialism, necessary though these three enzymes, primarily
Hegel's dialectic and Feuerbach's renewed materialism, were for the formation of Marxism.
But rather what finally led to the Archimedean point, and with this to theory-practice, did not
appear in any previous philosophy whatsoever, in fact has hardly been fully considered by
and in Marx himself. 'In bourgeois society', says the Communist Manifesto, 'the past rules
over the present,
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in communist society the present rules over the past.' And the present rules together with the
horizon within it, which is the horizon of the future, and which gives to the flow of the
present specific space, the space of new, feasibly better present. Thus the beginning
philosophy of revolution, i.e. of changeability for the better, was ultimately revealed on and
in the horizon of the future; with the science of the New and power to guide it.
All knowledge was however previously related essentially to what is past, since only this can
be contemplated. The New thus remained beyond its grasp, the present, in which the
Becoming of the New has its Front, remained an embarrassment. Thinking in commodity-
form has particularly intensified this old traditional impotence; since the way capitalism turns
all men and things into a commodity not only lends them alienation, but it also makes
evident: the thought-form commodity is itself the intensified thought-form Becomeness,
Factum. On account of this Factum the Fieri is particularly easily forgotten, and consequently
the producing element on account of the reified product, and on account of the apparent
Fixum at the back of men, the openness in front of them. But the false reciprocal relationship
between knowledge and past is very much older, in fact it has its origin precisely where the
work process was not at all considered in cognition, so that knowledge not only had to be, as
shown above, simply vision, but the Object of knowledge had to be simply material that has
been thoroughly formed, and beingness simply Been-ness. This is the proper place for Plato's
anamnesis: 'For truly', says Socrates in the 'Meno' dialogue (81B82A) and points to vision
precisely in the primal past of the soul, 'searching and learning are purely and simply
memory.' It is the spell of this contemplative antiquarium which despite all social changes
in the concept of knowledge has kept philosophy until Marx not only in contemplation, but
also in fact in the mere relation to Becomeness inscribed in every contemplation. Even for
the thinker of development, Aristotle, essence is the , the 'What-Was-Being', in
the sense of enclosed definability, statuary distinctness. Even for Hegel, the great dialectical
process thinker, occurrence is totally bent under its finished history, and essence is the reality
that has become, in which it 'is one with its appearance'. Not least in Feuerbach, Marx
himself notes the same block: 'Feuerbach's whole deduction regarding the relationship of
people to one another only goes to prove that people need and have always needed each
other. He seeks to establish consciousness via this fact, he therefore seeks, like the other
theoreticians, merely to produce a correct consciousness via an existing Factum, whereas for
real communists it is a question of
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overthrowing what exists' (Deutsche Ideologie, MEGA I, 5, p. 31). The effect of all this was
simply for the spirit of anamnesis to seek its power of cognition precisely where present, and
especially future is least to be decided. Whereas, therefore, the mere relation: knowledge-
past stands in an almost exclusively tub-thumping relationship to questions of the present,
and especially to crucial problems of the future, or in a relationship of the most short-sighted
bourgeois class standpoint, it only feels at home as it were (though without the perpetuated
class standpoint coming to an end) in the seclusion of the preterite. And indeed all the more
at home, the more distant the objects lay back in the past, the more adequate therefore their
isolation appears to the repose of contemplation. Hence, in the relation: knowledge-past, the
Crusades permit more 'scientificality' so to speak than both the last two World Wars, and
Egypt, which is even more distant, more than the Middle Ages. In fact the apparent total
Over of physical nature stands or stood there as a kind of super-Egypt or potential of Egypt, a
very long way back in the past, with the granite Becomeness of a matter which was
pronounced dead, not without methodological jubilation. But how different all this is in
Marxism, how greatly its power has passed to the present. How convincingly its new, its
general science of occurrence and change proves itself precisely on the Front of occurrence,
in the actuality of each decision, in tendency-control towards the future. In Marxism, the past
is not graded in an increasingly antiquarian manner either, since history, as both a primitive
communist history and as a history of class struggles, does not even make the epoch which
lies furthest back in the past into a museum; even less does it make the one which lies closer
to it into a science-free moratorium, as happens in bourgeois contemplation. Whereby such
large sections of bourgeois erudition, without any concrete knowledge-relationship to the
present, either confronted this latter epoch helplessly when it demanded decision, or, in
recent times, sold themselves to anti-Bolshevism, over and above all class interests, with
scandalous ignorance and lack of wisdom. Even the incomparably superior scientific
pioneers of bourgeois society, the great and pure ideologists of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, who certainly were kept in relation to the present and the future, always
confronted what was coming up in their own revolutionary class with illusions or
unconcretely overshooting ideals; not only on account of their respective class barriers, but
also on account of the barrier against the future, which until Marx was consistently erected
with the class barrier. This all unites, the longer it persists, the more so, precisely with the
anamnesis or the contemplative-static knowledge-block against
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what is really advancing and coming up. And likewise, now quite decisively: where the
knowledge-past-relationship sees only embarrassment in the present and chaff, wind,
formlessness in the future, the knowledge-tendency-relationship grasps the What For of its
knowledge as a whole: as the mediated new construction of the world. The dialectical-
historical tendency science of Marxism is thus the mediated future science of reality plus the
objectively real possibility within it; all this for the purpose of action. The difference from the
anamnesis of the Become, together with all its variations, could not be more illuminating;
this is true both of the enlightening Marxist method and of the enlightened, unenclosed
matter within it. Only the horizon of the future, which Marxism occupies, with that of the past
as the ante-room, gives reality its real dimension.
Neither must we forget here the new location of the Archimedean point itself, from which the
world is lifted on to its hinges. It likewise does not lie a long way back, in what is past, what
is finished and done with, to which earlier, merely contemplative materialism had reduced
the world by analysis. This subsequently produced an unchecked retrograde effect, precisely
when the demystifying role of this materialism was long since over; it dissolved historical
appearances into biological ones, and the latter into chemical and physical ones, right down
to the atomic 'basis' of each and every thing. So that, even of historically highly-charged
appearances, say of the Battle of Marathon for example, only the muscle movements
remained, i.e. the Greeks and the Persians together with the social content of this battle
disappeared into entirely sub-historical muscle movements. These then dissolved again out of
physiology into organic chemical processes, and organic chemistry in turn, which is common
to all living things in any case, finally landed up in the dance of the atoms, precisely as the
most general 'basis' of each and every thing. Thus, of course, not only had the Battle of
Marathon completely disappeared, for which after all an explanation was supposed to be
given, but the whole constructed world was apparently submerged in the generality of a total
mechanism with the loss of all its appearances and differences. In this reduction to atomics
and nothing but atomics, mechanical materialism saw the heart of the matter; in fact all there
was in reality here was that night of which Hegel once spoke, the night in which all cows are
grey. What was missing was what Democritus, the first great materialist, termed
, the rescuing of appearances, and which he called for in
methodology. Here, of course, Feuerbach did the young Marx a great service with his not
physical but 'anthropological' materialism, a service
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which is recognized in the whole tenor of the 'Eleven Theses'. Atoms and then the whole of
biology do indeed underlie every further construction in evolutionary terms, but the 'starting-
point', as Engels later called it in the 'Dialectic of Nature', then the Archimedean point (for
history) is for Marxism working man. His social modes of satisfying needs, the 'ensemble of
social conditions', which came to replace the Feuerbachian human Abstractum, the social
exchange process with nature itself: all this was now recognized as the only relevant and real
basis as far as the realm of history and culture is concerned. This was also a material basis, in
fact a much more distinctively material basis than that of the invisible atomic processes, but
precisely because it was a more distinctive basis, a historically characteristic basis, it did not
make historical appearances and characters into night. Instead it brought light for the first
time, a genuine light, in which simultaneously the Archimedean point lay, which means:
relation of people to people and to nature. And precisely because historical materialism, in
contrast to one-sided natural scientific materialism, was not a contemplative materialism, it
discovered at the specific location of its Archimedean point not only the key of theory, but
also the lever of practice. Marxism thus least destroys this lever or, correspondingly, the
higher, the new organization of living matter to which the lever raises us. Thus once again
Thesis 10 states: 'The standpoint of the old materialism is "bourgeois" society, the standpoint
of the new materialism is human society or socialized humanity.' And correspondingly,
world-changing of this kind occurs solely in a world of qualitative reversibility,
changeability itself, not in that of the mechanical Time and Time Again, of pure quantity, of
the historical In-Vain. There is likewise no changeable world without the grasped horizon of
the objectively real possibility within it; otherwise even its dialectic would be one of
marking-time. In fact, a great deal more power of creation has become visible in the world-
embracing dialectic of Marxism and comes to science. The hope which Herder sought to
invoke hymnically in the 'Genius of the Future': ' . . . for what is knowledge of life! and
you,/Gift of the Gods, face of the prophets! enchanting voice/That sings in premonition!',
precisely the hope of the knowledge of life became a real event in Marx, so that it might
really be such knowledge. The event is not closed, since it is itself a single Forwards in the
changeable world, a world which implies happiness. Thus the totality of the 'Eleven Theses'
testifies: socialized humanity, allied with a nature that is mediated with it, is the
reconstruction of the world into homeland.
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20
Summary Anticipatory Composition and Its Poles:
Dark Moment Open Adequacy
But who drives on within us? Someone who does not occupy himself, does not yet emerge.
There is no more to be said now, this inner dimension sleeps. The blood runs, the heart beats
without us being able to sense what has set the pulse in motion. In fact, if there is no
disturbance, then nothing under our skin can be felt at all. That within us which makes us
capable of being stimulated does not stimulate itself. Healthy life sleeps, weaving within
itself. It is completely immersed in the juice in which it is stewing.
Pulse and Lived Darkness

For this very reason we cannot feel that we are alive. Precisely this immediate pulse beats
alone. Acts like the fulfilment of desire, imagination and so on do not step outside the
immediate darkness of their occurrence. But the Now itself ultimately remains the most dark
in which we each find ourselves as experiencing beings. The Now is the place where the
immediate hearth of experience in general stands, stands in question; thus what has just been
lived itself is the most immediately, that is, the least previously experienceable. Only when a
Now has just passed or when and for as long as it is expected, is it not only lived, but also
experienced. As immediately being there, it lies in the darkness of the moment. Only what is
just coming up or what has just passed has the distance which the beam of growing
consciousness needs to illuminate it. The That and Now, the moment we are in, burrows in
itself and cannot feel itself. Correspondingly, therefore, the respective content of what has
just been lived is not perceived.
Room for Possible Advance

But what is driving in the Now at the same time continually surges forwards. It therefore
never remains weaving within itself, since the That of life is greedy. However unexpressed
its inner dimension may be, it expresses itself in the fact that it does not have what belongs to
it, but
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rather searches for it and intends it outside, i.e. that it is hungry. And the Outside into which
the subjective reaches must lie at least within its reach. If there were nothing but narrow,
suffocating, firmly established walls around the urging after what the subjective lacks, then
there would not even be any urging there. But as it is, something is still open to it, its urging,
wishing, doing has room. What is not can still become, what is realized presupposes Possible
in its material. There is this open dimension in people, and dreams, plans live within it. The
open dimension is also in things, on their leading edge, where becoming is still possible. And
urging not only has its outlet or its free space there, where it can still go, still choose, still
depart, still take a new path, lay a new path, but apart from the path there is in the objectively
Possible something which possibly corresponds to us, whereby the urging does not continue
endlessly unsatisfied. This corresponding something is not itself settled and guaranteed as
such, it is not receptive, let alone a solution, but it is prepared for its Possible and is thus at
least receptive as something prepared. There is a driving in things in which our affairs can
still be conducted, a Front in which our future, precisely this, can be decided. Such
changeable material is by no means self-evident: there could in fact also be nothing new
under the sun.* But as it is, there is in the flow of things, i.e. of events, definitely still a Still
and a Not-Yet, which is the same as genuine future, i.e. future composed of what has never
been like this. Ages in which nothing happens have almost lost the feeling for the Novum;
they live in habit and what is coming is no such thing, but rather as circumscribed as what
happened yesterday. But ages like the modern one, in which history, perhaps for centuries,
stands in the balance, have the feeling for the Novum in the extreme, they sense what future
is, with bated breath, by working to promote what is approaching, the approaching possible.
Such ages are the place to experience the correlate of the Possible particularly intensely,
beyond shattered Becomeness. The Now of the driving only has room among unclosed things
to realize, to make its contents increasingly manifest.
Source and Outflow:

Astonishment as Absolute Question
If something is properly realized, life comes to the place where it has never been, that is, it
comes home. In this possible realization of something still possible, however, two moments
ultimately constitute source and outflow.
*
Cf. Eccles. 1, 9.
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The source is characterized by the darkness of the Now, in which realization rises, the
outflow by the openness of the object-based background, towards which hope goes. It has
already been seen: in the process of realization there is something itself unripe and not yet
realized, hence it weakens (cf. p. 192); this unripeness makes itself evident in the darkness of
the lived moment. It has further been seen: in the object-based background or correlate there
is openness, still decidable Real-Possible, there is utopia as Front-determination of objects
themselves (cf. p. 204f.); this material capable of ripening makes itself evident as still
continuing tendency, still dawning latency. Dark moment on the one hand, adequate
openness on the other, consequently characterize source and outflow of the process of
coming up; they are the poles of anticipatory consciousness as well as that which corresponds
to it in object-based terms. Outflow, however, characterizes a moment of the final state
which signifies more than adequate openness, on the contrary: in which the latter presents
itself as open adequacy. Invariance of something constantly intended or of a utopian end
which is in the direction, this solely valid invariance has also already been distinguished (cf.
p. 221); it is Unum Necessarium in the direction, is an always identically disposed element of
the utopian final state. And now: open adequacy does not make itself evident in experiences
of the continuing world-process, with experimented outflow, but in short, strange experience
of an anticipated keeping still. The briefest symbol-intentions of an Absolute have always
been experienced in this keeping still, subjective at first, in fact appearing to be lyrical and
yet arch-philosophically founded in the matter itself, namely in a flash of utopian final state.
Such experiences of a utopian final state certainly do not fix it, otherwise they would not be
experiences of mere symbol-intention and not utopian, let alone central utopian ones. But
they actually do touch upon the core of latency, and in fact as final question, echoing within
themselves. This question cannot be construed towards any readily available answer, or be
referred to any material already settled anywhere in the available world. Examples of this are
given in the book 'Traces', where 'questioning, bottomless astonishment' is explained with
reference to a passage from Hamsun (Ernst Bloch, Spuren, 1930, p. 274ff.). Particularly,
however, in 'The Spirit of Utopia', in which such an ultimate symbol-intention was first
characterized as 'shape of the unconstruable question', this means in fact, as shape of
questions which cannot be bent or construed towards any readily available solutions: 'A drop
falls, and it is here; a hut, the child cries, an old woman in the hut, wind outside, heath,
autumn evening, and it is here again, exactly as it was, the same; or we read that Dimitri
Karamazov wonders in his
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dream why the peasant always says ''babby", and we sense it can be found here; "let the rat
rustle as long as it likes! If only it could find a crumb!", and we feel with this little,
miserable, peculiar verse from Goethe's "Wedding Song", here in this direction the ineffable
lies, that which the little boy left behind when he came out of the mountain again, "don't
forget the best thing!" the old man had said to him, but nobody could ever discover and put
into words this inconspicuous, deeply hidden, enormous thing' (Ernst Bloch, Geist der
Utopie, 1918, p. 364). We can see from this that it is quite figurative occasions and contents
to which the subject thus possibly inclines, but in these, the occasions and contents which are
different for every person, but always identical in their significance, the substance of deepest
astonishment announces itself, between subject and object, identifying both in intense
consternation towards one moment. Thus, once again, the unconstruable, the absolute
question certainly also runs towards the moment, into its darkness. Not as a clearing, but as
an unmistakable allusion to the immediate darkness of the Now, in so far as its central
latency in terms of content nevertheless depicts itself in such astonished questioning, such
questioning astonishment. If the content of what is driving in the Now, what is touched in the
Here, were extracted positively, a 'Stay awhile, you are so fair', then conceived hope, hoped-
for world would have reached their goal.
Once More:
Darkness of the Lived Moment;
Carpe Diem*
That within us which makes us capable of being stimulated, we have said, does not stimulate
itself. It sleeps warm and at the same time in darkness, wakes itself up least of all with
feeling. Even the feeling of internal and external stimuli, at the point where these plunge into
the Now, participates in the latter's darkness. Just as little as the eye can see at its blind spot,
where the nerve enters the retina, is what has just been experienced perceived by any sense.
This blind spot in the mind, this darkness of the lived moment, must nevertheless be
thoroughly distinguished from the darkness of forgotten or past events. When past material is
increasingly covered by night, this night can be lifted, memory helps out, sources and finds
can be excavated, in fact historically past material, even if only patchily, is especially
objectifiable precisely for contemplative consciousness. The darkness of the just lived
moment, on the other hand, stays in its bed-chamber; topical consciousness only exists
precisely in relation to an experience which has
*
This idea originally appears in Horace, Ode XI, Bk. I.
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just passed or for an expected advancing experience and its content. Together with its
content, the lived moment itself remains essentially invisible, and in fact all the more
securely, the more energetically attention is directed towards it: at this root, in the lived In-
itself, in punctual immediacy, all world is still dark. In punctual immediacy: does all
experience in fact occur punctually and atomistically, consequently in moments and as these?
This is denied by vitalist psychologists, they let mental material flow without a pulse. Thus
James, regardless of the fact that he allows 'transitive parts of the consciousness', sees
psychological life as a stream. Division is regarded by vitalists in general, especially by
Bergson, as artifical, as scientific-ideal abstraction, supposedly manufactured according to
mathematical models; even the moment would not be an immediate self-locatedness here,
both gliding and discrete, but a manufactured fiction. However, all this vitalistic denial of the
moment remains quite irrelevant in the present case; since the punctual pulse is in fact part of
life, it is not an abstraction from it. Whereas the stream of the consciousness-vitalists
themselves is abstract; since what it lacks is precisely the beating pulse, this element of the
stream of life as opposed to a waveless, uninterrupted pushing and shoving. The image of the
stream of consciousness shows its own abstractness in the fact that it contains almost nothing
of a real stream any more, but is instead stationary in itself. The stream of consciousness of
the vitalists is also so little a real stream that it manifests neither source nor outflow, and
above all it has nothing in common with the only concrete concept of the stream, with that of
process, which does decidedly consist of interruptions, namely of dialectical moments of the
dialectical context. As certainly as process is not 'composed' of these, following an
interpretation which is itself reified and mechanistic, it does nevertheless owe its
discontinuous character to them, precisely the 'pulse of liveliness', as Hegel says. James, even
Bergson not only fell back behind Hegel on this point, but even behind Hume, who is so
much closer to them, namely because he is undialectical. His theory of the 'indivisible
moments of time and consciousness' is significantly more concrete than the mere superficial
conception: stream of consciousness, with the pulseless abstractness into which it has been
reified. The correct version could even be learnt from Husserl here, at least as far as the
temporal aspect in the supposed 'act-continuum' is concerned: 'As a movement is being
perceived, moment by moment an As-Now-Comprehension is taking place in which the
topical phase of the movement itself is constituted.' And further: 'The flowing is not only
flowing in general, but each phase is of one and the same form . . . The form consists in a
Now constituting
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itself through an impression, and a tail of retentions affiliating itself to this and a horizon of
protentions' (Zur Phnomenologie des inneren Zeitbewutseins, 1928, p. 391, 476). No flow
can be thought of at all, let alone dialectically understood without that Now-Amidst in its
time, which is not even itself time, but 'the peculiar something', in Plato's words, out of which
the time (not only the conception of time) of the real stream of movement arises and in which
movement is united with restless rest itself. Plato, who has a better understanding than James
and Bergson of the discontinuous continuum, for this very reason decisively distinguishes the
moment ( , the sudden). It figures here as momentum of transition between
movement and rest, rest and movement: 'For nothing crosses over out of rest as long as it is
still at rest, nor out of movement while it is still moving, into rest; but the moment, this
peculiar something, lies between movement and rest, belonging to no time; and within it, out
of it, what is moved crosses over into rest and what is resting into movement' (Parmenides,
156 D-E). And finally as regards the flow as one towards outflow (rest) both the tenor of
the Faust plan and the related tenor of mysticism has the moment as no abstraction within it.
'Stay awhile, you are so fair': supposedly this can be said to the moment as a highest moment,
even to that perfectly fulfilled and so steadfast and steadily lasting moment which is stressed
in Eckhart's mysticism as the trice (nunc stans) of perfection. Thus all these statements, so
different from each other, are united in their recognition of a real Now; in contrast to the
stream of abstraction of the vitalists. And ultimately the pulse remains which also provides
the model for the intermitting momentary character of consciousness, or rather: occurs
analogously in the body. Derived from the pulse-beat, the mental moment is experienced in
the throbbing of its Now, in the forward-surging, also transitive character of all moments.
But no more is yet revealed in this immediacy, and becoming aware only stretches to the
point where the lived moment can in fact be experienced and characterized as dark. And here
the crucial factor is added which has in any case driven the problem beyond mere psychology
in all that has come before: the darkness of the lived moment is depictive for the darkness of
the objective moment. That is, for the Not-Having-Itself of that intensive time-element which
has itself not yet unfolded in time and process as manifested in terms of content. Not the
most distant therefore, but the nearest is still completely dark, and precisely because it is the
nearest and most immanent; the knot of the riddle of existence is to be found in this nearest.
The life of the Now, the most genuinely intensive life, is not yet
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brought before itself, brought to itself as seen, as opened up; thus it is least of all being-here,
let alone being-evident. The Now of the existere, which drives everything and in which
everything drives, is the most inexperienced thing that there is; it still drives continually
under the world. It constitutes the realizing aspect which has least realized itself an active
moment-darkness of itself.
From which the strange idea emerges that no person is really here yet, is really alive.
Because, after all, life means being-present, does not mean only before or after, foretaste or
aftertaste. It means plucking the day, in the simplest and most basic sense, means acting
concretely towards the Now. But precisely because our nearest, most genuine, continuous
being-present is not one, no person is yet really living, precisely from this perspective. Carpe
diem in quick, thoughtless enjoyment, it seems so simple, widespread even, but is so rare that
it never appears as real plucking. Nothing is more fleeting from the present than that usual
Carpe diem that appears to be completely absorbed in the enjoyment of the Now, nothing
with less power over being, nothing more banality ante rem. Thus the plucking of the day
cannot be achieved so quickly, unless the 'Stay awhile' spoken to the moment is in reality
confused with a bed of ease. However much credit is due to elementally forceful
contentment, it is only apparently at home in Auerbach's cellar* or even in philistine pleasure
in possessions. Already above (cf. p. 181ff.), Lenau and Kierkegaard were recalled as non-
masters of the Carpe diem, not unobjectionable ones, but very worthy objects of
consideration. They were both condemned to see the image of the loved-one jostling with the
loved-one herself. This may often be weakness of life, but the powerful subject of the
Egyptian Helen indicates that with weakness, even with Romantic exuberance, even with a
kind of utopian neurosis, the case is not closed. The usual Carpe diem does not get beyond
the mere impressible, beyond the surface of the moment of pleasure and pain, in fact it is
contrary to the version of it in Horace that which is dispersed, that which does not stay
awhile, that which is without present itself. In short: curiosity is just as little utopian as the
usual Carpe diem, which in fact jumps from one 'moment' to the next, wasting the day in the
day, has power over being. There is only a more genuine contact with the moment in strong
experiences and in sharp turning-points of existence, either of our own existence or of the
time, in so far
*
The Leipzig wine-cellar where Mephistopheles takes Faust to show him 'how easy life can be' and
where he plays tricks on the gullible drinkers.
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as they are noticed by the eye that has presence of mind. Extraordinary men of action seem to
offer genuine Carpe diem, as decision at the required moment, as power not to miss its
opportunity. Mommsen gives Caesar as an example of this power, calls it 'the sobriety of
genius' and continues significantly: 'To this he owed the ability to live energetically in the
moment, undistracted by memory and expectation; to this the capability of acting at any
moment with gathered strength.' But did Caesar, did most men of action of the class society,
which means here: of unfathomed history, equally grasp the moment when they acted in
terms of its historical content? This case is so rare that Goethe offers almost the only
example, a man furthermore who was not a man of action, but rather a man with
incomparable concrete vision. Thus Goethe's statement on the day of the bombardment of
Valmy* is relevant here: 'From here on and today a new epoch of world history commences,
and you can say that you were present at its inception'; there are, however, not many
examples of this kind of presence of mind. Not many such observations of an otherwise
unobserved moment: of a transitory moment with the most fertile motif, of a meeting place of
highly ramified mediations between past and future in the midst of the unsighted Now. A
sudden, not historically horizontal, but vertically striking light then falls on immediacy so
that it almost appears to be mediated, though without ceasing to be immediate or overclose
nearness. The situation-analyses of Marx and Engels give the most splendid example of
fathomed presence of mind, headed by the 'Eighteenth Brumaire'. And Lenin grasped the
present with historical insight all his life, right up to that thoroughly thought-out Carpe diem
which is called the Great Socialist October Revolution. All this of course already
presupposed a totally uncontemplative stance, namely apprehending-comprehending of the
topical driving forces of occurrence itself. This cannot be achieved by the class society which
necessarily overlooked the truly producing element in face of the product; but the correct
path to active topicality likewise only began with situation-analysis. Its goal remains the
illumination of that which both drives and remains hidden to itself in the final That-ground of
occurrence. Certainly too: all societies are pervaded by in no way merely lyrical, but rather
arch-philosophical experiences of the unconstruable question, of absolute astonishment, an
incipient Carpe diem in the unusual,
*
20th August 1792, when the Duke of Brunswick's Prussian army, thought to be the best in Europe,
was forced to retreat by the army of the French Republic under Kellermann. Goethe was actually
present at the bombardment.
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genuine sense; but, on the other hand, how much timidity, how much mere symbol-intention
there is in this inconspicuous everyday mysticism, the only kind which has remained, which
is worthy of remaining. Everywhere else, Not-there is the condition of the Now, and even the
Here of this Not-there forms a zone of silence in the very place where the music is being
played. Consequently, not only the existing, but also above all the subject of existing stands
in the incognito, precisely therefore what is driving and ultimately what is contained in what
exists itself. For this the full Carpe diem would first be crucial, so that the existing-topical
material and the environment that borders on it temporally-spatially would not in any way be
made gloomy and difficult by the nearness which has this still immediate difficulty in
experiencing things. But the moments still beat unheard, unseen, their present is at best in the
forecourt of its presence which is not yet conscious, which has not yet become.
Darkness of the Lived Moment, Continuation:

Foreground, Dead Space, Melancholy of Fulfilment, Self-Mediation
The lived darkness is so strong that it is not even confined to its most immediate nearness.
Instead it also has an influence in its environment, in the time adjoining the just Now, and
then in the space adjoining the just Here. This influence prevents experientially real nearness,
particularly as an occurring one, from achieving proper and reassuring distance, that is, from
being contemplated in the usual fashion. Consequently, the peculiar twilight of the
respectively topical foreground arises which cannot be easily contemplated, but also not
easily grasped and known. Several proverbs have more idea of this than most previous
philosophers; as for example: No weaver knows what he weaves, or: There is no light at the
foot of the lighthouse. And was not Oedipus, because he was himself standing in the light,
the last to realize that he had married his own mother? He had competently solved the riddle
of the Sphinx which could be contemplated from outside, but he reacted helplessly towards
his own case, because it was immediately near him. And so on in the obscure text of the
Now-time, of the Here-space, wherever mere contemplation, from a distance, from the usual
perspective, ventures forward towards it. This sort of thing appears most treacherously, as we
have often noticed (cf. p. 283f.), as soon as reified contemplation, that of something petrified,
Become, arrives in
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the present and attempts to say its piece to this something which is near, happening,
becoming. Then the habituation to the kind of contexts to which the distancing aspect had
given rise way back in the past is torn apart. Even the relative nearness of the nineteenth
century makes bourgeois historians characteristically embarrassed when they arrive at this
century in the course of their account; opinions intrude in place of the previous contextual
judgements. And the completely baffling unscientific approach of these historians is to be
remembered when history went to world war; the academic became the tub-thumping or even
jingoistic senior primary school master. This not only because of the class-conditioned
unconcrete attitude of the bourgeois to the annexes of the Now, but this particular weakness
of vision together with the ideological interest in falsification is centrally encouraged by the
general collapse of objective contemplation so to speak which nearness causes, and the false
judgements of bourgeois partiality step with particular engagement into the breach of topical
immediacy which can never be overcome by mere contemplation. All this may be elucidated
by considering a problem from landscape painting, in that and in so far as it concerns the
difficulty of the Topical together with the adjoining Now-foreground, Here-foreground. The
problem of the Topical for painting is: Where does the portrayed landscape begin in a
picture? The painter does not include himself in the painting, although he is also immediately
located in the landscape, as the innermost ring of the Immediate. However, the second ring of
immediacy: the authentic foreground of the picture, can also only be objectified with
difficulty; it still has too much nearness to the standpoint of the painter. And precisely the
confusion created by nearness causes the relative lack of developed form of the spatial
foreground too, the fact that it does not really belong to the authentic landscape. The
portrayed landscape therefore does not only begin, as is obvious, outside the painter who is
painting it, but also beyond the still diffuse objects of his nearer environment. A concept
taken from the physics of the air pump will make this clear: the foreground is for the
portrayal dead space, that is, a space from which the atmosphere has not yet wholly escaped.
In this case the atmosphere of immediacy, the persisting darkness and the persisting disorder
of the Here and Now, of nearness. Hence to the question: Where does the landscape begin?
Where does coherent objectification start? we can only answer: beyond detrimental space, at
a distance from it, precisely at the point where the darkness of immediacy together with its
outskirts begins to stop. And since this curious gap always lies between subject and object of
contemplation, precisely as
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dead space sui generis, from which the atmosphere of unmediated immediacy has not yet
been sufficiently removed: the difficult problem of the foreground of the landscape painting
sharply corresponds methodologically to the above-mentioned difficulty of occurring
topicality, occurring in time. Within this, however, the influence of the lived darkness is still
incomparably more significant than the subject-matter is itself in the spatial attention-relief,
and is not only an example of it, as in the composition of painting. This is already
demonstrated by the fact that the Here-space as spatial foreground can ultimately cross over
into landscape, can as it were conclude within it, and by the fact that an unfinished trace of
nearness does not announce itself in the repose of this conclusion. Whereas the Now-time, as
foreground of time, does not automatically run over into what can be comprehended, formed
and known, and in fact a new difficulty not automatically into knowability either, which
is not passive contemplation, but active tendency-lore. For otherwise this knowability would
have to get in its objective grasp what subsequently surrounds the Now-time, i.e. the future as
completely as, mutatis mutandis, the landscape-picture the landscape behind the Here-space.
Which, as regards the future, except for the next step to be taken, and the next after that, and
the grand perspective, quite obviously cannot be the case, not even in the basic science of
mastered occurrence, in the finally concre te tendency science: Marxism. And it cannot be so
because the future dimension in contrast to spatial distance itself contains unmastered
Now, i.e. darkness, just as the Now itself still contains unopened future, i.e. newness, and
surges forward to meet it. Past, this dimension which is only ostensibly closed, in fact only
for contemplation, and thus can ostensibly be compared with the objectifiable space-
landscape, appears only later in time-consciousness and in time-phase, only after the surging
into future, and for this reason cannot after all be compared with the objectified landscape,
which directly adjoins space-topicality and stands behind it as finished. On the contrary: what
contains the future in the Now-topicality remorselessly continues on its way above and
beyond all other past forms even in its foreground-topicality and in all its horizon-
environments. But since the future thus belongs to topicality, the former with all its
foreground- and horizon-objectivities also participates in the darkness of the lived moment.
And it participates in it in a way which constitutes the most essential characteristic of the
future: being sealed off from contemplation, but also still relatively unknown to tendency-
lore. This connection between moment- and future-darkness was formulated for the first time
in 'The Spirit of Utopia' thus: 'The darkness is intensified
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as soon as not only we ourselves but also the other, turned side remains undecided, hence as
soon as we turn to the future dimension, which itself, in so far as it is above all logically new,
means nothing other than our expanded darkness, than our darkness in the bearing of its
womb, in the expansion of its further history; and it is likewise intensified with regard to God
as the problem of the radically New, who must not only become visible for us in order to be,
so that the whole world-process is reduced elastically to a movement relationship between
two "separated" realities, but who contains himself only as hope, as Not-Being-For-Itself, like
us in the shadowy dimension of what has not occurred, of what is still unreal' (Geist der
Utopie, 1918, p. 372). In line with this uncanny formulation the darkness of the lived
moment therefore coincides in its total depth with the essential, but not here-existing mode of
existence of the goal-content itself, which was once intended by the mythological term God,
and which, according to the passage quoted above, is in fact the goal-content, that does not
yet exist here, has not yet been brought out, of existing itself. However, the Carpe diem or
present of the absolute goal-content stands in the same ground in which the subject of
existing stands, and from the same ground as the latter the goal-content as a Realized* goal-
content is still outstanding: from the ground of that unclarified hearth of existence which is
unmythologically termed agent and core of developing matter. So widely, so deeply therefore
the root darkness of the lived moment extends; so precisely is it assigned to the Novum in
both, to the Ultimum of the content. And it is likewise the same future: what is contained in
the womb of the ages, which is called upon to reveal what is contained in the moment. Solely
the capability-of-being, which has been encouraged to develop the power of guidance and
has been opened up, brings the immediate being of the driving-concealed moment to itself
and up; solely this opened transcendere into the Novum opens up immanent existing in terms
of content. The nearer the presence is here to the existential creator of occurrence, hence
historically to man, and the more radical the self-apprehension of the history-forming
subject, the more blind topicality frees itself, the more effectively it can be recognized as the
transit point of widely ramified dialectical mediations. The authentic, metaphysical darkness
of the lived moment is not yet or only initially illuminated by means of such historical
subject-comprehension, but the foreground problem, with
*
As in section 16, Bloch once again begins to alternate 'verwirklichen' and 'realisieren' for to realize.
The latter and its compounds are indicated with capitals.
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the crack of Here and Now in the depictions of the world context, is finally grasped. It is
assimilated into the problem of the mediated transit point and therein of topical-concrete
decision on the Front of world-occurrence.
Not that this crack in life, even in non-contemplative life, consequently disappears. For
ultimately the influence of the lived darkness is not confined to the various foregrounds
mentioned above either. But the blind spot, this not-seeing of the immediately entering Here
and Now, also in fact appears in every realization. Indeed, seeing is only dimmed by all too
near distance, whereas the kind of realizing which has been available so far does not darken
in a foreground of any kind, but in the realized material itself. Even genuine Carpe diem is
not exempted from this melancholy, namely when it is not merely presence of mind, but
plucks the fruits of a fulfilled hope. And the experiences of central astonishment, in the
unconstruable question, are only spared this melancholy because they in fact contain merely
lightning signs of a here-existing Now, a Here and There, and this in representative, often
ludicrous Objects, but not, not yet in the realized subject-matter in and for itself. Everywhere
else there is a crack, even an abyss in the realizing itself, in the actuated-topical entrance of
what has been so beautifully foreseen, dreamed out; and this abyss is that of the ungrasped
existere itself. So the darkness of nearness also gives the final reason for the melancholy of
fulfilment: no earthly paradise remains on entry without the shadow which the entry still casts
over it. It is not just that a fiasco threatens when too far-fetched dreams are supposed to be
realized, or when all too sublime dreams jeopardize their fulfilment. A trace in Realizing
itself is even still felt and is present where appropriate goals have been Realized, or where
monumental dream-images appear to have entered reality with skin and hair, with body and
soul. There is a realizing which disregards the deed of the realizers themselves and does not
contain it; there are ideals which pretend to be elevated, remote from tendency, abstractly
fixed, and thus also suppress the unfinished, unrealized aspect of their realizers. Precisely in
the melancholy of fulfilment this most profoundly not yet fulfilled aspect in the subject
announces itself in exactly the same way as the insufficient aspect in the fixed material of the
ideal criticizes itself within it. It is therefore also necessary increasingly to set free the
element of realizing simultaneously with the element of the future society. A similar process
has in fact already been seen in the problem of realization (Egyptian Helen): the wish- or
ideal-content, precisely when it reaches its realization-goal, arrives at a point of darker reality
than it possessed
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in the hovering, utopian, merely existing real character. And to repeat: Realization, however
much it cancels contemplative distance, never acts entirely as Realization, because there is
something in the subject-factor of Realization itself which has never realized itself. The
subject-factor of lending existence is itself not yet here, it is not predicated, not objectified,
not Realized; ultimately this is what is announced in the darkness of the lived moment. And
this incognito still remains the basic impediment which accompanies every realization, when
it is a full one. To remove it, to educate the educator himself, to create the creator himself, to
Realize the Realizer himself, all humanistic wishful dreams are directed towards this; they
are the most radical and the most practical. Growing self-mediation of the producer of history
is thus not merely the help to realize concrete tendency-anticipations concretely, it is also the
help to introduce realization without its peculiarly bitter trace. Without that remaining minus
which characterizes the immediate aspect of existing itself that has remained dark, and which
ultimately constitutes the element of non-arrival in arrival. A being-human which in its
sphere of existence is no longer encumbered with anything that is alien to it, a Realizing
element that is itself Realized: this is the border-concept of realization as fulfilment.
More on Astonishment as Absolute Question, in the Shape of Anxiety and of Happiness;

The Directly Utopian Archetype:
Highest Good
We said that what is driving in the Now also surges forward in the future into something
open. This openness has a double location in mental activity behind it, from which its fruits
are expected and also driven. The one location remains anxiety, of a kind which is all the
greater the more uncertainly it can expect its causes from all sides. Neither the neurotic
anxiety which may stem from unusable libido, nor the normal real anxiety in dangerous
situations is relevant here any longer, but rather an anxiety which is both unconditional and
related to something final. Even anxiety-dreams, as already noted, even children's horror of
the dark, even fear of ghosts only border atavistically on this anxiety, but they do indicate the
direction. For the believer, hell was populated with nothing but phobias of this kind, even
when external anxiety, that towards unknown nature, no longer needed to be anything like as
great. Hell has disappeared thanks to the Enlightenment, but the correlate problem of utterly
pervasive horror, of metaphysical horror, has remained. Its abode is always the Now, a
bloody
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gash in the darkness of the Now and of what is to be found within it. It is beyond doubt that
such an immediate horror exists, that it is of a different kind from the terrible real anxiety
towards the really Become. Its element is the unbearable moment, an often, though not
always pathological figment, an almost crippling terror in itself. Epilepsy, in the aura before
the attack, seems to have a particularly close connection with this unbearable state, paranoia
supplies the images of it closest to the anxiety-dream, the anxiety-dream in broad daylight.
Bchner's fragment about the poet Lenz going mad gives us an unforgettable account of this:
'Can't you hear anything?' asks the mad poet, 'can't you hear the terrible voice which is
screaming around the whole horizon and which we usually call silence?' And in Bchner's
'Woyzeck', anxiety is aroused everywhere by a roaring nothingness, by the wind, by the
evening sky, by the expectation of an uncertain negative something below, above all things,
threatening the poor devil from every direction. Anxiety appears in all these testimonies
which are still so very distant from one another as an expectation on the uncertain darkest
side, on the side of the strangulating, staring nothingness in the Real-Possible. This
unpicturable thing is also noted pictorially, in Drer's 'Melencolia', in fact both this side and
the other side of the astrological references contained within it. Even on the other side of the
Saturn shining out of the eyes of the woman figure, whose emblems fill the engraving, only
interrupted by the friendlier square of Jupiter, on the wall behind the figure. Saturn, however,
the star of brooding and yet also of collection, does not explain, although he is also the star of
misfortune, the ground into which Melencolia is gazing. Collection is only in the eye of the
figure, perhaps in the sphere in the foreground, perhaps even in the dog curled up asleep, but
not in the ensemble of Objects, nor in the object at which the figure is gazing. This object
itself is not in the picture, but precisely its completely uncollected nature is indicated by the
ensemble. Dehio strikingly drew attention to the dissolute aspect of this interior: the
compasses rest idly in her hand, scattered, mournful light lies on scattered Objects, the order
which otherwise characterizes scholars' studies of the sixteenth century is completely
missing, there could be no greater contrast than between this ensemble and the tidied one in
the engraving 'St Jerome in his Cell'. This in fact means: Drer's engraving 'Melencolia'
pictures, with astrological aids, anxiety as the contact with a possible abyss which does not
even have a bottom on which the fall is dashed. The engraving pictures stupor into which a
desperation opened up in enduring Now stares; Drer's 'Melencolia' is thus the invaluable
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document of negative astonishment, precisely without spooks or hell, even without the
determination of Saturn. Even in the negative there are therefore forms of the unconstruable,
the absolute question, there are unbearable moments of astonishment. They are
correspondingly more blurred than the latter's positive qualities, since they are only precise in
that they signify radically indeterminate horror, in the location of the abyss. Of course: the
abyss is not present alone in this location, even in the Melencolia the Gorgonian is not alone
in the world, but beside the stupor of astonishment there is in fact a Jerome-repose of
astonishment, and this indicates intentionally the other location of what is still open. Because
the changing face, the 'counter-sense of primal words', which was already to be seen in all
radical emotional states, particularly in the expectant emotions, is lacking least of all in
radical astonishment. Hence often the same cause which produces negative astonishment is
capable of producing happiness as the Positivum of astonishment. And here too the location
is always the Now, yet not as a bloody gash in the darkness of the Now and what is to be
found within it, but hope begins to blossom, with positive symbol-intention breaking into this
darkness, hope mysteriously confirmed in the inconspicuous. The element of this positive
astonishment is the reposeful moment, the moment where an otherwise quite insignificant
perception or an image felicitously shatters and catches the existing-intensive. Tolstoy
speaks in the 'Death of Ivan Illyich' of shrubs in the snowstorm, storm and cold ruled hostile
to life, the landscape itself lay in the most extreme desolation; despite or because of this, in
an ineffable incidental detail, suddenly homecoming and answer appear in this landscape,
more centrally than in any apotheosis. Tolstoy even associates the little, almost ridiculous
central incidental detail of the shrubs in the snowstorm very definitely with the rare great
moments in which, mostly at the moment of death, One and All suddenly becomes clear for
men, appears to become clear. There is a parallel here with the experience of the fatally
wounded Andrei Bolkonsky on the battlefield of Austerlitz who glimpses the starry sky as
never before, and also with the experience of unity of Karenin and Vronsky at Anna's death-
bed; but also of course: this unio mystica with meaning, eternity, totality is again much too
big and too determined, much too contrived in its theological Object to cope with the
modesty of the peripheral, never formulated material. The house stands already real in all
conventional religious experiences, as if it lay only in man's blindness not to see it, only in
the weakness of his flesh not to enter. Nevertheless, the connection with the inconspicuous
symbol-intentions is unavoidable,
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they are contained in all these experiences of consternation like seeds of a summum bonum,
of an absolutely human-adequate There. The There which announces itself in this way,
however, stands in mere real possibility, and all the positive symbol-intentions only evoke its
sign in man, this without doubt; they call the comprehensible-incomprehensible name of
good existence, in anticipated silence. And they also call it in central peripheralness, close
beside anxiety-consternation, with equally abrupt, equally undecided concentration. Utopia
of the end touches man in such objective, at the same time object-based astonishment; though
a content of horror can most definitely be interwoven with that of the wonderful. As a sign of
the paradoxical nature of the wonderful or in fact of the Not-Yet-Determinedness, Not-Yet-
Decidedness, which befits the final character of the Authentic and of tendency in general. At
all stages here, this adequacy (the naturalization of man, the humanization of nature) is still
open: not only with regard to its future entrance, but also with regard to its still unfixable
content which lies one jump ahead of everything that has so far been gained.
This kind of thing only takes place in the separate Now, because it takes place at the source
of everything. And an outflow is inherent in the source, whether it is reached is another
question. But the outflow itself takes precedence over everything as a living question, as that
into the Absolute, as that of the not yet existing Absolute itself. Unconstruable question and
its astonishment were defined above as the flash of the at last Real-Possible breaking in upon
itself, concerning the core of latency; by breaking in upon itself in this way, the Real-
Possible gives itself a hand to make a stop, ceases to be endless. And this stop occurs
precisely in the driver of the Real-Possible itself: the overbright consternation of the
astonishment at flashing moments and signatures of adequation thus has the most precise
connection with the That of existing in the bed-chamber of the lived moment. Therefore just
as the darkness of the lived moment represents one pole of anticipatory consciousness, of
anticipating world-composition itself, so real astonishment with open adequacy as content
represents the other; and they attract each other intensely, the symbol-intention of the
Absolute and Omega points to the darkness of the Alpha or nearest nearness. It is the source
or beginning of the world, still driving and still hidden in the darkness of the lived moment,
which grasps and dissolves itself for the first time in the signatures of its outflow. Grasps and
dissolves only in an anticipatory way, in quite weak, quite small signs: the world-knot, which
is concealed nowhere else but in the immediate That of existing,
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is also only disentangled through the most intensive nearness to this most immanent That-
intensity, through evidences in nearness. Precisely the so very nearest inconspicuous aspect,
the fine signature of these evidences, is the only thing which has remained of the earlier
putative closeness to the gods, in fact which has always formed the core in it, in so far as it
seemed to contain an ens perfectissimum. The great pre-appearances of genuine mysticism
remain as such in experimenting force, since what had also appeared in them as final
symbols, as real-symbols, had contact with fine signature and incorporated it. Here lies the
pre-appearance of the Andante, even the idyll as finale, with that Tao of the world which Lao
Tzu claims has no taste, and which therefore has the sharpest taste. Repose, depth has always
been founded in this inconspicuous element and has remained designable: 'But not as if the
secret drawer in every object still had to contain great unfurlings and documents as in earlier
times, when enormous wrappings still accompanied all depth and these wrappings gods,
heaven, great powers, glories, thrones were considered essential. But instead, sleeping,
silently, Odysseus came to Ithaca, precisely to Ithaca he came sleeping, that Odysseus called
Nobody, and into that Ithaca which can in fact be the way that this pipe is lying there or
however else something wholly inconspicuous suddenly presents itself and what has steadily
been intended finally appears to perceive itself. So firmly, so very immediately evident that a
leap into the Not-Yet-Conscious, into the more deeply identical, into the truth and the word
that solves things is made which is irrevocable; that simultaneously with the sudden last
meaning-intention of the viewer in the object the face of something still nameless, the
element of the final state, embedded everywhere, emerges in the world and no longer leaves
it' (Ernst Bloch, Geist der Utopie, 1923, p. 248). The thunder which believes it is the ultimate
and the apparent expression of this ultimate has become decadent; since what is final is silent
and simple. However, the fact that the final state, even in the most inconspicuous
astonishment, in front of and behind each pre-appearance, is not yet established was
demonstrated in the equally negative and positive utopia which opens up at this end and has
not yet become reality precisely in its ultimate aspect, either as negative reality of the
Pessimum and its Nothing or as positive reality of the Optimum and its All. Between both
there still exists even in unconditional astonishment the dangerous merging of an ultimately
undecided alternative, and it exists in object-based fashion in the outflow-problem of the
world. But equally, of course and this is also the major plus of hope-consternation in terms
of its prospect equally the Optimum
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of the goal-content has in its favour the openness of the historical process which is
continuing and has by no means been defeated up to now: it is not yet the evening to end all
days, every night still has a morning. Even the defeat of the wished-for good includes its
future possible victory as long as not all possibilities of becoming different, becoming better
are exhausted in history and world; as long as the Real-Possible with its dialectically utopian
process has in fact not yet been finally fixed. As long as wish, will, plan, pre-appearance,
symbol-intention, cipher of the One-Thing-Intended still have space in process, in fact form
virtual paradises in process. And the last symbol-intention remains in fact the homeland-
based one of the unconstruable question of the 'Stay awhile, you are so fair' in its Optimum.
The invariant of this direction leads in the end, as we are now in a position to say, to the only
archetype which has nothing archaic about it. That is: to the purely utopian archetype, which
lives in the evidence of nearness, to that of the still unknown, all-surpassing summum bonum.
The archetype: highest good is the invariance-content of the most felicitous astonishment, its
possession would be that which transforms in the moment and in fact as this moment, into its
completely resolved That. The archetype of the highest good is therefore not archaic, not
even historical, because there has never been a single appearance which could have even
begun to fulfil its image. Even less does it return, with Plato's anamnesis, to the immemorial
dimension of a perfection in order to fill its Optimum with it. The place to which this
archetype of unconstruable happiness returns is solely the itself still completely unappeared
origin at which it stops off and which, through its Omega, it brings to its Alpha, to the
appearing genesis of Alpha and Omega at the same time. All the forms of the unconstruable
absolute question, in their bright part, hence circle or surround the Optimum of this breaking
into the successful achievement of the Omega, in which the riddle-Alpha of the That or
world-impulse emerges as solved. Summum bonum would be perfectly successful
appearance of the Successful: hence it has also withdrawn from appearance; hence it is itself
inconspicuous, a utopian summum of those inconspicuous symbol-intentions through which
every appearance passes over into the matter itself. The content of the most basic desirability
which the highest good designates is of course still just as much in the fermenting incognito
as that which wishes this content in people. But its intended All always designated the peak
of the dreams of the better life, its utopian Totum continuously governs the outflow-
tendencies in well-managed process.
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The Not in Origin, the Not-Yet in History, the Nothing or Conversely the All at the End
That which in itself and immediately proceeds as Now is thus still empty. The That in the
Now is hollow, is only undefined to begin with, a fermenting Not. The Not with which
everything starts up and begins, around which every Something is still built. The Not is not
there, but because it is thus the Not of a There, it is not simply Not, but at the same time the
Not-There. As such the Not cannot bear the presence of itself, is instead related in a driving
way to the There of a Something. The Not is lack of Something and also escape from this
lack; thus it is a driving towards what is missing. Thus the driving in living things is depicted
with Not: as drive, need, striving and primarily as hunger. In the latter, however, the Not of a
There announces itself as a Not-Having, and in fact definitely as a Not, not as a Nothing.
Because the Not is the beginning of every movement towards something, it is precisely for
this reason by no means a Nothing. Instead: Not and Nothing must first be kept as far apart as
possible; the whole adventure of definition lies between them. The Not lies in origin as the
still empty, undefined, undecided, as the start of the beginning; whereas the Nothing is
something definite. It presupposes exertions, long erupted process which is finally thwarted;
and the act of Nothing is not, like that of the Not, a driving, but an annihilation. The darkness
of the lived moment refers to the Not, only negative astonishment to the Nothing, just as
positive astonishment refers to the All. The Not is of course emptiness, but at the same time
the drive to break out of it; in hunger, in privation the emptiness mediates itself precisely as
horror vacui, precisely therefore as abhorrence of the Not at the Nothing. And even at this
point, particularly at this point, it is clear that categorial basic concepts (fundamentals) are
made accessible solely by a thorough knowledge of the theory of the emotions. Since only
the emotions, not the emotionless thoughts, or rather the thoughts which have been made
emotionless, reach so deeply into the ontic roots that concepts which appear to be so
inherently abstract like Not, Nothing, All, together with their distinctions, become
synonymous with hunger, desperation (annihilation), confidence (rescue). These concepts
thus illuminate the basic emotions, as the basic emotions do the ontological basic concepts, in
that they make the intensive substance evident to them from which they spring, through
which they burn, and which they
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illuminate. Ontological basic concepts: here then the Not, the Not-Yet, the Nothing or
conversely the All are distinguished as those which make evident in the most abbreviated
terminology the intensively moving world-substance in its three principal moments.
Consequently, these sharply compressed basic concepts designate real categories, namely
area categories of reality in general; since their concise ontology most nearly approaches a
depiction of the objective emotion-substance, i.e. intensity-substance in the three principal
moments of the process-matter. In such a way, however, that the Not, unable to bear the
presence of itself, characterizes the intensive, ultimately interest-based origin (the That-based
Realizing element) of everything. The Not-Yet characterizes the tendency in material process,
of the origin which is processing itself out, tending towards the manifestation of its content.
The Nothing or conversely the All characterizes the latency in this tendency, negative or
positive towards us, chiefly on the foremost Front-field of material process. Even this
latency, however, refers again only to the content of the intensive origin, i.e. to the filling of
what is intended in its hunger, to the satisfaction of this interest which is breaking in.
Furthermore, as noted: in hunger, in privation, emptiness (the zero of the immediate That of
existing) mediates itself precisely as horror vacui. This horror vacui is the original That-
factor and positing factor, the intensive realization-factor which sets the world going and
keeps it going, keeps it going as experiment of the spilling of its That-content. The start of
the beginning of all Being-Here lies here always in the darkness which is still unmediated
with itself, namely in the darkness of the Now or of the just lived moment; the fiat of all
world-movements occurs most immediately in this darkness. And the darkness is in fact not a
far removed, not an immemorial darkness at the beginning of time, a long since passed
beginning masked by continuation or cosmos. But on the contrary: the darkness of the origin
remains, as immediate darkness, unchanged in nearest nearness or in the continuing That of
all existing itself. This That is still unresolved in every moment; the mysterious question of
why anything is at all is posed by the immediate existing itself as its own question. Its
expression is creation renewed in and by every moment; the world as process is the
experiment towards the resolution of the always and everywhere driving question of origin.
Above, we described this unresolved element as the world-knot which is concealed in the
unresolved That of existing; thus the world creates every moment anew in its immediate
Being-Here, and this continued creation appears also as preservation of the world, namely of
the world-process. The start of the beginning and the starting-point
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called origin and world-ground is to be found in precisely that Now and Here which has not
yet emerged from itself, i.e. which has not yet moved from its place at all. This origin in the
strict sense has itself not yet arisen, arisen out of itself; its Not is therefore in fact precisely
the one which is ultimately driving history and tailoring historical processes to its
requirements, but which has itself not yet become historical. The origin remains the incognito
of the core which moves throughout all times, but which has not yet moved out of itself.
Every lived moment would therefore, if it had eyes, be a witness of the beginning of the
world which begins in it time and time again; every moment, when it has not emerged, is in
the year zero of the beginning of the world. The beginning occurs in it time and time again
for as long as it takes until the undefined Not of the That-ground is decided, through the
experimental definitions of the world-process and its forms, either as definite Nothing or
definite All, according to its content; every moment therefore likewise potentially contains
the date of the completion of the world and the data of its content. Because the Not gets
involved in its What- or content-objectifications, in so far as it becomes mediated it changes,
ceaselessly in fact, since it now itself stands in the temporal-spatial process which it posits
and in which it experimentally spills its content. So the creation which it constantly posits
anew is not preservation in the sense of Becomeness, but rather preservation in the sense of
Becoming, that is, of experimenting with the content of the That-core. And the constantly
new positing mediates itself in historical terms towards particularly distinguished points:
towards the breakthrough of a historically New. Precisely because the most basic content of
existing, as not yet manifest, must be driven out continually in historical terms, the formation
process repeatedly develops Front-appearances of this material which has not come, i.e. the
Never-Yet-Been-So or Novum on the horizon, in that into which it is streaming, into which it
finally tends to flow out with single purpose. The whole manifold fullness in this search of
the core for its fruit is of course, together with the repeatedly possible Novum, equally a
persistent lack, namely of One Thing that has not yet been found; which is why the temporal-
spatial sphere of influence is no less covered with innumerable fragments and husks, with
wild saurian-like monstrosities, as progressive preparations appear for the One Thing, for
what is good, for what will bring a solution. Similarly, however, at the same time the Not
also inevitably appears taken here in its continuation as Not-Yet: in terms of occurrence
and of history, it opens up as this. The Not as Not-Yet passes straight through Becomeness
and beyond it; hunger becomes
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the force of production on the repeatedly bursting Front of an unfinished world. The Not as
processive Not-Yet thus turns utopia into the real condition of unfinishedness, of only
fragmentary essential being in all objects. Hence the world as process is itself the enormous
testing of its satisfied solution, that is, of the realm of its satisfaction.
The Not expresses itself, as noted, as hunger and what actively joins on to it. As meaning and
intending, as longing, wish, will, waking dream, with all visualizations of the Something that
is missing. But the Not expresses itself also as dissatisfaction with what has Become for it,
hence it is both that which is driving beneath all Becoming, and what is driving on ahead in
history. The Not appears in every previous definition to the Something as the unappeased
denial which says: but this predicate is not the ultimately adequate definition of its subject.
Thus in fact the Not makes itself evident as active-utopian Not-Yet in process, as negation
which drives on ahead in a utopian and dialectical fashion. As a denial which is growing up
in the positive positing itself, and in fact ultimately from the perspective of the adequate final
state of the All, the only place where the Not would come to rest, namely to the positive
rendition of what is intended in it. Thus the Not-Yet is of course also destructive or the
dissolving contradiction in all Becomeness, in accordance with the materialist dialectic. And
it is this contradiction precisely because every stage of the definition must also become a
barrier again for what is defined and reared by it, in other words: because no Becomeness in
the tendency towards the All already represents a successful achievement. The contradiction
to Becomeness expresses itself both in the subject and the object of the process, as the two
sides of the same moved reality. In the conscious or human subject the subjective
contradiction arises to Becomeness which is insufficient or which has become inhibiting, in
the object the objective contradiction corresponds to this which appears in the Become itself,
as the ripened tendency towards the form of existence which is due next and which is more
mediated with the forces of production. The Not-Yet here becomes all the more defined, its
tendency to what is fulfilling all the stronger, the more the tasks which it sets itself have
become objectively soluble. Now, however, we must further keep the crucial point in mind:
the Not as mere Not-Yet alone could both subjectively and objectively only in fact unsettle
inadequate Becomeness, it could not immanently explode it in the way we have described.
Explosion is annihilation: and the act of annihilating by definition and by nature is only
obtainable from the circulating Nothing. The Not seeking its All thus also enters in the Die
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and become* into a connection with the Nothing, as well as having one with the All. Even
fading, not to mention annihilation, is only constituted by the fact that in the change involved
in process and as this change the Nothing is circulating or the constantly threatening
frustration. Similarly, however, in fading an as always still insufficient All is circulating,
that which makes relative successfulness possible, above all in masterpieces: otherwise there
would only be forgetting of the past and not also the partially rescued and rescuable element
which is called history and after-ripening. The connection of the Not and the Not-Yet with
the All is one of the goal, it was cited as that which says and reveals: this predicate is surely
not the ultimately adequate definition of a subject; or concretely: human beings and the
whole world still find themselves rebus sic stantibus in prehistory, in exile. The connection of
the Not and the Not-Yet with the Nothing is however not one of the goal, but rather it is one
of the use to which dialectical negation puts the Nihil of annihilation, namely in the sense of
the annihilation of inadequate Becomeness by immanent explosion. This dialectical use of
the Nothing in no way conceals the already noted basic difference between Not and Nothing,
between the start and horror vacui on the one hand, the possible Definitum of annihilation
and mors aeterna on the other. Nor does the dialectical usefulness of the Nothing conceal the
completely anti-historical pre-appearance which the Nothing has as downright destruction, as
a den of murderers repeatedly opening up in history; since in this den there is certainly very
much a piece of history, a piece of light annihilated as it opens up. There is no dialectic of the
determined mightiness, determined pre-appearance of this kind of Nothing, i.e. no
progressive negation of the negation: annihilations like the Peloponnesian Wars, the Thirty
Years War, are merely misfortunes, not dialectical change; the mortification of Nero, Hitler,
all these apparently satanic outbursts belong to the dragon of the final abyss, not to the
furthering of history. However, a quite different impression is in fact created by the
connection of the use which occurs in not so determined appearances of the Nothing,
especially in negations immanent in the matter, therefore in those in which history continues.
Then the Nothing must definitely serve for the best, and the act
*
From Goethe's 'Selige Sehnsucht' in the 'West-stlicher Divan'. The verse runs:
'And until you have possessed
this truth: Die and become!
You are just a gloomy guest
In the earth's dark medium.'
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of annihilation becomes productive as negation, above all as negation of the negation. Thus
dialectic through Nothing consists in the fact that all that which still unsuccessfully exists
carries the seed of its fading within it, so that in fact at the same time war is declared on
persistence in the temporary material of each attained Becomeness. This war must combine
with the constant demandingness of the Not-Yet and be at its service: the inadequate is
cleared away from the path to the All, passes from the Becomeness into the No-Longerness
of the Orcus. Indeed, the dialectic through Nothing even refers to the monstrous complex of
Becomeness which raises itself not as the All, but as mere cosmos* or universe out of
process, and even substitutes itself for the All in all purely cosmic perspectives of
philosophy, from Parmenides to Spinoza. The cosmos is the first astral mythical, then
pantheistic, then mechanistic substitute for the All and stands in its place as the embodiment
of the given world and of satisfaction in it. It thus appears as the whole of movement which
does not move, as harmony of Becomeness, in which the differences of Becoming and the
deficit of particulars, as according to the Law of the Large Numbers,** balance each other out;
an elapsed, a positive stability. But the dialectic through Nothing has even included world-
annihilation within itself, has certified temporariness for the universe, by using the Nothing.
The Orcus which is described in physical terms as freezing death, in mythological terms
conversely as world-conflagration, physically contains the birth of another cosmos or
universe, utopianly even the birth of a totally fulfilling All. New heaven, new earth, the logic
of the apocalypse presuppose the dialectical functional change of the fire of annihilation
which is otherwise considered to be satanic; every advent contains nihilism as something
utilized and defeated, death as something devoured in the victory. Frustration and
annihilation is of course the constant danger for every process-experiment, the coffin that
constantly waits beside each hope, but it is also the means to break inadequate statics. And
this dialectic through Nothing intermixes not least with all significant positive aspects, not as
their danger here, but as their important foil, as obstruction of their evidence. Blackness is at
home in this obstruction, the included element of roughness, of eeriness which prevents pure
rosy red even in higher regions. Blackness prevents levelling out, in so far as it is produced
by cheap gloss, by rotten apotheosis; in
*
Bloch is playing on the connection between the German 'Alles' meaning 'all', and the German 'All'
meaning cosmos.
**
The Law of Large Numbers. Bernoulli's theorem a concept in probability theory.
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their place, precisely through non-smoothness, through roughness, the deep and the sublime
are encountered. If shuddering is the best part of mankind,* then it is precisely the Nothing to
all smoothness, to all contrived solution which is conceived in and devoured along with the
shudder of sublimity. Thus the Nihil into which Drer's Melencolia gazes is also a useful and
formative element of positive astonishment or of the perception of the All in the confident
sense. Indeed, only when enormously raised consciousness of the Nothing in the world,
especially in the conspicuously false supernatural world, is taken seriously, does the central
inconspicuousness of a landing, of an All emerge, which had previously been masked by
cosmic jubilation or even by thrones, powers, glories. Consequently, the advanced state of
Nothing, breaking out with greater and greater strength in history, and not in fact increasingly
obscured by it, has given constitutive power to the dialectic towards the All itself. Utopia
presses forward, in the will of the subject and in the tendency-latency of the process-world;
behind the cracked ontology of a supposedly attained, even finished There. Thus the path of
conscious reality-process is in fact increasingly one of the loss of fixed, even hypostatized
static being, a path of increasingly perceived Nothing, though consequently also of utopia.
The latter now completely encompasses the Not-Yet and the dialecticization of the Nothing
in the world; but it just as little suppresses in the Real-Possible the open alternative between
absolute Nothing and absolute All. Utopia, in its concrete form, is the tested will towards the
Being of the All; the pathos of Being is therefore now at work in it which was previously
devoted to a supposedly already completely founded, successfully existing world order, even
supernatural world order. But this pathos acts as one of Not-Yet-Being and of hope for the
summum bonum within it; and: despite all use of that Nothing in which history still
continues, it does not in fact ignore the danger of annihilation, even the still hypothetically
possible Definitivum of a Nothing. Here it depends on the work of militant optimism: just as
without it proletariat and bourgeoisie could perish in the same barbarism, so without it in the
broader and deeper perspective, sea without shore, midnight without easterly point could still
threaten as Definitivum. This kind of Definitivum would then designate the absolute In-Vain
of the historical process, and it is, as something that has not yet happened, as little out of the
question as is, in the positive sense, the Definitivum of an all-fulfilling All. What ultimately
remains therefore is the changeable alternative between absolute Nothing and absolute All:
the
*
Cf. Goethe's 'Faust', Part II, 6272.
Page 313
absolute Nothing is the sealed frustration of utopia; the absolute All in the pre-appearance
of the realm of freedom is the sealed fulfilment of utopia or Being as utopia. The ultimate
triumph of the Nothing has been conceived mythologically as hell, ultimate triumph of the
All as heaven: in reality the All is itself nothing but identity of man who has come to himself
with his world successfully achieved for him. The That-proposition: In the beginning was the
deed,* the All-proposition: The insufficient, here it is done** both unidealistic propositions
define the tendency-arc of matter which is qualifying itself. Our intention-invariant within it
remains: naturalization of man, humanization of nature of the world totally mediated with
man.
Utopia No Lasting State;

Therefore after All:
Carpe Diem, but a Genuine One in Genuine Present
The Now as something merely fleeting is nevertheless not correct, should not be like this.
But just as little should there be an endlessly drifting dreaming in which present enjoyment is
impeded, even shunned. After all, the substance of utopia is ultimately nothing if it does not
refer to the Now and seek its spilled present. Genuine present, no longer one pieced together
out of Now, what is just past and the simultaneity of the surrounding space. Of course, the
mere immediate fleeting Now is too little, it fades and makes way for the next, because
nothing in it has yet been properly achieved. Hence Jean Paul's sentiments are true when he
says: 'If there was nothing except the moment for the heart, then you might say, around me
and inside me everything is empty.' But he says the wrong thing about this emptiness when
he reifies past, even future instead; when, in a romantic and idealistic way, he will not let
them move into the present at all. When with genuinely felt darkness of the lived moment,
yet equally with stay made absolute in memory, even hope he disparages not only a still
insufficient, poorly external Carpe diem, but every present in the following manner: 'Since
you can never experience beautiful days as beautifully as they later shine in memory or
previously shine in hope: you would rather
*
Cf. Goethe, 'Faust', Part I, 1237. Cf. also John 1, 1. 'In the beginning was the Word . . . '
**
Bloch is compressing the words of the Chorus Mysticus from Goethe's 'Faust', Part II, 12106-9, which
reads:
'The insufficient
Here becomes an event.
The indescribable
Here it is done;'
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ask for the day without either; and since one only hears the gentle music of the spheres at
both poles of the elliptical vault of time and nothing at all in the middle of the present; you
would rather remain in the middle and listen, but past and future both of which no man can
experience, because they are only two different poetic genres of our heart, an Iliad and an
Odyssey, a lost and regained Miltonic paradise you do not want to hear at all or let them
come near, so that you can just nest deaf and blind in an animal present.' Even where a
complete present and reality is conceded to the future by the idealism of Jean Paul, a
disparagement of this tangibility, consequently reification of striving, eternalizing of utopia,
manifests itself: 'If in this world, I say, poetry became life and our pastoral world a sheep
farm and every dream a day: this would only heighten our wishes, not fulfil them, the higher
reality would only give birth to a higher poetic art and higher memories and hopes in
Arcadia we would pine for utopias, and at every sunrise we would see a deep starry sky
departing, and we would sigh as we do here' (Titan, 45th cycle, conclusion). This kind of
thing is of course only spoken in a melancholy spirit and not with approval, even in the
prophesied endlessness of longing a warning is issued against that utopianism which
considers an Arcadia as intensified summer holiday or even as resigned sheep-farm to be the
final wish-content. But where from the outset, as in the case of Arcadia, only the wish for
escape and the tired wish for contrast are driving us on, the escape of course easily runs on
further in fact longing itself, sighing itself out of Arcadia again. Though of course Jean
Paul himself, with Goethe and Gottfried Keller the greatest master of graphic description in
the German language and of the golden superabundance of the world, ultimately refuses the
eternalized utopian. It is also the political aspect of the democrat in him which, for the sake
of 'Dawnings for Germany',* finally breaks free from being besotted with the Not-Now in a
mere romantic dream. Jean Paul himself thus gives the last word to a will towards the
present, towards utopian present: 'The present is chained to the past as prisoners used to be to
corpses, and the future is tugging at the other end; but one day it will be free.' Thus nothing is
more repugnant to utopian conscience itself than utopia with unlimited travel; endless
striving is vertigo, hell. Just as there should be a hold instead of the repeatedly fleeting
moments or merely tasted points in time, so too there should be present instead of utopia, and
within utopia at least present in spe or utopian present tense;
*
A political work by Jean Paul, which appeared in 1809.
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if utopia is no longer necessary, there should at long last be Being as utopia. The essential
content of hope is not hope, but since it does not allow precisely the latter to be wrecked, it is
distanceless Being-Here, present tense. Utopia works only for the sake of the present which
is to be attained, and so in the end present, as the finally intended distancelessness, is
sprinkled into all utopian distances. Precisely because utopian conscience will not be fobbed
off with what is poorly existing, precisely because the furthest-reaching telescope is
necessary to see the real star of the Earth, and the telescope is called concrete utopia:
precisely for this reason utopia does not intend an eternal distance from the object, with
which it wishes to coincide instead, an object that is no longer estranged from the subject.
The That, for which reason and for the illumination of which the world-odyssey is under way
and not yet odyssey of quiescence, does not throw itself forever into designing and process;
for the Intensivum of this That basically just wants a concise result instead of endless
process. Even if a stationary halt in the On The Way is as bad as or even worse than On The
Way itself made absolute, every halt is still correct in which the utopian present moment of
the final state itself is not forgotten, on the contrary, in which it is retained by the agreement
of the will with the anticipated final purpose (summum bonum). There are such moments in
all concrete revolutionary work, in the realization of the proletariat as abolition of
philosophy, in the abolition of the proletariat as realization of philosophy. They are in every
articulation of unknown self-being through artistic preappearance and in the hearth of all
articulations of the central question. They are even in the stupor of negative astonishment,
and all the more so in the shiver of positive astonishment, as a landing announced by bells.
There is definitely utopian present in this, precisely in the sense of begun abolition of the
distance of subject and object, therefore also of self-abolishing utopian distance itself. The
magnetic needle of intention then begins to sink, because the pole is near; the distance
between subject and object diminishes, as the point of unity dawns pre-consciously, where
the two poles of utopian consciousness: dark moment, open adequacy (for the That-intention)
reach the point, coincide. Accordingly utopia cannot go any further here, it goes instead into
the content of this presence, i.e. into the presence of the That-content, together with its no
longer alienated, no longer alien world. As is unfortunately only too evident, what is
intendable as such presence, as such manifested identity does not yet lie anywhere in a
Becomeness, but it lies irrefutably in the intention towards it, in the intention which is never
demolished, and lies unmistakably in the historical and world process
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itself. The latter most certainly has not been damaged by a decisive In-Vain and Nothing.
That is why the identity of man who has come to himself with his world successfully
achieved for him does admittedly present itself as mere border-concept of utopia, in fact as
the utopissimum in utopia and precisely in concrete utopia: but this most hoped-for thing of
all in hope, called highest good, also represents the region of final purpose in which every
solid positing of a purpose in man's struggle for liberation participates. The All in the
identifying sense is the Absolute of that which people basically want. Thus this identity lies in
the dark ground of all waking dreams, hopes, utopias themselves and is also the gold ground
on to which the concrete utopias are applied. Every solid daydream intends this double
ground as homeland; it is the still unfound, the experienced Not-Yet-Experience in every
experience that has previously become.
21
Daydream in Delightful Form:
Pamina or the Picture As Erotic Promise
It then inflames my soul, there it becomes bigger and bigger and I spread it out further and further, more
and more brightly; and the thing really becomes almost ready in my head, even if it is long, so that
subsequently I can survey it at a glance in my mind, just as if it were a beautiful picture or a pretty person,
and I do not hear it at all consecutively in my imagination in the way it must subsequently come, but as if all
together at once.
Mozart
The Tender Morning

We dream all the more, the less we have already experienced. Love, above all, always paints
its Own earlier than it has it. It imagines the one girl, the one boy vaguely, before the
consequently lovable creature has appeared in person. A glance, an outline, a way of
walking, are dreamed, the chosen one must look like this in order to be chosen. The beloved
features hover ahead like a picture, and the external stimulus must be commensurate with
them, otherwise it cannot excite us as one to be loved. The external stimulus is thus not only
accepted here, so that it excites us, for instance as the
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first which has appeared, but it is chosen as an exciting stimulus by inner inclination,
preparation. What is then intended, the coming features of the figure are of course not seen
clearly, but clearly and selectively sought after. A fulfilling appearance hovers and strides
ahead of those who are awaited, themselves await. With this eye, this outline, something to
be loved rises in the morning, something distant stands outside the door. Many girls and
many boys have made their infatuated choice very early in this way, it often has a lasting
effect. Sometimes the choice occurred at home, in individual features of father and mother,
sometimes in the street, sometimes in a face in a picture. Much remains inward here, a dream
of what we do not know or what cannot yet be attained. The dream with the picture in it is
loved for a long time, and alone.
Effect through the Portrait

It expresses itself more clearly when it sees itself in a picture. Thus long ago girls believed
they would see their future husband on St Andrew's night. Or the girls went to a witch who,
after an anxious curiosity had intoxicated them, showed them their bridegroom in the so-
called mirror of the earth. Kthchen von Heilbronn and Graf Wetter vom Strahl* appear to
one another across time and space on somnambulant New Year's Eve. Elsa von Brabant sees
her knight in similar rapture. Once again a mirror of the earth is set up in the magic mirror of
the witches' kitchen,** with the 'most beautiful image of a woman'; even Helen first appears in
the Emperor's palace as a similar spectre. Then, however, with secularized magic which can
be much more easily experienced, the actual portrait appears, erotically compelling the will,
possibly even non-will through enchantment. The enchantment extends from the silhouette
and the photograph to the surrogate painting of the woman not yet known; the original can
moreover be surrounded by danger or can itself be a danger, which increases its aura. The
special medium of love that is created in this way is, as is only right and proper, best
described by a fairytale, by Grimm's fairytale of Faithful John: 'After my death', said the old
King
*
The lovers in Heinrich von Kleist's play 'Das Kthchen von Heilbronn', written in 1808, based on a
Schwabian legend.
**
Goethe's 'Faust', Part I. The scene where Faust first glimpses Helen in the witches' mirror.
Page 318
to Faithful John, 'you must show my son the whole castle, but you must not show him the last
chamber down the long gallery in which the picture of the Princess of the Golden Dwelling
stands hidden. If he sees the picture, he will be overwhelmed by love for her and will fall
down in a swoon and will get into great danger on her account.' The young King nevertheless
sees the forbidden painting and shirks no danger until he has won his beloved and brought
her home. Thus enchantment is created by the portrait, and not in fact, as in sympathetic
magic, enchantment which is supposed to strike the person represented, but one which
conversely strikes the viewer, fantasizing erotically from the painted object. Through the
burning lens of the painting, the spell of a distant sun strikes the person standing in front of it,
excites utopian unrest in him. This kind of love-potion effect, conveyed by painted
anticipation, is presented in more detail than in Grimm in the story of Prince Kalaf and
Princess Turandot in the Arabian Nights. Prince Kalaf tries to contemplate without being
aroused the picture of the dangerous Turandot, her triumphant and murderous features, even
hopes to discover defects in it, but he immediately falls for the fire which inflames him from
the pre-appearance. The Chinese motif spread from the Orient into European chivalry and
into its dream-figure, Amadis of Gaul. Amadis of Gaul then, the original European dream-
knight, saw the picture of Oriana, an English princess, not a Chinese one: nevertheless,
portrait magic makes complete Orient out of love here. Drives him into adventures, obstacles,
countless dangers, into the whole of the known world at that time, including the Sultan of
Ancient Babylon, and into the ghostly depths of hell, until the union is consummated and
Oriana sinks into the arms of the prize of chivalry. What Turandot promised as a picture,
Amadis' lady kept during the whole course of her winning and did not lose after he had won
her. Schiller merely reworked the theme of Turandot, but a full ray of Amadis and his courtly
love, of woman as image and like the image in a picture, still fell on Maria Stuart; Mortimer's
first appearance before the queen definitely falls into this category:
One day,
while I was looking round the bishop's palace,
my gaze was drawn towards a woman's portrait
of stirring wondrous charm, and violently
a feeling seized me deeply in my soul,
it overwhelmed me so, I stood transfixed.
But then the bishop said to me: Well may
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you linger by this picture with emotion.

The loveliest of all the women living,
she most deserves our pity of them all,
enduring for the sake of our belief
her suffering in your own fatherland.
Thus Mortimer saw Mary's portrait in France, the sensory-supersensory splendour of

Catholicism radiated from it and sparked off a rush of images which drove the knight in the
same breath to the Scottish queen and to the heavenly Mary. The motif however remains the
portrait-utopia of the Gothic and also of the Baroque romance of chivalry: passion is
combined with devout worship of the image, with such a vividly exchanged and secularized
adoration of Mary that it makes the knight into Perseus who frees Andromeda, into the
crusader bent on rescuing the damsel in distress. The distant quests of the knights have long
since been forgotten, but the Baroque, which took up the motif of being sent far afield,
echoes in wonderfully pure fashion in Mozart, in a miniature which understandably the
painting has now become, in Tamino's song: 'This portrait is enchantingly beautiful.' Pamina
presents the sweetest figure of all dream-beloved and with the music of her pre-appearance
the epitome of them. The fine miniature of Pamina lies in Tamino's hand and is enclosed by
it, the most delicate of frames, Pamina is regarding the boy even in the unearthly beauties of
his song itself, she drifts in front of Tamino as a magical image and as the musical form of
his love. With heavy coarsening, though also magnetization of the miniature from the 'Magic
Flute', the Turandotmotif recurs again in Wagner, in the 'Flying Dutchman'. His picture keeps
Senta under its spell and in hope: optically in the disturbing likeness over the door, musically
in the demonic ballad. Wagner's neo-Baroque in general particularly likes to modify this
spell; not painted in Elsa's Lohengrinvision, long before she saw him, painted in Eva's,
though only indirect, preparation in the 'Meistersinger', concerning Stolzing. 'What made me
feel such sudden anguish was the fact that I had seen him long ago in the picture', in the
picture of David 'as Master Drer painted him for us.' Characteristically, the still Baroque
building of the opera has the Turandot-picture hanging on its walls more often than the play.
There are many such examples, they all tempt us to the dream and promise. It is not even
necessary for the picture itself which stimulates the dream to be a particularly good one. In
fact, in experience, far from fairytale and opera, even the photograph lends itself to utopian
tenderness.
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Dostoevsky, in 'The Idiot', lets Myshkin hear about Nastasia Filippovna through Rogozhin,
he sees her picture, he sees the suffering, yet arrogant expression, he quickly brings the girl's
photograph to his lips and kisses it. In this Dostoevsky-world the portrait is 'the collective
contradiction of a person, the portent of beauty in suffering'; it does not only arouse the
desire to find this woman, but to free her from her face through love, to fulfil her longing for
childhood and innocence which the picture promises besides her beauty. Reason enough for
the sick saint or holy fool to be dedicated to this woman through her portrait. The enchanted
have after all, besides the danger which surrounds their beloved, almost invariably also seen
the sorrow caused her by the fact that she is herself far removed from her beloved, in a
strange place, far removed from love; this creates the deepest seduction alongside beauty.
Even behind the painting of the unfortunate, aloof Princess Turandot the archetype of
Andromeda is still at work, who finds herself in the power of a dragon. Ultimately this is so
even when the idol does not stop at any picture, not even the most exquisite, when the picture
is completely painted over by love, if not basically itself painted by it. This was ultimately
the case in all instances of portrait-magic we have considered and only culminates in the
purest dream-woman there is, and her most faithful dreamer: in Dulcinea and Don Quixote.
Hence none other than Don Quixote's Dulcinea is and remains the concentration of all these
picture-beloved, both the cautionary and the most completely utopian one. Taken to the point
of comedy: a ridiculous picture of happiness in ridiculous unhappiness; condensed to the
basic phenomenon of all mere erotic dream-beings: to Dulcinea as the femme introuvable.
Nevertheless, the picture of the beloved creates the first strong waking dream even in happy
situations in life; imago substitutes as well as sending us out into the unknown.
Nimbus around Encounter, Betrothal

This is different again when the woman has already been seen in the flesh, but only
fleetingly. Then an image also closes in around the event, one that is won from the first or the
last impression. No matter how brief the first impression may have been, it remains as such,
outlines and colours itself. The glance at the passing, vanishing woman stops still, agonizing,
not lived out, but pictorially decided. Or instead, it comes to a very hasty farewell with
unanswered, frozen, suffocated love, to a farewell in which
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the briefly experienced sinks away again, but of course also composes itself. Then not the
first, but the last impression remains, is decorated with the few features of a happiness
missed. The impression is preserved in both cases as remembered image, which nevertheless
possesses nothing that has been lived to the end, but is still confronted by the fullness which
was possible. Again, there can be unhealthy imago in this nimbus, and yet again it can also
indicate a most human kind of love. Heine's poem:
I stood in darkening dreams
and stared upon her likeness
enters completely into this fruitless melancholy. Mrike's Peregrina* songs capture the same
interrupted feeling not in a sentimental, but in a shocking way:
Oh, yesterday into the lighted nursery
by flickering of dainty candles arrayed
where I forgot myself in noise and play
you stepped, o picture of pity-sweet agony;
it was your ghost who came to dine with me,
we sat as strangers keeping grief at bay
until my sobbing burst out in the end
and hand in hand we left the house as friends.
In this unfulfilled, though once corporeal wishful image there is the agony of a love which
does not live and does not fade, which wanders in its morning twilight, returns eternally and
departs eternally. The same imagemotif of Ahasueric beginnings repeats itself, in a much
weaker form, but moving precisely in what is left unsaid, in Mrike's Mozart novella;** the
poet of Peregrina relates the encounter of a young bride (the happy bride of another) with
Mozart and the afterglow of this encounter: 'A few moments later, as she crossed the big
room upstairs which had just been cleared and set straight again, the drawn green damask
curtains of which admitted only a soft twilight, she stopped and stood wistfully by the piano.
It was just like a dream to think who had been sitting at it a few hours before. She looked
thoughtfully at the keyboard for a long time which
*
These were included in Eduard Mrike's Bildungsroman 'Maler Nolten', 1832.
**
Eduard Mrike, 'Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag', 1855.
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He had last touched, then she quietly closed the lid and pulled out the key, jealous to ensure
that no other hand might open it again so soon.' Here a fleeting, though extraordinarily
significant reality has framed itself, as it were; at least its mental picture, which points ahead
in utopian fashion, was won from unfulfillable love. Thus the imago of the passing woman
never found again is also radically added to the wishful images composed of fragmentary or
incomplete reality. Hebbel wrote a sad song to the unknown woman in a similar vein:
But now my eyes will never know you again,
not even if you pass me by one day,
and should strange lips your destiny explain
I would not recognize the name they say.
Yet you will live in me forever more,
as music lingers in a silent room,
and though I cannot shape the form you wore,
no form can drag you with it to the tomb.
In fact, an image of this imminent, non-imminent presence is sprinkled even at the beginning
of successful love; curiously, spellbound in fine fetishes, the rising morning then stands still.
Tolstoy, in the 'Kreutzer Sonata', makes the red belt of a girl glow, love is ignited by it, even
the later ascetic memory has not forgotten the belt. With what a felicitous flash even the
space around Werther's Lotte* stands still: she herself appears, sharp and abiding down to the
pale-red bows on her arms and breasts and the black bread in her hand, with the children
round about her, absorbed in the tender gesture of sharing out the bread to them, so perfectly
feminine, a whole spectacle of goodness shining forth. In the midst of this beautiful
beginning the image leaps out in this way, even remains afterwards as the shape of the secret
betrothal, preserves this in its untouched landscape. No miniature drifts ahead here, like that
of Pamina, but it forms itself in love at first sight and creates with a tune which is so purely
emotionalized in this frame 'dream of the highest graces, heavenly morning glow', as the
quintet in the 'Meistersinger' sings.
*
In Goethe's 'Die Leiden des jungen Werthers'.
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Too Much Image, Rescue from It, Nimbus around Marriage

If the intended woman is won, then of course the fantasy around her ebbs away. But it does
not necessarily disappear, in fact too much initial image is reluctant to become flesh. Above
all, when the dream-image nourished itself more from the lover who had it than from the
loved-one it referred to. Very romantic spirits who fell deeply in love with the fairytale-time
of young love and who are weak in reality have thus generally been notable for their fear of
fulfilment, especially for their hatred of marriage. Here we may once more recall Lenau,
impelled to remain forever in the company of the image of the loved-one only out on the wild
sea. And the imaginary, though equally tangible figure of E. T. A. Hoffmann's conductor
Kreisler can be recalled as another example, who saw only heavenly images in love, only
smashed soup-dishes in marriage, and did not want to swap the images for the dishes.
Darkness of the lived moment and reification of the Trojan Helen are romantically travestied
in all this kind of thing, as we have seen, but also, when pathologically sharpened, are
brought into focus and made clear. Even a naturalistic late or half-Romantic like Ibsen
celebrated and exaggerated in a particularly instructive way the sheer morning value of love,
love as sheer morning value. In a very radical bohemian way in 'Love's Comedy', where Falk
and Schwanhild leave each other voluntarily, precisely out of the deepest affection, so that
their 'spring love' does not disappear in marriage, as it would in reality, where the leaves fall.
This is over-blown of course, but no more over-blown than the shock Menelaus experiences
when confronted with his Egyptian Helen, which returns here, includes all this, is again
relevant for it all. And no more over-blown than another reactionary character of Ibsen's, one
who was by no means vilified for being romantic in her time, but so to speak for being ultra-
modern: the 'Woman from the Sea', with the same initial value complex. This woman, Ellida
Wangel, also reifies a hardly realized beginning and consequently ruins her marriage.
Though the undomestic, sea-related element is also in Ellida Wangel herself when she is
constantly gazing out at the ocean and at the strange man of her first love, at the silhouette
which he forms far out in the ocean. But the limitless image of abduction remains essential,
opposed in a decidedly unrealistic way to a world which invariably appears to it as the
narrowness of the fiords. And the abstractly utopian trade in eroticis goes on; finally,
Spitteler also portrayed it in the dream-obsessed hero of his novel 'Imago' and in the beautiful
Theuda, spurned out of
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loyalty to her image. Being married to another, the 'governor', makes her into 'a slice of
bread'; but her visionary poet will not acknowledge reality, and the situation, deranged out of
the world, is not improved again until he changes from the sensory-supersensory suitor into
the supersensory one once more. Theuda-imago must not become real, the poet's muse
herself will not stand for it, as Spitteler indicates; after so much fantasy, reality would not
stand for it either. 'Imago' is bizarrely excessive, but what remains true about it is: all too
heavenly love never becomes earthly love, the one disturbs the other. Thus precisely also in
love-marriage the so much more general problem of realization is discernible, the
decrescendo through darkness of the lived moment and through its repercussions. The pitiful
hungering for the pure dream-image ante rem thus almost gets into the state where it appears
to itself indiscriminately, in fact particularly when discriminated in the world-light, as the
higher thing itself. After all, the various conductor Kreislers do seem to have their case
confirmed even by the anti-Romantic enemy of all wishful dreams, by the advocate of
reality: 'However long a man has been knocking around the world, has been pushed around
by it, usually he still ultimately gets his girl and some sort of a position, marries and becomes
a philistine just like all the others; his wife holds the purse strings, children come along, the
woman he worshipped, who was at first the only one, an angel, starts to look more or less just
like all the others, his job brings him work and aggravation, marriage a shrewish wife, and so
the whole miserable business of all the rest has arrived' (Hegel, Werke X2, p. 216f.). Much of
this may also have remained true outside this Biedermeier* embourgeoisement, precisely as
the melancholy of fulfilment which at this level accompanies anything invested with too
much image. It is this melancholy which drives back so dubiously into the love-dream before
the real matter or even at the beginning of the real matter, causes it to encapsulate itself and
reify itself as distant love per se. And in fact precisely because its fantasy, as one which
essentially only contains distant love, ebbs away once the reality is perceived; abstract utopia
is then even more certain to be remembered. Here is a source for genuinely utopistic
neurosis: namely for lingering in the waking dream, for the image getting stuck in the first
signs, in the mere initials of reality.
*
See Vol. I, p. 40n. Biedermeier also suggests petit-bourgeois domesticity. The name derives from the
fictitious, hapless poet Gottlieb Biedermeier satirized in the comic Munich weekly 'Fliegende Bltter'
(Broadsheets). 'Bieder' means respectable, and 'Meier' is a very common surname, suggesting
ordinariness.
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The case is immediately different, however, where the fantasy does not block itself off from
what is coming. Where the image in it not only seeks to be preserved, but proved in flesh and
blood. And that becomes the course of the matter itself, as soon as the pre-appearance,
instead of merely proliferating subjectively in itself, has also been sufficiently stimulated by
the Object itself. Because the imago of an already perceived loved person can definitely
manifest traits which may not be completely unfounded in the Object. After all, not every
love-object has the power of reaching into the imagination through its imago, of moving the
latter towards it, even when there is such receptive disposition or mere analogy of the
original with its image. In particularly acute instances of the living image-effect an attraction
must have been contained in the object itself, namely a founded wishful image within it
itself, so that it can at least appear in this way, and the power to act as this wishful image.
Pamina when encountered in reality is perhaps not the same as she appeared to Tamino in the
picture, but the utopian imago she created is still in fact her own. Thus what is true of every
imago drawn from a person is especially true of the erotic image: those who know how to
create it are poetic natures, that is, those with a high degree of objective imagination in them.
With real possibility of becoming in a good climate that which reaches into the imagination,
which they seem to be not without reason and radiate as preappearance. Love, which does
not exhaust itself post festum in the enjoyment or in the disappointment of its images, thus
keeps faith with the love-object in what may also have been a wishful image of itself in the
object, therefore, possibly, a propensity towards the self-transcendence beyond what is innate
and what has become in it. The probation of the imago thus occurs in terms of the object and
by means of the object; in this way it finds accommodation. If, however, this power of
exposure through an image is missing, or if the lover alone was the poetic nature, in such
unrestrained overflowing unreality that Helen truly does appear to him in every woman:* then
the catastrophe of the image is completely unavoidable. Not only the youth of love then runs
away from Hegel's unveiled shrewish wife, unhappy marriage knows no other remedy than at
most to become banal, a shadow in the numbness of limbo. What was loved will never again
become in this marriage what it was before, in contrast to the happy marriage, where space
remains for a dream-image which was constitutive to prove itself, that is, to develop what has
been exposed in it. And here simultaneously
*
Cf. Goethe's 'Faust', Part I, 26034. See also Vol. I, p. 159n.
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a freshness proves itself which can be in a position to dispel the whole usual, all too usual
alternative between initial dream and apathy in this field. For precisely what is utopian is by
no means, in line with Romantic psychology, confined to the Alpha, in such a way that the
following alphabet of things is merely problematic stretching of something already known.
Rather, marriage also contains its own specific utopia and a nimbus which does not coincide
with the morning of love, hence by no means fades with it. This utopia arises in fact from the
probation of the love-imago, and its poetry is always one of prose, though of a prose with the
richest of backgrounds: of the house. The house is itself a symbol, and indeed an open one
despite all its closedness; it has as its background the goal-hope of the homeland-symbol,
which persists throughout most wishful dreams and stands at the end of all. This hope is so
original that it does not give way to the morning images of love; on the contrary, it has
already communicated itself to the Lotte-image, to both the landscape of secret betrothal and
the spectacle of goodness shining forth. Though the wishful image here is not one of passion,
which is never a constituent of marriage; by feeling affection, a person already detaches
himself from passion. The wishful image is most definitely not one of being provided for
sexually and socially, of rationalized sexuality which made marriage into the most bourgeois
institution in the bourgeoisie. Marriage is just as little visualized as an objet d'art, with a
limited life right from the outset, as an inner bourgeois revolt against anticipated philistinism.
Rather, imago of marriage posits the developing space of house exactly around two people,
with its many careers beyond philistinism. This above all in socialist society, because it no
longer needs to posit the family as a refuge from the struggle of life, but keeps it going as the
nearest manifestation of solidarity. With the partner as constant guest in the house, with the
alliance of unique intimacy based on special differentness. This phenomenon is full of
tension and yet it is not dramatic, but thoroughly epic; thus Chesterton says very tightly here
in a felicitously conservative way: 'All the things that make monogamy a success are in their
nature undramatic things, the silent growth of an instinctive confidence, the common wounds
and victories, the accumulation of customs, the rich maturing of old jokes. Sane marriage is
an untheatrical thing;'* And yet marriage is so far from being a mere moral appendage to love
that it represents, precisely in comparison with it, something strangely new: the adventure of
erotic wisdom. So that it represents the successful or
*
From 'George Bernard Shaw', 1935.
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unsuccessful experiment of a communion which finds no equal either in sexual love or in any
social community which has previously appeared. Thus marriage appears as the utopia of one
of the most friendly and most strict expressions of the substance of human life; thus its
probation is not only, in fact ultimately no longer at all that of the painted Pamina picture, the
virginal one of encounter. Rather, the music of the ordeals by fire and water is added to the
utopia of the Pamina picture in Tamino's hand; this music now no longer designates and
signifies the bride, but marriage, no longer passion, but the friendship of love, which is in
fact called marriage. Pamina herself guides the music of fidelity or the probation of the imago
far beyond the first mere enchantment by this imago. Marriage initiates and survives the fire-
ordeal of truth in the life of the partners, of the steadfast befriending of gender in everyday
life. Guest in the house, peaceful unity in fine, burning otherness, this therefore becomes the
imago of marriage and the nimbus it undertakes to win. Often making the wrong choice, as is
well-known, with resignation as the rule, with happiness as the exception, almost even as
mere chance. And seldom does marriage become the outbidding truth of what was initially
hoped for, therefore deeper, not merely more real than all the songs of the bride. Nevertheless
it has its utopian nimbus with justification: only in this form does the by no means simple,
the cryptic wishful symbol of the house work, is there any prospect at all of good surprise
and ripeness. Just as the pain of love is a thousand times better than unhappy marriage, in
which there only remains pain, fruitless pain, so too the landlocked adventures of love are
diffuse compared with the great sea voyage which marriage can be, and which does not end
with old age, not even with the death of one partner.
High Pair, Corpus Christi or Previous Cosmic and Christ-Like Utopia of Marriage
The ship which takes us on board in this way was painted in a doubly luminous way. In
earthly and celestial colours, they present two mythical utopias of marriage. The first can be
described as that of the High Pair, it is aristocratic-pagan, the other classifies marriage as
Corpus Christi. Little attention has been previously paid to the category of High Pair, even
though it emerged immediately after the matrilinear society. Significantly, Bachofen
conspicuously avoided it, always placed only woman or man alone on the respective
matrilinear or patrilinear peak. And yet the high couple developed
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the most peculiar wishful image of marriage, even in the eyes of its viewers, not only of the
partners. Woman and man are each imagined here concentrically within themselves as a
picture, the one graceful and providing-good, the other powerful and dominating-good;
however, only their connection brings blessing per se. It appears as unity of tenderness and
sternness, of grace and power, in fact of whore and prophet, all this here with the old astral-
mythic background of moon and sun, and also earth and sun. The woman has in her favour
the glittering moon-goddess or the primally wise earth-goddess, the man the radiant light
system; both can or should be at work and dispense in the High Pair together in the human
heaven. The High Pair nimbus lies around Pericles and Aspasia, around Solomon and the
Queen of Sheba, around the 'Helios' Anthony and the 'Isis' Cleopatra, around Simon Magus
and Helen. The last two, Simon, the Gnostic of Jesus' time, Helen, a hetaira from Tyre, were
particularly venerated by their followers as 'Dynamis' and 'Sophia' in unity; the world
appeared redeemed to them through the rediscovery of this primally male, primally female
element. After all, an echo of this Simon-Helen cult at the time of Christ lived on throughout
the whole of the Middle Ages and was preserved, by changing its characters, in the Faust-
Homeric Helen relationship. Whereas late antiquity also provided especially adventurous
examples for the category of High Pair: thus the Emperor Eleagabal, as priest of the Syrian
sun-god Baal, married the priestess of the Carthaginian moon-goddess Tamit day and night,
Baal and Tamit in one. A further astral myth streamed in heavily here, the Babylonian myth
of a 'sacred wedding' in God himself. It lived in gnosis when this divided up its powers of
imagery shining down from above into male and female ('primal ground and silence', 'light
and life', 'concept and Sophia'), it was preserved in the cabbala. Christianity, with its
womanless God the Father, allowed no or only indistinct High Pairs on this earth, but
gnostic-cabbalistic Judaism most definitely did. Thus around 1650 the pseudo-Messiah
Sabbatai Zewi had his wife Sara, a hetaira like Helen of Tyre, as 'second person in divinity'
beside him. Indeed, the Tamino-Pamina image deriving from Hellenistic sources, the Faust-
Helen image under the continuing influence of Simon Magus and Helen of Tyre these
continue poetically to consummate the ancient nuptials. In two people, in the erotically fixed
couple, the category of the High Pair thus sought to cause to appear what did not combine in
the cults, in the external firmament: moon and sun simultaneously, with equal intensity in the
sky, in heaven. Whether the misera contribuens plebs itself ever came to see this
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dream-image is debatable; it probably contented itself with the sight of its demi-gods.
Nevertheless, the image of such a union still runs through the nimbus of every young
marriage, when it occurs between well-favoured people. The image has been expressly
preserved in kitsch as well as in dynastic pairs (robber and robber's bride, heir to the throne
and his highborn consort) and gave a powerful highlight on marriage even where the
aristocratic background and the astral myth had disappeared. The compatible partner for the
most beautiful woman has long engaged the imagination of erotic fulfilment, as perfect pair-
image of grace and power. And though Christianity no longer justified the High Pairs
theologically, this pair-myth, acting like a guiding image, does in fact live on in the Faust-
Helen legend, in the Pamina-Tamino union (further dealt with by Goethe in 'The Magic Flute
Part Two'). Indeed, it is ranked very highly as 'image of our bliss' in the Suleika book in the
'West-stlicher Divan', expressly related to the simultaneity of crescent moon and sunrise and
to what it means to unite the former's refinement with the latter's power:
The Sultan managed this, connected
The highest world-pair in the land,
To designate they were elected,
The bravest of the loyal band.
In all this the double unity of sexuality seems so peculiarly large and did not rest until it
believed it had found a hold in the firmament itself. A unity of people who are man and
woman in a fuller sense than Adam and Eve, a sacrament of sun and moon. Christianity,
however, no longer has a place for it not only on account of its womanless God the Father,
but above all in fact as non-astral-mythic religion. No place in a world in which moon and
sun now equally sink, as externalities with which the cosmic utopia of marriage likewise
sinks.
Instead, however, its second face rises, an inner one which promises and binds in a different
way. Devotion and strength, maidenliness and leadership are not to be combined in a
worldly, but in an extra-worldly way and thus completed. Marriage becomes community in
nuce, that is, the Corpus Christi imitated by wife and husband. In this too there is an image
which first begins with marriage and has its erotic promise in marriage, as the house, with
sensory-supersensory brilliance. Millions still believe in it, as in the sacrament of marriage,
for them marriage is made in heaven and remains there until death, despite possible earthly
wretchedness
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or catastrophe. The marriage partners themselves consummate the sacrament through

marriage, they themselves already enter into relation with God, as the creator of children's
souls. Every marriage, Pius IX impressed on us, is in itself a sacrament, even if only an
empty one; not so that marriage becomes sacred, but because marriage is sacred, is the
collaboration of the priest necessary, in the only sacrament which the church itself does not
dispense, which it only makes into a full one through its ratification. Then of course, in the
sacramentum plenum, a vast gold ground should emerge in marriage to the believer; wife and
husband stand in imago beyond compare. According to the teachings of the church, they
come together as consecrated limbs of Christ's body, in order to devote themselves to the
extension of this body, to the spreading of the kingdom of God in the rational human
creature. The bond of Christ with his community remains the image and model image of
marriage: 'For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall
a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife and they two shall be one
flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church' (Eph. 5, 3032).*
Sulamith's love for Solomon in the Song of Songs, with breasts sweeter than wine, with the
beloved who has gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and
to gather lilies,** this glowing wedding song is clerically transformed and presented
allegorically as the love-talk of Christ with his community, as devotion of the head to the
body, as purification of the body through the head. Despite the Fall, our bodies are the limbs
of Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6, 1619), always in such a way that marriage is
rooted in the marriage of Christ with the community and with its extension and continuing
effect, its organ and depiction in the rational human creature. Sexual communion and fidelity
to it are completely connected in this image of marriage with religious and with social
communion though only in the form of the Christian community related to the other world.
In St Paul, marriage becomes the connection of disciple and female disciple out of kinship
and convention, in order to blend themselves in the image of the new God, in order to belong
to him in the new house; comradeship between the sexes ideally becomes comradeship of the
cult. Though the human creature added a great deal of water and misfortune
*
'Church' in the Authorized Version corresponds in versions of the German Bible to 'Gemeinde', which
means 'community' and is the word Bloch is using here.
**
Cf. The Song of Songs 6, 2.
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to the wine of this miracle, especially the absolutely un-Christ-like society in which in fact,
as late Roman, feudal, capitalist society respectively, the Corpus Christi did not exactly
reveal itself in perfect form in the social context. But the utopia of the grapevine and the
vines was nevertheless at work in the refuge as which the family wanted to preserve itself
non-antagonistically within class society. Despite all strongly patrilinear, patriarchal features
and despite the extra-worldly vanishing and reference point, there was no utopia of love
which could have considered marriage to be as deeply important and made its image as
deeply binding as the former. The essential patriarchal feature, with the man as 'head', was
nevertheless included in a community of love of a more extensive order in which there was to
be no more domination, nor any loneliness deux. Unus Christianus nullus Christianus, this
principle of a cryptic collective was reflected here as the faith, love, hope of marriage.
After-Image of Love
Even if a dream becomes real, it will not always remain so. Even if it is not carried to the
grave, the body is which it found. Death does not cut love off, but what was visible and alive
for it. The magic wand of the first impression was followed, the gold was pure, its time is
past. Then, however, a waking dream is restored again in images, it remains an afterimage of
love, fulfilled and yet, then again, not fulfilled. This after-image is as distant as possible from
the Peregrina-vision composed of unfulfilled love, the vision of the never achieved farewell,
and yet related in one point. Since even the woman happily loved can become Peregrina
through death, in so far as death is alien to her, in so far as it only interrupts externally.
Undoubtedly, there is widespread self-deception here, right down to the kitsch which forms
in the memory around the so-called late blessed husband or wife;* this caricature is never the
subject of discussion, not even transfiguring memory of a less insipid kind. Rather, no after-
image of love is unequivocal, unless already able to develop in the lifetime of its object; then
of course, in its brilliance, it is unerring. As in the Peregrina-vision, hope also repeatedly
rises out of memory in such cases, and a promise
*
'Blessed' is the ordinary term of endearment in German for a departed husband or wife. Bloch's first
wife Elsa, whose death in 1921 caused him so much grief, seems to be very much present in this
passage.
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out of the after-image; Theodor Storm's novella 'Viola Tricolor' circles around this problem
twice. Since unsatisfied-remembering wishfulness is at work here both in the child who
garlands the picture of his dead mother with roses and because of his stepmother least of all
forgets his own mother, and also in the man entering his second marriage, and he too takes a
long retrospective glance. He takes it on lonely paths, in his lonely study with the picture of
his late wife over his writing-desk, by the window which opens out on to the garden, down to
the little hut which he has not entered for so long. The retrospective glance goes there, the
after-image goes and lives there: 'The sky was full of clouds; the light of the moon could not
reach down. Down there in the little garden the overgrown shrubbery lay like a dark mass;
only where the steep path led down between black pyramid-shaped conifers to the bamboo-
hut did white gravel glimmer between them. And out of the imagination of the man who was
looking down into this loneliness, a lovely figure stepped who no longer belonged to the
living; he saw her down there wandering on the path, and it seemed to him as if he were
walking at her side.' Storm's hero is thus prone to seduction by the dead, a peculiar and
extremely complex infidelity appears: he breaks his marriage to his second wife by
committing adultery with a shadow. Curiously, this very disturbing kind of after-image
seldom appears in great literature, just as if for the avenger, Hamlet, only the marriage tables
of funeral baked meats were a problem, because of a crime.* Shakespeare's 'Winter's Tale',
however, is full of the power of the erotic after-image: it is at work in the culpable longing of
the King in front of the statue of Hermione; only here, in Shakespeare's mysteriously light
game, a deep jest causes a desire to go back again, causes a powerful pull towards the past
and makes it present again; only here the statue of a past-unpast life is brought to life again.
This is a fairytale solution; everywhere else in life awkward complications surround the
erotic afterimage: as one which is uneasy about being merely an image of What Has Been. A
differently beautiful love is easily offered witches' brews here which do not rejuvenate, but
only draw it into an intermediate state between ghostly spring and after-ripening. But the
distinction must be made: the falsely celebrated after-image closes off new life and closes in
old life in an authentic Now, with all the disadvantages of what may also be called
*
'Hamlet', 1, 2, 1801.
HAMLET: Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral bak'd meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
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'repeated mirroring' in spiritual optics. Whereas the correctly secured after-image, which has
not the least in common either with return through after-taste or with death-cult, may be the
most fruitful, since it shines in that sphere in which even in the past something Unbecome
still awaits and approaches. The dead loved-one has moved out of mere memory, the imago
does not make us long fruitlessly for the past but has the same effect as a star shining from
the future. Epimetheus, in Goethe's 'Pandora', sees the after-image even in tangible aspects of
the existing world, albeit transparently; the vanished Pandora shines through:
In thousands of patterns her shape is concealed,'
she floats on the waters, she strides in the field,
in sacred proportions she flashes and sounds,
their content ennobled within formal bounds,
which lend it, are lent the highest of powers;
to me she appeared where young womanhood flowers.
In Dante's Beatrice this kind of erotic promise found its most silent power, one of continuing
encounter with perfection, as sacred perfection. In death sancta illuminates the Beyond, itself
still approaches us out of this future, awaits, receives, completes. Wherever such
inconceivable consolation arises, the beloved the after-image represents proves to be
descended from Beatrice's line. However little the image ends as promise, the founded
fidelity to it just as surely plants hope, not only at the grave, but also in visualization.
22
Daydream in Symbolic Form:
Pandora's Box;
The Good Thing That Remains
Every dream remains one by virtue of the fact that too little has yet succeeded, become
finished for it. That is why it cannot forget what is missing, why it holds the door open in all
things. The door that is at least half-open, when it appears to open on to pleasant objects, is
marked hope. Though, as we have seen, there is no hope without anxiety and no anxiety
without hope, they keep each other hovering in the balance, no matter how far hope
outweighs for the brave man, through the brave man. However, hope too, which can deceive
with will-o'-the-wisp, must
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be of a knowing kind, one that is in itself thought out in advance. The consistently curious
Pandora legend has hope brought to men by a woman, but in a demonic way. Pandora is
tender as Pamina, dazzling as Helen, but evil or sent with evil intention and so after all like
the usual snake in the myth of the Fall. She comes from Zeus, who seeks through her to take
his revenge on Prometheus for stealing fire, an enticing picture of beauty itself, but with a
sealed collection of dangerous gifts, Prometheus refuses her, but Epimetheus, the deliberator
after the event, allows himself to be seduced, and so Pandora opens the box she has brought
with her. Now this contained, according to Hesiod's portrayal of the legend, the whole army
of evils which has subsequently descended on men: disease, trouble, hunger, deformity, all
flew out. Only at the end Zeus closed the lid, supposedly in sympathy, before hope came out
too. This is, however, a very contradictory legend or version of the legend; since hope, with
which after all Zeus also wanted to help the men created by Prometheus to get over their
weakness, lies here amidst the explicit evils. In Hesiod's version it is distinguished from the
other evils only by the fact that it remains untapped, i.e. has not in fact been distributed
among men. But this provides no real understanding in Hesiod's account unless in fact hope
as evil refers to its deceptive aspect, even to the powerless aspect which it still represents for
itself alone. The ancients had depicted Elpis in this way, tender, covered in veils and fleeing,
this is how the Stoics wanted to leave the images of hope behind them, just like those of
anxiety and fear. The same effect is created by the unforgettable Spes which Andrea Pisano
depicted on the door of the Baptistry in Florence; she sits waiting, although she is winged,
and despite her wings, like Tantalus, she raises her arms towards an unattainable fruit. Thus
hope, so much less endowed with possessions than memory, may appear as an evil on the
side of uncertainty, and the deceptive, the unfounded kind certainly is one. But of course,
even unfounded hope cannot be ordered among the usual evils of the world as if it were the
same as illness or worry. And founded hope especially, that is, hope mediated with the real
Possible, is so far removed from evil, even from jack-o'-lantern, that it in fact represents the
at least half-open door appearing to open on to pleasant objects, in a world which has not
become a prison, which is not a prison.
The longer time went on, the less the ancients sought to relinquish hope. Hence a later,
Hellenistic version (even Goethe's 'Pandora' adopted it) portrays Pandora's dowry not as
container of misfortune but, on the contrary, of good things, ultimately as a box of mysteries.
Pandora's box
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is Pandora herself in this version, i.e. the 'all-talented' woman, full of charms, gifts, felicitous
talents. These too, according to the Hellenistic version of the myth, came out of the box, but
in contrast to the vices they completely escaped and were not distributed among men; thus,
accordingly, hope nevertheless remained in the box, as the only good thing left. It keeps up
courage for the good things that are missing, steadfastness and non-resignation in the face of
those which fail to appear, and where it vanishes, the process pending in the world gets lost.
Thus in the long run the second version of the Pandora myth is surely the only true one; hope
is the good thing that remains for men, which has in no way already ripened but which has
also in no way been destroyed. In fact, the half-opened door with adventistic dawning in
advance, through which subjectively and objectively hope is indicated, is the Pandora-box of
the unfinished world itself, together with the hollow space with sparks (ciphers, positive
symbol-intentions), which its latency represents. With a historical symbol, the friendliest
there is, the box opens as the deep warm study, the cabin on land in which the promising
light of home burns. With a landscape symbol, the strongest there is, the box opens as the
open sea, with heavy evening clouds in the storm, with the golden red morning clouds over
the horizon, when the sun is no longer far away and the day begins which may also be
praised before the evening comes.* Both aspects are equally the perspective of philosophy
which finally replies to hope materialistically and openly and is sworn to the new earth of the
Totum. This Totum or All still stands in process and its tendency, it is approaching, with
utopian elements of the final state, the Front of process, in latency. Illusions and their good
things which have in any case never been existent have flown out of Pandora's box, but really
founded hope, in which man can become man for man and the world homeland for man, has
remained. Thus, for the same reason, concrete anticipation is as familiar with enlightenment
(destruction of illusions) as it is with genuine mystery (That-fiddle, utopian Totum). As much
with a maximum of freedom from illusion as with a maximum (pregnant with decision) of
optimism. And that is why no moment of comprehended hope is missing from the theory-
practice of Marxism which is kept total and not kept up artificially. Mechanical materialism,
of course, is true as materialism, that is, as explanation of the world in terms of itself, but it is
untrue when, as merely mechanical materialism, it teaches an as it were stupid world,
*
Bloch is reversing the standard German proverb here 'Don't praise the day before evening comes',
which would be equivalent to the English 'Don't count your chickens before they are hatched'.
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certainly a half and narrow world, moved without goal, with the old cycle of becoming and
fading, locked to the chain of unchanging necessity. But this is not the world in which the
contradictions occur that drive us ahead, in which better life, becoming human, Thing for Us
are really possible, have space in forward development and capability of development. The
real open world is that of dialectical materialism, which is not carrying any mechanistic
eggshells. It is as powerfully removed as mechanical materialism from the idealisms of
reason as creator, of spirit as demiurge, from bible-bashing and hypostases of the other
world, but also from the statics in the particular, above all in the whole of the world, which
mechanical materialism still venerates, as does idealism. We cannot think well enough and
greatly enough about matter; its days, which are equally ours, have neither unchanging
number and proportion nor anywhere near their full weight. Not only movement and such an
apparently 'anthropomorphic aspect' as contradiction (with movement itself as first
contradiction) are its modes of existence, but also such an apparently so much greater
'anthropomorphic aspect' as anticipation. This is felt out and opened up by hope, depicted by
its objectively positive tendency- and latency-concept. And such an auroral aspect not only
breaks forth repeatedly in human-historical terms, it even qualifies and embraces the
landscape of the physical world, which is in no way merely quantitative and cyclical. There
is also within it, precisely within it, ciphers of the development of a homeland, in mediation
with the human-historical one, on the basis of the as yet so little reflected morning-land:
objective-real possibility. The substance-formations of the world right down to the
unleashing of the most intensive force of production, of the true atomic nucleus: existere,
quodditas are full of the tendency of the Not-Yet towards the All, of the alienated towards
identity, of the surrounding world towards mediated homeland. Even after and precisely after
the building of a classless society these substance-problems (tasks) of salvage, humanization
continue to work. The hope of the goal, however, is necessarily at odds with false
satisfaction, necessarily at one with revolutionary thoroughness; crooked seeks to be
straight, half to be full.
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PART THREE
(TRANSITION):
WISHFUL IMAGES IN THE MIRROR:
(DISPLAY, FAIRYTALE, TRAVEL, FILM, THEATRE)
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23
Making Ourselves More Beautiful Than We Are
Not everyone looks a bit special. But most want to make a good impression and strive to do
so. The most external way of doing this is the easiest here. The drab person colours himself
as if he were glowing. Thus many shine in front of others, show off.
Grooming is soon learnt and fleeting. The woman, the applicant show themselves, as they
say, from their best side. Which means from that side which is most readily marketable. The
ego changes itself into a commodity, into a saleable, even sparkling commodity. It sees how
others behave, what others wear, what is on display in the shop-window, and places itself
into it. Of course, people cannot make of themselves what has not already previously begun
within them. Equally, in terms of pretty wrappings, gestures and things, they are attracted
outside only by what has already existed for a long time in their own wishes, even if only
vaguely, and what is therefore quite willingly seduced. Lipstick, make-up, borrowed plumes
help the dream of themselves, as it were, out of the cave. Then they go and pose, pep up the
little bit that is really there or falsify it. But not as if it were possible for someone to make
themselves completely false; at least their wishing is genuine. This shows itself, in fact
betrays itself in the pose they strike. Wishing, however, only moves upwards in a
conventional way, the assiduous young man of this type is dissatisfied with the state in which
he finds himself, but not with the state of rich and poor in general. So he smiles at this in a
really friendly way, so he blossoms out in accordance with the image which he sees as his
own, or rather the one which he is made to see as his own. To appear more than he is, that is
consequently all that is allowed to him in the petit-bourgeois urge to be considered top dog.
To be more than he appears, however, this reversed formula is not imitated by any grooming;
which is why there is never so much kitsch as in the class which tolerates itself not being
genuine. What is ours and non-fading, it is still not often worn apart from the tie.
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24
What the Mirror Tells Us Today
I was privileged to serve.
Saying
Being Slim
Not to give oneself a second glance, that is really something. But for the little employee it
usually just means to be finished. If he is not yet that, and if he does not want to end up like
that, then the applicant must be conscious of himself as spruce and dressed accordingly. A
mirror is part of getting dressed, the threatened man looks at himself with the eyes of his
master. With eyes which tell him how the boss wishes him to be, when he wants to rely on
his employees. Of course the mirrored man believes he sees himself as he wishes to see
himself, wishes himself to be, in fact, even the man who has no choice but to be mirrored
believes it, shortly before his appearance in public, at the office. The face now composes
itself as smoothly as possible, the employee wants to be as slim, as creaseless as his suit and
holds himself accordingly. He puts himself at an advantage in this way, but at that advantage
which the real masters gain from the little man. Therefore the glass does not even reflect the
way he wishes himself to be but simply the way he is wished to be. This kind of thing is
standardized like the gloves in the shop, like the shop-smile of the salesman that has become
a general and prescribed smile. To keep smiling through anxiety and in tedium, this is now
the American mark of the gentlemen who are no such thing. The intention here is that they
should resemble each other as one egg does another, and nothing but creeping chickens hatch
out.
Good at Cringing
Those who offer themselves for sale have to please. The girl the way she should be, the
young man the way he should carry himself, they are therefore also put on show outside. As
the ruling class requires, on pain of destruction. The feminine aspect of the employee consists
of pink, the masculine of wax (but must be smart). To keep them both up to scratch there is
therefore a mirror hanging in the street too, in every public place,
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there are lots of them hanging wherever they go. The window-display mirrors and by doing
so increases what is supposed to be happening in the buyer, what he would like to be in petit-
bourgeois terms, so that he buys. The usual reading- and film-matter of the West supplies
many such images of desirable good conduct, of fruitless appearance. Deceitful signposts are
erected here: to the dancing work-animal, to the travelling man-in-chains, to the perfect
marriage of the castrated husband. All in the manner of a lie which must be sweet though
impossible enough to intoxicate us and yet still keep us in harness. Sport seems to be a real
escape from the tedium; genuine wishes are felt here at the start; competition, almost extinct
for small people, provides a refuge. But the field is narrow, getting ahead is just a game,
seriousness is left standing, the swimmer improves on records only in the water, but the boss
does so in terms of profit. Of course, quite different peak performances would emerge if
there were medals for being first in suffering in silence, for being number one cringer,
champion at swallowing your pride, at grinning and bearing it. These are the unhailed victors
of that life which is really still offered to people on the capitalist road through life, without a
lie. The boxer stands in the ring, dishes it out, but the one who can take it best stands outside
the ropes, as a spectator. Is the true master when it comes to taking the right hook to the jaw,
to coming out when the bell goes. Thus above all he pleases those who keep the duped
punch-ball pinned down.
25
New Clothes, the Illuminated Display
A velvet collar polishes.
Saying
Nobody can shed their skin of course. But it is easy to slip into a new one, hence all
grooming is in fact getting dressed. In any case, the clean shirt lies spread out in the morning
like the new day, a new coat covers the whole past of the man just released from prison.
Clothes which can be chosen distinguish men from animals, and jewellery is even older than
these clothes, it sets them off even today by standing out. With garments women in particular
put on a new part of themselves. She is a new woman in new clothes, in the fine lather of
feminine finery. However, the wish to try oneself out in various ways also begins for most
other people with
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the both spotless and variable illusion which a tailor can lend. Hence old or sedentary people
feel most comfortable always being dressed in the same way. Others immediately feel they
have no creases if their trousers do not show any.
Well Laid Out

After this, out on to the busy street, itself idle, watching. Light comes through the trees from
the bright houses, from the square at the end, and calls. But what is calling here is the
commodity dazzlingly illuminated behind glass, looking for customers. Thus in addition to
the sewing-pattern there is the window-display, to stimulate elegant wishful life. The
window-display first came into being with the open capitalist market, and it still possesses,
characteristically in the West above all, the capacity to stimulate needs, primarily those with
'the personal touch'. For the purpose of fulfilling the wish closest to the heart of the
businessman himself: making profit. A good window-display must therefore be suggestive,
always presents parts to represent the whole and the parts themselves again as merely
intimating ones, and thus it makes us uneasy about lingering before shop-windows. Here is
the delicatessen with dishes we cannot help but call appetizing. Coffee, tea, schnaps are best
presented against Delft tiles, on red varnish; Dutch-Indian air lulls the purchaser in. Here is a
china shop: in the middle the laid table, blossom-white, crystal, candle-lit, waiting for guests
who are as refined as it is itself. Here is a ladies' fashion shop of higher distinction: outfits
gathered in to an unbelievable slimness at the height of fashion like little else in the world
and yet a kind of other world: no earthly women walk like that. Here is a tailor's for general
managers and for those who would like to be like them: the ulster has been thrown over the
Chippendale chair in an inimitable way, a soft hat waits beside it, pigskin gloves, shoes that
look as if they were made out of the cover of an old Florentine book. The wanderer, however,
and all those others who, like most of us, cannot afford to buy, is not made rebellious,
however great the uneasiness of his desire for possession, precisely by what is all too high.
Anyone who is after more cosy happiness, however, will find it behind the windows of the
furniture store. Dining-room, bedroom, studio, drawing room everything is ready like a
made bed, and the young civil servant who no longer feels the need to go chasing infatuated
round the park, only needs to fling his bride into it. He sees behind the windows, in down-
feather
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and salmon-pink, the most legitimate bourgeois wishful dream, but also that fulfillable for
the fewest of all: the dream-house for two from inside. The dream of the beautiful house fills
itself with the furniture on display which is itself living beyond its means, with factory-goods
which are always got up in fancy dress: the broad odalisque-style armchair,* the Californian
bar-top, the Faustian studio. At every corner the shop-window thus forms wishful dreams, to
make the rich people who have no money draw it out of their pockets. And no one knows
better when it comes to this sort of dream than the dresser who arranges its displays. He does
not only set out commodities, but also the enticing image which arises between men and
commodities; he builds with happiness and glass. And the passer-by continues to build on
this capitalist enticing image in a purely human way, even though it exists close by slums or
cheerless streets of bourgeois conformity, presupposes these and is supposed to make us
forget them. Uneasy, certainly, but not made rebellious (for the magic behind the glass of
course shows no enviably visible owner), the petit bourgeois affirms precisely in front of the
displays which are beyond his means the elegant and praiseworthy aspect into which the
bosses shape their lives. The woman must exist for these flowers, for this perfume, there
must be the abundance of life; but where is it to be found? Around Christmas, when we do
not give presents to ourselves, but to others, the shopping streets of the cosmopolitan cities
become almost pious. With double, treble intensity the neon-adverts, the wishes glow up and
down, go blue, yellow, red, green, pour drinks, billow as tobacco smoke, make out of the
commodity everywhere a so-called Christ-child.** As much a cute picture as the overfilled
shop-windows are a deceitful one. The coffee which is poured into the sea does not need to
be put on display first.
Light of Advertising
But the commodity always still needs a label which praises it. Which makes it especially
appealing in competition and does not only make it shine in the shop-window. The designed
and spoken display, the big drum for
*
Odalisque a woman slave or concubine in an Eastern harem, especially in the seraglio of the
Turkish Sultan.
**
The German equivalent of Santa Claus, the baby Jesus who brings the children presents at Christmas.
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this is called advertising. It especially transforms man into the most sacred thing there is next
to property, into the customer. Even earlier ages, countries that were not capitalist had a kind
of advertising, but it was more contented self-importance than a weapon in the acquisitive
struggle. It skipped over, it even ironized the commodity; just as even today a coal-
merchant's might commend itself, almost mockingly, as 'Orcus'. Even in old Peking there
were the following business signs: over a basketmaker's 'The Ten Virtues'; over an opium
shop 'The Threefold Uprightness'; over a wine-shop 'Neighbourhood of the Highest Beauty';
over a charcoal-shop 'Fountain of All Beauty'; over a hard-coal shop 'Heavenly Embroidery';
over a butcher's 'Mutton-shop of the Morning Twilight'. But these are poems, not big draws,
even if, as enticement and exaggeration, so to speak, they do long precede capitalist
advertising. Even more beautifully than the window-dresser, the man in advertising plays on
the piano of wishful dreams, making them irresistible in the stimulated person, until a
customer ripens out of him. Atlantic hits like the following now emerge: Spring hats are no
longer a luxury these days; Call for Philip Morris; Purity and a big bottle, that's Pepsi Cola;
Modern design is modern design; Buick, the car for the successful businessman. Buying
ladies' stockings causes a literal rebirth, guarantees the New York Times: 'Van Raalte covers
you with Leg Glory from sunrise till dark.' Thriftiness, wish for the latest thing and morning
red have a rendezvous even for gentlemen and at a cheap price: 'Howard Clothes, styled with
an eye for the world of tomorrow.' Advertising makes magic out of the commodity, even out
of the most incidental commodity, a magic in which each and every thing will be solved if
only we buy it. The lady in the illustration who is dabbing eau-de-cologne on her temples,
who is accepting Swiss chocolate from gentlemen, becomes the picture of happiness
precisely by doing so. Shop-windows and advertising are in their capitalist form exclusively
lime-twigs for the attracted dream-birds. The so gleaming and acclaimed commodities
become, as Marx says, the bait with which people try to entice the essence of the others, their
money, to themselves, and to transform every real and possible need into a weakness. All this
is made possible by painted, highly recommended commodities, a parade of Christmas and
Easter values throughout the whole year. Thus the employees are charged up without them
exploding, and the many lights of the several faces of Berlin West, all of them rotten, only
serve to increase the darkness.
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26
Beautiful Mask, Ku Klux Klan, the Glossy Magazines
Your daddy's rich, but your mamma's good-looking.
Jazz song*
The obsession with transforming ourselves lures us even more strongly. A person does not
then only put on new clothes, but becomes unrecognizable in them. The means of doing this
is not dress, but dressing up in disguise. The wish emerges for a mask which is most
definitely not an everyday one. The mask is superficial to begin with, as such it hides, indeed
denies the previous ego, the ego portrayed in previous life. The housewife, the salesman
disappear, a colourful image of themselves takes their place. This is now carried over on to
the body, the wearer caters for himself with it. That dressing up in disguise takes place which
in many cases is not dressing up at all, but a small fulfilment. The mask enables the
bourgeois not only to look as he wishes to be and to be taken for at parties, it also allows him
to act in a really boisterous way. In fact, often when he is dressed up as a criminal, hangman
or pasha, it suits his style better than his everyday coat, which is, so to speak, forced upon
him. With this disguise he throws a dream over himself, the dream of the colourful or great
animal. And we see which role the disguised man would like to play in life, even could play
if he was not prevented. He is by no means only masked as hangman, sex murderer, prince.
Those who have dressed up in a good disguise have undressed, that is how they look on the
inside.
The Crooked Paths

It more seldom turns out that someone is a colourful animal on the outside as well. It is
surprising that more crimes are not committed simply for richly striking effect. All criminals,
even if they come from the scum of the earth, are petit-bourgeois, the good life is only
possible in affluence, that is what they want. Crime, so it seems, makes rich overnight, if you
know how to use the night as well as the man of property knows how to use his day.
Doubtless, for poor, that is, would-be exploiters, there
*
Bloch is presumably quoting from Gershwin's 'Summertime' here.
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is a persistent urge to go into the underworld, into what is for them a cross between a killing-
feast* and a beggars' banquet. The lure of the revolver is succumbed to relatively seldom in
the petit bourgeoisie, and it remains at the planning stage, only because the consequences
require very good nerves, and also have many Black Fridays. ** It's an honest man who only
dreams of the crimes which the others commit, so says an old saying; even outside the
masked ball, however, the confidence trickster is what he wishes to be, a prince. In fact, the
beggars' banquet is often retained as working clothes even by more capital criminals: the
crooked road is supposed to be and remain at the same time the colourful-eerie road, crime
itself loves and preserves the anarchic romanticism in which the petit bourgeois cloaks it.
Thus wayward youth is seduced by the image of the gangster, the image of the wish for
bloodshed; but there are also really droll robbers and murderers, above all sex-murderers,
who to all intents and purposes ply their trade in a kind of dream-game, mostly with wishes
for revenge, and thus exaggerate it in a theatrical way. They dupe the police in letters which
lead to their discovery; the pleasure taken in the role, in the role which is ultimately not only
one they play, is too great. What is longed for and intended as such a role is verified by their
testimonies; they are furthermore poetic in a terrible way. For example, a letter to the police,
around 1930, from the Dsseldorf sex-murderer Krten who murdered nineteen times,
dripping with bloodthirstiness and grinning suffering, yet suffering draped in moral
sentiments, and in a smarmy, but very self-relishing criminal style. The sex-murderer is
skilled at being doubly chilling and writes: 'I expect you are interested in my activities. Since
my beginning lies in another region, the following may be deserving of your special
attention. In Langenfeld (north of Cologne) was the beginning and, if my luck holds, will
also be the end of my affliction. A creature lives there, which in its moral life and in its
thoughts is hardly comparable with any other soul. That she cannot belong to me has driven
me to all my terrible actions. She must still die, even if it costs me my life, I wanted to poison
her, but her totally pure body overcame the poison. Now things are going better for me, my
girl has to walk home in the evening from Hilden, I enclose a sketch of her route. She is my
next victim' and a later letter closes with verses which read like something written on the
toilet-walls of Cockaigne, but their contents were true:
*
A rural feast where freshly slaughtered pigs are eaten.
**
'Black Friday' is also the expression for the Wall Street Crash in German.
Page 347
At the foot of Pappendelle

At the spot my cross foretells,
Where no weeds have grown,
And which is marked with a stone,
Lies a corpse one and a half metres deep.
The letters were put in black-bordered condolence envelopes; the self-satisfaction in the
committed, yet still draped murder is great. Something of the Nazi announced itself in all
this, he later sucked in many droll robbers and murderers, moral sex-murderers. The crooked
paths are thus filled with cruel wishful images in a particularly precise way, including those
of the gallows at the end, with the inconceivable cruelty of which the Christian bourgeoisie
has for centuries sweetened the misfortune of not being allowed to break people on the
wheel, to hang, draw and quarter them, and to burn them at the stake, in person.
Success through Terror

More and more people of this kind clamoured to be disguised in life too. Grotesque masks
and hoods are not only desired by Mr Would-be at balls, but also during the day. The mask
did not only move beyond the fancy-dress party among old-fashioned private criminals, it
became fascist seriousness. Public seriousness made political, then came the Night of the
Long Knives and its day. 'Wolf's fangs' and 'Scary monsters', joke articles which travelling
salesmen put on to amuse fellow passengers in railway compartments, became party insignia.
Papa had recently gone to a fancy-dress party at the Glee Club as Judge Lynch and it was
unanimously declared the best mask of the evening. Now he was the same in the street, but
for real and faultless; and the Jews with cut-off trousers and with witty placards around their
necks, the Jewish sweethearts with shorn heads in the train triggered salvos of laughter,
before they triggered different salvos. 'Regression' broke out, apaches, death's-heads, knights
of the Fiery Night-shirt enlivened the streets, police made them doubly insecure. All wishes
came true which the petit bourgeois had acted out at Carnival time, every scream of blue
murder, and in particular the wishes of those who as Lynchers, Ku Kluxers, hooded avengers
and the like drove false revolt into genuine barbarity. The fascist charlatan reached for the
werewolf mask, he conjured with half-crazy names, with scenes from horror stories, where
these descend to the level of kitsch, but also to the level of the well-oiled,
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serviceably built schizophrenia of the bourgeois conformist. That is, of the Cockaigne of
emergency, this too comes from the golden West. The American Ku Klux Klan still sets the
tone for this, the reactionary underground movement of the Southern States of America after
the Civil War, then again after the First World War. The gang wore domino robes with a
hood, the material was dark with white insignia sewn on which were supposed to look
ghostly in torch-light. There were insignia in the shape of a Bowie Knife, there were also
bullets, half-moons, crosses, snakes, stars, frogs, wheels, hearts, scissors, birds, cattle. The
clan called itself the Invisible Empire; the realm has an 'Imperial Wizard' at its head,
followed by the 'Great Dragon', the 'Great Titan', the 'Great Cyclops'. There are 'Clan-wolves'
and 'Clan-eagles', the names of the ordinary members are the same as the motifs on their
dominorobes; but a fiery cross burns on the hills where they meet. This mummery is intended
to appear extremely different, barbarically colourful, so that the bloodthirsty Babbitt can
make a taboo out of himself. Following in the footsteps of Red Indian stories and totems,
even of the medieval Vehmgericht,* of the exclusively dark Middle Ages in general, as the
American magazines imagine them to be. The masks of the Ku Klux Klan were thus the first
fascist uniform, and its proclamations were the first to colour with their wishful images the
'revolution' from the right, the Lynch revolution. The beginning of the movement is
instructive here, which will perhaps appear again, the call to the Arkansas Klan in April
1868, which runs as follows:
KKK
Special Order No.2
Spirit Brothers; Shadows of Martyrs; Phantoms from gory
fields; Followers of Brutus!!!
Rally, rally, rally. When shadows gather, moons grow dim and stars tremble, glide to the Council
Hall and wash your hands in tyrant's blood; and gaze upon the list of condemned traitors. The time has
arrived. Blood must flow. The true must be saved.
Work in darkness
Bury in waters
Make no sound
Trust not the air
Strike high and sure
Vengeance! Vengeance! Vengeance!
*
A secret court which operated in Westphalia from the late twelfth century to the middle of the
sixteenth century.
Page 349
This immediately sounds like the sex-murderer Krten's criminal language quoted above, but
with revolutionary masquerade. In the truly primitive person the mask-wearer intruded
through his disguise into the creature that is portrayed by the mask. The wild man in the
lion's mask becomes the Lion-god himself, he imagines he can act like him. Even the dancing
dervish, when he is turning on his axis, feels himself to be a heavenly body turning around
the sun; in this way in his imagination he pulls down the powers of the sun to himself.
Civilized barbarity, however, by no means uses the mask, in this case that of the man-eater,
merely to participate more than usual in the wishful idol it represents for it, but above all also
in order to arouse horror, and to paralyse through terror. And the mask fitted like a glove
when big business summoned it, when 'moons grew dim and stars trembled' and the
Kristallnacht* came out on to the streets.
Bestsellers, Syrupy Stories

But this pleasure in transforming oneself must also be able to wander in friendlier fields.
Since behind all its criminal images there in fact lies something spruced up by the petit
bourgeoisie, the wild Babbitt runs to it in the end. It is to be found both in prose, in
bestsellers, and in the as it were poetically plotted sweetness, in the sweetness with plot, in
short, in the magazine story. The bestsellers are those which, with or without the use of
elbows, promise the path to contrived happiness. These can just be cosmetic books, they are
like the French chef who knew how to make a beefsteak out of a glove. To these we may add
the guidance counsellors in life's struggle, for the would-be beauty-queen, for the prospective
lucky devil. Illustrations (teaching good manners) back up the explanation, finally the
employee is shown his goal in a grand tableau: he is sitting at the dinner table with the boss's
family, next to him the half-won daughter; monogamy, coated with marriage into the
business, concludes the bestseller. This genre flourishes most extensively in North America;
how to win friends and influence people, precisely this is part of the business. The headings
of a 'Popular Guide to Desirable Living' run: 'How to live your life; The secrets of health;
Love and marriage;
*
Kristallnacht. The night of 9th/10th November 1938 when the Nazis launched a pogrom throughout
Germany, burning and looting Jewish homes and synagogues.
Page 350
How to make money; The way to charm; Success with your children; How to sharpen your
memory; Unmarried, but ; Never too old to love; How to make people like you; How to
talk about books, theatre, music, arts.' In short, this is a veritable Pharos in the wishful sea of
the petit bourgeoisie, and it guides to the perfect Babbitt, that is, to the wishful goal of the
Babbitt with credit. So much for rational success courses and their winner's purse; there are,
however, to our least surprise, also irrational ones. They awake 'the secret powers' in man,
they establish: 'The intensive demands of today's hectic business life cause many men to
experience a premature decline in the best of their powers', they make people magnetic. They
relieve shyness in contact with the opposite sex, create social lions and the man to whom
ladies will gladly hand over the tiller of the little boat that is their life. Among bestsellers
belong even the various manuals of sexual erudition, in so far as they are not pure substitutes
or there simply for voyeurs. The peak of bourgeois conformity was reached in van de Velde's
'Ideal Marriage', the respectable dirty-joke book, the pedantic guide on the roundabout route
to pleasure. The privately published edition for winedealers, which the ars amandi had
already long since become, now becomes mother's milk with whisky, at the same time
creating a substitute for the wise, counselling father confessor of old. But love fades and the
insurance company remains; that is why every how-to-succeed book is ultimately dedicated
to the latter or to the instincts which lead to it. The dream-book of accomplished love-making
bows before the significantly more American dream-book of well-to-do accounts, of nest-
eggs already home and dry. Right at the end, where otherwise panic at the closing of the
gates threatens, there thus appears in the insurance brochure an exclusive house set back
from the road, with forest and lake and the friendly postman at the gate, just bringing the
insurance annuity to the rose-growing head of the house and his slumbering wife. This is all
promised by the guide to life and slips from prose entirely into poetry, namely into the rose-
pink which no longer exists for any would-be capitalist who has to reach for a bestseller.
Even if all pretentious strivers are disappointed, those who read without pretension are not.
They are offered the magazine story, in the German version it looms dimly out of the time
where boy gets girl, in the American version it downright lies. Here faked lives are surveyed
on a rising curve, up to money and splendour, on paper. And the trick by which the rise is
achieved is always the same, it is, as Upton Sinclair once said, that of the impossible
coincidence. Servant girls marry successful gold-diggers or
Page 351
men with a heart of gold who soon afterwards discover a kerosene dump. Poor shorthand
typists who spare every calorie for silk stockings meet an employee, love follows, her lover
takes her on a few modest trips which give him the opportunity of discovering the noble
character of his beloved, but ultimately he discovers himself to her, namely as the boss in
person, and carries his bride home sounds like magic, doesn't it? Or a lad who is as poor as
he is pretty stops a horse which has bolted and so gets to know the rich heiress who then
becomes his wife a golden bed of free enterprise in the midst of monopoly capitalism. The
magazine story, with impossible coincidence, is full of these swift changes in private
fortunes, namely upturns on to the peaks of society. It mediates the view from the fence, full
of false hope, into the richest circles, it is, especially in America, the rot-gut epic of the
jackpot, run off in millions. All this, this time in bourgeois-conformist Germany, interspersed
with emotion from the plush age of the previous, in no way extinct century: 'I know a seat
where the wild thyme blooms.' Or still again la Marlitt:* 'And then it was ding-a-ling, with a
merry jingle out into the winter splendour, it echoed like joyful bells in the hearts of youth as
if heralding only happy and beautiful things for the whole of life to come.' Or romantically
solid: 'How cosy it was in the manor house! In all the downstairs rooms the shaded lamps
burned in pretty colours, for dusk had fallen earlier than usual today with the driving snow.
And the stout greenwood logs crackled in all the glowing stoves, and even outside in the
great hall warmth streamed from a great old-fashioned tiled stove.' Or romantically demonic,
once again upwards, even if with equally stout prose, towards the aristocratic highlands of
bourgeois-conformist respect, of transfiguration: 'These old castles, sombre and taciturn from
outside, fairy-like inside with their magnificent brocade walls, heavy curtains at their doors.
What a strange and fantastic spectacle confronts us there! Intrigue lurks at every door, but
along the half-lit corridors love ties its delicate bond.' The magazine story thus remains the
most deeply moved story in its feudal images, the most miracle-believing in its capitalist
images. It exudes deep contentment with the upper class, seeks to teach it, disseminate it,
preserve it intact. All this, as far as the dream of success is concerned, with the constantly
open arms of the happy end, in fact of the capitalist-feudal one; there is no other end, can,
must, will not be. The parasitical life of the upper class is presented by it as highly
acceptable, wealth is grace. The poor devil does not rebel, he flies
*
Marlitt. The pen-name of Eugenie John (182587), popular novelist.
Page 352
of his own accord into the lap of the rich heiress. This complacent, impossible aspect, which
does not however upset any of the rules of the game, already alone distinguishes the kitschy
happiness of the magazine story from the far less passive colportage,* which is consequently
detested by noble bourgeois conformists. In general, nothing happens in the mirrors of this
scribbled kitsch-dream except coincidence, and the blessing which it brings the lucky devil
multiplies, in all its Atlantic magic, the cheap Don Quixotes of meaningless hope.
27
Better Castles in the Air in Fair and Circus, in Fairytale and Colportage
Duckling, duckling,
here are Gretel and Hansel.
No bridge, not even a track,
take us over on your white back.
Hansel and Gretel
Then we went to bed. But I did not sleep, I lay awake. I thought about who could help. I racked my brains
for a solution. The book I had been reading bore the title: 'The Robbers' Cave in the Sierra Morena or The
Angel of All the Oppressed.' When father had come home and fallen asleep, I climbed out of bed, stole out of
my bedroom and got dressed. Then I wrote a note: 'You shouldn't work your fingers to the bone, I'm going to
Spain; I'm going to get help.' I put this note on the table, put a piece of dry bread in my pocket together with
a few pennies from my skittles money, crept down the stairs, opened the door, drew another deep sobbing
breath, but quietly, quietly, so nobody would hear, and then went down into the market-place with muffled
steps and out along the Niedergasse, the Lungwitzer Weg which leads via Lichtenstein and Zwickau to
Spain, to the land of the noble robbers, the helpers in need.
Karl May, Mein Leben und Streben
*
Bloch is using the term here to mean the genre of popular literature comprising adventure story,
picaresque tale and thriller which he sees as distinct from the magazine story.
Page 353
If sailor tales to sailor tunes

Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons,
And Buccaneers and buried Gold,
And all the old romance, retold
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as once they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of to-day:
So be it, and fall on! If not,

If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave
Where these and their creations lie!
Stevenson, Treasure Island, To the Hesitating Purchaser
Through the unplanned wanderings, through the unplanned expeditions of the imagination the quarry is not
infrequently raised which carefully planned philosophy can use in its well-ordered household.
Lichtenberg
Towards evening is the best time for telling stories. The insignificant world near at hand
disappears, distant things which seem better and nearer move up around us. Once upon a
time: in fairytale that does not only mean something past, but a more colourful or lighter
Elsewhere. And those who live happily ever after there, if they are not dead yet, are still alive
to this day.* Even in the fairytale there is suffering, but it changes, and does so for good.
Gentle, badly treated Cinderella goes to the little tree where her mother's grave lies, little tree
wake yourself and shake yourself, a dress falls down, the most splendid and dazzling
Cinderella has ever seen, and the slippers are all golden. The fairytale always turns golden in
the end, there is enough happiness to go round. It is always the little heroes and the poor folk
here who manage to reach the place where life has come good.
*
A traditional ending to German fairytales, an alternative to 'And they all lived happily ever after'.
Page 354
Courage of the Clever

Not all are content just to wait for this goodness. They go out in search of their happiness,
clever versus rough. Courage and cunning are their shield, their spear is reason. Since
courage alone little helps the weak against the fat lords, it does not cast their towers to the
ground. Cunning of reason is the human part of the weak. Fantastic though the fairytale is, it
is still always clever at overcoming difficulties. Courage and cunning also succeed in a very
different way in the fairytale than they do in life, and not only that: it is, as Lenin says,
always existing revolutionary elements which kick over the given traces here in the
imagination. When the peasant was still in bondage, the poor fairytale boy thus won the
king's daughter. When educated Christendom trembled in fear of witches and devils, the
fairytale soldier deceived witches and devils from beginning to end (only the fairytale
stresses the 'stupid devil'). The Golden Age is sought and mirrored when you could see right
to the back of paradise. But the fairytale cannot be fooled by today's owners of paradise; so it
is rebellious, once bitten and with its wits about it. You can climb up a beanstalk to heaven
and see how the angels mill money there. In the fairytale 'Godfather Death'* dear God offers
himself as a godfather to a poor man, but the poor man answers: 'I don't want you as a
godfather because you give to the rich and leave the poor to starve.' Always here, in courage
and sobriety and hope, there is a touch of enlightenment, long before the Enlightenment
existed.The valiant little tailor in Grimm's fairytale, a born flyswatter, goes out into the world
because he thinks the workshop is too small for his valour. He meets a giant, the giant picks
up a stone and squeezes it until water drips out, throws another stone up so high that it can
hardly be seen any more. But the tailor outdoes the giant by squeezing a cheese to pulp
instead of a stone and by throwing a bird so high in the air that it never comes down again.
Finally, at the end of the fairytale, the clever fellow overcomes all obstacles, wins the king's
daughter and half the kingdom. Thus in the fairytale a tailor can become a king, a king
without taboo who has got rid of all the malevolent mischief of the big men. And when the
world was still full of devils, another fairytale hero, the boy who went out to learn what fear
was, staves off anxiety all along the line,
*
'Gevatter Tod'. This carries a double significance in the Grimm fairytale because it also means 'Death
the Reaper'.
Page 355
he sets corpses on fire to keep them warm, plays skittles with ghosts in the haunted castle,
takes the chief of the evil spirits prisoner and gains a treasure in the process. The devil
himself can be deceived in the fairytale, a poor soldier deceives him by selling his soul on
condition that he fills the soldier's boot with gold. But the boot has a hole in it, the soldier
places it over a deep pit, so the devil has to drag along sacks and sacks of gold until the first
cock's crow and then go away empty-handed. Thus in the fairytale even shoes with holes in
them must serve those who know all about them to their best advantage. There is no lack of
gentle fun poked at mere wishing or the simple fairytale means of reaching the goal, and this
fun is also enlightened, but it does not discourage. In olden days, begins the fairytale of the
Frog King, when wishing still helped, so the fairytale does not pretend to be a substitute for
action. But rather the clever Augustus* of the fairytale practises the art of not letting himself
be impressed. The power of the giants is painted as one with a hole in it, through which the
weak man can see his way to victory.
Magic Table, Genie of the Lamp

Good things, such as have never been seen before, are on hand here too. Above all wishful
gadgets of the handiest kind offer themselves to the weak, magically. The most striking
example of this is Grimm's fairytale 'The Magic Table, the Golden Ass and the Cudgel in the
Sack': a hero, a poor outcast boy, becomes a joiner's apprentice and when his time is up there
he receives a little table which looks rather unremarkable but has remarkable properties. If
one says 'Table spread yourself', it instantly spreads itself with food which is so good no
innkeeper could have procured it, and a big glass of red wine stands by the plate. Together
with this comes an ass which can work miracles, he spews out gold pieces on demand, back
and front; finally the cudgel in the sack appears or the magic weapon without which the poor
boy cannot exist in this world, even when he has become rich and happy. The Magic Table
has many brothers in fairytale wishful magic: the flying slippers in Hauff's story of little
Muck and his little walking-stick that is really a divining rod; the piece of wood in the
fairytale 'The Fates of Said', the wood underneath the ship-wrecked boy
*
Stupid Augustus is the hopeless clown in the German circus. Bloch sees a hopeful counterpart for him
in the fairytale.
Page 356
turns into a dolphin which carries Said to the shore as swift as an arrow. Grimm's fairytale
'Brother Lustig' has a satchel into which the Brother can conjure anything he wishes: roast
geese, eight devils, ultimately, by throwing the satchel into heaven, he manages to get
himself into heaven with it. Grimm's fairytale 'The Water-sprite', which is equipped with an
enormous cudgel-in-the-sack, has children throwing a brush, then a comb, then a mirror
behind them to stop the evil sprite. These become first a great brush-mountain with
thousands of bristles, then a combmountain with teeth, then a mountain of mirrors, so smooth
that the sprite cannot get across any more and has to give up the chase. Thus in general, game
and magic have a free hand in the fairytale, wish becomes command, the effort of doing
things drops away, even separating space, separating time. In Andersen a flying suitcase
carries us to the Land of the Turks, lucky galoshes take a Chief Justice back to the
Copenhagen of the fifteenth century. In the Arabian Nights the 'magic horse' flies, it carries
us up to heaven, and there too waits, with folded arms, the most powerful fulfiller of wishes:
the Genie of the Lamp. Highly typically, precisely this most lavish fairytale 'Aladdin and his
Magic Lamp' is based on pure wish-utensils for acquiring what is not available. The smoky
lamps are lit, the wicked uncle murmurs mysterious words and suddenly the cave opens with
its hidden treasures which are heaped up in the name of Aladdin. A subterranean garden
appears, and jewels grow on the trees instead of fruit. The Slave of the Ring, the Genie of the
Lamp appear both hallucinated primal wishes for power, for a power which is not confined
to particular goods as in the case of the Magic Table, rather the lamp brings its master
everything, absolutely everything that he desires. The Genie of the Lamp bestows countless
treasures, beauty of the body and instant prowess as a knight, refinement of speech and
intellect. He builds a palace overnight, the like of which the earth has never contained, with
treasure-chambers, royal stables and an armoury; the bricks are made of jasper and alabaster;
the windows of gems. A gentle command: and in an instant the lamp transposes the palace
from China to Tunis, then back to the old place without the carpet in front of the portal even
having been disturbed by the wind. We must not overlook the magic board which gives the
wicked uncle near omniscience of the events taking place on earth; 'Then, however, one day
among many, he designed a sandboard, and he spread the figures out and explored their
sequence exactly; and immediately he established for certain the sequence of the figures, of
the mothers as well as of the daughters' it is the same geomantic board with which
Page 357
the magician in Tunis had learnt of the distant treasure in China which Aladdin subsequently
dug up. Pure wishful means, pure via regia, to reach by the shortest route (in the fairytale)
what nature itself, outside of the fairytale, denies man. In general, technological-magical
treasure-hunting is the fairytale aspect itself in this kind of fairytale; since the discovered
treasure symbolizes like little else the miracle of sudden change, of abrupt good fortune.
Keen perception and smoky lamps are necessary for this in the Aladdin fairytale. Keen
perception alone suffices in the secularized treasure-hunter fairytale by Edgar Allan Poe 'The
Gold Bug', in Stevenson's 'Treasure Island'. But even in these half-fairytales (passing over
into adventure story) treasure creates tension and twists; it is itself the mandrake which
unbolts life and lets us acquire its brilliance. The technological-magical fairytale thus only
indirectly aims at possessions, or when it has to; it aims at the transformation of things into
utility-goods which are available at any time. It paints, in place of the short blanket for which
almost every man must stretch,* a bed of sloth in nature. It intends to use another fairytale
to denote the native region of all Magic Tables and also of the Magic Lamp it intends the
Land of Cockaigne. The roast pigeons in it:** this sounds moreover as if we were already
listening to a social fairytale, to a fairytale of an ideal state, simpler in its wares, but still
more nourishing than all the others.
'On Wings of Song, My Darling, I Will Carry You away'

The boy who went out to learn what fear was only dreamt weakly at first. Even the valiant
little tailor won the princess almost without intending to, just because she was lying across
his path. All fairytale heroes find happiness, but not all are clearly moved towards this
happiness beforehand in the dream of it. Only the heroes of the later, but not therefore worse
literary fairytales or fairytale legends*** (with authors as different as Hauff, E. T. A.
Hoffmann, Keller) are also fairytale figures in psychological terms, namely of a dreamy,
utopian nature. Little Muck in Hauff's story: he went
*
Bloch is using a German saying here which is the equivalent of 'to cut one's coat according to one's
cloth'.
**
Bloch is thinking of Pieter Brueghel's picture of the Land of Cockaigne here, where the glutton waits
with open mouth to catch the roast pigeons.
***
In German literary criticism the 'legend' usually contains a religious component and is often associated
with a specific shrine or relic.
Page 358
out to seek his fortune, he precisely pursued his dream of happiness. 'When he saw a piece of
glass glittering on the ground in the sunshine, he put it safely in his pocket in the belief that it
would change into the most beautiful diamond; if he saw the domes of a mosque glowing like
fire in the distance, if he saw a lake flashing like a mirror, then he hurried towards it full of
joy, because he thought he had arrived in a magic land. But oh, those illusions vanished when
he got close, and all too soon his weariness and his stomach rumbling with hunger reminded
him that he was still in the land of ordinary mortals.' To another genre, curious in a different
way, but likewise born to fairytale, belongs the student Anselmus in E. T. A. Hoffmann's
'Golden Pot', the self-professed romantic 'fairytale of the modern age'. Anselmus too has his
head full of dreams, and the spirit world is not sealed to him, for this very reason he is
hopeless at dealing with life. 'So as was said, the student Anselmus fell . . . into a dreamy
brooding which made him oblivious to all outside contact with ordinary life. He felt an
unknown something stirring in his innermost being, causing him that exquisite pain which
precisely constitues longing, which promises man another, higher being. He liked it best
when he could wander alone through meadows and forests and, as if released from
everything that bound him to his wretched existence, was able as it were to find himself
again, just by contemplating the multifarious images which rose up from inside him.' And yet
Anselmus still managed to win resonant Serpentina, even if only after a struggle against the
run of bad luck which hindered him, against hostile powers which disguised themselves in
this very bad luck and worse. In the blue palm-tree room of Archivarius Lindhorst, in a
brilliant triad of bright crystal bells, Serpentina appears, and he becomes worthy of her.
Anselmus reaches Atlantis where he moves with the daughter of the Prince of Light to a
nobleman's estate, after having occupied a smallholding there for such a long time, a
smallholding in dreams, the property of his inner sense. That is Anselmus, student of the
Germany that has perished; and alongside him stand, as is only right, all the other wishful
natures of the literary fairytale and of the legend descended from Don Quixote's line.
Especially if they only belong to Quixote in their vivid imagination, but not in their active
power.
Sir Zendelwald in Keller's legend 'The Virgin as a Knight' is the most dreamy character of
this kind. Thus he lived in complete indecision, knew almost nothing of the things that went
on outside him. Though he knew all the better the wishful ideas which he built up about the
world and about women in his lonely castle. 'When his mind and his heart were
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seized by something, which always happened completely and in a fiery way, Zendelwald
could not bring himself to take the first step towards realizing it, since the matter seemed
closed for him as soon as he was inwardly clear about it. Although he liked to converse, he
never said a word at the right time which might have brought him good fortune. Not only
were his thoughts in advance of his tongue but also of his hand, so that in combat he was
often almost defeated by his enemies because he hesitated to deliver the final blow, already
seeing his opponent lying at his feet in advance.' Then news came to the dreamy knight
which, although it arrived out of the hurly-burly of the real world, rather coincided with the
object which filled his imagination just then. On one of his scanty journeys Zendelwald had
in fact seen the countess Bertrade, a young, exceedingly beautiful and rich widow; he had
been at her castle, had been deeply smitten, but had departed from her in silence. After
Zendelwald had spent many months thinking of nothing else except the distant gentlewoman,
a message came that the Emperor had announced a tournament and that the countess wished
to offer her hand to the outright victor, in the firm belief that the divine Virgin would
intercede and direct the hand of the right man worthy of her to victory. The knight finally set
out on the journey, but soon fell into his old image and thought patterns again, anticipating
according to his wishes and working out his dreams. 'Step by step the adventure now took
place in his imagination and turned out for the best, in fact while he was riding through the
summer-green landscape for days on end he was already holding sweet conversations with
his beloved in which he was expressing in advance sentiments of most eloquent invention so
that her countenance blushed with sweet pleasure, all this took place in his thoughts.' Since
rumination slows one down, however, the knight did not arrive until the tournament was
already over, and all would have been in vain for him had the heavenly Virgin not filled the
gap between wishful dreams and reality. Because she herself had fought in the tournament in
the form of Sir Zendelwald, in fact: when the delayed dreamer to his great astonishment saw
his own person as the victor and bridegroom next to the beautiful countess, when, stung with
wild jealousy, he broke through the crowd to see his double and rival, at that moment his
likeness vanished from Bertrade's side, the countess turned to the real Zendelwald and
continued the conversation without having in the least noticed the change of person.
'Zendelwald alone did not know what was happening to him when Bertrade spoke the
familiar words, to which he replied several times without thinking, with words that he had
already
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spoken somewhere before; in fact, after some time he realized that his predecessor must have
carried on exactly the same conversation which he had thought up in his imagination during
the days of his journey.' So the knight and the countess were happy together; this happiness
emerged from a peculiar dream and a peculiar fairytale and became real. Real in a fairytale
way; the Virgin Mary, herself a dream of belief, helped a dreamer with extremely woolly,
almost ruinous wishful thinking into the wonderland. Though, of course, neither Anselmus
nor feeble Sir Zendelwald emerged from their inwardness, not even where Legend the Fairy
gave them ground.
'Let Us Go to the Meadows of the Ganges, There I know the Loveliest Place'
And yet this kind of morning is not only fed from inside. The glittering fragments which little
Muck put in his pocket shone for him outside too, in the external field where they lay, most
clearly. Long before the inward dimension streams with wishful images, they are stimulated
by the fairytale features of nature, particularly by clouds. In them the lofty distance appears
for the first time, a wonderful tower-topped foreign land, above our heads. Children think of
white cumulus clouds as icy mountains, a Switzerland in the sky; there are castles there too,
taller than those on the ground, as tall as castles should be. Longing is the surest Being for
this youth anyway, and the departing evening red where the sun is going away intensifies it.
The boy in the fairytale by Lagerlf,* 'Little Nils' Journey with the Wild Geese', migrates
with the birds along their shining and singing path, the path to the south where the heavenly
castle stands on the earth, where the happy islands of Wak-Wak are at home in the sea. Since
for most people their first image of the sea is also derived from the broad sky and drifts
towards it; i.e. the cloud is not only castle or icy mountain for the fairytale glance, it is also
an island in the sea of the sky or a ship, and the blue sky in which the cloud sails mirrors the
ocean. After all, the distance over our heads, the sea of air with its clouds, is not even
confined to earthly shores or a reflection of them. Thus all fairytales in which heavenly blue
appears plunge it into vast waters above, and the voyage continues unimpeded to the coast
which especially reaches into this
*
Selma Lagerlf, 18581940, the Swedish writer.
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imagination: to the morning star. In all this, astral-mythic traces are still at work, right down
to the fairytale of the stars that became thalers;* but they are as little necessary to fairytales,
which migrate even further or higher than the birds, as the Christian heaven is. Even without
all these elements, there are wondrous glimpses in them, and if they are wondrous they still
bring out the brilliance of a singular soul quite cosmically, and everything in it is redolent of
poetry. As in the fairytale tricks that in 'Der Grne Heinrich' Gottfried Keller has his Frau
Margret play with the rainbow-light, just as if it were a messenger boy. Like another little
Muck with the glitter of fragments and utopia in an ignorance which does not need to be
ashamed if it contains more beautiful things than the disenchanted world, Frau Margret lives
among the flotsam and jetsam of her junk and curiosity shop, lost things crowd round and
make themselves heard, the daylight itself is illustrated with pictures from distant lands and
pagan books: 'Everything was important to her and alive; when the sun shone in a glass of
water and through it on to a brightly polished table, the seven colours that played were for
her a direct reflection of the splendours which were said to be in heaven itself. She said:
''Can't you see the lovely flowers and garlands, the green railings and the red silk scarves?
these little golden bells and the silver fountains?" and every time the sun shone in the room,
she made the experiment so that she could see into heaven a little, so she thought.' It is the
realist Keller who incorporated this childishness and described it; it nevertheless continues,
in an innocent spirit, the urge towards the sun which fulfils everything living, and embroiders
on this urge. If distance roars in the shell like the sea, it may also look like a harbour light in
the prism, like Frau Margret's weird wonder-light, and the fairytale has no objection. It is
even possible that its dream draws, i.e. that it designs a formal map of its coasts. The external
field in which it moves invites it to do this anyway, from which it gathers and absorbs
familiarized imaginative images ordered in a fairytale way. Kipling, in the dream fairytale
'The Brushwood Boy', has his boy design precisely such a map, he travels on it. Hong Kong
is an island here, in the middle of the 'Ocean of Dreams', and on its coast lies Merciful Town,
'where the poor may lay their wrongs away,/And the sick may forget to weep'. In his dream
the Brushwood Boy rides his Thirty-Mile-Ride with the girl he has imagined since childhood,
he rides with his dreamed Brushwood Girl through the dunes and steppes, through the
evening light of his wishful
*
A Grimm's fairytale.
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geography, through 'the valleys of wonder and unreason'. In fact even when confronted with
the reality of the Far East, which the grown-up man later reaches as a colonial officer, the
dream-land does not disappear; Hong Kong is a city and yet remains an island, the dream-
map does not become invalid. 'Policeman Day' wakes him up regularly to a bad reality, but
even so the dream-map does not fade in the real world. The wishful image of the hero
mingles in this fairytale with mere night-dreams, but in such a way that he forces these to
dress up his actual daydreams in sensual form, into the wishful land of India and the wishful
princess who emerges from it. Neither does the beloved in Kipling's fairytale ultimately only
become the girl whom the lonely man imagines to himself, whom he bedecks with dream-
jewellery and accommodates in mirage. The Brushwood Girl does also exist, very much so,
has met her hero in her own identical wishful dream; so in the end the two dream-subjects do
discover themselves for real and find in each other, in the real mysticism of love, their India
again. A real India of a higher order, one to which the dreamed India was a promise and the
cause, the imaginative substance, the unrefuted background. In fact it is, besides clouds,
heavenly blue, rainbows, the Orient in general, far away around the banks of the Ganges, an
itself fantastic external world, through which the contact of the fairytale is facilitated with
what is available in the external field. There the Brushwood Boy is at home, there the jungle
welcomes and opens the view of a foreign land which in the fairytale is just inland and
homeland. South Seas, turquoise blue sky, bazaar dome, the mysterious house all this
oriental scenery yields with the greatest affinity to the fairytale wish, incorporates it. The
reason for this is not at all simple: of course most of the material for fairytales comes from
the Orient, especially from India, and inclines to go back there, but also the nature of
fairytale, precisely the cloud and evening castle made of sky, in fact even the German
fairytale forest border on the Morning Land. It is not the already discussed rebelliousness in
so many of Grimm's fairytales that culminates there of course, but rather the wonderful
aspect, the adventure and the landscape of the magical; these constitute the archetypal
splendour of the Arabian Nights. This may also lie on the island of Hong Kong or in the
imago of the Brushwood Girl herself, the wonder-woman: the most inward fairytale contains
this element of outward place. In the Indian Ocean of Dreams, in the image which puts in
from distant lands and itself sends us off on a voyage.
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South Seas in Fair and Circus

Distant lands can put in even in a quite sensual way for a boy and be immediate. In colours
and shapes, raw as meat, colourful as the little flag the Italian butchers stick into it. The
booths at the fair likewise did not grow here, any more than the time and again dusted down,
time and again freshly unveiled magic they bring with them. It seems as if it comes from
extraordinary foreign parts, is no doubt vulgar and a complete swindle, but nevertheless of
more substance than the irritation the bourgeois conformist feels about this time-honoured
pleasure of youth and folk. Thus these ship-booths sail in, borne on the South Seas for the
simple and innocently complicated spirit; the tent-ships tie up for a short time in the dusty
towns. Are tattooed with pale-green or bloodthirsty-red pictures in which votive images for
sea-rescue clash with harem. The generator drives the orchestrion with a foreign, fat,
inhuman, breathless-lethargic sound, sometimes it is connected with a girl of wax dancing
next to the entrance screwed to the floor. And with crazy contortions, which pass from
screwed-down wax to dancing wax, she throws her head back from time to time, to stand
trembling in just this position, right behind the crier who is himself afraid of nothing. The
world, the one sold in this way, has the secrets of the bridal bed and also of the born
deformity on one edge, the secrets of the bier on the other. 'The lady will reveal her
splendidly built torso, you will see the secrets of human sculpture'; but also: 'At nine o'clock
this evening, at the very hour at which she died, Professor Mystos will call an Egyptian
mummy back to life'. Freakish people and their art put themselves on display, in pure side-
chapels of abnormality. The sword-swallower and the fire-eater, the man with the untearable
tongue and the iron skull, the snake-charmer and the living aquarium. Dusky Turks,
pumpkin-men, giant women are there: 'nature was so lavish with the substance of her body
that at the time when she blossomed to her highest perfection she attained the mass of four
hundred pounds'. And the extraordinary foreignness is repeatedly joined by that of the
fairytale, even of the Gothic novel: oriental maze, jaws of hell, haunted castle. This is the
fair, a colourfully rough fantasy, in Americanized cities it is increasingly infiltrated by
loudspeakers, technologized fun-establishments, but the wishful land of medieval South
Seas, so to speak, has remained. And is preserved, going back much further from the Middle
Ages, all the more in the fair of a higher order, in the kind of show presented entirely without
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a curtain: the circenses. Since if the various wonders of the booths come under one roof, into
a ring, and if the menagerie breaks out in it, then Colosseum develops out of the South Seas,
or the circus. The waxwork cabinet aspect is missing of course, all semblance of death, every
mechanical organ, because here in the circus everything is alive. And in contrast to the fair,
which works with cloaking, with stage, showcase, curtain, the circus is completely open; the
ring brings this with it. In fact it is the only honest, fundamentally honest performance that
art knows; in front of spectators in a complete circle a wall can never be erected.
Nevertheless estrangement does occur, the somersaults are the most extreme acts the human
body performs, but it does perform them, jugglers appear, but there is no sleight of hand.
Created as if by pure gypsies in the green caravan, older than the oldest reader can remember,
perhaps even prehistoric, circus art is a kind of bourgeois uprightness in art and the model for
it. It is the pub without back rooms, apart from cloakroom and stable, and that can be viewed
during the interval, everything happens under bright lights in the ring, on the trapeze under
the big-top, and is still magic, a separate wishful world of eccentricity and precise dexterity.
The characters have changed little, the stern, comic and gymnastic characters, they are
prearranged like the types of animals we get to see: the elephants, lions, horses trotting round
and round, the ringmaster with his whip and the equerry between the acts, the tiding mistress,
the tightrope-walkers and other aerial acrobats, half sylphs, half on the verge of death, the
animal-tamers and the escapologists. But the clowns who appear in the intermission see to it
that the circus is also folk entertainment without intermission. They range from the glittering
and powdered ones of the Elizabethan age to the tramp with the bulbous red nose, black-and-
white laughing mouth, to the crown of poverty, stupid Augustus. These are all figures from a
Colosseum which has become friendly, and so they are most certainly second-half spectacles
or pantomimes. The performance is introduced by the most beautiful music of its kind, by
Fucik's * March of the Gladiators, concluded with the march Per Aspera Ad Astra. The
circus still represents today the most colourful mass spectacle or the image of the sensation;
it is Arabian fantasia in the most brightened Roman arena.
What booth and tent mirror is seldom mirrored again. Not really even surrealistically,
although the fun can be fairly creepy, its face perverse. Even though the wax figure plunges
us into terror, the glitter-clown hangs over into what is unknown. Only Meyrink fetched a
separate fairytale, a separate colportage out of this world, jokey, affinitive, badly written,
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uncanny, all mixed together. Thus describing Mohammed Darashekoh's oriental waxworks:
'The generator at the entrance beat out its tempo and drove an instrument similar to an organ.
A stumbling, breathless music was playing with tones which, loud and muffled at the same
time, had something peculiar about them, muted, as if they sounded underwater. Smell of
wax and smouldering oil-lamps hung about the tent. The main act: Fatima, the pearl of the
Orient, was over, and the spectators were milling here and there or looking through the peep-
holes in the walls covered in red cloth into a roughly painted panorama which represented the
storming of Delhi. Others stood silently around a glass coffin in which a Turco* lay dying,
breathing heavily, his bared breast shot through by a cannonball the edges of his wound
gangrenous and bluish. When the wax-dummy opened its lead-coloured eyelids the creaking
of the watchspring shook gently through the cabinet'. Contrived, but no less intense horror is
contrived again here, in impression and towards it, but there is no lack of dream-lights
consistent with fair and circus either. Meyrink's 'The Golem' is fairytale-colportage of the
fair, as is also his colportage 'The Green Face', sprinkled with the showmanship of the circus.
'The Golem' deals in its colportage with no more, but also no less than the secret of the booth
which you cannot see by paying more. Here is the hum that comes in from the street, the
moonshine at the end of the bed, a pale slab which looks like a slice of fat, the room without
a door, somewhere in the city of Prague, with the Golem as its occupant, the ledge of stone
on the window of the Golem's room to which the guest clings and looks and looks and falls,
because the stone is as smooth as a slice of fat. Even a beautiful Miriam is drifting around, a
wax-dream of perfection, and her house stands in the morning light, inaccessible as the booth
of the secrets of Greece for visitors under sixteen, as the sidereal life. The strange mixture of
Jakob Bhme and jokiness jars which characterizes precisely this kind of literature, to the
point of surrealism, but it is consistent with the ambivalent, two-headed, thoroughly
allegorical genre. The pictures of Dali, sometimes even of Max Ernst move in a similar
mixed atmosphere of fun and depth, indeed cosiness and horror; the model for all this is
provided by the contemporary humorously animated and Medusanly staring wax-dummy.
Meyrink, like the whole fairground magic of varying degrees, is a nonsense about which
showman and author leave us in no doubt, but a longing inhabits it all, itself not nonsensical,
although
*
A nineteenth-century native Algerian infantryman in the French Army, a Zouave.
Page 366
garish and deceivable, cheap and disordered. It is the longing for a formation of figures in the
world consisting of perversities and oddities, for curiousness as an objective property. Both
Dali and Meyrink are of course eclipsed, which is self-evident in this case, indeed they are
trounced precisely in their base horror, which is not so self-evident, as soon as a great writer,
who is nevertheless also expert at the droll-strange, bad-humorous and may be in league with
it, takes on the metaphysical affront. The writer is Gottfried Keller, and his 'Dreambook' of
1848 reports the following on the subject under discussion that can never quite be discussed:
'I entered a waxworks; the company of the potentate looked very slovenly and neglected,
there was a terrible loneliness and I hurried through the place into a closed room where an
anatomical collection was on view. Here almost all parts of the human body were to be
found, artificially reproduced in wax, most in diseased, terrible states, a highly remarkable
general meeting of human states which seemed to be debating an address to their creator. A
substantial part of the worshipful company consisted of a long row of glass jars which
contained the progressive stages of human growth from the smallest embryo to the fully-
formed foetus. These were not made of wax, but natural tissue and were suspended in alcohol
in very profound postures. This reflectiveness was all the more conspicuous since the boys
actually represented hopeful youth in the meeting. But suddenly in the tightrope-walkers' hut
next door, which was only separated by a thin wooden wall, loud music started up with
drumming and cymbals, someone stepped on the tightrope, the wall trembled, and the silent
attentiveness of the little people was gone, they began to quiver and to dance to the beat of
the wild polka which was pounding through the wall: anarchy entered, and I do not think that
the address was ever delivered.' Thus far the young Keller, and again the humour is
noticeable, together with that kind of mocking depth which makes use of the wit in a doubly
droll way here. Ancient folk-pleasure, in no way simple, but also in no way decadent, is
preserved in the fair, travels with it. A bit of frontier-land is there, at a very reduced price of
admission, but with preserved meanings, with curiously utopian meanings, conserved in
brutal show, in vulgar enigmaticness. It is a world which has been too little investigated in
terms of its specific wishful regions. Precisely 'curiosities', as these things were ultimately
called in the Baroque period, hold themselves above water here, above land.
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The Wild Fairytale:

As Colportage
Even in the fairytale not everything immediately runs smoothly. There are giants and
witches, they block off, make us spin all night, lead us astray. And there is, against the all too
smooth or hurried sky-blue, a kind of fairytale which is seldom regarded as such, a wild, as it
were sweeping kind. In general it has been little regarded, not only because it easily descends
into trash, but because the ruling class does not like tattooed Hansel and Gretels. The
sweeping fairytale is the adventure story, it best lives on today as colportage. On its face
there is the expression of an admittedly unrefined creature, and it is often so. But colportage
consistently manifests features of fairytale; because its hero does not wait, as in the magazine
story, for happiness to fall into his lap, he does not bend down to pick it up either like a bag
thrown to him. Rather, its hero remains related to the poor thickskin* of the folk-tale, the bold
boy who sets corpses on fire, who takes the devil for a ride. There is a courage about the hero
of colportage which, usually like its reader, has nothing to lose. And an approved chunk of
bourgeois ne'er-do-well pushes forward, absconded and burned out, but still alive; when he
returns, an atmosphere of palms, knives, the teeming cities of Asia clings to him. The dream
of colportage is: never again the everyday; and at the end stands: happiness, love, victory.
The splendour towards which the adventure story moves is not attained as it is in the
magazine story by wealthy marriage and the like, but by actively sailing out into the Orient
of the dream. If the magazine story has something of an unspeakably dilapidated legend
about it, then colportage is the last, but still recognizable gleam from the romance of
chivalry, from Amadis of Gaul. Hence the vaingloriousness which is already familiar from
the oldest epic poems, such as the Waltharilied** where the hero overcomes ten knights at
once, or from the saga of King Rother and Asprian the Strong who flings a lion against the
wall so hard that it smashes to pieces. But hence also the pathos against the philistines,
against a life whose epitaph is already written at twenty, against corner by the fire and juste
milieu. A true fairytale aura of a wild kind is created; the
*
Bloch is referring back to 'The Boy Who Went Out to Learn What Fear Was', collected in Grimm.
**
Written by Ekkehard I of St Gallen around 925, concerning the flight of Walther of Aquitaine and his
beloved Hildegunde from the court of Attila.
Page 368
aura of the Stevenson world of 'Storm and adventure, heat and cold . . . schooners, islands,
and maroons, and Buccaneers and buried Gold'. And the whole group, particularly where it
gets by without making excuses for itself as it were, i.e. without literary refinement, time and
again has a foul stench. It is ambivalent, can point to Ku Kluxers and fascists, even be a
special stimulant for them; but the foul stench also in fact points to the cosy bourgeoisie's
justified mistrust of too much of the poor devil and his campfire. Every adventure story
breaks the moral commandment 'Pray and work'; instead of the first cursing prevails, instead
of the second the pirateship appears, the rifleman not in the King's pay. The romanticism of
the robber thus shows a different face, one which has appealed to poor folk for centuries, and
colportage knows all about it. The brigand was the man who had fallen out with authority,
often he had a common enemy with the people and frequently had bases among the peasantry
as well. Not without reason therefore, Italian, Serbian, and above all Russian folktraditions
tell of robbers with a different slant to that of the police-reports; Schiller's robbers-play
with the motto: In tyrannos! is only so to speak the classical manifestation in a literature in
which the figures of brigand and Brutus could be exchanged. Here there is immature, but
honest substitute for revolution, and where else did it express itself but in colportage? Had
Schiller, its authentic genius, only remained more loyal to it, this genre would definitely have
become a different one to that of the debased romance of chivalry and of treasure-hunter
stories. Ku Klux Klan and fascism simply turn into life the criminal abbreviation and the
wilderness of the colportage. Whereas the uncommon goal in the wilderness: imprisonment
and liberation, stunning the dragon, rescuing the damsel, cleverness, breakthrough, revenge
all these pieces belong to freedom and to the brilliant light behind it. Not Fascism, but the
revolutionary act in its Romantic age is this kind of chap-book come to life. Hence, besides
Schiller's 'The Robbers', rescue-plays, we could even say: rescue-fairytales appeared
immediately before and after 1789; they dug round for prisoners as if they were digging for
treasures in a cave. And significantly: the libretto for 'Fidelio', the trumpet signal itself would
not have been nor have been the way they were without the colportage which they represent.
The Fidelio-plot itself is sharpest, explosive colportage, as we know, and it belongs to
liberation. Deep dungeon, pistol, signal, rescue: things which in elevated literature of the
modern kind never appear, or never in their original form, create suspense in one of its most
powerfully available forms: that of night to the light. Consequently the need for re-evaluation
of this
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genre, by virtue of the highly legitimate wishful image in its mirror, is especially evident. At
all points here lost meanings are fresh, awaiting meanings which have not been lost, as in the
fairytale. A happy outcome is secured, no trace remains of the dragon, except in chains, the
treasure-hunter finds his dream-money, the couple are united. Fairytales and colportage are
castle in the air par excellence, but one in good air and, as far as it can be true at all of mere
wishing-work: the castle in the air is right. It comes in the end from the Golden Age and
wants to be in one again, in happiness which penetrates from the night to the light.
Ultimately, in such a way that laughter deserts the bourgeois and disbelief in the power of the
poor deserts the giant, who today is called the Big Bank.
28
Lure of Travel, Antiquity, Happiness of the Gothic Novel
Stuck here in Berlin's close atmosphere
Come July we start to feel quite blank,
What I would give to be a courier
With the Dresden Bank.
O to hear dark pleasure's organ rousing,

When abroad the heart begins to stray
For with three times a hundred thousand
You can go a decent way.
Hail the boy released from daily rota

Who conceives this dream spectacular,
Like a man who reads his wanted poster
Dining in a distant spa.
Sad, I brush away my silent tear,

Quash the rotten urge to quit the ranks
Looking at the poor investors here
At the Dresden Bank.
Peter Scher
When I now saw the towers from a long way off and the blue smoke of Nuremberg, I almost thought I was
looking not at a single city but at a whole world.
Johann Butzbach's Little Book of Wandering
Page 370
The same things every day slowly kill us off. To crave anew, the pleasure of travel helps us
to do this. It not merely freshens up expectation before the journey starts, but does this in the
midst of the enjoyment of seeing. Wishes which nothing can be done about any more,
superannuated wishes which have become spinsterish, drop away. The stagnant element
drops away which may characterize not only everyday life that always remains the same, but
also wishes carried around for all too long. Wishful dreams can after all have passed out of
the time appropriate to them, in such a way that they can never again be fulfilled. Someone
who wished for a Kodak in his youth and never got one will never again find the Kodak of
his wishes, even if as a man he is in a position to buy the very best. Such things were not
accorded to the desire at the time or in the circumstances when they would have given the
most extreme pleasure. The hunger for them has gone grey, in fact almost every goal can
become tedious if it is launched towards for too long, too hopelessly or even in too habitual a
way. Whereas new wares create new needs, and in particular new impressions.
Beautiful Foreign Lands

Every journey must be voluntary if it is to give pleasure. For this it needs a situation which is
gladly, at least not reluctantly left. The first feeling in the car or the train, when it finally
departs, is crucial for what is coming. If travel is enforced or on business, i.e. not a happy
breaking off from something, then it is not travel. If it is undertaken out of boredom, because
nothing else occurs to us, then boredom travels with us. It is the baggage and the fate which
is dragged over the rails with us in the steel crate. The train is then deprived of the enjoyable
quality which so seldom appears elsewhere: of travelling exactly in the direction in which we
want to go. Commercial travellers, sailors, emigrants are not on a journey either, the latter
even despite their possible liberation. In all these cases, travel is enforced or on business,
spell in the latter, banishment in the former. Is an endlessly moving band, as in the elevator
and factory, not a band of blue which the spring causes to flutter through the air again. In any
case, the happiness of travel is and remains temporary escape from home without subsequent
demand, it is a drastic change without external compulsion to make it. The traveller of the
capitalist age must also be able to be a consumer, not a suitor, otherwise he loses the world of
attractive strangers,
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among whom he has nothing to do, among whom he has no habit. Of course it remains true:
nothing is as exotic in a foreign country as the foreigner himself; but the latter as bourgeois
enthusiast at first does not see the everyday life of foreign countries at all, least of all does he
want to see the misery in it which does not cash the cheque for him made out in the name of
beauty; he sees in foreign countries, often with incurable subjectivism, the personal wishful
image of them he has brought with him. And this of course is usually exotic enough either for
disappointment to follow, because Italy does not consist of paper lanterns for example, or, if
it has not fudged the matter itself but exceeded it, for the old wishful image to remain
stationary alongside that of the experience already gained, uneducated but partly also
undisappointed. Because the wishful image remains uneducated, it does not penetrate
properly into what soberly exists; the average traveller, in any case isolated by hotel, guide-
book, taxi-rides, in fact perceives the poverty even less than at home. On the other hand,
however, the same bourgeois is in a position, thanks to his own defamiliarization which he
passes on to the objects, not to experience any of the deadening effect of everyday life and
possibly to see meanings in the objects which in everyday life only a competent painter
would discover. Defamiliarization is here the exact opposite to alienation; within the
bourgeois-private world, travel is the May which makes everything new, the only one. And
the refreshing defamiliarization is supported by another paradox of travel, by one which now
not only befalls the bourgeois enthusiast, but which is also materially connected with the
apparently unfurling juxtaposition of space. A kind of subjective temporalization of space,
subjective spatialization of time arises out of this, especially when the scenery changes
quickly. Travel time is filled in a way in which usually only space is filled, and space
becomes the medium of change which usually only time is. So a reversal of the usual orders
of perception arises, filled time arises in space which appears mobile, changed. The old
adventure stories completely unrolled space in this way, disturbed its mythic rigidity; every
journey still lives, itself mutatis mutandis, from the paradox of this changing dream.
This above all in youth, and especially in youth as a couple. If love is itself a journey, into
entirely new life, then the value of foreign lands, experienced together, is doubled by it. Just
as the loved-one already makes the street where she lives enchanting, together with the
smallest conspicuous features of her part of town, the windows, lampposts, trees, so this
magic passes over all the more into the things which the lovers' journey gets to see. Freshly
poured love in its first frothing foam carries us away in
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any case, and erotic transformation also seeks transformation of the outside world. Our own
surprises are combined with those of the unknown land, of the foreign-beautiful city; then
light falls even in the dullest minds, and the lively ones become full of figure. Wanderer, path
and goal become as one in the journey of love; which is also why, when they are apart,
nothing beautiful appears to the boy and girl in love which they do not wish the other could
see at the same time, so that it could be seen together. Even the bourgeois honeymoon copies
this, even if it has made a part of the dowry out of it. Eroticism makes the world vivid and
everywhere into Cythera; for eroticism everything beautiful becomes a flight of wishful
dreams, of elopements and revelations. The Indian book of love, the Kamasutra, thus advises
with great refinement that the loved one should be shown beautiful objects after making love,
and sublime, especially unusual ones, be they works of art or constellations. For most people
their first true journey of love remains the richest in dreams, the memory which is most
youthfully, therefore most powerfully surrounded by utopia. The foreign setting seals all
earlier wishes for distance; defamiliarization in beauty is the evening and the night of the city
of love, lives during the day. And just as travel is related to eroticism, so too in a different
type of combination to the activities of the Muse. It may not be accidental that the happily
transformed stay commits us to the wish that significant things be achieved in this
uncommon place. Nothing has a stronger effect on such plans and hopes than an environment
which is removed from the habitual diffusion, a vivid environment which itself seems pre-
formed. At the rough table in the loggia of this country-house, the wine in front of us, under
sturdy old arches through which the Roman sky peeps here work seems to succeed.
Especially if objects of great nature, of great history gaze into the flow of the sentences, then
it appears as if they are reflected in them, as if Vesuvius or Monreale were imparting
themselves to them. This is a fane superstition, and it has achieved unusual things which
justify belief. Out of this differently erotic, productive pathos of travel Shelley wrote his
'Prometheus Unbound' in the bushes on the Palatine Hill;* in the preface he stresses that he
wants to feel under obligation to a majestic past,
*
Shelley writes in the preface: 'This poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths
of Caracalla, among the flowery glades, and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, which are
extended in ever winding labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air.
The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening spring in that divinest climate,
and the new life with which it drenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of this
drama.'
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he wants to vindicate himself before it. Even contrast can have this effect: Ibsen's 'Nora',
which was written in a Norman watchtower near Amalfi, or especially Goethe's Witches'
Kitchen scene,* composed in the garden of the Villa Borghese: in both the author and the
work, from the contrast between the place of composition and the place and tenor of the
action flourished seclusion and counterlandscape which had never before appeared in such a
complementary way.'As one goes further north, witches and soot increase':** but the witches'
smoke which can be formulated in fact increased under pines, in the clarity of the Pincio;***
even the Walpurgisnacht**** was conceived in the South. Nothing homely altered or created
blurred edges between the work and the diffuse everyday. The defamiliarization which
makes every significant object doubly enhanced, like a mountain peak above clouds, possibly
exposes, with or without complementary effect, the greatness of the work itself. These are the
effects of travelling defamiliarization on hope; with Eros in both forms, that of love and that
of creation. And in the end, with such frequent sudden change, as far as defamiliarization is
concerned: one of the innovations of the journey may even be that it also defamiliarizes the
habitual at home. The emotion thus created is called homesickness; it is correspondingly an
emotion of longing which is as aroused by distance as it is changed. After all, homesickness
is not only stimulated by the displeasure which the non-availability of habitual objects
evokes, but besides the homesickness created by loss of the habitual world of sensory
perception there is the productive kind which makes the abandoned, long since dully
experienced environment itself colourful, in fact utopian, and finds new sides to it. Then
homesickness is carried by a wishful image just like the foreign lands before the beginning of
the journey and in it. And it is carried by the same, often unjustly, but often also justly gilded
memory which afterwards completes the course of the journey itself and characterizes the
utopian lands in the exotic dimension. With the difference, of course, that the gilding of
homesickness disappears upon our return, whereas the image of travel becomes even more
exotic post festum, even attains a transformation which connects up with or is capable of
connecting up with the good wishful land of art and other elopements. Anyone who travels
across the sea, Horace says,
*
A scene from Goethe's 'Faust'.
**
'Faust', Part I, Paralipomena 38.
***
Pincio: the northern hill of Rome (mons Pincius) where Lucullus and Sallust had their great gardens.
****
A further scene from Goethe's 'Faust'.
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only changes the clime, not himself. But at least he changes the clime: in the simple case this
is a rearrangement of the scenery, in more significant cases there grows out of the changed
content of consciousness a changed situation of consciousness which wishes to be
commensurate with the content. Further, the lure of travel certainly relates to a beauty which
is for the most part merely subjective, that is to a beauty which is coated with
defamiliarization from the perspective of the mere viewer and from the mere wishful image
of the highly intensified matter. In a foreign country nobody is exotic but the foreigner
himself, but neither is the foreign country in any way defamiliarized from itself in a beautiful
way, and the native inhabitant has, apart from his own need which the mere travelling
enthusiast does not see, the wish to travel to foreign lands himself. Possibly to those from
where the travelling enthusiast himself comes; all this out of the same subject-wish existing
on both sides for alienation. So we can see how much subjectivity there is in every travel
experience as such from the outset, and how difficult this can ultimately make it to advance
to that changed situation of consciousness which not only seeks to do justice to the content
perceived, but is able to do justice to it. Even Goethe's 'Italian Journey', such a splendidly and
objectively directed journey, by virtue of the fact that as much as possible it seeks to perceive
only pro-Classicism, anti-Baroque, manages to reach from this subjectivity only half of real
Italy. But the journey pursues a wishful image of beautiful otherness at least on this distant
point, and one which in a foreign country, with its freshly perceived wonders, is nevertheless
often embodied in reality. Which is in fact also why post festum the travel-image may remain
so closely related to art, indeed to another transformation as well, namely the gathering
transformation towards a final journey. The often reported procession of memories at the
hour of death, or even possibly in old age, therefore not only has people, figures, objects on
its concentrated route which were as it were foretold at the hour of our birth or sung in our
own house, but especially travel-images even embellished again post festum with utopian
festiveness. And this last spice was perhaps already at work in the first sight of uncommon
objects, burning and concealing, or conversely intensifying the real taste of the matter. The
best thing not only about history but also about geography is thus that it arouses enthusiasm;
though of a kind which meets and sets out for all the more intense insight into the objects
which do not only contrast to the habitual in their proper place.
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Distance-Wish and Historicizing Room in the Nineteenth Century

A story from the tenth century? 'Who rides so late through night and wind?'*
Scheffel, Preface to 'Ekkehard'
Since the journey has become comfortable, it does not take us so far any more. It takes more
homely habitual material with it and penetrates into the custom of the land even less than
before. The walk, the ride, the never avoidable adventure were replaced by transport in the
nineteenth century, a railway network compared with today's airlines built up with
amazing speed. Little has been as canalized as travel; two world wars served to disrupt this
useful progress. The nineteenth century had nevertheless managed to get the express train to
roar past a place undisturbed where according to old travel-guides there had previously been
a den of robbers, and the dangerous life at home had not yet really blossomed. Instead,
however, precisely beautiful foreign lands were falsified into a petitbourgeois holiday binge.
The so-called tour operators emerged, as a means of cheaply carrying out not only the
journey but also the previous wishful images turned towards it. So-called sightseeing began,
and the sights stood inside a world set up ready for the tour, an arranged-Italian, arranged-
oriental world. In 1864 the former railway official Louis Stangen organized the first of his
group tours which subsequently became so popular; they revealed to moderate distant
yearning not only its Italy, but also its Near East. Sorrento was greeted, the shimmering
bloom of the waves, even the blue Adriatic, the island pearl of Corfu, Cairo, the gateway to
the East, and the gigantic pyramids. Fully guaranteed, tips inclusive, everything like
clockwork, guides thrown in, for a lump sum with no surcharge. But even the tourism which
was not spoonfed had been growing since the middle of the century in a more and more
rationalized way with the increased affluence of the middle class; the world was catalogued
so that it could be seen in a week, in a fortnight, in four to six weeks. Only alpinism still
provided, in places, space for untroddenness, even for specific distance-, that is peak-wishes.
Likewise the reading interest of the public persisted, in fact increased in the last remaining
journeys of discovery, in those into darkest Africa and in the North Pole expeditions;
Nansen's book
*
The first line of Goethe's celebrated poem 'Erlknig', written in 1782.
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'Farthest North', with its highly Arctic photographs and colour plates: Northern Lights
Corona, Northern Lights Baldachin, still gave a hint of unsold nature to the widest circles. Of
course the normal traveller also sought unsold nature where he took his whole homely
comfort-cell (living-room) with him, and where the same Coca-Cola world which
encouraged tourism increasingly cancelled out the dreamed otherness, even fairytale distance
of places to visit. Above all, however, on the basis of all this organization: tourism acquired,
by making sea-voyages, washing against the Near East or at least distributing the images 'On
a flight across the world' at home, increasing propagandistic significance for the home-based
wishes for world markets, wishes for world power. For the imperialist age promoted and
surrounded the travel agencies continuously; at the same time, however, it most definitely
deformed the foreign world. The latter was at best pushed back into areas off the beaten
capitalist track, but mainly it became an immobile foreign article, until it became a different,
colonial one; everything declines, with the exception of the West,* from this standpoint this
is a valid proposition. The preoccupation with folk life, the expedition into what is not posed,
this concrete perception of real curiosities is long since gone. Goethe's 'Italian Journey', even
Viktor Hehn's Italy book showed this objectivity, above all also as far as experienced folklore
is concerned. The otherwise so precise Baedeker no longer shows folklore, or only slanders it
when it does not fit into the standardized window with a view. And the dream of distance
was most definitely only preserved at the cost of wishes for contrast flooding over the exotic,
though admittedly also making the immobile foreign article into an article again, into one
which simply bears the brand-name: Not-Home. As if foreign countries were solely the
opposite of Krefeld or even Minneapolis or even Liverpool, as if they did not bring their own
significances with them, those which are only comparable with themselves. Thus now to the
mere wish for contrast peculiar things like Southern Italian Church Festivals, for example, or
the still preserved caravans, camel-markets and bazaars of the Orient do not, as might be
expected, stand in a disparate relationship with the home-based world, neither do these
Middle Ages at the gates of Europe open up, as might be expected, features of its own past
Middle Ages, but on the contrary: an exact counterpart to the homeland of the visitor was
*
Bloch is alluding here to the title of Spengler's work 'Der Untergang des Abendlandes', 'The Decline
of the West', a book which celebrated the primitive and in which much of Nazi ideology was
prefigured. It first appeared in 1918.
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sought after, a contrast which after all has nothing whatsoever to do with what is being
visited. Such wishes for contrast are of course older than the nineteenth century, though not
much older than the eighteenth. In Winckelmann they acted as a guide in the search for noble
simplicity, silent greatness, they were at work in Goethe, in so far as he did not pass
judgement on the Italian people and landscape, but on specific Italian works of art, and made
him blind, now he had had enough of German 'tobacco-pipe columns', to the extremely
prevalent, extremely predominant Baroque in Italy. Delacroix sought contrast in a different
way in his Algerian and Moroccan pictures, this time in a Romantic way. The glow of his
predators, harem concubines, desert scenes ('frocit et verve') is not only Africa, but anti-
Louis Philippe, anti-Citizen Kingdom. Out of pure anti-classicism, Delacroix had even
preached that true antiquity was to be found among the Arabs. But from these earlier wishes
for contrast those of the later nineteenth century are not merely distinguished by the sunken
level of those who bore them, but above all also by that of the world which they sought to
contrast with, even if in a negative way. Because Venice now simply had to provide the
opposite to what Krefeld provided or to what was Liverpool-like, it could easily appear itself
as an overdone non-Liverpool; in which the real Venice is in fact completely uninvolved.
And the so-called Italian night is something quite different from the opposite of a Northern
European industrial day; unless the night is posed for foreigners. But only in this way did the
never-heard-of, never-seen appear which going abroad was supposed to present subjectively,
even objectively. A blissful dream of flight and distance, of contrast-images in the midst of
canalized decorativeness created its travel souvenirs, and Sphinx-like mystery, which lies
around everywhere, waited on better times. For the wonders of beautiful foreign lands reveal
themselves only without transferred masked ball, only with the significant object, perhaps
even full of premonition, in its own juice, in its proper place.
Not least, after 1850 the four walls of home were themselves supposed to be made
unrecognizable. This too with ornament fetched from afar, of a kind that their own arid time
did not supply. People turned away from everything white, everything unshrouded, just as if
they had become aware of a corpse in it. It mattered a perfidious great deal to the high
capitalist century that every one of the things it prided itself on was masked. The Biedermeier
period still loved to have its walls unwhitewashed or walls in simple green, its furniture was
so honest-clear, bright-beautiful like little else before. Gathered net-curtain let the light in
doubly white,
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it fell on the glass cabinet and the cherrywood cupboard, on the plain round table with slim
legs or supported by a well-proportioned column, on modest-rich lyre-chairs, on the soft-
mighty settee. And even if they called this whole atmosphere neo-Grecian at that time, it was
nevertheless completely at home with itself, was always more Being than Appearing. With a
fine scent of fairytale, punch, of the art of E. T. A. Hoffmann so closely related to these
rooms. Then this stopped all of a sudden around the middle of the century, reproduced
distance-magic, machined bulls'- eye panes began. A bourgeoisie that was becoming rich lay
down in the bed of nobility, dreamed there after past styles, old-German, French, Italian,
oriental, pure souvenir. A constantly astonishing desire emerged to transform even No-Being
into Appearing, to have their everyday apartment sailing under different colours. Travel-
substitute, indeed outdoing travel between their own four walls became the password, partly
a historical, partly an exotic one. From here came the obsession with material-draping in the
Grnderjahre,* the collection of bric--brac, nouveau riche swanky style, velvet and satin all
mixed together. From here came the sideboards in the form of knight's castles, the halberds
and the harem sumptuousness, the mosque-lamps and the bullhorns a quite mysterious
montage. And it lay in dim light falling through many layers of material draped at the
windows, through the most pseudo-oriental curtains possible to keep the street at bay, to
protect the masquerade of the ensemble. And in this ensemble there chimed the salon-pieces
of the young ladies, those ornamented with little bows, little trumpets, amoretti, all the false
Rococo of the 'Cascades', 'Carillons' and 'Papillons', of the 'Penses fugitives' and 'Cloches du
monastre', not forgetting the 'Souvenirs de Varsovie'. Furthermore, right into the room, they
liked to hang a polished pole with a giant kilim, ** as if this were a mast and sail and the room
were cruising in Arabian fashion on the sea of the world or lay in the harbour in front of an
Indian city. Next to it the spinning wheel was not forgotten and the souvenir from Venice:
the mother-of-pearl gondola in front of a sky-high Murano mirror.*** However, for all this
wishful mask as dcor (executed in all sorts of price-ranges, as goes without saying) the
studio of the Viennese painter Makart**** ultimately provided the model: this was the original
of
*
The period of industrial expansion after 1871 in Germany. Also the style of architecture of that
period.
**
An Eastern carpet.
***
Of Venetian glass.
****
Hans Makart, 184084, the Austrian painter.
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historical-exotic disguise. Every commercial councillor, advised by decorators, received the

stimulus from here for homely foreign life, right down to the easel in the corner with the just
completed oil-painting. To depict the gloss-utopia of the nouveau fiche which had never
existed like this before, we would have to dip our brush into Makart ourselves where he is
thickest. 'The studio in Guhausgasse', wrote a contemporary of Makart's in 1886, 'acquired
through the profligate splendour and love of art of its master more and more the character of
an artistically arranged museum which provided Makart's imagination with an apparatus of
props and models for convenient use, in which his own existence and the brilliant
conviviality with which he surrounded himself transformed itself for him into a work of art
shimmering with colour.' Shimmering with colour, Titian, Venice and above all of course
Orient, this was the dream- and flight-password for this so deeply bourgeois-conformist,
bored and pessimistic age, for the coveting age, decoration age, mask age par excellence.
Disguise no less governed the historical novel, old-German in Scheffel (Ekkehard), Romano-
Germanic in Felix Dahn (A Struggle for Rome), Egyptian in Georg Ebers (Uarda,
Semiramis); all in the light of the bulls'-eye pane, even on the Tiber and the Nile. And this
historical defamiliarization was necessary, because the exotic apartment was not entirely
sufficient to fulfil the swanky dream of knight's castle, and because the shopping streets
outside could certainly not be furnished with spinning wheels. Despite the trouble which
even external architecture, if we can call it such, took with its costumes, with its Romanesque
stations and Gothic post-offices, with Indian bandstands and Moorish monkey-houses. And
since the raw mechanism of this age could still not be covered up by all this, it then also
bought, so that it would likewise be decorated with a gigantic apartment dcor as it were, a
travel-souvenir of an enormous kind: nature. The connoisseur of the nineteenth century saw
in this the reproduction of an inherently dreary, but well-draped mechanical-materialist
prospect, a kind of imitation panorama of energy and material. These last two remained of
course, as Ludwig Bchner* said, 'the raw materials out of which the whole universe builds
itself with its wonders and beauties', whereas for holidays, which did not want to be deprived
of their beauty, nature became the luxury edition. Here, even the most enlightened person
used the words 'goddess' and 'temple'; this sort of thing shone like a diorama of firn** or
*
Ludwig Bchner, 182499, German physician, philosopher and popularizer of science, wrote the
influential 'Kraft und Stoff' (Force and Matter), 1855.
**
Last year's snow.
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Alpine glow in the homely window. 'The goddess of truth lives in the temple of nature', says
Hckel's 'World-riddle', which so coloured and ennobled material and energy, 'she lives in
the green forest, on the blue sea, on the snow-covered mountain-tops.' In fact to the same
extent that the world of Makart diminished around the turn of the century towards Bcklin,
and in a different way towards Klinger, the overcrowded apartment became more classical
again so to speak, and the Orient was exchanged for pure Mediterranean, though without the
drapery disappearing. The room only put on the white-gold mask as it were; the gaslight was
joined by Csar Flaischlen's 'Sun in the Heart', Carl Larsson's 'House in the Sun' joined the
architecture of the historical novel, in 1895, as a kind of cosmically, but no longer Bengal-lit
form of life. This now resulted in an art nouveau eroticism next to that of the painted markets
of female slaves in Cairo, a 'halcyon' eroticism next to that of the palm-tree in the drawing-
room and the German Renaissance in Turkish. The specific dream-layer that was present
only in the nineteenth century, in which the overcrowded kitsch and all the oddities
mentioned above stood, decorating in a historical-exotic-utopian way, now stocked itself
with more brightly conjured visions but conjured visions nonetheless. A harem heaven had
stood over almost all interior dcor in the nineteenth century, now it becomes oriental Cyprus
in one's own home, in one's own nature-temple exchanged for a secessionist-ancient one
and yet it remains Cyprus as a genre-piece, as exoticism of the century of illusion. This not
least in the prospect which the Hckelian Wilhelm Blsche painted of the nature temple like
a drapery 'of noble nakedness': 'Bright future world of a better Hellenism cleared of its dross;
where decency and nakedness, pure consecration of art and hot scent of the spring of love
can camp together on the common flowery meadow, without disturbing each other, while the
white temple with its sacred curtain before the deepest mysteries of life and thought silently
towered above them into the heavenly blue . . . When will we reach your Isle of the Blest
from the deep shadowy valley of our aberrations?' As is evident, here too the curtain is not
missing, a kind of antique portire which is happily imagined in front of the entrance to the
temple, like tantalizing underwear on a lover or even like the hanging kilim in the earlier
drawing-room, only not thought of as a sail. Such ancient temples with curtains in flowery
meadows did not exist, they are equally dreamed contrast-images from travel pictures. They
were to be found, more white oil-paint than marble, at exhibitions of that time, their
prototype appears as a toy, sometimes in castle gardens of the late Rococo, even in
classicistic
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engravings. In all these cases, even around the turn of the nineteenth century, beautiful
foreign lands still have a decorative effect, namely as the special kind of arranged, posed
utopia. Above all, on the room- and picture-world of the Grnderzeit lay the real curse of the
reproduction (produced by factories), the false blessing of a plush exoticism, of an arcade as
apartment, of a panorama as dcor. There is no gainsaying the rich, Corinthian column, but it
especially must be the most genuine of all; for its place is not the swankiness of the petit-
bourgeois nouveau riche, not blocked lack of imagination, but its surplus.
Aura of Antique Furniture, Magic of Ruins, Museum

Collecting is a particularly complicated way of departing, has always been so. It draws
together, keeps everything with it, borders on acquisitiveness and greed, to this extent it
remains quite narrowly at home. On the other hand, it looks for its material in as wide a field
as possible, roams high and low in search of old equipment, thinks nothing of ruining the
person obsessed with it, to this extent it is sufficiently extrovert. That is contradictory, but
united in the wish to surround itself with what is rare, to have temporally or spatially distant
things as a capsule, as it were. Everything can be collected: buttons, wine-labels, butterflies,
very often stamps. Amongst the rest, the collecting of antique objects, of no longer available
or exotic art is only the most noble form of hunting. The obsession with perfection is also to
be found in the stamp-collector, as much as it is in the collector of porcelain; the wish to have
a set, and that to have a service complete is the same. And rarity determines the price in the
former as well as the latter, whether it is a matter of a variation in perforation or of a Baroque
commode which curves at the sides too, costing half as much again as one that only curves at
the front, around the drawers. With all collector's items the work of the dealer, as a finder of
rarities, is productive (one of the few productive kinds in the business of distribution); with
all of them the competition of the collectors regulates the price. Despite this, art-collecting is
essentially different from the other kinds, because in this field what is rare is at the same time
the unreproducible, the irretrievable. Whereas stamps and similar things are more or less the
same today as they were a hundred years ago, old furniture, velvet, porcelain are
characterized by a lost quality, a vanished handiwork, a sunken culture; and this qualifies
them as rare. In contrast to the monotonous, increasingly
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more monotonous machine-made goods, an unstandardized wealth opens up in the land of

antiques, one which never ceases to be a fresh source of amazement. The simplest faience
plates are already different if the places where they were made were five hours walk apart.
No one oriental carpet, with the exception of Bukhara and Afghan, is like another; there are
as many differences between a Frankfurt and a Danzig cabinet, although they are both
Baroque, as between a yard-gate and the portal of a castle. All this is separated by locality,
commission, convention, but everything is unrepeatably united in solid handiwork, specially
made piece by piece, and everything was linked by a closed, slowly developed culture.
Today's collecting of antiquities thus means a turning away from manufactured goods, a
turning towards an image of the house that has become irretrievable, that was both the most
cosy and the most imaginative. Neither is this collector-Eros weakened by the undeniable
origins of its present form in the previous century, more precisely: in its decorative rooms. It
is not weakened because pleasure in antiques would rather relate to anything other than
swankily dressed-up reproductions and so-called period furniture. Even fake. antiques are
seldom adapted to the needs and decorative wishes of a nouveau fiche swankiness. All
genuine ones, however, are witnesses of a formal certainty destroyed by capitalism, surviving
flotsam from a lost beauty. The embarkation for the land of antiques has nothing whatsoever
to do with romantic-reactionary anti-capitalism, but rather with the realization that late
capitalism was the deadly enemy of art, particularly of that in household fittings. As a
formerly beautifully wrought ensemble, these continue to form their delightful ensemble,
stemming from the same ground, from the same imaginative fertility. All these good pieces
complement each other too, join on to each other, even though still in a mixture, as, to take
examples from architecture, from Wrzburg, from Worms, a side-portal of pure Rococo
joined on seamlessly to a Romanesque cathedral.
It of course remains true that the wish to depart also underlies the collection of genuine old
things. This combines to some extent with the rotten distance-magic of previous times, this
was unknown to the really genuine inhabitant of a really genuine environment. But he did
know the wish which today still forms an important part of the antiquarian sojourn: the wish
to be present in several old periods, distant lands. It is the wish of the Chief Justice in
Andersen's 'Lucky Galoshes' to get to Gothic Copenhagen; the many tales of magic which
transport the adept to ancient Troy or to the distant Ganges are of a similar kind. What a
dream to
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be able to pass a day, only an hour in the porcelain century, let alone in ancient Athens,
Rome, Byzantium, Memphis, Babylon. To be able to walk in the flesh through the old streets
and houses, on a journey backwards in time, against death, behind our own birth. The visitor
finds a reflection of this unnatural wishful image, braced against the course of things, in
Pompeii. And there is certainly a bit of Pompeii in every old wine-jug, alive in the sound of
the Baroque cabinet door slamming in the mighty lock, in the remote gleam of the pewter
plate. This backward journey with wishes is at its wildest, is most full of jumbled reflections
in every good overcrowded antique shop. Balzac describes quite unforgettably a wishful
series or mirror-montage presented in this way in 'The wild ass's skin'. Here a young poet
enters the storehouse, 'intoxicated with life and perhaps already by death', and as such a
voyeur he grasps the cross-section montage, experiences the jumbled spell of the sojourn in
the past, in distance, in the hall of mirrors. 'He had to see the skeletons of twenty worlds . . .
crocodiles, monkeys, giant stuffed snakes grinned at church-windows, seemed to snap at
busts, to want to seize hold of enamelled caskets and to climb on chandeliers. A Svres vase,
on which Madame Jacotot had painted Napoleon, stood next to a sphinx dedicated to
Sesostris . . . instruments of death, daggers, strange pistols and secret weapons were mixed
up in a motley array with the instruments of life: with porcelain soup-dishes, Meissen plates,
transparent Chinese cups, antique salt-cellars and feudal sweet-jars, an ivory ship under full
sail floated on the back of an immobile turtle. An air-pump poked in the eye of Caesar
Augustus, who remained in motionless majesty . . . On this rubbish-heap of the world
nothing was missing, not the calumet of the Indians,* not the green-golden slippers of the
harem, not the Moorish yatagan,** nor the idol of the Tartars. There was everything right
down to the soldier's tobacco-pouch, the priest's ciborium*** and the feather trimming of a
throne. In addition, a thousand capricious lights played over this confusion of images, full of
a wild turmoil of nuances and of the most intense contrast of brightness and darkness. The
ear seemed to hear strangled screams, reason fetched a thousand uncompleted tragedies from
chaos, and the eye imagined it could perceive barely shrouded illumination.' The despair of
the young poet which drove him into the storehouse is stilled, he is transformed into knights
and
*
A Red Indian pipe.
**
A curved Moslem sword.
***
A lidded chalice for the sacraments.
Page 384
bayadres,* into faded wax, iron, sandalwood, round about him a hundred times and spaces
are compressed into a single perspective. 'Soon he became a pirate and surrounded himself
with this man's lugubrious poetry, then he admired delicate miniatures, azure and golden
ornaments which embellished the precious manuscript of a missal, and forgot the excitement
of the sea again. Lulled with thoughts of peace, he once again espoused learning, lay in the
depths of a cell and looked through its lancet window across the meadows, woods and
vineyards of his monastery.' The fantasies described in this way clearly indulge continually in
flotsam-montage, not in the decorative rooms of the second French, let alone German
Empire. Balzac's consternation is not even Romantic, but it is, in a new way, downright
Baroque in its addiction to what is ruined. Balzac's antique shop is a showroom for the past
and for distance, flotsam thus becomes allegoric.
Which means that the things preserved as vanished seem as if they were only now releasing
their final beauty. The weather-beaten aspect then appears, being simply a surface one, like
melancholic-cheerful clearing, like a clearing; thus, in a manneristic way, still discernible in
Balzac, the cult of the ruin arose. Transitoriness, so bewailed in human body and happiness,
acquired at that time, as a formed and also revealed transitoriness, a strange figurative value.
'Resplendent with pale corpses', this provided the end of the Baroque tragedy with its
ornament; the ruins were honoured no differently as such which stared out from antiquity (cf.
Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, 1928, p. 176f.). The whole of Baroque
mannerism reflected the twilight which arose out of the merging of the rising bourgeoisie and
predominant, precarious-mighty neo-feudalism; though admittedly transitoriness, as one
interrupted in its fall, still definitely created form, and hence in no way descended into
nihilism. The ruin thus had to hold the centre course fairly precisely between decay and a line
which was shining through, an only now integral line so to speak; this wavering centre, held
in the balance as it were, made it picturesque, in the Baroque sense. The ruin furthermore
enabled Baroque Christianity to combine the glance into transitoriness with that of a world
on the last day; this mixture of transitoriness and apotheosis made ancient ruins venerable,
not only beautiful. Thus the ruin more of a terror to unbroken ages than a wishful image
became the category in which antiquity became edifying for the first time. And more than
that: a reflection of the many
*
Hindu dancing girls.
Page 385
martyr scenes in the paintings of the Baroque also fell upon the ruins of past beauty. The
Renaissance, when it depicted ruins of ancient temples, had still allowed these to consist of
purely redeemed and as it were demonstrable models. But paintings and engravings of the
two subsequent centuries of Baroque use the ruin precisely to transform the classical model,
as one of proportion and symmetry, in a Baroque way. The ruins became new elements of a
separate, decidedly unclassical emblem, of an allegory of transitoriness, on which eternity
alights. Thus the remains of antiquity were over-beautified in disintegration by Baroque
interpreters, rather than restored into intactness; this even in Piranesi, and all the more so in
the sentimentalizers of antiquity as sunset. Piranesi's 'Vedute di Roma' are very precise, they
want to give a view and were received in this way at the beginning of the Winckelmann
century, but even here the torsos as such, in their elegiacally desirable beauty, are thoroughly
overaccentuated. Even the actual Baroque painters, those of melancholic-drunken
imagination, also set ruins-antiquity where in reality it does not appear at all: Chisolfi's
'Ruins of Carthage' (Dresden) provide an excellent example of this genre around 1650.
Bushes, broken walls, columns which have picturesquely been rolled down and scattered
make the splendour of antiquity through transitoriness especially precious here. If painted
architecture always expresses wishful dreams most freely, then here they are: to have
Christian elegy in the hymn of antiquity. And the sentimentality of 'where the shudders of the
pre-world fan round us' was still a resonance of the Baroque; hence it is populated by
artificial column-stumps, not only on graves, also by artificial ruins in general, as it is in the
castle garden at Schwetzingen. In addition, apart from ancient ruins, those of the medieval
castles now also entered into view, especially suitable for ghosts, alongside antiquarian
edification. Ruins have always been regarded as good lodgings for the departed, even in
antiquity itself and in the Arabian Nights: thus this scenery, particularly when it shifted into
native, Gothic moonshine, became the legitimate setting for the Gothic novel which began
with the eighteenth century. How different these sentimentally contrived ruins seem from the
horribly real ones which the American terror-attacks have left behind. How different too,
however, was the aura at that time, which mere transitoriness and its elegy bestowed, from
the horror which lived without any aura whatsoever (unless it was that of senselessness) in
the deserted gaping windows. How far away, however, the category of antiquity also was at
that time, this category augmented by ruin-magic, indeed ruin-ciphers, from the restoration
concepts of the nineteenth century; how different
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is the devotion to the torso from the drive to its completion. Soon after 1820 when the Venus
de Milo was ploughed up, and throughout the whole of the century, the missing arms were
reproduced in more than a hundred reconstructions ex ingenio; the Baroque would have had
its edification precisely from the torso, that of transitoriness and of the final light on it. But of
course in important respects the ruin vision remains even today, outside the transfigured
facies hippocratica: as in the pathos of patina, as in that of block-unity. The wishful pathos of
patina extends from iridescent glasses to the gold tone of Paestum, from weathered roof-tiles
(monk and nun) to the noble green bronze; this pathos wants the time that has flown since
then, wants it like old wine or like the evening of a life wellspent. In a different way,
however, quite unromantically, but also not ungrateful to destruction, love of block-unity
reveres the influence of time, namely in the sculptural-Greek field: the armless Venus de
Milo appears here as more strict form compared with the illusionistic form of the complete
original. Thus precious flotsam can indicate meanings everywhere, which it raises above its
original state and previous, in fact everyday context. This most powerfully in empty ages; it
was no accident that the museum itself, developing from the princely treasury, first rose in
the nineteenth century to its instructive, admired-reminding splendour. Antiquity as a whole:
it is largely of course something irretrievable, a Vineta under the waters of the past. But it is
also, in the age of machine-made goods and formalistic Bauhaus-impotence,* which so
proudly superseded the decorative impotence of the nineteenth century a utopian sign. A
reminding-utopian sign of what fullness, what ornament, what effectively encompassing
imagination was, and not merely was, but unceasingly is. Even a real new creation will and
must as such also have antiquity within it, working with and continuing to work beyond
it, obviously, not copying it. The degree of newness makes a work important, but the degree
of antiquity makes it precious, and in the work that claims as well as leaves a cultural
inheritance both determinations go hand in hand. The machine created other conditions to the
manually-skilled conditions from which all antiques derive, but just as little as the
capitalistically produced machine-man of today will remain, just as little are machine-made
goods, which only correspond to the general mechanical response and its lack of ideas, the
last word. 'Surgical tongs for
*
Bauhaus. A German artistic school founded in 1910 in Weimar by Walther Gropius, which attempted
to break down the barriers between architecture and the fine and applied arts and to encourage the co-
operation of art, science and technology. It was closed by Hitler in 1932.
Page 387
delivering babies must be smooth, but sugar-tongs certainly must not' (Geist der Utopie,
1918, p. 22); every true artist loves ornament, even if an epoch which has been so decimated
by mechanical response and kitsch does not yet love the genuine ornament in return. The
purification of the atrocities of the nineteenth century is presupposed, this certainly as
conditio sine qua non, but beyond this purification a world of expression stands as a task, a
world which continues the fullness of what has become antique, does not destroy it. An
intense will towards colour, form and ornament, even though in no way already blessed or
even freed from the epigonism of epigonism, pervades the world freed from the mechanical
response. It demonstrates that the light which has shone throughout history until the intrusion
of the machine-made commodity, and fills all our museums, has not been extinguished in the
Bauhaus and similar hollow cheering. The more drastic the architectural pseudo-progress,
namely into nothingness, the more antiques become in the old wishful image a new forget-
me-not, a non-romantic one. The reality which is now in progress has enough pre-appearance
against all loans on the security of the nineteenth century to be able to produce creations
of as yet unknown human expression. It is the sign of something poorly built, therefore of
most of the new gadgets and streets, that it cannot grow old, but only rots in the course of the
years. And equally it is the sign of something innately precious that after an appropriate time
it joins up with the great old inheritance and is worthy of it.
Castle Garden and the Buildings of Arcadia

It is now infinitely beautiful here, yesterday evening, as we stole through the lakes, canals and woods, I was
very moved to see how the gods had allowed the Prince to create a dream around himself. When one passes
through it, it is like a fairytale that is being read aloud, and has quite the character of the Elysian fields . . .
Goethe 1778 to Charlotte von Stein about the English park in Dessau
There is no cheerful house which does not stand in greenery or cannot look out on to it. The
open air belongs to it, above all the open air shaped in accordance with our wishes: the
garden. It collects and arranges the flowers, tames rock and water, provides walls which open
by themselves. The garden belongs to the stroll and incorporates it, it belongs to a wife and to
Cythera. It was no accident that the Arabian garden adjoined the
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harem, a landscape of love, surprise and peace. To this end it was enlivened by shade and
nook, by playing waterspouts and kiosks, there was no lack of oddities. The park of the
Baghdad caliphs contained brooks made of tin, a pond filled with mercury, all around hung
golden cages with blinded nightingales which also sang in the daytime, aeolian harps
murmured in the trees. The walls of the love-pavilion were perforated like ivory filigree,
through them shone the turquoise, oriental sky. Mazes were popular, mirror effects which
increased the pleasures of love (the most famous were in the castle gardens of Arabian
Palermo, even Rome had already fetched such arts from the ancient Orient). And just as the
beautiful woman is bedecked with silver bangles and chains, so too the oriental garden with
metalwork, glass flowers, jade from China a fine pleasure-dream of nature itself, of nature
as woman. The second blossoming of the garden then came in the Baroque; the interest of
western absolutism in oriental despotism at the same time caused it to reach into the Arabian
imagination. This above all in the castle gardens of the seventeenth and eighteenth century,
despite the new element of representation which had become a pressing requirement. This
new element then prevailed in the second heyday of all garden-art, in its Baroque heyday, but
it never completely prevailed. The Baroque park became the measured, geometrically
measured-out stage for ceremonial festivals, but also for a nature which overacts all over the
place. It had to behave as a peripheral zone of the court, half mathematical entity, half tamed
fantasy; it was panorama. Barbaric-comic excesses revealed themselves here which
corresponded to the Baroque wish to form emblems out of each and every thing: Adam and
Eve in yew, St George in box-wood, a dragon with a tail of creeping ivy, prominent poets in
laurel. But equally the Baroque garden created the non plus ultra of what the society of that
time wished and imagined from a nature 'sans la barbe limoneuse', although with full-
bottomed wig. This was, however, imitation of the opera. It was moreover still illuminated
nature, not only posed scenery, in the sense intended by a nobleman of the time who said he
loved nature; because it was both a perfect and rational bafflement, great veduta, as a mixture
of ancient circumstances and oriental moods, in short, as an ensemble of both convention and
strangeness. The Rococo caused the representation at work in all this to vanish, it even
removed the full-bottomed wig from nature, but the oriental mood remained even in
Arcadian apparel. Marble wishful images were a new addition, whose allegory had been
defused to so-called dalliance: Cupid and the Graces, goat-footed Pans embracing nymphs,
voluptuous rape of maidens. All in
Page 389
reduced form reminiscent of porcelain and childlikeness, under a leafy canopy, next to a
dreamily trickling spring, inviting imitation, a Jardin Eden in amorous fashion, hidden in
quiet boskets. In reality here in fact, as in the oriental garden, the harem came out into the
open air, augmented by extraordinary refinement only attainable in a Catholic context. And
in the Baroque park, sentimental Orient is recognizable even without its refinement, at least
when this wishful world is once again concentrated, i.e. painted. Through the Baroque garden
world of high antiquity, as which Claude Lorrain and the heroic Poussin portrayed the
Southern landscape, peeps a thoroughly eastern-ancient Mediterranean; it peeps through in
the bright gold light behind shining bushes, it peeps through even in the colonnaded temples
and ruins which all appear like Palmyra, not like Rome. Veduta is also extremely prevalent in
the Baroque garden, chappe de vue into the infinite, but also into nook and fullness. Nature
appears as a pre-ordered adventure of representation and pleasure, with a magic castle in the
middle.
Thus houses were extended in the most delightful way by a green which did not grow
anywhere in this form by itself. Even the apparent turning away from the artificial
conception, which was an artistic one, did not do away with this kind of garden. The turning
away from the French garden happened around 1750 on account of the ever more powerfully
advancing bourgeois life; the English so-called natural style began. But even the English
park tended its wilderness as a very cultivated one, and it kept man in the landscape, the
landscape for man. Of course the English park, even the one in the Rococo which is still
often mixed with the French, appears to distance itself from the castle, also it is not supposed
to have any more borders against wild nature. The middle-mountain garden was once more
preferred to the garden artificially laid out on the plain: Romanticism announced itself, the
Heidelberg landscape began to be discovered, Lake Zurich, the garden nature supposedly for
itself, apparently without human intervention. But what arose in this way was once again not
given, but wishful nature throughout, that of Addison and Pope, then above all of Rousseau,
that of an Arcadia that had become sentimental, and the English park was its prelude. It
distanced itself from castle and house only in so far as it formed a new parterre in meadows
and woods, in weeping willows, reedy lakes and urns, namely one for the sensitive
construction or Romantic house of the whole world. That nature in its original, perfect state
was a garden: this biblical idea now became the pagan one, it pervaded an Elysian dream.
Even wilderness, the apparently most extreme anti-pole
Page 390
to the world of men and plants, was incorporated in Rousseauism in this way, even if only on
the roundabout route of Romanticism. 'The garden', says Friedrich Schlegel in this vein, 'in
this symbolic-artistic sense is already an enhanced, beautified and transfigured state; in
wilderness, however, it is real nature itself whose feeling fills us with that deep sorrow which
at the same time has something so wonderfully attractive about it' the attractive aspect of
absorption, indeed isolation, which enjoys itself living to itself. Gradually even deserts and
icy mountains had a place in it, already from the time of Haller's poem about the Alps.* They
were endowed with eeriness, they lay at the edges where nature falls down into ancient
chaos, but also where it stretches over the inhabited borders into the solitary and sublime.
The English garden as architectural creation could of course no longer indicate this kind of
thing, but its lay-out loved such twilights or crumblings of habit, it even built follies, which it
took over from Baroque, in solitude, remoteness. One garden in transition from Rococo to
English lay-out gives us a particularly instructive and as it were encyclopaedic impression
here: the most beautiful, the castle garden at Schwetzingen. Alongside reedy lakes and urns,
the attempt was made here to bring together what is worthy of memory in the world by using
dummies and faades, a green showroom. But a showroom which once again only revealed
expressed moods and wishful images, a natural treasure-house of purely artificial and
sentimental treasures. Green yew and white gods, voliere *** and secluded bathing-hut,
temple of Apollo and mosque all these wishful constructions of the earliest montage are
combined. There is a temple of Mercury, one of Minerva (with an underground chamber, as
cult-space of 'wisdom'), an artificial ruin, a temple to Botany and a Roman water-castle all
transferred from the theatre of the Baroque or Rococo into the open park. This was the
pleasure garden of great gentlemen, the space for courtly nature festivals and promenades,
but equally a lingering air of a fantastic abduction and remoteness lies over it. Susanna's aria
in 'The Marriage of Figaro' lives precisely in this region, the nobility of Mozart's music
resounds in such gardens close beside an extravagance which makes out of history,
mythology, foreign zones its sentimental and curious panorama. Even Voltaire wrote in 1768
to Collini about the most beautiful of these parks: 'Before I die I want to fulfil one more duty
and enjoy one more consolation: I want to see Schwetzingen again, this idea governs
*
Albrecht von Haller, 'Die Alpen', 1729.
**
An aviary.
Page 391
my entire soul.' And under all the construction-masks with which such gardens were
provided, there was always one missing, that of the church. Precisely in place of this, Arcadia
was to be dressed up or symbolized in sensory form: in the Baroque garden an Arcadia with
curiosity, in the English garden one with zephyr, crescent moon and nocturno.
Wild Weather, Apollo by Night

There is also a way of defamiliarizing things when reading. And in fact into the very region
where it blows and whispers and ominous things happen. This kind of thing admittedly lies a
long way from the refined evening sensibility of the English garden, but still has the sensitive
element, coarsened, now and then even deepened, within it. This has now become a
completely bourgeois pleasure, it is absorbed through reading, so it can take place in the
armchair, very easily in fact. Not only the previous century achieved considerable things in
the reading enjoyment of shudders under the cosy lamp. The warm study made people
doubly receptive to wild weather outside and to the events they read about to which this
weather whistled. Rough wind served to abduct the reader into circumstances which
curiously belong to the anti-fireside of total foreignness. This abduction usually occurs even
at the beginning of such stories; the deserted house, 'spine-chilling twilight' are desirable for
this. At best, unfriendly world per se, November nights, screams, weird even ghostly events
offer themselves, astonishingly, to the warmth of the outlook. Wishes land here although
possibly still at a much reduced price which are not entirely dissimilar to those which once
gave the impetus to the world of Ossian, to stormy wind, heath, fog, groaning carried away
on the wind. Most effectively at work in the wishes here is the touch of shock and rough-
night, indeed anxiety-wish, which we dealt with above (cf. p. 85), the 'countersense of primal
words', which is always dialectical. Without this, without the mixed emotion, in fact mixed
object which is at work in shuddering, the props for night-horror would not be so full of
veiled pleasure. Because the defamiliarization is also fulfilled by them which constitutes the
totally sensational relish of horror: the Gothic novel. Its particular bad weather begins in the
age of Ossian, it first announces itself in Horace Walpole's 'Castle of Otranto' in 1764,
extends to E. T. A. Hoffmann where it is always the witching hour. But also to Jean Paul
whose 'Titan' turns on flickering light and Hades as generously as it does
Page 392
sun, Alps and Rome. Edgar Allan Poe would certainly not have been thinkable without such
sojourn in the last gleam of the evening light and in the night which has set in. Travel images
of this kind live in a grotto, as it were in the sea-grotto in which according to the Nordic saga
salt is ground, not Attic but Gothic salt. Bitter water and night stream through the landscape,
the scenery becomes furnished Niflheim. * Dark corridor and staircase, night, cemetery, owls,
clocks, uncertain light, mysterious noise, trapdoors, Gothic rooms, hiding place per se, eerie
portraits with all too lively eyes: this ensemble predominantly fills the Gothic novel, is its
essence. And time and again the peculiar wishful happiness in horror remains essential to its
spirit: 'It was indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its
terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there
were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density
of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent
our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all points against
each other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did
not prevent our perceiving this yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars nor was there
any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated
vapour, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural
light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and
enshrouded the mansion' (Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher). Thus acclimatized as never
before, the atavisms of the spirit world also loom into the Gothic novel, with pale or sooty
fire, with slurping and knocking, with cheap-precious and in any case disparate magic. The
strangest mirror is opened up here, but as always it phosphoresces, it shows something
uncanny in experience too. Precisely this glance, at work in Hoffmann in the midst of the
most precise description of his Biedermeier world, constitutes Hoffmann's peculiar realism.
One which shows so incisively the distance between the average misery of existence and the
images of hope, but which also, when it demonizes this misery and localizes the images of
hope, reveals a dimension in the real world which causes the Gothic novel and the images of
hope in it not only to be confined here as sociological realism with entertaining style all
around it. Rather: forgotten border-situations emerge in the dejected cleanliness, the hot
punch
*
The realm of cold in Norse mythology, an underworld of the dead.
Page 393
of the Biedermeier situations; Hoffmann reports all the things that may still slip through from
the abandoned sectors, infiltrate everyday life, exposing them with humour. Midnight is at
any time of day for this Hoffmann, but at the same time men are neither hopelessly enslaved
by the so-called gruesomeness of the spirit world, nor does its spell in fact retain the last
word. But even the wildest goings-on awaken clever counterforces as in the fairytale; they
turn remoteness into what is bright, into the ether which appears especially blue in its foil of
night, into humanism. Thus the justiciary in 'The Estate', a genuine horror-story, casts
departed Daniel back into the void again, thus the Archivarius Lindhorst in 'The Golden Pot'
conquers the Hecate apple-wife and carries defamiliarization forward into the light of a
cloudless Atlantis. This is objective opposite direction to horror in the antique journey of the
Gothic novel.
29
Wishful Image in the Dance;
Pantomime and Filmland
Nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus.*
Horace
Hippolyta: But all the story of the night told over,

And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy;
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Also what dances wants to become different and depart there. We are the vehicle ourselves,
combined with our partner or with our group. The body moves to a beat which lightly
intoxicates us and at the same time brings us into a measure. Wooing and fleeing above all, a
movement which always gives a hint of sexual movement, this constitutes a basic feature of
the social dance, and the more coarsened this is, the more evident it is. But it is not exhausted
by this, another step or whirl is imitated too, brought into form, the dainty, the measured step,
and in many preserved folk-dances, particularly Russian ones, that of joy after work is done.
But also in the sexual dance there is something lifted, something lifted away which makes
itself visibly felt, becomes feelingly
*
Odes I, 37, 'Now we must dance without restraint.'
Page 394
visible. The dance allows us to move in a completely different way to the way we move in
the day, at least in the everyday, it imitates something which the latter has lost or never even
possessed. It paces out the wish for more beautifully moved being, fixes it in the eye, ear, the
whole body, just as if it already existed now. Light, exhilarated or strict, in every case the
body steps out differently here, into something different. And a drive remains to carry on
going within it more and more strongly.
New Dance and Old

Where everything is disintegrating though, the body also contorts itself effortlessly along
with it. Nothing coarser, nastier, more stupid has ever been seen than the jazz-dances since
1930. Jitterbug, Boogie-Woogie, this is imbecility gone wild, with a corresponding howling
which provides the so to speak musical accompaniment. American movement of this kind is
rocking the Western countries, not as dance, but as vomiting. Man is to be soiled and his
brain emptied; he has even less idea amongst his exploiters where he stands, for whom he is
grafting, what he is being sent off to die for. But turning to the real dance, out of the same
disintegration which in wide circles brought up the American filth, a kind of movement of
purification emerged in significantly narrower ones. It did not direct itself against jazz
though, for the simple reason that it had already begun before the First World War. It
directed itself, in conjunction with the simultaneous reform of arts and crafts, against the
milder disintegration, against the uglifications of the nineteenth century to which jazz then
added the final hideousness. The new schools of dance developing from Isadora Duncan,
then from Dalcroze, attempted to demonstrate a more beautiful human image in the flesh;
whereby they certainly began the building from a high roof, and consequently had to be
extremely 'ideological'. As one among many let us remember the Loheland School, if only
because it sought to be the natural school. It looked at the beautiful animals with their
superbly fit stride well-suspended within them. It was intent on breaking down from top to
bottom the purposely concealed or frozen posture which the master-servant relationship
brought with it. The limbs were encouraged, in courses which no longer wished to have
anything in common with the learning of manners, not even with chivalrous attitudes, into
Page 395
unconstricted movement 'playing round the body's centre'. In the audience, women as well as
men, particularly after the First World War and in Germany, looked delightedly into the
mirror in front of which and in which such studied dancers moved. A new kind of
Bohemianism, a so to speak naturally stylish, slimly fencer-like one became the decorative
fashion at that time; it did at least create a new type of woman and actor. Forms were adopted
and performed through which people seemed trained in freedom. Though the best that was
sought after so artificially in those days could have been found at any time in the only place
where people moved naturally in the folk-dance. It alone really stands on the ground which
the progressively degenerating bourgeois dance of recuperation has lost. And it does not need
arts and crafts to remember the so-called centre of the body, to be well-suspended in the
body. Peasant regions preserved this dance for a long time, even after the capitalist
destruction of traditional costumes, the devastation of festival customs; a new socialist love
of homeland animates it again and makes it true. The folk-dance always has a national
flavour and thus, if it remains genuine, cannot be transposed at all. Unless as witness and
measure of every uncorrupted successful group-expression of drive-images and wishful
images. Whether German Lndler, Spanish Bolero, Polish Krakowiak or Russian Hopak, the
form is exact and comprehensible, the content it signifies is joy beyond the day of drudgery.
The calmness and boisterousness both say: Here I am human, here I am entitled to be.* And a
human being with human beings in the group, a rhythmically moved form-sequence in
unison. Individual boys and girls may of course step forward at any time, whole dances can
serve to represent selected sagaheroes, like the Georgian one of the Mountain Eagle, but the
group remains essential even then, absorbing, enclosing the movements again. Every folk-
dance is thus agreement, the time of the common, of the common field is still remembered in
it, together with ancient pantomimic forms.
The whole body always participates here, gives itself up to the flow. But even dance which
was only posed in an artificial posture did not die out at the same time. It lives in the exact
ballet, of courtly origin, originally highly remote from the folk-dance, but also incompatible
with the arts and crafts of the new dance which had prided itself so much on relaxed
movement. What a contrast to the body playing around
*
Cf. 'Faust', Part I, 940.
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its centre, in the Loheland School, and to everything similar which might billow as a kind of
artificial nature. The ballet has no longing for this whatsoever, but rather a longing for the
gracefully or illustriously controlled posture which once accorded with Rococo and even
Empire style, chiefly with refined suffering and cool jubilation. The expression of both goes
silently on tip-toe, in a cloud of gauze and powder. The classical ballet puts a truly
spiritualized handiwork alongside, or better, against mere circling around the centre of one's
own body. Because it sketches out a human landscape where both the centre of gravity of the
body and also gravity are missing; even the ground is denied. It is curious here that the light-
exact element which distinguishes this completely artificial dance coincides with the
mechanical; Kleist's essay on the puppet-theatre significantly borders on the ballet on this
point. Admittedly, according to Kleist, the puppeteer puts himself completely into the centre
of gravity of his puppets and lets their curving movements play around it, and yet 'these
puppets have the advantage of defying gravity'. This succeeds even more perfectly here than
in the elfin-spirit way the ballet strives for when it denies the ground: 'The puppets only need
the ground, like the elves, in order to brush it and to animate the swing of their limbs afresh
through the momentary impediment; we need it in order to rest on it and to recover from the
exertion of the dance: a moment which is obviously not a dance itself and with which nothing
more can be done than to make it disappear as soon as possible.' Kleist further grounds the
superiority of the puppet in the fact that the consciousness which it lacks has caused much
disorder in the natural grace of man. And with this he is in no way aiming at irrational
prejudices, but in fact at the mechanical quality which the puppet possesses, and which lends
it grace at the same time as exactness. And this perfect grace is only supposed to fall to man
again on the other side of knowledge, after a complete traversing of consciousness and of
knowledge. Now, even though ballet is far removed from this kind of traversing, its complete
Ratio shows what is to be represented, depicted here in fact with that grace which like the
puppets seems to have abolished gravity. Elegant proof, that is not a mechanical but rather a
mathematical concept, much more a point of honour; the cooled Ratio of the ballet is
therefore graceful and precise in one. Thus the 'Dying Swan' of Pavlova, as far as the
expressive-essential element in the exact is concerned, conceived something white, pure, frail
in appearance, and in Japanese ballet even a battle is expressed only by a few sparingly
descriptive gestures with
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the fan. The ballet is the school of every thought-out dance; it is no coincidence that it is
flourishing in the Soviet Union together with the folk-dance, this other colourful-peasant
genuineness. And in such a way that, according to the practical theoretician Moisseyev,
without this folk-dance the way the Soviet ballet expresses itself today would not be possible
at all. The folk-dance (with its pantomimic-dramatic devices) and the always non-dramatic
ballet can also be used in succession, in the same 'dance-poem', according to the wishful
emotions and the sequence of the action. The Soviet ballet (because the balletic aspect
remains dominant even in the mixed form) thus shows no stylistic break. The gestural-rich
expression of the folk-dance and the sparing-precise expression of the ballet unite
realistically in the action to be depicted.
New Dance as Formerly Expressionist Dance, Exoticism

Where everything is disintegrating, the path into foreignness is or was never missing. It was
even weakly pursued in the Loheland School, towards the beautiful, well-suspended animals,
with their superbly fit stride. But the playing around the centre of the body and the like was
not sufficient where the 'posture' striven for by a large part of bourgeois youth began to run
wild. Where a rebellion against the image of man presented by the bourgeois was no
rebellion at all, not even where the apparent rebellion did not become its fascist opposite.
There were here, in the reflex of the dance, curious formations, shallow- and certainly also
unclear-irrational ones in which a rapport was sought with uncontrolled otherness, with
uncivilized foreignness. This still seemed bourgeois-conformist in Impekoven when she
danced unrecognizably tarted-up genre pictures. The same thing became banal and crazy in
so-called Eurhythmics, an anthroposophic dance-school full of dervishes and dervishesses
from the parlour, but very cosmic, as it was fashionable to say at the time. Here the so-called
ethereal body was supposed to be developed in the dancers, in addition the solar plexus and
interrelation with the so-called cosmic forces of becoming. To this end, in a more than literal
way, poems were danced, in such a way that symbolic movement corresponded to each
vowel so to speak an astrological exercise of the most insipid kind, yet in fact, together
with the whole of anthroposophy, banally and irrationally effective. Foreignness in the
geographical sense, but at the same time archaic foreignness was shown in the dance-
landscape which was offered by Sent M'ahesa. This was
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ethnologically and above all arty-crafty-mythically decorated, fundamentally wrong, but

fitted the wish for exoticism in Red Indian, Siamese, Indian copy-dances. There remains
Mary Wigman or genuine Expressionism in the dance-picture, incomparable with the above,
with irrational bourgeois conformity. Wigman most advanced the limits of expression of the
dance, much about this advanced dance and its imaginary scenes was merely evocative, but
little was abstract, nothing was empty. The landscape which on the beat of the gong spreads
out around the new dance seemed filled here with a characteristic merging of Niflheim and
Baghdad in which, we could say, a Hoffmann world moved seen through the eyes of Chagall.
This world was even there when Wigman danced Bizet's Arlsienne, and, highly improved
Hoffmann, the genre-picture of Saint-Sans' Danse macabre. In addition of course Wigman,
together with her school, with her mist-flame nature, also participated in the night-side of
Expressionism, which it manifested as banished as flown, as flown as banished alongside
its utopian glare or brightness. And the whole dimension of dance in the original itself, not
merely in its imitations belonged to a Dionysian element in the ambiguous sense; just as
this kind of new dance would never have come about without Nietzsche. Here is Dionysus
who called down to the dance of the murderers, and for whom in the end even negro-
sculpture was only a roundabout route to the blond beast. Here is the other Dionysus who
praised the dance against the spirit of gravity,* who in admittedly more vague dithyrambs
praised the god of life, against the mechanical response of reduction and denaturing: 'My
wise longing thus screamed and laughed out of me which was born on the mountains, truly a
wild wisdom! my great roaring-winged longing.'** Even this kind of roaring of wings, at its
very short end, partly carried not to distant seas, but into the local bloodlake of fascism; for
which this kind of roaring of wings was already foreseeable in its imperialist premises.
Nevertheless there is ambivalence in Dionysus and thus also in Expressionist, even
exoticizing dance, which without the pathos of this god of life would not have gone into
ecstasy either. Not into the decorative kind and even
*
Nietzsche used this term consistently in 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' to denote the type of leaden
consciousness man must give up if he is to become the superman. It would not have escaped Bloch's
attention that it is used by Zarathustra in connection with the dance in 'The dance-song': 'A dance and
scorn-song of scorn on the spirit of gravity . . .', and this may account for Nietzsche's appearance at this
point. The Spirit of Gravity is also a section heading in Part 3 of 'Thus Spake Zarathustra'.
**
'Thus Spake Zarathustra', 'Of old and new tables', Part Three.
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less into genuine ecstasy which equally wanted to portray oppressed life with creeping,
panting, crouching as it did liberated life with the roaring of wings. Thus the Wigman-world,
admittedly as the only and most genuine one from the Expressionist dance age, was also free
of blood on its night-side, and was a figure-formation which strove out of the darkness
inflicted on it as well as out of its own, with rich imagination, into the brightness. From
original dance-creations of this type an inheritance may be claimed which sets them once
again, differently on their feet, on those which know which way to go.
Ritual Dance, Dervishes, Blessed Circles

The dance was always the first and most bodily form of setting out. To another place than the
regular one where we find ourselves a regular. And in fact the primitive dancer feels himself
universally enchanted, bones and all. His dance begins orgiastically, but is also supposed to
be an instrument which carries him a long way away. Because even if the possessed man gets
beside himself, he is also hoping to transform himself into the powers which are lodged
outside him, outside the tribe and its huts in the bush, in the desert, in the sky. With the mask
depicting the demons he makes these demons visibly present, he becomes the tree-spirit,
spirit of the leopard, rain-god; at the same time, however, by imagining he is inside these
gods, the dancer also wants to draw their powers over to man. By the consecrated place on
which the ritual dance proceeds, seed, harvest, war are supposed to be protected from their
evil demons, surrounded by their favourable or favourably disposed ones. Drum-beat,
handclapping, monotonously raving chant intensify the trance in which horror itself is
supposed to help and is incorporated. And not only the mask is important, but in fact the
dance which moves it, in whose leaps it shakes itself and makes procession. Nothing is
arbitrary here, every step is schooled and prescribed, but no different from the way
convulsions are not arbitrary, and the possessed man has no gesture free. Magic dance is
schooling in these convulsions, it is thoroughly demonic and wants to be so. Its vehicles are
without consciousness in a deliberate fashion and wild in regulated fashion.
It always haunts the dance that it belongs to the night and began with it. The Greeks, of
course, invented the measure, the raving aspect seems to lie not only beneath them but also
behind them. But even in their case it returned in the horde of bacchantes who swarmed out
almost mysteriously
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in the spring. Almost mysteriously in a culture whose visible and clandestine aspect,
precisely in terms of movement, is constituted in a completely different way, in terms of the
will towards measure in an exactly similar way to how Goethe sees or longs for it:
When the Graces secretly come down from Olympus,
to join the rows of nymphs, gathered in sacred moonlight:
Here the poet listens to them and hears the lovely songs,
Sees the mysterious movement of secret dances.
The Maenads, however, at home far behind the nymphs, of all this showed only eerie,
Dionysian movement of secret dances. The arms of the Maenads were wound round with
snakes, and their tread invoked the underworld Bacchus with the double sex and the bull's
head. But admittedly the depictive movement around the gods of night, fertility and the abyss
vanished to the same extent that the Dionysian abyss was built over. And this not only in
Greece, but also in the Near Eastern countries with their equally, in fact most blatantly
orgiastic dance-rites, night-cults. The abyss was built over in two ways, matrilinearly and
patrilinearly; this produced new and diverse magical dances, but they were united in their
attempted turning away from the merely orgiastic. The Phrygian dances were constructed
matrilinearly-chthonically around the tree of life, they even live on in the May-dances which
were spread across the whole earth. In these the couples held long colourful ribbons tied
around the maypole, the ribbons wound and unwound in the movement of the dance, which
was thus supposed to depict the interweaving of becoming, fading, new becoming. The
couples participated with their ribbon-dance in this chthonic weaving, which was considered
to be happy or wished to be so. But the temple-dances of Babylon were constructed
patrilinearly-uranically, they reflected an ascent on to the seven planet-levels of the heavens,
and also a shedding of the seven 'veils' of these spheres, so that the soul can come pure to the
highest God. A memory of this no longer chthonic, but cosmic pantomimicry has been
preserved in Islam, in the dance of the dervishes. The trance is considered here as
preparation, as the reclothing of the soul so to speak in order to be able to take part in the
round dance of the houris, in fact of the angels. The houris were not only regarded as the
heavenly maidens in this order however, but in fact as the star-spirits who in quite
Babylonian, quite Chaldean fashion direct human destinies. By penetrating depictively into
the rotation of the houris, the dervish is therefore attempting to conform to
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the stars, to reflect in motor fashion their rotation in his own dance figures, he is attempting
to absorb the effusion of the primum agens around which the stars themselves are circling.
Ibn Tofail explained this in the twelfth century by saying that the dervishes, whose order
began around the same time, 'take the heavenly circling motions as a duty upon themselves'.
By doing this they believed they could ultimately draw down a reflection of divine
movement upon themselves, no longer demonic, but sidereal, devoted to the external sky, to
astrology. In all of this, matrilinearly as well as patrilinearly, earth-mythically as well as
astral-mythically, the ancient orgiastic trance is so clearly tempted to overform. So visibly
also in these cults outside Christianity, however, shamanistic elements still balanced out the
law of the day.
The dance found it more difficult to get going, though, when the body itself was no longer
supposed to interrupt it. Christianity repressed in its intention not only the sensual but also
the religious dance. Misgivings about it, at least as a trance-like dance, already begin with the
Jews: dance belongs to the priests of Baal. They froth, they leap around the altar (1 Kings 18,
26), they have their dervishes, and even the Jewish 'company of prophets' at the time of Saul
appeared as dervishes, beating tabrets and ecstatic (1 Sam. 10, 5); they were despised for this
very reason. And for this very reason people asked in astonishment: 'Is Saul also among the
prophets?' (1 Sam. 10, 12); the latter were at that time still considered to be heathenly
possessed. Even though alongside this or above it, with high honour, David's dance before
the Ark of the Covenant is reported, not only Michal, his wife, felt this to be a degradation,
but David himself admits his degradation to her (2 Sam. 6, 22), although with its sacred signs
reversed, as trance before Yahweh. This sanctification, however, was absent in early
Christianity and in the Church; the dance flourished in the Middle Ages as a courtly dance
and as folk-dance, but not as a liturgical one. 'It is permitted to nobody', a council of 680
decrees, 'to perform games and dances which, inspired by the devil, the heathens invented';
the gestures of the body are no longer the place for the transcending spiritual motion to make
its home. The prescribed steps of the Catholic priests before the altar did in fact perhaps
contain a memory of Roman temple dances, but it is reduced to the most sparing symbolic
hints, and the procession has a stiff stride. Ecstatic dance only breaks out irregularly, as in the
case of the flagellants at the time of the Black Death, and is then convulsive. In the next
world, however, there are blessed circles, as Fra Angelico painted them; as a wishful being of
movement for which
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the earthly body is weighed and found too heavy.* The movements of the blessed and of the
angels were above all defined in such a way that they do not take place in space, but carry
their moving-space with them, in fact first form it. The place, says Thomas Aquinas with
such highly remarkable utopia of motion (perfectio motus), is surrounded by the angel, not
the angel by the place, the angels are extended in a virtual, not in a corporeal way. Hence the
heavenly dance was thought of as one without steps and distances, as flight which does not
need continually to measure its length, and which, being immaterial, no longer knows any
effort and any separating space. But this kind of thing is not built for man; the only Christian
dance was imagined as heavenly, not as earthly. The wishful image of a dance of this kind
persisted, could not however unlike the dances of the participation magique evoke or
become human movement. It still lived on in the Baroque, here in fact particularly vividly
when it painted its jubilantly hovering angels on the dome; but this canonical hovering is
hardly achievable in the dream for unwinged men walking in the flesh. It is no coincidence
then that every more recent attempt at an art of dance has also been considered unchristian or
conversely: the gravity-free flying of those who are walking in the flesh takes on and takes
up in the ballet affinities with something as wholly unspiritual as the puppet represents.
Thus the continuing and definitely unclosed art of dance always acts as one which affirms the
body transformed in a highly earthly way; whether it draws on folklore or on the tradition of
courtly dances of which the ballet is the last. Though true new art of dance can only arise if a
well-founded reason for joy is present, shared by the spectator, for 'nunc pede libero pulsanda
tellus'. The most substantiated joy arises with the storming of the Bastille and its
consequences, free people on free ground; it did not exist before this storming and will not
exist without it.
The Deaf and Dumb and the Significant Pantomime

The dance needs no words, it does not want to sing either. What it draws in the air, in the
unknown region, lies beneath language or is remote from it. If it lies beneath language, then,
wherever the dance is disposed towards communication, especially also in groups, the usual
pantomime arises. It seems as if it is deaf and dumb, has been like this for a long time, as if
*
Cf. Daniel 5, 27: 'Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting'. Bloch is reversing the
German idiom derived from this biblical passage, 'weighed and found too light'.
Page 403
the other limbs were slaving away only as substitute for the tongue. This begins even in such
graceful figures as Pierrot and Colombine, but it culminates as soon as no gesture can say
more than: 'I love you' or: 'I hate you' or at most: 'I am consumed by jealousy.' In ancient
mime, which was astonishingly elaborate and powerful, this gesture was significantly more
expressive and meaningful, particularly in the East Asian kind. This did not derive from the
fact that people were still closer to a supposedly more primitive gestural language here,
which preceded spoken language. Spoken language, as the basis of thought, first developed
with mental activity the ability to express itself also wordlessly and mimically. At least to be
able to express itself so much more richly, variously, above all more in the mime of a
situation than the speechless animals. Thus the reason for the outstanding mime of the
Mediterranean peoples, compared with that of the North, lies in the preserved interaction
here between spoken language and gestural language. And the gestural language, which is
only developed in human-mental terms after spoken language, could thus cultivate an
expression outside language here, because in the South for one thing plastic embodiment is
stronger and because for another the emotion-expression at least in the middle class, not to
mention the lower class was not cut back or stunted. 'Every spiritual excitation has by
nature its mien and gesture (quendam vultum et gestum)', says Cicero on this subject in very
Southern fashion in his book about the orator. And although the Greeks did not particularly
foster the pantomime, the spiritual excitation was nevertheless so closely connected with
corporeal performance for them that Aristotle characteristically dealt with the emotions not
so much in his work on the soul as in that concerning rhetoric. Because, as still today in the
Mediterranean peoples, it is the emotions which chiefly expressed themselves, in fact
explained themselves in oratorical mimic expression. Even the Baroque did not eradicate
gestural language from the standpoint of its predominantly Italian origin, but quite the
contrary, it exaggerated it; thus the Baroque launched pantomime in a big way. The Italians,
but also the French at that time developed an entire so-called dictionary of nature concerning
gestures and attitudes; though Batteux again, in his otherwise so rationalist theory of art,
stressed that gestural language was readily comprehensible to uncivilized peoples, even to
animals. The thus developed canon interacted with that of Baroque sculpture, which indeed
equally excelled itself in expressive attitudes. Even the statues at that time stood as if on the
stage, and the mime on the stage profited from the highly developed expressivo of the
Baroque statue. Precisely here though it was demonstrated how much
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every more complicated set of gestures, including Batteux's 'naturel dictionnaire de la nature',
presupposes developed language, although it leaves it out and laconizes it suo modo. The
man who is furious about an injustice which he cannot change looks upwards, calling down
the avenging bolt of lightning: this and similar attitudes were in no way comprehensible to
uncivilized peoples, nor to animals, in fact they contained so little 'nature' that they hardly
appear outside of the Baroque idiom, Baroque Catholicism and the lightning-Zeus visualized
by it. Nevertheless this kind of pantomimicry never appeared deaf and dumb, on the contrary,
it seemed at that time more eloquent than any interjection or even tirade. Even in the
eighteenth century a pantomime 'Medea and Jason', with richly substantial feeling and action,
came on to the London stage and received European acclaim. Terpsichore, the muse of the
dance, combined everywhere here with Polyhymnia, the resonant muse of mimic expression;
the scale of expression, especially of the pathetic kind, was evidently great.
Since then it has become conspicuously much smaller, but has not completely lost its
gradations. Even in its decline a trace of meaning was retained, at least of the peculiar
approval which the play without words arouses. And after all, in any case, intelligible silence
when there is movement present continually appears in the dream, in its otherwise so
divergent forms: that of the nocturnal dream and that of the waking state. Even in the night-
dream far more forms, incidents, actions are seen than voices heard; and the incidents speak
for themselves. Especially in the waking dream entire long series of games and wishes
silently unfold; because in most people the optical imagination requires less effort than the
acoustic. Mute images rise almost automatically out of the realm of the waking dream mood,
whereas dialogue must usually first be invented. And the significant pantomime provides a
mirror of this predominantly optical phenomenon, whether it is under the water of sleep or in
the smoke of the waking dream. Indeed, the wordless reason which makes the pantomime
speak also stretches beyond the dream into the terra firma of not always talkative life. Even
coitus is not eloquent, even the bitter struggle, even the solemn reception, together with long
stretches of every ceremonial, and the archetypal memory remains: original pantomime, long
before the ancient mime and outside it, was like the dance with which it coincided, wordless-
magic. It wanted to stimulate the equally wordless forces of nature: the Navahos dance round
fire in the direction the sun moves, the image of the sun is raised aloft in silence. Among the
Aztecs in the spring festival even the struggle of the old and new demons was portrayed
pantomimically,
Page 405
in Japan priestesses performed the Kagura dances, imitating the emergence of the sun with
all mythically traditional details. In short, there is no cult in which pantomime is missing; it
was to say to the community in the language of gesture what could not be expressed in the
same way in words. And precisely the dream has preserved this soundless-expressive game,
the course and sequence of figures; the daydream consciously continues, in its animated
picturing of desirable events, this silent procession, out of its own material. Hence therefore
the formed and considered pantomime has never quite been forgotten either, hence it wanted
and was able to be expressively renewed, after the all-time low in the last century, when the
scale of silent expression had shrunk to a half dozen vulgar or comic-exaggerated
conventions. Nothing provided more encouragement to this than the remarkable new form of
pantomime in film; it came very soon, after the folded arms, the extended index-fingers had
disappeared from its screen. Because Asta Nielsen, the first great film actress, with a flicker
of the eyelid, a raising of the shoulder, possessed the art of expressing more than a hundred
mediocre poets put together, silence had not yet become stupid. Likewise a renewal of
pantomime was attempted by the Expressionist dance, as in the significant rhythmic allegory
which the poet Paul Claudel created in the Twenties with the Swedish ballet; this pantomime
bears the clear waking-dream title: 'Man and his Longing'. Memory and longing play around
man here, he rouses himself from sleep, dances his own will and that of all creatures. Claudel
explains this in the following manner: 'All animals, all noises of the infinite forest detach
themselves, come around to look at him . . . Thus feverish people plagued with insomnia toss
and turn through long nights, thus caged animals fling themselves over and over again
against steel bars which cannot be broken out of.' A woman appears, turns as if spellbound
around the man, he grasps a corner of her veil, 'but she continues to turn it around him,
unwinding the veil from herself until he is wrapped in it like the chrysalis of a butterfly,
while she is almost naked' (cf. Bla, Das Wesen der neuen Tanzkunst, 1922, p. 77). Bla, in
an excessively Georgian* way, called this allegorical dance sequence a moving tapestry of
life, that is literature, but he could also explain it from itself, 'as infinitely returning, not to be
pacified human movement as it finally raises itself again incomplete out of all the artistic
disguises and completions and as these themselves'. In reality this kind of thing did not
produce insignificant pantomime and one which, without
*
Bloch is again referring to the poet Stefan George.
Page 406
the earlier mythological materials, concerns itself with human longing and its waking-dream
figures. All the more so if universal man and his still more universally tailed longing do not
dance, but concreteness finally approaches, an aimed concreteness. This happens in
Asafyev's balletpantomime 'The Flame of Paris', concerning the storm on the Tuileries during
a banquet for Louis XVI. In the contrast between the steps of the court dances and the a ira*
of the revolution, a completely comprehensible plot arises, almost a drama without words.
This all becomes possible as soon as the meaning of the story communicates itself in gestures
of silence, in the characteristically open aura around wordless indicating and acting. 'Saltare
fabulam': this glory of the old mime has not become submerged or inaccessible to the
pantomime. In fact, even half of the spoken play still takes place in gesture and thus actually
first creates the show-play,** show in the play.
New Mime through the Camera

It is striking how the gesture was able to become so rich precisely in the context of the film.
Because here to begin with it flickered especially feebly and crudely, seemed to remain
kitsch. The suitor on his knees, the palpitating adored woman, they were the best the flicks
could muster. But soon the film itself, developed to some extent, made an astonishing
contribution to the degenerate pantomime. In general, through the good fortune that the film
began as silent film, not as sound-film, an incomparable mimic power was discovered, an
until then unknown treasury of the clearest gestures. The sources of this power are in no way
evident, no matter how indisputable its effect is compared with that of the usual pantomime,
or even that of the theatre gesture, in the silent play. Some things may immediately appear
unaffected in the film, because the gesturing film-people move without a frame, but also
without an emphasized distance from us. The camera takes the eye with it, continuously
changes the view-points of the spectator, which become those of the actors themselves, no
longer those of the spectator in the stalls. Ever since Griffith*** cut the
*
'a ira!' A song of the French Revolution, see Vol. I, p. 143n.
**
Bloch is playing on the word 'Schauspiel' here, the ordinary German word for a play in the theatre.
***
D. W. Griffith (18751948), the American film director. His major film was 'Birth of a Nation' (1915).
Page 407
heads of people into the action for the first time, since this employment of the close-up, the
play of the facial muscles has also appeared as revealed suffering, joy, hope. The spectator
now learns from the close-up of a gigantically isolated head, much more visibly than from
that of the speaking actor on the whole stage, what incarnate emotion itself looks like. But all
this camera-life would be nothing without exceptional actors who in the still silent film
sharpened gestures to concentrated keenness or many-sidedness. The path here started out
precisely from nuance, that is from a refinement particularly surprising in the earlier half-art
of the film. Asta Nielsen, as we have seen, first brought that studio theatre into gesture which
so far removed the film from the pantomime which had become usual and terribly
degenerate. Only with studio theatre of this kind was it at all possible to enlarge, without
coarsening, to put nuances or apparently incidental elements into the centre of vision, to
make transitions of a rapid or fleeting kind (like the passing of a spoon, the play of the
eyebrow in the case of hopeless love and so on) essential, indeed into an ecce homo. The film
is filled with sheer mirrored Up and Down of the movement of wishful dream or beyond
the 'dream-factory' which became more and more of a dizzy swindle with desired-real
tendency-movements of the age, but so that this can be brought home in a filmic way through
figures and their actions, a micrologically developed intonation is necessary not of the
word, but of the gesture. Such intonation is natural in the spoken theatre, and its effects are
astonishing: 'Give me the helmet' is the first line of the 'Maid of Orleans',* if the 'give' is
stressed, even lightly drawn out, not the 'me', then the whole court theatre of the nineteenth
century stops, and the shyly possessed maid stands there. Good films applied this new
emphasis or process of making visible to the body and to movement, evidently instructed by
the new dance; which might also solve the riddle of how the gesture was able to become so
rich precisely in the context of film. There are thousands of examples of the micrology of the
incidental, which is not such; every good suspense-film is already charged with mimic
instances from the subconscious and from premonition, how much more so completely
without waxworks and dummy the socially critical and revolutionary film. In fact, not only
does the remarkable new mime extend to men, but even to things, which are naturally silent,
but also, if the director can achieve it, unnaturally eloquent. The cooking-pots swaying with
the ship in Eisenstein's 'Potemkin' belong here, and precisely here
*
A play by Schiller, 1801.
Page 408
the great rough stamping boots, shown in isolation, on the steps in Odessa. The film 'Ten
Days Which Shook the World' does not show the wavering defenders in the Winter Palace in
St Petersburg, it shows a giant chandelier whose crystals shake gently, then more and more
violently on account of the explosions, as is obvious, with over-meaning, as is particularly
obvious. But even this pantomime of film-things is first learnt from that of film-people; all
arts of the camera would have had nothing of this kind to show if the flickering eyelash of
Asta Nielsen or the handshake in close-up had not previously made their contribution. Above
all the objects of the nineteenth century express in the film their awkward ridiculousness or
their uncanny hide-and-seek; as in Ren Clair's masterpiece 'Chapeau de paille' (1927), as in
the sound-film 'Gaslight' (1943). And the sound-film, as a form itself, only made it look, in
its early days, when it was photographing theatre-substitute, as if the pantomime, which the
the silent film had renewed, was now going to die for the second time. However, even the
sound-film is still always pantomimic where the dialogue is silent, there is even an
exceptional plus of a pantomimic kind which is only achieved through the sound-film.
Because through the fact that they are also recorded acoustically, things here acquire a quite
separate additional layer of mimic expression. In fact we can say: the sound-film brought
about the paradox of a so to speak audible pantomime, namely one relating to noises. The
microphone makes a pair of scissors cutting through canvas audible, through wool, through
silk, and the really different noise which is produced by this; drumming of raindrops on the
window, a silver spoon dropped on a stone-floor, creaking furniture reach into a micrological
world of sensory perception and of expression. In general the backdrop not only becomes
mobile as in the silent film, but an acoustic backdrop, and its sound transforms itself into
thing-like gestures. We can listen to what was previously unnoticed, even the softest
whispering, so that it in fact still remains a whispering through the microphone, a secret, a
treacherous whispering, one which is closely related to the gesture and the sign. In general
therefore the film, in that it is capable through photography and microphone of incorporating
the whole of real experience in a streamlike mime, belongs to the most powerful mirror- and
distortion- but also concentration-images Which are displayed to the wish for the fullness of
life, as substitute and glossy deception, but also as information rich in imagery. Hollywood
has become an incomparable falsification, whereas the realistic film in its anti- capitalist, no
longer capitalist peak performances can, as critical, as stylizing film and as mirror of hope,
certainly
Page 409
portray the mime of the days which change the world. The pantomimic aspect of the film is
ultimately that of society, both in the ways in which it expresses itself and above all in the
deterring or inspiring, promising contents which are set out.
Dream-Factory in the Rotten and in the Transparent Sense

The more grey the everyday, the more colourful material we read. But a book means sitting
around in our room, we cannot go out with it. Also, wishful life read in books only becomes
vivid in so far as the reader already knows it from his environment, however much he
interprets it. Everyone has love inside them, but not everybody is already given a noble
soire, i.e. this cannot quite be imagined by everybody. Far more deceptively than the stage,
the film presents events like this, with the wandering camera as the eye of the guest-spectator
himself who can see through them. Most people certainly do need the screen to see desert
and high mountains, Monte Carlo and Tibet, the casino from inside. In the nineteenth century
there were strange optical establishments for such views into the distance, they were already
very popular. There were the so-called Kaiser panoramas: the visitor sat in front of one of the
stereoscopic pairs of opera-glasses which were screwed into a rotunda, and behind the glass
coloured photos from all corners of the earth drifted, at the ringing of a bell, jerkily past him.
There were above all the great circular panoramas, the first was opened in Berlin in 1883, it
represented the battle of Sedan, or rather: it led the spectator directly into the battle, as if he
were an eye-witness. Wax figures, genuine earth, genuine cannon, a painted circular horizon
allowed the spectator to be present at a historic moment; the construction was worthy of its
creator, the court and uniform painter Anton von Werner. At the time though there was
argument as to whether on level ground such compositions were really art, almost as people
have argued today about the cinema; but the 'panoramic' was discussed with the same very
serious aesthetic expression as the 'filmic' is today. Those who were contemptuous of it
called Anton von Werner's construction too 'naturalistic', those who admired it pointed
conversely to quite similar hybrid art in the Baroque, to the Baroque Christmas cribs, to the
Stations of the Cross. The modern in the year 1883, in the wax, weapon and oil pantomime of
Sedan, in this substitute for not having been there, was nevertheless a triumph of technology
which those who had been there in 1870 had not yet experienced;
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since for the evenings the guide promised 'electric glowing light illumination' as well as an
'electro-fountain of arc-light' (cf. Sternberger, Panorama, 1938, p. 21). The film no longer
needs this, it is itself without doubt new technology, together with all the genuine aesthetic
questions which arise out of new technology, new material; and its affiliation to art is decided
by its affiliation to genuine pantomime. Nevertheless, even the cinema, precisely the cinema,
has not developed with impunity in the age of substitute living, in a society which has to
divert its employees or deceive them with ideological 'electro-fountains'. Lenin called the
film one of the most important forms of art, and in the Soviet Union it has at least developed
as the most important method of politically educating the masses. In Hollywood, as we
know, it is so far removed from such work of enlightenment that it almost exceeds the
crudeness and mendacity of the magazine stories; thanks to America the film has become the
most desecrated form of art. The Hollywood cinema does not only supply the old kitsch: the
sloppy kiss-romance, the nervebasher, where there is no longer a difference between
enthusiasm and catastrophe, the happy end within a completely unchanged world; without
exception it also uses this kitsch for ideological stupefaction and fascist incitement. And even
social criticism which formerly appeared once in a while in some American films: even then
it was, as regards capitalism, little more than the refinement of a critical apology; it has
completely disappeared since the fascisization of Liberty, with spines bristling only against
truth. In the Twenties Ilya Ehrenburg called Hollywood a dream-factory and was referring
here to the mere diversion-films with their rotten sparkle. Since then, however, the dream-
factory has become a poison-factory, no longer only for the purpose of dispensing escapist
utopia ('there is a goldmine in the sky far away'), but also White Guard propaganda. The
cinema-panorama shows in the imagination wishfully steered by fascism red dawn as
night and the Moloch as the children's friend, the people's friend. This is how far the
capitalist cinema has degenerated, consigned to the technology of the war of aggression. A
good dream-factory, a camera of dreams which are critically inspiring, overhauling according
to a humanistic plan, would have had, had and undoubtedly has other possibilities and this
within reality itself.
For it remains indicative that so much that is right emerges time and again in the film.
Amidst so much futility, so much opium, such quick turnover, so little leisure. The technical
reasons which rescue the film have been given above: no distance, no peep-show, rather the
spectator walking
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alongside; chamber-music pantomime, not entirely lost even in the mass-produced

commodity, predominant in good films; opening up of the wide world, especially nearby, in
the incidental, in pantomimic detail. In addition there is the manoeuvrability of detail, of
groupings which have become fixed themselves, made possible by the techniques of film and
so closely related to the waking dream. Now, given this so good, if also thwarted technical
How, as far as the What of the film is concerned, namely the subject-materials specific to it,
the period in which the development of film falls not only had a capitalistically devastating,
but in a limited sense also we may say: ironically usable effect. For as a period of
bourgeois decay it is also a period of cracked surface, of the previous groupings and
identities decaying; consequently it is, as in painting, so in film, the time of a not only
subjectively, but objectively possible montage. Because this became objectively possible it is
in no way necessarily arbitrary and completely unreal (with regard to the objective events); it
is much rather in a position to correspond to changes in the external relation of appearance
and essence itself. Here is the field of new hints and genuine authorities, the field of
discovered-real separations between objects which previously appeared to be closely
adjoining, of discovered-real attachment between apparently very remote ones in the
bourgeois order of relations; good films correspondingly made constant use of such
manoeuvrability which has become realistically possible even in terms of subject-materials.
Thus the Soviet director Pudovkin ('Storm over Asia', 1928) went so far as to assert: 'Film
collects the elements of the real in order to show another reality with them; the dimensions of
space and time which are fixed in the theatre are completely changed in film.' The magic is
combined with that photographable transparency which the the Soviet film has often shown,
historic and modern, and which states that a different society, indeed world, is both hindered
and circulating in the present one. This is the right thing and the best thing that emerges from
the film, made easier not least by the completely new form in which the 'transitory' can be
shown here. The art of film-illusion, although it is neither painting nor poetry, not even in its
best examples, still gives an image which allows movement, and a narration which possibly
demands the descriptive standstill of a close-up. The cinema does not thereby become a
mixed creation, of the kind which, in so much higher regions, Lessing's 'Laocoon' defined
narrative painting, descriptive poetry. In higher regions narrative painting, descriptive poetry
may be fatuous; Lessing allocates to painting only actions through bodies, to poetry only
bodies through actions. Whereas the technique of film shows
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actions through quite different bodies to those of painting, namely through moved, not
stationary bodies; so that the borders between descriptive space-form, narrative time-form
disappear. A soi-disant painting because film, by virtue of the fact that it is able to portray
all objects, in contrast to the stage-set, has at least become as broad as painting, and the
image is always the primary thing even in the sound-film a soi-disant painting has now
therefore itself become a succession of actions, a soi-disant poetry itself a juxtaposition of
bodies: and the Laocoon of the film, in contrast to that of the statue, screams. He can scream,
without rigid grimace, because the film even in the standstill of the close-up shows this
standstill only as a passing one, not as a rigid one. Every background turns towards the
foreground here, and the wishful action or wishful landscape so essential to the film climbs,
although only photographed, into the stalls.
30
The Theatre, Regarded as Paradigmatic Institution, and the Decision in It
Already they are seated, eyebrows raised,
and calmly wait out there to be amazed.
The Theatre-Manager in 'Faust'
The Curtain Rises

For ages especially eager people have been coming together here. The impetus which has led
them to the box-office and into the windowless room varies. One section is bored and only
wants to buy its way into an evening where they will be diverted after a fashion. A better
active section, on the increase today, does not want to kill time, but to fill it. These visitors
too want to be entertained in the performance, that is, to be released and become free, not
automatically or simply free from something, but free to do something. There is, however,
driving in all of them, what we may call mimic need. This need is more widespread than the
poetic, it is connected positively with the not only submissive or hypocritical, but tempting
desire to transform oneself. It shares this desire with the actor himself, seeks to satisfy it
through him, that is, in all better cases, through what he respectively represents. Further,
however,
Page 413
above all the spectator does not want to see what the actor is representing mimically, but
what he and the whole group of players give as a sensually colourful, eloquently moved
representation of something. If the spectator is drawn into the life on the stage, then he is thus
in no way simply drawn out of preceding everyday life like the friend of mere diversion. Not
even when the stage dispenses so-called light fare, if this is distinguished from kitsch, which
does not even divert, but stultifies instead. The curtain rises, the fourth wall is missing, in its
place is the open proscenium and behind this show-side things must happen, in a pleasant,
entertaining way, significantly, that is, signifying Something. From the life we have had the
narrowness disappears into which it has so often led; remarkable and decisive people, a
further scene, powerful fates now appear. The spectator is prepared in an equally expectant
and involved way for the things which are now to come.
Rehearsal on the Model

But he does not merely remain prepared, the physically gripping actors incite to more. They
require the spectator to decide, at least to decide about whether he likes the performance as
such. And it is an objective play that is being performed, so the clapping or whistling in
which the decision expresses itself must extend to the play which does after all give the actor
his role in the first place. How much more so if the spectator, who is no teenager and no star-
cult, then perceives the mimer simply as the medium of the dramatic character inside a
likewise dramatic action. The displeasure that is expressed here, the applause which is given,
sometimes during the performance itself: these are very different from the silent or even
enthusiastic response given to literature when we read. For not until the spectator really sees
on the stage what he wishes to see or even what he does not wish to see is he usually drawn
into a response which goes considerably beyond the decision of mere judgements of taste.
Not least, it is also important for there to be a formal assembly of voters in every theatre,
whereas there is as a rule only a single reader confronting the book. Very interestingly this
decision is made into the central point in Brecht, and precisely by virtue of the fact that it
substantially breaks away from the merely 'culinary' judgement of taste. Also by virtue of the
fact that it not only evaluates the people, encounters, actions represented, 'as they are, but
also as they could be'; that the theatrical construction of a person 'does not start out from him,
but towards him'. To this end in Brecht the decision is so sharply and so deliberately
demonstrated, in direction and guidance
Page 414
of the action, that it always has to extend beyond the evening in the theatre. And of course in
an activated-instructed way, into life that can be better effected, i.e. really into the things
which in the bolder sense of the word are to come.
This firstly because the spectator no longer merely projects himself into the play. He remains
with his senses alert and puts himself into the action and its actors while equally putting
himself opposite it. The correct position is thus solely 'the attitude of smoking observation'
(Notes to the 'Threepenny Opera'), not that of the spellbound man who is self-indulgently
working off his feelings, instead of forming ideas and learning them with pleasure and
entertainment. There must be pleasure in the play, more than ever, deadly seriousness is more
out of place here than anywhere, indeed, 'the theatre must be able to remain something
superficial' (Brecht, Kleines Organon fr das Theater, 3), but the enjoyment experienced
must not melt the spectator, rather it instructs him and makes him active. Secondly, the actor
himself must never completely fuse with the character and its action which he is imitating.
'He always remains merely the indicator, the one who is not involved himself', he stands next
to the character of the play, even as its critic or praiser, and his gestures are not those of
immediate emotion, but make the emotions of another evident in a mediated way. Through
this more epic than dynamic theatre the performance is supposed to receive freed from all
exhibition of the actors' souls or of so-called theatrical blood not less, but more liveliness,
warmth, vividness. Consequently Brecht stresses, precisely with regard to the effect of the
epic mime-style on the audience: 'It is not the case although it has been proposed from time
to time that epic theatre, which incidentally as has also been proposed from time to time
is not just undramatic theatre, lets out the battlecry reason on the one hand on the other
emotion (feeling). It in no way renounces emotions. Particularly not the sense of justice, urge
towards freedom and righteous anger: it renounces them so little that it does not even rely on
their existence, but seeks to intensify or to create them. The ''critical attitude" into which it
endeavours to bring its audience can never be too passionate for it' (Brecht, Theaterarbeit,
1952, p. 254). To the objectivization of the actor, however, corresponds that artistic device of
objectively raising out a scene in general, which Brecht calls estrangement.* This means:
'Particular events in the play should through captions, backdrop of sound and music, and
the acting styles of the actors be
*
Verfremdung. Often falsely translated as 'alienation' in English, which is precisely what Brecht
intended his epic theatre should lead away from.
Page 415
raised (estranged) as self-enclosed scenes from the realm of the everyday, self-evident,
expected' (Brecht, Stcke VI, 1957, p. 221). The effect should then be that wonderment
appears, i.e. that scientific amazement, philosophical astonishment with which the
thoughtless acceptance of phenomena, even theatrical phenomena stops, and posing
questions, inquiring behaviour which wants to know begins. The 'Advice of the Actors', who
are expert in the estrangement effect, is given thus in one of Brecht's didactic plays (with
astonishment as the beginning of reflection):
You've seen what's usual, what's always bound to happen.
But we are asking you:
What's not strange, find it surprising!
What is ordinary, find it inexplicable!
What's usual here should astonish you.
What is as a rule, recognize as misuse
And when you have recognized misuse
Take action against it!
Epilogue to 'The Exception and the Rule'
And in contrast to ineffective literature, estrangement makes an especially vehement appeal

for thoughtfulness with anticipatory consequences. Since what has not changed for a long
time easily appears as unchangeable, the estrangement of the life depicted in the theatre
ultimately happens in order 'to take away from events which can be socially influenced the
stamp of the familiar which preserves them from intervention today' (Kleines Organon fr
das Theater, 43).With this, thirdly and lastly, the major concern of this way of directing is
now reached: namely theatre as rehearsing on the model.* The attitudes and events should be
thoroughly worked out, thoroughly experimented with in a play-like way, to see whether they
are of use for changing the world or not. We can therefore say: the Brechtian theatre intends
to be a series of varying attempts to produce the correct way of behaving. Or, which comes to
the same thing: to be a laboratory of correct theory-practice on a small scale, in play-form, as
it were in the stage-case which is experimentally submitted to the serious case. As
experiment in re and yet ante rem, that is, without the real mistaken consequences of an as it
were unrehearsed conception (cf. the didactic play 'The Measure Taken') and with a
pedagogic approach, to perform these mistaken
*
In the idiomatic sense this also means 'putting to the test'. Bloch is punning on the word 'Probe',
which means both test and rehearsal.
Page 416
consequences dramatically. Even possible alternatives are thus portrayed on a trial basis, with
the end of each of these alternatives carried out on stage (cf. the contrasting didactic plays
'The Man Who Says Yes' 'The Man Who Says No'). A similar characteristic style is revealed
not least in Brecht's mature Galileo-drama, where the question must be thoroughly enacted
whether Galileo's retraction, for the sake of the major work still to be written, was the right
way of going about things. All this strives to achieve 'parable drama', from hypothetically
intensified, often also simplified examples and decisions. And the Brechtian, as far as the
information that was to result is concerned, more and more, more and more wisely discarded
abstractness. Nowhere is simplification to be found in that truly terrible form called
schematism, because schematism has already learnt the region that is accessible to it by heart
with five or six formulas or hurrah-conclusions; which is also why it hates the Brechtian.
Brecht's theatre seeks a mode of action in which there is only communist conclusiveness of
conduct, i.e. conclusiveness that is to be freshly tested time and again and that leads to the
goal of the viable production of the really useful and its reason.
More on the Rehearsal on the Model to be Sought

It is undoubtedly unusual that plays teach when they are themselves only learning. That their
people and their actions are turned in a questioning-examining way and also turned round.
Nevertheless, an open form already appears in all dramas when a person, a situation is shown
precisely in its lasting contradiction. Only where a central figure as character or as social
function acts in a one-track, inevitable way, then there are no such variabilities. Othello's
jealousy does not waver and cannot be thought of in another way, in all its consequences and
successive situations; Antigone's matrilinearly traditional and persevering 'piety', Creon's
'reasons of state' which have become socially victorious, waver just as little. The conflicts are
unavoidable here, the experiment of a Being-able-to-be-different, Being-able-to-act-
differently, Being-able-to-end-differently would be grotesque here even if merely hinted at in
an interpretation and its direction. But are there not many-sided natures in a great series of
dramas, and those with several possible paths before them? Is there not Hamlet or, in a so
much smaller, more insignificant, cancelled alternative creation, the monologue of Fiesco*
*
'Fiesco', a play by Schiller.
Page 417
wavering between republic and monarchy? Were there not always dramas with several
possible versions, evaluations of their course, their outcome? Goethe's 'Stella', Tasso
compared to the original Tasso? Goethe ended 'Stella' with reconciliation in 1776, tragically
in 1805, 'Tasso' showed in its original version the prosaic Antonio denied, the fanatical poet
affirmed, in the second version this is almost reversed. Certainly there was no previous
dramatic art and the most greatly elaborated least of all with a separate theory-practice
relationship, let alone with the drama as a course of study which is always correcting itself
(interrupting itself like a tableau). But even the unalterable dramas: if they were not
rehearsals on the model to be sought, they were still models of a path taken to its end, a good
or bad one, one to be sought or to be fled, with the recommended motto: exempla docent.
This above all where the stage, with or without didactic thumping on it, has been endowed
with a moral institution. Indeed, the unexpected thing occurs that Brecht wants to be far less
moral and pedagogic than Schiller for example. Precisely the author of didactic plays and
school-operas rejects, as a friendly materialist, a theatre which only moralizes and therefore
would not be one: 'In no way could we raise it to a higher status by making it into a market
for morals for example; it would then rather have to see to it that it was not in fact
humiliated, which would happen immediately if it did not make the moral pleasurable and
indeed pleasurable to the senses from which the moral can certainly only stand to gain'
(Kleines Organon, 3). But this rejection of the blurbs and leading articles, of 'visible
advertizing'-kitsch on the stage does not hinder the old Brecht programme of a theatre to
shape consciousness and to school decision. Thus this programme wants 'to move the theatre
as close to the places of education and publication as possible'. The theatre, as is obvious, as
masterly place of entertainment, whose influence is exerted through poetry, not through
leading articles and hurrah-conformism. Precisely the latter would not need any kind of
rehearsal on a model, because it already knows everything anyway and because it translates
the word model as model pupil. What is meant instead of this is moral institution with
happiness, where the depth of the enlightenments and impulses achieved are accustomed to
being directly proportional to the depth of the enjoyment. Not without reason we could point
to the sensually most pleasurable theatrical illusion here, that of the opera: progressive
masterpieces of opera like the 'Magic Flute', 'The Marriage of Figaro' simultaneously provide
in the noblest enjoyment the most activating humane wishful image. And like the means, so
too the content of instruction mediated through the progressive theatre
Page 418
(medicine and teaching) is one of joy; as such it acts in the play as content that must be
produced through struggle or content that shines ahead already produced. 'Thus the choice of
standpoint is another major part of theatrical art, and it must be chosen outside the theatre.
Like the remodelling of nature, so too the remodelling of society is an act of liberation, and it
is the joys of liberation which the theatre of a scientific age should communicate' (Kleines
Organon, 56). So much for the theatre here, when it appears as the house of decisive
actions, about which and between which it is decided. As soon as the rehearsal on the model
is acted, the goal is clearly visible, but the stage as experimental stage (preview-stage) goes
on bullying the ways of behaving to reach it.
Reading, Spoken Mime and Scene

We said above that all real plays are better to see than to read. Because in front of the stage
decisions can be made far less in terms of taste, far more collectively than in front of a book.
But in woeful cases it does nevertheless seem conceivable that performed plays are just as
good, even better to read than to see. When, that is, the actors put themselves in front of their
role, when for example we get to see and to hear the 'scheming villain' Miller instead of Iago.
It becomes even more unpleasant when a star uses works of literature as a pretext to embody
his oh so personal physical presence and delivery once again. It also happens, even in less
flashy performances, that due to so-called temperament or even due to lack of time actors
speak much too quickly on stage as a rule, above all when there are verses to be disposed of
or even elaborate periods. Much that is precious gets lost in this reeling off, how dismally
what was a more and more richly unfolding landscape in leisurely reading becomes an
obstacle race. But the theatre must always prove to be a plus compared to reading, no matter
how lively the pleasure ear and eye have derived from reading. And it must be so much of a
plus that even the best conceived reading-drama stands in relation to the performed drama
like the shades from the Odyssey straining for the blood in order to be really able to justify
themselves. After all, whenever the work-true performance takes place, they are seldom good
and never work-true dramas which are more beautiful unperformed. They are at best lyrical
flights with speeches for and against which lack successive actions, thickening plots,
entrance, exit, bad atmosphere, as it were the noble, not only Schillerian but also
Shakespearean
Page 419
colportage of what is bursting to get on stage. There is no world in the drama without the
visible space for characters and alternating scenes which actors, above all directors bring out
on stage. And even great lyric poetry, in so far as it exists in action, i.e. in drama, is first
projected in the scene on to the movement of the mood or of the reflection, in short, on to the
drama in its introverted form, to which this poetry belongs. Precisely for this reason and
not, as is obvious here, inner world of reading-verse, as escape from the theatre Brecht's
statement is so important and true:
The Elizabethan wrote verses for us
about the heath at evening,
which no lighting crew ever matches
nor the heath itself!
and the statement is true, the lighting crew does not match the verses because the
Elizabethan's heath at evening has been driven to its truest essence poetically, but inside the
theatre, inside the Lear and Macbeth scenes for which Shakespeare wrote all these verses.
The matching, surpassing, unlocking of the heath at evening by great poetry undoubtedly
happens through the power of the keys* of such poetry over nature (cf. p. 215), but the theatre
in fact shows the poetic heath as the ground on which even its own play is ultimately played.
Not least, such a perfect theatre also first realizes the important pause which in the drama
may not lie so much between the lines as between the words and phrases and between the
scenes. Listening, knocking, attention to distant cries, something expectant therefore is
especially evident in such pauses, together with the observance or fall of the folds of
significant customs. Even the wonderful trumpet movement in Verdi's Othello heralding the
Doge's legation derives on this side or the other side of the opera from the form immanent in
the Shakespearean pause. Thus the theatre, in contrast to the book, is the sensual experience-
reality in which unheard things are publicly heard, in which what is remote from experience-
reality becomes vividly public, in which the composed-compressed, the full-filled really
appears, as if it were in the flesh. And it is always mime through which poetry projects itself
on to the level of the theatre; it is spoken mime plus gestural mime plus the aura mime of the
scenery created by the set-designer. The proscenium
*
Bloch is using this expression in the legal, not the ecclesiastical sense, i.e. the power of a wife to act
for or against her husband in household matters.
Page 420
becomes like a window here through which the world is changed to the point of recognition,
sees and hears itself. Thus the theatre is the institution of a new, never again immediate
experience-reality, laid bare by the dramatic poetry that refers to it.
Everything depends on the tone here with which a role is provided. Indeed, we can say,
portrayed man is a sound-figure, as this he is born for the stage. Hence at the beginning there
is the speaking form, that is, the difficult art which modulates, models the intonation. The
basic tone then to which this spoken mime is set (the excellent expression comes from
Schleiermacher, preacher and philosopher into the bargain) is not for example given by the
abstract outline of a figure, let alone by the clich which has been formed from this outline.
The true basic tone stems solely from the disposition, the ties and the goal-image of the
figure, therefore from the possibility of acting, of being, revealed by its character together
with its circumstances. This does not mean a character in the static sense of what is
ingrained, engraved, but the character designates here the determination towards an action
which is only now shaping itself. Only in this direction is a dramatic sound-figure truthfully
achieved, it is only varied from the perspective of its destination. As an example the great
director Stanislavsky cites Hamlet, in such a way that we may discover in Hamlet the task: I
want to avenge my father. We could, however, also discover a higher task: I want to discover
the secrets of being. But we could even discover a still higher task: I want to save humanity
(cf. Trepte, Leben und Werk Stanislawskijs, p. 78f.). Stanislavsky's direction developed the
figure of Hamlet, together with all its impediments, in accordance with this last 'basic
formula'. The well-aimed characteristic style becomes more difficult of course in spoken
mime, as soon as this is already traditionally fixed by a certain abstract, indeed untrue-
pathetic altitude. This is still the case with regard to Schiller, as the problem of being able to
speak Schiller's verses both in a cool and completely unsonorous way; this is the case in the
song-mime and no less in that of the orchestra with regard to Wagner. The doggedly
persistent court theatre tone, its yearning or rolling pathos is mysteriously difficult to break
through even in the speaking of Wallenstein. With equally mysterious difficulty (although it
seems it is being attempted at the new Bayreuth, not without success) can the plushy
heroines' and then the victory-avenue Baroque be removed from the intonation of the
Nibelungenring. These obsolescences certainly have part of their origin in the original
Schiller and Wagner: an origin in a rhetoric at an altitude which is all too similar and
therefore often only sustained by force.
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But this is equally balanced out by Schiller's sharply logical power of language, by Wagner's
sharply contrapuntal power of expression; and the restitutio of Schiller and Wagner means to
portray, in the case of Schiller, the speakable piano of the reflective aspect in his work, in the
case of Wagner, the singable bel canto of the endless melody in his work. In Richard
Wagner, lying more originally, more as a result of his own time in excessive thunder, there is
the more overdue case, as it were, of restitutio in integrum: to be achieved firstly by
considering the song-mime and going on from here to grasp the whole construction. All the
more important is the task of finally making the performance of Wagner, precisely from this
perspective, commensurate with the blossoming, the sharp and powerful aspects and sudden
depths of his work. The gestural mime and scenery, no longer torrid and rancid, no longer
with thunder-clap, clashing of swords and booming of waves, then follows unimpeded. Then
gestural mime itself, it stages the dramatic action communicated through words in terms of
the bodies of the actors, but also in terms of the body, so to speak, of the things placed on the
set. This set can be bare, as in Brecht, as in old English and old Spanish theatre, it can be
luxurious as in several good examples of the former Meininger* and the dcor and costumes
of Max Reinhardt, it can above all allow poetry itself to spread out and settle in an aura-like
way in the stage-set as in the art of Stanislavsky. Of whom it was rightly said, he possessed
the keys to all doors and apartments, in fact he knew how to preside with equal proprietorial
power in the Ibsen room of Doctor Stockmann, in the night-shelter cave, in the enormous
chambers of Zaren Berendij. Thus, closely related to the gestural mime, the above-mentioned
aura mime arose, of the scenery created by the set-designer. The Calderon stage, especially
the Shakespeare stage did not practise this sort of thing of course, but in all their bareness,
indicating a cave, a forest, a palatial room merely with a caption, the dagger or the rope-
ladder were by no means lacking as necessary props, and: the allegorical stage-set becomes
the extension of these props, their impression and expression in space as it were. Somewhat
exaggerated, but no less spread out in an aura-like way, Stanislavsky's collaborator
Nemirovitch-Dantshenko expresses this gestural mime and scenery thus: 'A production can
only be called good when one can let the performance continue running from any point
whatever without words and the spectator can nevertheless still
*
Meininger. A famous troupe of actors at the court theatre in Meiningen.
Page 422
understand what is happening on stage.' In fact, even in Calderon the dagger in a drama of
jealousy, in Shakespeare the rope-ladder in a drama of love are mimic per se. Indeed, the
dagger in Calderon is jealousy itself in its external form, and the early light between
nightingale and lark is no longer externality in Shakespeare, but the outwardness of Romeo
and Juliet's love and their death. Even if it is forced, this kind of thing does not divert us from
the action, but the thing-aura which has become homogeneous directs us into the action,
provided, as Shakespeare has his Hamlet say to the actors, 'in the meantime some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered'.* Obviously, spoken language remains the
Alpha and Omega however successful gestural mime and its scenery. So that a pantomime
does not become independent for example or merely thrust itself forward, but even the most
successful pantomime device in Nemirovitch-Dantshenko's sense serves the poetic work. But
from the point of view of the mime, the theatre is at its best the sculpture of poetry and one in
which even the most powerful movedness, one towards mimic expression, does not remove
the sculpture.
Illusion, Sincere Appearance, Moral Institution

The perennial question is, to what and to what end does the stage really remove us. It works
with make-up and usually also predominantly with techniques and lights which feign in a
considered way. The stage is therefore more appearance than any other mode of art and
precisely because it allows its appearance to become experientially real, despite the
separating proscenium. This gives the theatre its both delightful and illusionistic power, of
course, but underlines the appearance more heavily than any other single pure art. Indeed,
stage-appearance to an unfriendly eye and it has often met with this, not only among bigots
can more closely resemble the highly ignoble appearance of a wax dummy than that of an
image, shining through in a refined way, not in the least experientially real. In addition there
is the so to speak dissembling aspect of the theatre hero or even the theatre martyr;
transferred to real hypocrisy the concept of the play-actor comes from here. But of course the
difference between moral appearance and theatrical appearance was obvious even at the time
when play-acting was still not an 'honest trade'. The play-actor is hypocritical, whereas the
*
Hamlet, III, 2.
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actor transforms himself or rather, physically indicates the role which he is playing. And
because the stage, by virtue of the poetry acted out, equally presents itself in the actor as
governor of something that is not experientially real, any connection with the wax dummy or
even with so-called tableaux, let alone bedazzlement, is lacking once again. Nevertheless the
question remains, at the level which has become appropriate: is the theatre, if not dazzle, still
nevertheless nothing more than illusion? In bourgeoisaesthetic use this concept in fact carries
no disparaging connotation, however it refers even then to a something which is not
externally real, which as pure, although as it were decent appearance has nothing at all in
common with any kind of pre-appearance. In this way illusion was extended to all, even to
the so-called pure arts, always with an echo of theatrical appearance of course. E. v.
Hartmann for example cites in his three-quarters conformist-trivial, one-quarter summarizing
'Philosophy of the Beautiful' illusion as the character of art per se and defines it as 'subjective
correlate to objective aesthetic appearance'. But then nothing at all seems real about this
appearance; since Kant-Schiller's definition of the beautiful: as freedom from real
Appearance,* this sort of thing has been agreed by almost all aestheticians who come from
this tradition. Even if it is purposeful, Appearance only becomes beautiful 'as soon as it is
detached from the reality which gave rise to it and thus also from the reality of purpose
which this same reality serves, and is transfigured into pure aesthetic appearance' (E. v.
Hartmann, Philosophie des Schnen, 1887, p. 174). But the surprise of course, not in E. v.
Hartmann, but rather in Schiller, who was the best Kantian in aesthetics, follows hard on the
heels of this. Because, if freedom from the reality of purpose is really supposed to be the
objective correlate to the subjective illusion, then not even theatrical appearance is an
illusion, indeed this least of all, as will shortly be seen. And if even Schiller himself calls it a
'beneficent illusion', precisely the beneficent element emphasized here still decisively
removes its illusion-character once and for all. 'The Theatre regarded as a Moral Institution'**
says in this vein: 'We are given back to ourselves, our sensibility awakens, salutary passions
shake our slumbering nature and make the blood surge more freshly'; likewise, precisely
the supposed mere illusion puts into reality, refreshes it and points itself to a stronger,
deliverable one. This lapse by Schiller mentioned above
*
'Erscheinung' in Kant and Schiller as opposed to 'Schein' which Bloch uses for 'appearance'. We have
indicated this basically linguistic distinction by the capital.
**
An essay by Schiller, 1784.
Page 424
brightens up his earlier work with the programme, so little bound to illusion, of a theatre
which is precisely regarded as a moral, consequently in no way reality-free institution. But if
and because the theatre is such an institution, then all illusion-character is incompatible with
it; since no illusion activates the realizing will and the will towards reality. The theatre as
illusion also certainly had to correspond to a bourgeoisie which completely tore apart reality
on the one hand, art and ideal on the other, way beyond Kant. But it is true: art as illusion
would be and would remain lies all the way, taken in a moral and extra-moral sense. That is,
both in the intention to deceive and in view of the impossibilities which such an art produces.
Conversely, the existing appearance of the theatre is never illusionary appearance, but
sincere per se, it too 'along a line of extension from the Become, in its formed and more
commensurate expression' (cf. p. 216). Its play does not quiesce, instead is able to influence
precisely the will of this world, in its real possibilities as paradigmatic institution.
But in order for this institution to be effective, beautiful appearance must not be forgotten in
it. The stage is of course not illusionary, but the raised index finger does not feature on its
coat of arms either. Where this finger appeared, there was much bourgeois-puritanical hatred
of art at work, or at least suspicion towards art. Not infrequently, unfortunately, this
suspicion was also instigated by socialists, just as if theatre were no pleasure, but a Sunday
School (with nothing except villains and model pupils). Above we showed how Brecht
himself recalled us from the idea of theatre as instruction, the same author who first praised
the consciousness-shaping stage rather than the merely culinary one. But the theatre was not
supposed to be an unadorned moral institution in Brecht and at any rate not an obtrusive one.
On the contrary: here too morality comes through pleasure, as the 'noblest function that we
have found for ''theatre"'. But the Gottschedian schoolmasterishness in the German aspect of
the moral institution does not die out so easily; which is why time and again tolerance for the
light with happiness must be requested. Which is why Goethe, in his essay 'German Theatre',
has the following declaration of belief in beautiful-cheerful appearance to make: 'From raw
and yet weak beginnings, almost puppet-like, the German theatre would perhaps have
gradually worked its way through various epochs to what is powerful and right, if it had
found a quiet progress and development in Southern Germany where it was actually at home;
except the first step, not to its betterment, but to its so-called improvement, was taken in
Northern Germany by feeble-minded men incapable of any production.' And after Goethe has
Page 425
so reservedly passed judgement on Gottsched's reform, after he has even had to examine the
Hamburg dispute for and against a clergyman being allowed to visit the theatre, he continues,
not entirely without a memory of the title of Schiller's youthful work: 'This dispute, which
was conducted with much animation on both sides, unfortunately obliged the friends of the
theatre to present this institution which is actually only dedicated to higher sensousness as a
moral one . . . The writers themselves, good, valiant men of the bourgeois estate, put up with
this and worked with German uprightness and true reason towards this purpose, without
noticing that they were thoroughly furthering the cause of Gottschedian mediocrity.' In line
with this sharp plea, Goethe also did not want the famous Aristotelian catharsis to be related
to the audience and transferred to them, but rather to the characters of the drama.
Undoubtedly in all this there was not so much an aristocratic reaction at work in Goethe
against the public-spiritedness of the German bourgeois enlightenment, as aversion to the
secularized servility which had attached itself even to the moral institution, to one ultimately
minus theatre. Likewise, Apollo without Muses and Minerva without Epicurus suit
materialism in art far worse than they suited its idealism. What Schiller meant by his moral
institution, however, rather than Gottschedian homespun, was flourishing theatre and only
then moral purposefulness, was scene and only then tribunal. Only then, through the richness
of the scene, can the theatre serve morality, as has so often happened in art, precisely the
highest kind. The isolated perfection of this stands in the Hamlet scene where the play forces
the royal murderer to reveal himself; the social revolutionary moral institution is to be found
in 'Cabal and Love' and 'William Tell', * in 'Egmont',** it is endowed with pure Brutus-music
in 'Fidelio'. And this moral institution is not only a tribunal, for above the corrected, even
above the triumphant and thus precisely horror-engendering image of vice on the stage the
paths of salvation appear, or at least the signs of their light. German classicism in general was
the attempt to develop the whole, undismembered human being out of the society
dismembered according to class. This attempt built purely on the belief in aesthetic
education was naturally an abstract one, but it did also undoubtedly put remarkable guiding
images on the stage. And among them are those which only today find their real mandate,
entirely without abstraction or even gushing misery
*
Plays by Schiller which appeared in 1784 and 1804 respectively.
**
A play by Goethe, 1788.
Page 426
around them. The sincere appearance of the stage is therefore, like illusion, least detached
from the reality of purpose; it is instead its promotion through festivity.
False and Genuine Topicalization

Good plays come back performed again, but never as the same ones. For every new
generation there must therefore be new productions, many of them. The change in
presentation becomes extremely sharp when another class begins to take its place in the
stalls. But even if the stage then does not remain unchanged, i.e. junk-like, it is still not a
cloakroom on whose hooks new clothes can continually be hung. This means: the people and
scenes of an old play cannot be totally and radically 'modernized'. In any case the costume of
the period remains in which the play being performed is set. This is definitely not
contradicted by the fact that the Baroque dressed up its ancient heroes la mode and made
them act accordingly. For the Baroque acted ancient heroes, but in fact no ancient dramas,
rather ones it wrote itself; thus it did not distort any ancient dramas either when it transposed
their material into its own bourgeois-courtly figures and conflicts. For a far less creative, but
even more well-considered reason, Cocteau's 'Orpheus and Eurydice', for example, written in
the Twenties of our century, wear sports shirts and horn-rimmed glasses; this equally without
any difficulty. However, it is not easy to find a more fatuous piece of nonsense than the idea
of playing Hamlet in a dinner-jacket or, to use a more modest example, the idea of setting the
first act of 'Tales of Hoffmann' in a chrome-nickel bar. Or even of putting Schiller's robbers
in proletarian garb and giving Spiegelberg a Trotsky-mask. All this is a snobbish, at least
exaggerated backlash against historicizing theatricals which expired long ago in any case.
Correct is only the obvious fact that every theatre is that of its age and neither a faithful
masked ball nor an outing for pedantic philologists. That is of course why, for its
refreshment, the scene always needs a new perspective and one newly worked into it, but in
such a way that the time-aroma of the writing and its stage-set never drifts away. For
precisely the new partiality of the perspective needs the characters and actions at the place of
their ideology given to them by the writing, if otherwise hatred and love, dross and model are
to have the object shown by the writer. The stage-set towards which the author has
composed, instead of being rejected, must therefore be changed to the point of recognition,
Page 427
to the recognition in fact of the class conflicts which take place in it and which have only
now become ripe for expression. Only this is the theatre not stylized in a topical way, but
really topicalized, and this, as in the stage-set, so much more precisely in the refreshed
illumination, modelling of the stage-text. Here, apart from the well-known cuts, there is even
the adaptation of a play, provided it is dusty in several places or even exists in an immature
and unfinished form, and provided as conditio sine qua non the new adaptor or even
completer is akin to and on a par with the author. Thus Karl Kraus not only rescued
Offenbach texts, but the whole diamond of this music out of the rut into which it had fallen.
Thus Brecht viewed 'The Private Tutor' by Lenz as a human plant which continues to grow
out of the feudal misery of the eighteenth century into the capitalist misery of the twentieth.
But the matter also becomes precarious here immediately cavalier directors, frustrated
authors or woeful epigones try to use old material as a crutch and as a substitute for
production. The epigonal completers (model: finishing Schiller's 'Demetrius') are for
literature what the dreadful castle and palace restorers of the previous century were for what
was called architecture at that time. Like the latter they have become rarer, whereas brash
directors are continually introducing an unspeakable topicalization into the text of the drama
in order to give it a vulgar-political 'interpretation'. All for the purpose of making a tendency
however commendable it may be visible outside the mirror of the work, instead of in it.
We do not need to be reminded when there is a highly uncommendable, namely pre-fascist
tendency of a 'William Tell' in which, by damping and retouching the men of freedom,
Gessler was moved into the centre as 'the most interesting' figure. Or even where the comedy
'The Merchant of Venice' was forced to parade itself as shrill anti-semitic propaganda. For
even with the most correct tendency, vulgar-political topicalization enters a field that is alien
to the work, with the loss of the given drama. As for example when 'Maria Stuart' is so
wrongly staged and got out of all proportion that the play no longer provides any tragedy, but
rather the acclaimed triumph of Elizabeth. Because she is in fact by virtue of an
unparalleled new dramaturgical structure supposed to represent rising capitalism opposite
French-Catholic-neofeudal Mary. This is historically not incorrect of course, but for the
given drama (final act) even worse, above all far more superfluous than a palace-restoration
in the taste of the 1880s. Only in the case of an ambiguous figure in literature itself, Hamlet
being the prime example, can the exaggeration of one of its features, possibly overlooked
until now, at best be
Page 428
justified; however, even these features must have been illuminated in Shakespeare, and the
director only has to develop them. Only as this kind of development and after-ripening does
renovation take place in the theatre, and only to this end are masterpieces, however felicitous
the destruction of their 'gallery-tone', museum-value, quoted on the boards. Even Richard the
Third does not act as if he was Hitler, but he more clearly embodies today a part of the
Hitlerian character the more he portrays his own skin and that of his time through
Shakespeare. In the same play, at least as far as the allegoric aspect of rescue is concerned, a
similar sort of thing is true of Richmond and the lovely day of tomorrow around him. This
portrayal must be meaningful of course and not a historical waxworks with 'timeless
material', with 'general human material' in it. But meaningful material means here: the
classical drama must be spoken and portrayed in such a way that the present is not forced on
to the drama, but so that the drama also implies the present. And this on account of its
temporally never exhausted conflicts, conflict-contents and solutions, or rather: every
classically great drama shows in these conflicts and solutions within it an as it were
overhauling concern overlapping the temporal. Indeed even plays written in the present only
possess dramatically topical meaning (in the sense of instruction and elucidation) when they
are expert at such overlapping concern. There is a social process (between individual and
community, between contrasting forms of community themselves) which extends from the
Greek beginnings of the drama into the future, right into the society of no longer
antagonistic, but naturally not vanished contradictions. This process, dramatically
concentrated between typical bearers, makes every great drama great precisely because it is
capable of new topicality, and makes it topical precisely because it is transparent to the future
task: optimistic tragedy. In 'Rameau's Nephew' Diderot lets it be said: 'There were many
columns along the way, and the rising sun shone on them all, but only Memnon's column
resounded.' This column signifies genius in contrast to mediocrity, but in more purely factual
terms it signifies the lasting resounding power and topicality of great dramas in the direction
of day break. The topical production will thus best adapt if it directs itself in this direction. It
is immanent in the truest dramas, from 'Prometheus Bound' to 'Faust'; it needs no added and
inflicted visible advertizing but in fact visualization.
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Further Genuine Topicalization:

Not Fear and Pity, but Defiance and Hope
The measure for this fresh aspect must however be freshly worked out time and again. It is
gained most surely from the existence of important new plays and from understanding of
them. It is gained not least from the great difference in which the wishful image in a socialist
age is located as against the earlier one. This difference becomes tangible in what Schiller
called the 'reason for pleasure in tragic objects'. Even Schiller apparently cannot detach
himself in the thus designated essay and more clearly in the subsequent one 'On the Art of
Tragedy' from the Aristotelian definition of tragedy. And moreover he does not intend to
distinguish between tragic play and tragedy,* because both had to move the spectator. And it
is also emotion, from the perspective of which Aristotle reaches his famous purpose-theory of
tragedy: it must arouse the emotions of fear and pity. Schiller accentuates here only the pity,
but tragedy, even in the Aristotelian original, shows us human beings, chiefly their heroes, in
a condition of suffering. And the dramatically effected heightening of fear of suffering, of
pity with it, is supposed, as is well known, to liberate the spectator from these emotions. That
is, the emotions are supposed to be worked off again through the tragic intensification back
to their normal height in life. This is the meaning of Aristotelian catharsis or purgation, as
one which in fact always includes emotion through dramatically experienced suffering.
Euripides was of course the first to introduce emotion into tragedy, which is indeed why
Aristotle also ascribed to Euripides the strongest dramatic effect in the sense given above.
Presupposed here, however, is not only the specific drama from which emotion emanates, but
above all also a way of behaving which stresses less the revolt against fate as the however
steadfastly borne suffering from it, the subjection to it. The whole of ancient slave-owning
society did not perceive anything tragically rebellious in suffering, did not perceive
Prometheus as a basic tragic hero or at least did not fully admit he was one. This despite
Aeschylus' Prometheus trilogy and despite the knowledge that the tragic heroes are better
than the gods, even than Fate. And now it is instructive precisely for the measure of the
*
German distinguishes between 'Tragdle' and 'Trauerspiel', the former conforming to Aristotle's
classical definition which Bloch discusses here, the latter designating a play about tragic events, often
in the lives of ordinary people.
Page 430
refreshment of the dramatic aspect how above all purgation of fear, then of pity, is the tragic
effect which has become most alien to us. It must still be conceded that, as we have seen,
Schiller was still fond of it (albeit with exclusive emphasis on pity); that previously Lessing
defended or once again purged it in the 'Hamburg Dramaturgy' (albeit likewise with
reduction of fear, which is supposed to be pity referred to ourselves). But even the
entrepreneurial, dynamic bourgeois society understood the ancient reason for pleasure in
tragic objects only with misconceptions; even for it a quite different wishful image of the
theatre was topicalized by the tragic hero, even that of Greek tragedy, from the one which
brings with it the merely passive emotions of fear and pity. The emotion of fear in any case
disappeared with the tragedy of fate, and what of pity? This kind of emotion in the
Aeschylean Prometheus and in what is connected with it is of a far lesser order than
admiration. Indeed something far more, something very different can be identified in the
shifting of emotion which has occurred so strongly, in this most essential kind of
topicalization. Because even if the tragically aroused reason is no longer fear and pity, it no
longer remains only admiration either. It is instead and now as such seen also in the tragic
characters themselves defiance and hope. These are the only two tragic emotions in the
revolutionary relationship, and they do not capitulate before so-called fate. Defiance of
course dwindles from and in the helping-victorious characters, the heroes of socialist society
and drama; corresponding to no longer antagonistic contradictions, substantial solidarity. It is
all the more important, however, from and in the failing-victorious characters, the heroes of
classically traditional drama, who in Hebbel's phrase have touched on the great sleep of
the world. And specific hope, as one which always carried out its proper paradox in this
failure and which forms the best reason for pleasure in tragic objects, comes home for the
very first time without paradox in socialist theatre. (So that here, however, in the sense of the
last plays ['Romances'] of Shakespeare, of Goethe's 'Faust', the tragic may be dissolved.)
Thus the theatre brightens in general in its moral, paradigmatic institution as a cheerful-
anticipating one. That is why it is cheerful even in tragedy, not only in critical comedy, not
only in the comic play.* That is why the circular horizon of morning spans precisely around
the tragic heroes, in fact even around genuine emotion, namely around the noble downfalls of
the tragic play. When
*
German again makes a distinction between classical comedy 'Komdie' and the 'Lustspiel', a light
comic play.
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Schiller says: 'What has never ever come to pass, that alone will never age', this statement is
doubtless, one would say, exaggerated; and yet there is a material core to it, beneath so much
pessimistic and idealistic resignation. Only the statement must read: What has never ever yet
quite come to pass, but is imminent as a humanly worthy event and forms the task, precisely
this will never age. The active portion of future thus provides the authentic measure for
freshness, even in comedy, which criticizes the present, in the comic play which lets it end
cosily, and all the more so in the sublimity of the tragic world. Because it becomes clear from
the effect of its heroes, an effect rich in hope, that something is not quite right about their
downfall, that the element of future raises in it.
31
Mocked and Hated Wishful Images, Voluntarily Humorous Ones
If the next thing that happened was that someone used a capital of a hundred million to paint all negroes
with white oil paint or to make Africa square, it wouldn't surprise me.
G. Freytag, The Journalists
The Little Word If

Much is laughed at in a crooked way which is not amusing. We are fond of smiling at a
person who has bad luck, and if that person is clever he will laugh along with us. A
particularly stale, but striking kind of joke finds room here. How funny that someone has lost
their key and so arrives too late. We tell everybody that we cannot get rid of our cold and it is
treated like a good joke. Laughing serves here to make the matter small, peripheral and
almost as if it did not exist. On the other hand it is fun, it is also itself funny, to be able to
rearrange for oneself, with a little, merely inner finger so to speak, the things which do not
suit us or which we are used to in others which do not suit them. Nice, if things were like
that, but that things are not like that also arouses laughter. Hence the proverb: if the little
word if were not there, there would be many a millionaire. Or: if wishes were horses, beggars
would ride. This mocking is correct, nevertheless much about it remains curious, even more
soon becomes dubious. For such a merry tone loves to spread itself to the place
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where it simply grins and jeers. It spreads itself at the expense of anticipating in general,
unusual anticipating. So may primitive man have laughed when a dreamer wanted to
demonstrate to him that meat could and would one day be eaten roasted. It is the extremists,
they always have the laughers against their side. The matter is wind and will become water
like every wind. Not every wind does this of course, but the bourgeois conformist likes to
hear it.
'None of these New-Fangled Things Are Any Good'

From this point of view the New is most easily, even most heartily mocked. Its bringers
disturb, because supposedly man gets used to everything, even to what is bad. Unusual things
remain a treasure trove of fun and aversion for the petit bourgeois; this is connected with his
insecure self-contentment. The comedians come out with it freely, the new ladies' hats are
ghastly; according to this recipe the jest of the future is now cooked up and served. But of
course, it must be added that the joke of this kind also reveals roots in a quite different class
and in very old times. From these it lives, the aversion of the bourgeois conformist lives,
without knowing it, and only spitefulness is his own growth. The peasant too does not eat
what he does not know, he had good reason not to as long as the New came to him from the
squire and from the city which plundered the peasants. This has stuck with the peasant for a
long time, as an acquired characteristic, it made him, from quite a different basis, join in with
the petit-bourgeois cry: None of these new-fangled things are any good. And another reason
lies even in a very old, almost archetypally effective fear of innovation: in superstition as the
remaining traces from a long past magical age. When the first iron ploughs were introduced
into Poland and bad harvests followed, the peasants put it down to the iron and went back to
the wooden plough. That is: in the good old days, in the wood, stone, bronze age, iron did not
exist, so the later material does not suit the customs which have been handed down here.
Likewise: circumcision is performed, in all tribes which practise it as the final trace of
primitive human sacrifice, with a wood or stone knife; the temples of the ancient earth-gods
could not be built or repaired with iron tools. Related to this, carried over from the old stone-
knife to the priestly caste: in Rome the Plebeians finally attained the office of sacerdos which
till then had been archaically reserved solely for the patricians. And of course the Roman
Catholic God only
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understands Latin; a German mass here would be what iron was for old Mother Earth among
the old Polish peasants: challenge, abomination. Thus for superstition all innovations bear the
sign: no good will come of it. A trace of the old fear is analogously also used by backward
and by anachronistic classes against the future which does not suit them. Something unusual
is here in every way a stranger to the country, so it is mocked with a conspicuous
counterblow to the wish for surprise.
Le Nant;
Another World
The joke gets more daring when it tries to demonstrate the New itself in a despicable way.
When it even plays with the darkening in it and dissolves it into a tingling horror. The
tingling element in it always designates the pleasure in the fact that there is now something
odd, i.e. not usual, going on. Very early on the magic theatre picked holes in magic, not so
much to disenchant it, as to let a curious, a strange shadow fall for the public even over the
wonders of technology. The wishful image of climbing over the old borders is thus, among
other things, reduced to a sensational prank; a play-actor can teach an inventor. Tricks with
fire belong here: the art of walking on glowing coals, the fire-eater, fire-breather. Powel the
Fire-Eater fried a steak on his tongue in 1762 by putting a glowing coal under it; his tongue
was coated with an unknown protective salve. The optical illusions belong here, above all the
use of reflecting mirrors which have been documented since the sixteenth century.
Benvenuto Cellini tells of phantoms which were projected on smoke during a performance in
the Colosseum; the mirrors used for this were introduced into Rome from the court of the
Tartar Khans. The trick has been retained from this of making living people vanish and
appear again with mirrors: 'Le Nant' on Montparnasse is a booth which even today spirits
away people, even things which were standing on the stage a moment ago and lets them
come back from Nothing into Being-here. In 1865 Tobin and Pepper constructed 'The
Cabinet of Proteus', in which men and women reappeared transformed: naked in their bed of
love or in a hair-shirt at the stake. However, 'Le Nant' on Montparnasse, does it not seem as
if it already wished long before Sartre to devalue and to mock: All progress is progress into
Nothing.
There is certainly no lack of this where new things are exaggerated in images. For a hundred
years joke-books have been drawing material from
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how man will look in a hundred years. The mocking becomes all the stronger, the more
peculiarly the mocker himself is affected by his grotesque cartoons painted in advance. Then
of course the caricature can soar to heights which are necessarily missing in the joke-book. A
grotesque picture-book is relevant here with text from the nineteenth century on a romantic-
technological knife-edge: Grandville's 'Another World' (1844); the author died three years
later in a madhouse. A change of connection is made here from the old world to a new one,
and the genre portrayal of the change is mixed with friendly genre-scenes of hell. On the
title-page are promised: 'Transformations, Visions, Incarnations, Ascensions,
Locomotions . . . , Metamorphoses, Zoomorphoses, Lithomorphoses, Mtempsychoses,
Apothoses et autres choses.' Not all of these promises are kept, nevertheless the curtain rolls
up to reveal a complicated-utopian variety. There are reconstructed men, double-eaters, back
and front they bear head-biters and tuck in. Tools have long since made themselves
independent, they are giant insects of iron, their limbs pincers or levers, their head a
blacksmith's hammer which rivets as it nods. A 'Concert la vapeur' hisses, rattles, jangles
up, with no people yet precise: all the instruments are driven by steam, they have almost
become steam-engines themselves; an oscillating piston-rod with a hand on it provides the
conductor. Even the 'Mystres de l'infini' are technologized: Jupiter, Saturn, Earth, Mars are
joined by an iron bridge; the bridge is shown illuminated by gas-lamps, as big as a little
moon. Baudelaire said of Grandville and his drawings: 'He is a diseased literary brain, always
obsessed with illegitimate hybrids . . . This man has with superhuman courage spent his life
improving creation.' But in fact the only correct version is that he was the talent to picture out
technological Gargantuas and to drive his horror with this foolery. Each of these pictures
caricatures, excessively distorts the means of making people happy through technology. On
the Palace of Justice of the future the axiom stands: 'Les crimes sont abolis, il n'y a plus que
des passions'* a serious summit in the jumped-up mockery of utopian nonsense. So much
for Grandville and his oracle; a schizophrenic petit-bourgeois, a significant horror of
technological imagination has eaten too much of Proteus or even Prometheus here, it made
him feel sick. And in any case, every oddity, as we have seen, brings a bit of wit with it (cf.
p. 102), as its reverse side; which was also noticeable in many products of Surrealism.
Outside of Surrealism this can best be demonstrated from the montages of hell, the 'paradisi
*
'Crime has been abolished, only passions remain'.
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voluptatis' of Hieronymus Bosch, whose mixed novelties were collected by the Spanish court
solely for the sake of amusement. And not completely unrelated appears the peculiar witty
horror even in the exaggerated prosthesis-family of Grandville, as one in which madness and
joke break out together. Difficult to deal with this; cheerfulness rescues, itself frivolous, from
that remoteness which is becoming demonic, to which man and later the machine can
rearrange the world. Wit rescues from extreme artificiality or unhealthiness of abstract and
yet portrayable mixed figures, from the realm of shadows of technological perversion, black
utopia. At the same time, however, wit is objectively in it: as a beginning of the 'grotesque',
which linguistically and factually stems from the 'grotto' or underworld, as father or brother
of a laughter which precisely must not be absent from hell. Some of this appears in the
above-mentioned caricatures, the fear-caricatures of technology and its prostheses. With
spiteful or scornful anxiety-dream, full of terror of the technological challenge and of what it
is calling. Giant slit-eyes open in a picture of Grandville's in the sky; the Big Bombers of the
future and the atom bomb were not foreseen even by the most terrible scorn.
The 'Birds' of Aristophanes and Cloud-Cuckoo-Land

Mockery of the New puffs itself up where there is a mandate. A mandate of the ruling class
against spreading dissatisfactions and their images. Then eulogists of the old days are sought
for, and long before they romantically blew the New away, they started to lay into it
satirically. Inherently political satire is undoubtedly more natural to the oppressed class than
to the owning class who feel comfortable in the Old and who want to preserve themselves
within it. Thus the mockery of Sicilian mime most certainly lived in the people, and even the
old Attic comedians did not just listen to what the people said, but also looked into its heart
when they made them laugh about the traditional rut. But the reaction during and after the
unfortunate Peloponnesian War caused mockery to be increasingly turned against claiming to
know better and definitely not against superannuated things. Whereby, with superior means,
the hatred of the bourgeois conformist was also mobilized in the demos, in fact the hatred of
unusual things and their way. The first political satire was correspondingly reactionary, was
directed precisely against utopias; its master: Aristophanes created several of his best
comedies at the expense of revolutionary hope. One of the comedies is called 'Ecclesiazusae',
it mocks the plan for women's suffrage
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and community of property; another is called 'Birds' and mocks socialist utopia per se. Even
the nickname 'cloud-cuckoo-land' (Nephelokokkygia) literally goes back to the 'Birds', as do
the majority of humorous genre-pictures with which the so-called future state has
subsequently been conceived. Two Athenians suggest to the birds that they should found a
city in the clouds, not without intending to fly there themselves. One of them: Peisthetairos
(Trusty Friend) makes a 'rabble-rousing speech' to finches, tits and swallows, he teaches them
that they once ruled the world instead of the gods and will rule it again. The other: Euelpides
(Hopegood) believes with dumb loyalty in the founding of the city in the air, in
Nephelokokkygia high above, between heaven and earth, controlling both. The city of the
birds is supposed to become the realm of freedom: decency and morals are banned there,
'nature' rules. Quite in the spirit of the precedence of 'nature' over 'statute' which the Sophist
enlightenment taught, the leader of the chorus turns to the audience:
Those of you who wish to spend
all your days that are to come
living happily with us, the birds,
please accept this invitation.
All forbidden by your laws
thought down there to be a sin
is for us in our bird kingdom
beautiful and virtuous.
But how beautiful and virtuous this naturalness is emerges from the fact that Aristophanes
introduces a comrade who defiles everything that gets in his way. And a law is considered, in
the perfected malice, the inspired slander-strategy of this comedy, 'according to which it
brings glory to hang and bite your father'. Thus the whole social wishful dream appears here
as a mixture of crime and farce; its 'nature' itself has no floor except that of cloud vapour. It
is just curious that the beautiful city in the clouds, this reflection of all distant isles of
happiness, first appeared in literature through the medium of mockery.
Merry Outdoing:
Lucian's 'Vera Historia'
For ages the better life has been talked about as if it were already there somewhere. Even
strange things can appear as something better because
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they are at least different and unheard of. The form in which this kind of thing is reported is
the travelogue or conversely tales in the manner of Sinbad's. Even fairytales of an ideal state
have very often chosen this form; after all the land of happiness typically lies a long way
away. On a distant island, in a South Sea; the wonders reported of it are intentionally
uncontrollable. The most cheerful mockery of this kind of lie is Lucian's 'Vera historia', there
is even a model for Mnchhausen in it. Gottfried Brger took several stories from here
almost verbatim, and Thomas More, who translated Lucian's dialogues, also had no qualms
about starting to spin his Utopia with sailor's yarn. Even Rabelais' wonderful giant-images
(the world in Pantagruel's mouth consisting of twenty-five inhabited kingdoms, not counting
the deserts and a broad stretch of sea) reaped great benefits from the 'Vera historia'; and
Rabelais is the only one who surpassed Lucian in such grotesquerie, namely with
Renaissance-dimension. The mere mocker Lucian, in a declining, sceptically destructive
society, definitely lacked greatness of utopian mockery; but his scepticism made him give
himself over precisely to the dissolute element which was the only thing to make an
impression in the wonder-tidings. Not without the fabulous stories, as is very often the case
with irony, being mocked so long that the mockery imitated and surpassed them. Thus
Lucian gave a choice, fantastic vision of unavailable things, almost itself utopian, quite light,
quite carefree, like an inhabitant of the happy islands themselves. He wanted, as the
ambitious introduction says, to follow in the footsteps of the great liars, Odysseus at their
head, but also poets, philosophers, historians and above all legendary geography. He mocks
in particular fabulist writing in the vein of Antonios Diogenes, who had dealt with the
'wonders beyond Thule' in no less than twenty-four books. Concerning these events Lucian
says: 'I do not reproach them for their mendacity; but what surprises me is that they feared no
discovery. By wishing to participate in the world of writers and liars, and not in a position to
be able to report facts (because nothing of significance has happened to me), I will say the
only true thing in advance, namely that I am going to tell lies. So I begin with what I neither
saw nor heard, and what is more, I will write about things that never happened or could
happen.' Thus Lucian sails, still laughing off the possibility of his own lands of imagination,
with fifty other liars beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The known world remains behind (as far
as it is not reflected from time to time in the moon, a suspended earth-mirror). And in the
unknown world there is everything that Tantalus craves and Zeus withholds. Lucian used
motifs from his Syrian homeland which are
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to be found again later in the Arabian Nights, as in the stories of Sinbad the Sailor. There is a
kind of bird like Rok, there is a giant fish which swallows Lucian's ship, and more sparkling
horrors besides. There are also alcoholic motifs, 'Vinland'-motifs which only re-emerge in
medieval travel-legends, pictures of discovery. For on the island beyond the Pillars of
Hercules the traveller sees giant footprints, those of Hercules and Dionysus. And following
these he reaches a flowing river of wine, with fish which cause intoxication, with women on
the river-bank who have been partly turned into vines and thus make doubly drunk. On the
other hand, Lucian allots liquid air as a drink to the inhabitants of the moon, 1700 years
before its production, while (so that nonsense is still proved right) colossal spiders cover the
space between moon and morning star with a traversable web. But far more peculiar is this:
the ship of lies on its voyage into the Atlantic is in fact underway in order to track down,
literally: to track down 'where the limit of the ocean is and which men live on the opposite
shore'. This is clearer than the famous prophecy of Seneca that one day the girdle of the
ocean would break apart, but the forecast of the opposite shore of the Atlantic is written in a
work of mockery on lies and fantasy. Of course: if the truthful narrator then reaches a
wonder-city, he again portrays it as fatuous for its sheer magic, and the wonderland still only
consists of impossibility. To this extent the Lucian approach even provides a very good, in
fact funny antidote to the poets who lie, especially to the Mnchhausens who utopianize.
However, it remains a different thing whether a Mnchhausen occasionally utopianizes too in
order to enhance his hunting tales, or whether a utopian enlists the wonders of travel to
colour his happy island really boldly. The intentions in both are fundamentally different, just
as the windbaggeries of Mnchhausen and the fairytales of happiness of a Thomas More are
different in their methods. Even the most abstract utopian had nothing impossible, just sheer
possibilities in mind, even if their true story was still so cock-eyed and still outstanding.
There is no river flowing with wine, but an overflow for all, which likewise does not exist,
immediately passes from the merry lie into the merriest task.
Voluntary-Humorous Wishful Images

Finally there are rash dreams which believe in new things and yet laugh over them. They do
this voluntarily, need no mockers from outside, they are already born humorous. And
precisely because available things shift
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in them in a baffling way, with future everywhere and not believed as true. In a particularly
funny way the formation of living creatures that have been swopped around presents itself for
such games. Maurice Renard saw to this with the knife in his Gothic Novel 'Docteur Lerne',
which dealt with the exchanging of brains. A doctor inserts calves' brains into lions' heads,
monkeys' brains into human heads and vice-versa. Thus he changes and mixes the species,
his own nephew is raging in a bull into which he has inserted this nephew's brain. The
criminal doctor has killed himself long before and implanted his brain into the head of his
great teacher, in whose body and titles he now lives. If that is surgical wishful mockery, it
becomes electric-erotic in Villiers de l'Ile Adam in his Edison novel 'The future Eve', a kind
of fairground booth with mechanical mermaids, but really alive. The creation (re-creation) of
a woman by Edison is related here, the American wonderman himself. The inventor creates
for Lord Ewald a precious imitation of Alicia, the Lord's very beautiful mistress, made even
more beautiful by the technologically added soul of a higher female being. Pure metal,
perfumed flesh, the new mysteries of the microphone, phonograph, electric current ('The
future Eve' appeared in 1886) combine to make the 'Automate-lectro-humain'. What the
automaton-artists of the Rococo, what Spallanzani in 'Tales of Hoffmann' began, is
completed here so to speak; for the new Olympia is not a doll any more, but a factive ideal of
woman. Despite Edison the line is of course not modern, the plan itself: the virgo optime
perfecta is even found in antiquity. She is conceived of magically in the Pygmalion myth,
and Aphrodite was gracious to the sculptor because she animated the immaculate statue
untroubled by any organic frustration. And going further, again into the comic: In a preserved
fragment of the Roman academic farce, in M. Terentius Varro's 'Liberated Prometheus' the
Titan opens a human-factory after his liberation, from which Goldshoe, a rich man, orders a
girl 'made of milk and finest wax, like the Milesian bees collect'. The joke is however the
same as in the Edison novel, and its goal remains the old Homunculus which is just
cultivated immediately as a synthentic virgin. An authentic new line in the electric-utopian
field of humour, even field of paradox was first entered upon by H. G. Wells with his 'Time
Machine'. This machine is also much more effective as a story than Wells' later lemonade-
like liberal fairytales of an ideal state. The time-machine does not travel fight or left, but only
back and forth on the time-line, as a no longer imaginary axis of space. The inventor swings
himself up on to the unheard of vehicle in his laboratory, sets the lever to the future. It
becomes night
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around him, namely the coming one, becomes the day of tomorrow, becomes next week in an
hour, becomes future winter and summer, which with an increasing number of revolutions of
the machine only appear as a reflection of white and green. Decades are dashed through,
centuries. Finally the traveller switches off the motor in the landscape which in the same
place in space as his room will be in the year 802701. There he meets completely harmless
people who have stayed at the level of children, singing, dancing, twining flowers; under the
ground, however, the Morlocks live, sticky-blackish creatures of far higher intelligence. They
are the proletarians of far higher intelligence. They are the proletarians of previous times, and
the flower people are the rich who have grown stupid in idleness, they are now kept as cattle
by the Morlocks, as living meat-supplies. After many dangers, the time-traveller returns from
the year 802701 to his present friends, with a flower in his hand which does not grow
currently on the whole of the earth. He promises to divulge the secret of the machine as soon
as he has tried out the other direction in time, the past one. But from this journey, Wells
assures us, the traveller did not return, either because he settled in the Ice Age, or because,
slipping back further into the past, he fell prey to an ichthyosaurus. So much for this
interesting prank, it plays like a virtuoso on the popular conception of time, it plays less like
a virtuoso on the popular bourgeois conformist conception according to which 'since man
never changes' there will still be classes even in hundreds of thousands of years. The class of
the idlers up there, even though now edible, the workers down there, even though with the
only remaining intelligence, that of canal-creatures. The last, the total Morlock-portrait that
Aldous Huxley supplied beyond Wells, with the ironic Shakespeare title 'Brave New World'
ends in a completely reactionary way. In this only reflex-people inhabit the future, clean,
without feelings, unsentimentally divided into the reflex-groups of robots and leaders.
Individuals are abolished, society functions as a switchboard, and the idiotic wishful image
which Huxley makes out to be one belonging to the communists or to the fascists, all the
same to him apparently, is screamingly funny so to speak. It is bursting so much with
laughter that it does not even know how to distinguish monopoly capitalism from
socialization of the means of production. Thus the liberal bourgeoisie has become incapable
of utopian humour; its game ends in horror and stupidity. As the individual-agitator Huxley
shows, is only still capable of the murder of hope and anti-utopia. Instead of this, it is better
to stick to 'The future Eve', particularly to the 'Time Machine' as far as it remains technical,
and to related
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humorous stories. Precisely socialism has room for voluntary-humorous wishful images of a
genuine, future kind; in fact they will be able to form a separate amusing genre of writing
within it, that of effervescing projects. When one day a little Golden Age starts to begin, it
will still be possible to exaggerate many wishful images, but not to caricature any of them.
32
Happy End, Seen Through and Yet Still Defended
I'd like to dance a Can-Can,
As brazen as Pompadour,
For we Parisian lasses can
Think only l'amour, l'amour.
Offenbach, Paris Life
The salesman also has hours when he leans on a sugar barrel and is lost in sweet daydreams. Then it's like a
twenty-five pound load on his heart to think that he's been chained to the shop like a watch-dog to its kennel
ever since he was a boy. If your knowledge of the world's confined to what you've picked up from shoddy
chap-books with half their pages missing, if you only know the sunset from an attic window, and the evening
glow merely from what customers tell you, then you feel an emptiness inside which all the oil-kegs of the
south and all the herring-kegs of the north can't fill, a blandness which all the mace in India can't season.
Nestroy, On the Razzle
We know only too well men want to be deceived. But this not only because stupid people are
in the majority. But because men, born to pleasure, have none, because they are crying out
for pleasure. This at first even makes clever people one-track and simple at times, they are
taken in by glitter, and it is not even necessary for the glitter to promise gold, here it can be
enough that it glitters. We learn by our mistakes, but soon the obsession is at work again and
hopes that this time it will not be deceived. It keeps itself fresh for the emergency and does
not want to miss it; meanwhile however, new children with unburnt fingers are always
growing up, new deceivers are always hooking into a weakness which could also be a
strength. For this obsession still has a weakness for happiness, for laughing ultimately,
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and it is not of the beaten-up opinion that anything better could seldom follow. The
exploiting of weakness need not come about through swindlers, on a small or large scale.
Glossing over is sought after everywhere, bad books are full of it. But, characteristically, the
sugar increases towards the end, it rises or rises up so to speak. Life is dubious, but on
balance it should be worth it. Even the man who has otherwise learnt by experience is thus
impressed by all's well that ends well.
There is a lot to be said for condemning outright the illusion at the end. When we consider
the disaster which it has sown and sows today, in increasing fashion. Where work no longer
gives any pleasure at all, art is forced to be good fun, merry swindle, tacked-on happy end.
This keeps hold of the listeners; at the end of the Fascist national community* or of the
American way of life everyone will get something, and indeed without the least thing having
to be changed in existing reality. The cinemagoers and the readers of magazine stories catch
sight of rosy red upward paths, as if they were the norm in present society, and only chance
has blocked them for the chance viewer. Indeed, the happy end becomes all the more
unavoidable in capitalist terms, the smaller the chances of moving upwards have become in
the society that exists today, the less hope the latter can offer. In addition there is the 'moral'
dosage of the good outcome; because not everyone becomes rich and happy, there is not
enough sugar for this even in the magazine world. Rather, a bank account is only reserved for
the virtuous, and misery for the wicked, and only for them; thus one of the most brazen
inversions of the real situation takes place. The Rich Man Hotel is occupied everywhere by
good people; but the many bad things, hunger, slums, prisons, which the ruling society
cannot abolish and cannot even deny, are expediently allotted to the morally bad. These are
the old Sunday sermons of crafty edification which have now become complete hypocrisy
and part of the cosmetic industry too. 'If money', says Marx, 'comes into the world with
natural bloodstains on one cheek, then capital does so from head to toe, bleeding and
dripping with filth at every pore'; thus it needs, all the more, the longer it goes on, a mask for
the outcome, happiness of honesty at the outcome. The happy end is however not only a lie,
it has also become shallower than at any other time, it confines itself to the smile of the car
and perfume advertisements. Well-groomed gentlemen and ladies show the high-life of a
declining society, without sweetness of life being compressed into this end as in
*
'Volksgemeinschaft': a National Socialist expression.
Page 443
the Rococo. The happiness of bourgeois wealth has itself become as crass as it is empty, its
happiness borders in reality more on the void than the dead themselves. Nevertheless, this
lying, prescribed happy end deceives millions for whom it replaces the church's empty
promises of the other world, and it is prescribed only for the sake of deception. With
imagination that is always newly warmed up the poor devil who builds himself up in golden
dreams is supposed to remain in the belief that these dreams are certainly fulfillable in
capitalism, at least in capitalism plus patience and a little time to wait. But for the little man
there is no stock-market killing, every rosy red ends for him as Black Friday. There are very
sophisticated capitalist fireworks, not only in an optical respect, against which the socialist
world can hardly compete. But after all the snakes of lightning and boxes of stars, de luxe
Venetian bombs and the Queen of the Night, there follows the violent thunder-flash bomb
and that is the highlight and the conclusion of the matter. Everything capitalism stages with
happy end, business like never before, Greater Germany,* America first, even keep smiling,
leads into death. In the most uninspired way the beautiful in the world of the whitewashed
graves becomes the beginning of the terrible.
And yet this is only one side of illusion, which is itself false. An unmistakable drive is
working in the direction of the good end, it is not only confined to gullibility. The fact that
deceivers make use of this drive disproves it au fond almost as little as the 'socialist' Hitler
disproved socialism. The deceivability of the happy end drive merely says something against
the state of its reason; this, however, is as teachable as it is improvable. The deception
represents the good end as if it were attainable in an unchanged Today of society or even the
Today itself. But just because knowledge destroys rotten optimism, it does not also destroy
urgent hope for a good end. For this hope is too indestructibly grounded in the human drive
for happiness, and it has always been too clearly a motor of history. It has been so as
expectation and incitement of a positively visible goal, for which it is important to fight and
which sends a Forwards into barrenly continuing time. More than once the fiction of a happy
end, when it seized the will, when the will had learnt both through mistakes and in fact
through hope as well, and when reality did not stand in too harsh contradiction to it, reformed
a bit of the world; that is: an initial fiction was made real.
*
A National Socialist concept.
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Sometimes even, when there was great belief, a paradox succeeded: the victory of the urgent
over the mighty enemy, of the cheerful over the nasty probable. If the will-content of the goal
is missing, then even the good probable is left undone; if the goal remains, however, then
even the improbable can be done or at least made more probable for later. Not even the
breaking of the chain at its weakest link succeeded and succeeds, if the breakers do not have
the Positivum: anti-chain wholly in mind. Men reduce themselves when their purpose is
reduced, whereas when it is great and cheerful it makes itself unavoidable in a world which
only still has the choice between swamp or energetic new construction before it.
So it never befits the colour red to be voluntarily timid. Every barrier, when it is felt as such,
is at at the same time crossed. For just coming up against it presupposes a movement which
goes beyond it and contains this in embryo. This is the most simple dialectical At-the-same-
time in the objective factor, primarily when it completes and activates the consciousness of
the barrier. Then consciousness reaches the other side in a mediated way, enters into the
struggle for the happy end, which already senses itself, almost announces itself in the
dissatisfaction with what is available. The discontented person then sees all at once how bad
capitalist conditions are and how urgently the socialist beginnings need him, how good their
consequence can and will be. This makes the barrier into a rung, assuming that the other side,
the happiness of the goal, always remains present on the path. And the indispensable insight,
unalterable, into the economic laws attests that these laws have, as recognized and used laws,
the stuff in them to lead to a good end. Thus socialism does not need to borrow from other
colours, customs, powers, as though its own colour were not sufficient. It does not need to do
this above all when these colours or frames lie so much on this side of the crossed barrier and
have already supported such very different things that they cannot easily, nor unequivocally
be re-functioned. Socialism, which possesses and keeps its path to the happy end as its own,
is precisely also as a cultural inheritance a socialism through its own creative power, its own
fullness-goal, without plush, without intellectual timidity. The nouveau riche bourgeoisie of
the second half of the previous century did not get by with its own material; so it cultivated
finery and substitutes with bows, little covers, masked houses and pictures, uncomprehended
ornaments, palatial faades, historicisms; and the substitutes really looked the part. This is all
miles away from socialism, which never ploughs
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with a strange team, which unmasks and aesthetically condemns masquerade and swankiness
with social criticism. 'Grnderzeiten' are foreign bodies here, particularly noticeable in
socialism; it finds no path to the cultural inheritance which goes through the parlour either.
Politically the revolutionary proletariat never borders on the petit-bourgeoisie, how should it
do so culturally? In reality this kind of thing is never practised either; because a practice
which has no realistic theory behind it and in its favour, would not be one, is impossible in
socialism. Indeed, socialism does not incorporate the genuine cultural inheritance either in
such a way that it begins with it and then continues to build on it as if it were a finished first
floor so to speak. Instead, the drive to build is moral here for the first time in the history of
civilization, is the building of a world without exploitation and its ideology. Furthermore,
neither bareness nor epigonism characterize this work, but the matching colours red and gold,
manifestly a splendidly bold match. However, already contained in the red is the gold that
brings affinity to the best from tradition and forms its classical material as growing
substance, not as previous local form. Therefore: fresh air and great breadth belong to this
outcome, as the one in which no plush happy end hangs any more and none from the laurel-
scheme of historicism. There are enough merry trading centres on the stream to the true
happy end; for this flows solely through socialism. As observed above, every barrier, if it is
felt as such, is already crossed. But equally: no barrier is actively crossed without the
intended goal drifting ahead in genuine images and concepts and transposing us into such
significant conditions.
See the outcome of things as friendly, that is then not always foolish or stupid. The stupid
drive to a good end can become a clever one, passive belief a knowledgeable and summoning
one. To this extent we can proceed to the defence of the old merry farewell celebration, for it
invites us, partly, to eat, not only to contemplate. And this wanting to eat has sometimes first
made us sensitive to the block which in the shape of the existing society forces itself
between the idea and the pleasure-banquet. Whereas people who do not believe at all in a
happy end impede changing the world almost as much as the sweet swindlers, the marriage-
swindlers, the charlatans of apotheosis. Unconditional pessimism therefore promotes the
business of reaction not much less than artificially conditioned optimism; the latter is
nevertheless not so stupid that it does not believe in anything at all. It does not immortalize
the trudging of the little life, does not give humanity the face of a chloroformed gravestone. It
does not give the world
Page 446
the deathly sad background in front of which it is not worth doing anything at all. In contrast
to a pessimism which itself belongs to rottenness and may serve it, a tested optimism, when
the scales fall from its eyes, does not deny the goal-belief in general; on the contrary, what
matters now is to find the right one and to prove it. For this reason there is more possible
pleasure in the idea of a converted Nazi than from all the cynics and nihilists. That is why the
most dogged enemy of socialism is not only, as is understandable, great capital, but equally
the load of indifference, hopelessness; otherwise great capital would stand alone. Otherwise
there would not in fact be, despite all mistakes in propaganda, the delays until socialism
ignites in the massive majority whose interests belong to it, without it knowing. Thus
pessimism is paralysis per se, whereas even the most rotten optimism can still be the
stupefaction from which there is an awakening. Even the contentment with the minimum for
existence so long as it is there, the shortsightedness in the daily struggle for bread and the
miserable triumphs in this struggle ultimately stem from the disbelief in the goal; the first
thing is therefore to break into this. It is no coincidence that capitalism has striven to spread,
apart from the false happy end, its own genuine nihilism. Because this is the stronger danger
and, in contrast to the happy end, cannot be corrected at all, except through its own demise.
The truth is its demise, as expropriating and as liberating truth, towards a humanity which is
finally socially possible. So truth then, sweeping clean, an instruction to build, is in no way
grieving or ice. On the contrary, its attitude is, becomes, remains critical-militant optimism,
and this orientates itself in the Become always towards the Not-Yet-Become, towards viable
possibilities of the light. It creates the readiness, which is uninterrupted and informed of
tendency, to risk the intervention into what has not yet been achieved. As long as no absolute
In-Vain (triumph of evil) has appeared, then the happy end of the right direction and path is
not only our pleasure, but our duty. Where the dead bury their dead, grieving may rightly
take place and failure may be the existential condition. Where snobs participated as traitors in
the revolution until it broke out, all that is left to pray may in fact be: Give us this day our
daily illusion. Where the capitalist sum no longer works out anywhere, the bankrupt may in
fact be forced to pour and spread a blot over the ledger of the whole of existence, so that the
world in general looks coal-black and no inspector will call the nightmaker to account. All
this is an even worse deception than that of the radiant faades which can no longer be kept
up. The work against this, with which history continues, indeed has been continuing
Page 447
for a long time, leads to the matter which could be good, not as abyss, but as mountain into
the future. Mankind and the world carry enough good future; no plan is itself good without
this fundamental belief within it.
Page G-1
GLOSSARY OF FOREIGN TERMS
Greek (Transliterated)
aporia: doubt, perplexity
aristoi: aristocratic quality (lit: best)
diairesis: division
dynamei on: What-Is-in-possibility
dynaton: capable
elphis: hope
eschaton: the last things
eudaemonia: happiness
hen kai pan: one and all
kairos: occasion, opportunity, the right time
logos spermatikos: engendering word
melos: melody
oecumene: the whole world, the merging of all nations
peripeteia: sudden change
polis: city state
proskunesis: worship
zoon politikon: political animal
Latin
A
ab origine: from its origin
ab ovo: from the beginning
absconditum: the thing that has vanished
actus purus: the pure act
ad calendas apocalypticas: until the time of the apocalypse
ad libitum: as far as desirable
ad oculos: to the eye
ad pessimum: in a pessimistic direction
ad valorem: according to its strength
alter deus: the other god
Page G-2
alteritas: multiplicity
alterius juris: according to another law
amor Dei: love of God
amor dei intellectualis: intellectual love of God
amor fati: love of fate
analogiae entis: the correspondences between things
a nihilo contracta: assimilated from nothing
anima candidissima: most candid soul
anima mea: my soul
ante rem: before the event
apex mentis: the apex of the mind
apex terrae: the apex of the earth
a posse ad esse: from potential to being
appetitus socialis: social appetite
arpeggio ante lucem: the arpeggio before the light
ars amandi: the art of love
ars combinatoria: the art of combination
ars demonstrandi: the art of demonstration
ars inveniendi: the art of invention
ars magna: the great art
artes liberales: liberal arts (in the Middle Ages)
a se esse: being to itself
auditio beatifica: blessed hearing
augmentatio: augmentation
aut Caesar aut Christus: either Caesar or Christ
B
bona valetudo: good health
caccatum: stained, soiled
cantus firmus: sure song
caput mortuum: dead head
caritas: charity, love
carpe aeternitatem in momento: seize eternity in the moment
carpe diem: seize the day (live for the day)
carpe diem nostrum in mundo nostro: seize our day in our world
causa aequat effectum: cause equals effect
causa finalis: final cause
causa sui: for its own sake
chorus martyrum: chorus of martyrs
Page G-3
circenses: circuses
civitas Christi: the city of Christ
civitas Dei: the city of God
civitas terrena: the earthly, sinful city
cogitatio: thinking
cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I am
collegia fabrorum: college of masons
comes: comrade
communes notiones: common ideas
communis opinio: common opinion
compunctio cordis: the contrition of the heart
conditio sine qua non: an indispensable condition
contemplatio: contemplation
contradictio in adjecto: opposite to what is next to it
Corpus Christi: the body of Christ
corpus permixtum: adulterated body
corpus rerum: true body
corrumpere: to corrupt, corruption
corruptio, defectus: corruption, disintegration
corruptio optimi pessima: the worst things are a corruption of the best
credo quia absurdum: I believe because it is absurd (the leap of faith)
crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato: crucified under Pontius Pilate
cum grano salis: with a grain of salt
cum ira et studio: with passion and partiality
cur deus homo: why does god become man
D
dator formarum: the giver of forms
definitio: definition
de jure: according to the law
de nobis res agitur: the matter in question is ourselves
de profundis: of the depths
descendendo ad opera: by getting down to business
destillatio, solutio, purefactio, nigredo, albedo, fermentatio, projectio medicinae:
the distillation, solution, purefaction, blackening, whitening, fermentation and projection
of medicine
destinatio: destination
deus absconditus: vanished god
deus optimus maximus: greatest and best god
deus spes: god is our hope
Page G-4
dies irae: day of wrath

disjecta membra: scattered limbs
divinae bonitatis similitudo: the likeness to divine goodness
divina proportio: divine proportion
docta spes: educated hope
doctor angelicus: the angelic doctor
doctor ecstaticus: the ecstatic doctor
doctor subtilis: the subtle doctor
donum inventionis: the gift of invention
dux: commander, leader
E
ecce homo: behold the man
ecclesia perennis: eternal church
ecclesia philadelphia: church of brotherhood
ecclesia triumphans: the church triumphant
eductio formarum ex materia: extraction of form from matter
egrediens de loco voluptatis: emerging from the place of pleasure
ens perfectissimum: perfect being
epitheton ornans: decorative epithet
eritis sicut deus: you will be like God
et in Arcadia ego: and I too am/have been/will be in Arcadia
ex cathedra: edict from the authority (bishop)
ex contrario: from the opposite
exempla docent: examples teach
ex encyclica: edict from an encyclical (pope)
exercitia spiritualia: spiritual exercises
ex ingenio: from character, personality
existere: to exist, existence
exitus letalis: departure through death
ex machina: by divine intervention
ex oriente lux: light from the East
expressivo: expressively
exprimatio: expression
ex una voce plures faciens: making many things from one voice
ex uno judicio plures faciens: making many things from one judgement
F
facies hippocratica: shrunken and deathly appearance
factum brutum: bare fact
facultas agendi: individual justification (lit. the ability to do something)
Page G-5
fiat lux: let there be light

fides: faith
fieri: to be done
figura animae: form of the soul
figura Dei: form of God
figura virtutum: form of the virtues
finis ad quem omnia: end to which all things move
florealia: flower festivals
fortuna vettit: fortune changes
fruitio: fruition
G
generatio aequivoca: of dubious generation
H
hic et nunc: here and now
hic Rhodus, hic salta: here is Rhodes, here rise
homo absconditus: vanished man
homo contemplativus: contemplative man
homo faber: man as maker
homo homini homo: man being man to man
homo homini lupus: man being a wolf to man
homo religiosus: religious man
horror pulchri: fear of the beautiful
horror vacui: fear of the void
I
idola theatri: idols of the theatre
imitatio deorum: the imitation of the gods
imitatio mundi: the imitation of the world
impietas: impiety, disrespect
impossibilium nulla obligatio: under no obligation because impossible
in aeternum damnatus: damned for eternity
incipit vita nova: the new life begins
in concreto: in concrete terms
in corpore: in substance, as a whole
incredibile dictu: incredible to relate
in fluxu nascendi: in the process of birth
in gloria et jubilo: in glory and jubilation
in litteris: literally
in nuce: in a nutshell
in realitate: in reality
Page G-6
in spe: to be hoped for

in statu nascendi: in the state of birth
intellectus: intellect
intermissio legis: legal loophole
intimum, summum, apex mentis: inmost, uppermost, peak of the mind
in toto: as a whole
in tyrannos: against tyranny
ipso facto: in the fact itself
J
justificatio: justification
justitia: justice
L
laboratorium Dei: laboratory of God
laudabiliter se subjecit: he subjects himself in a laudable manner
lex continui: law of continuity
lex divina: divine law
libertas amicorum: the freedom of friendship
libertatem perfectam: perfect freedom
liquidas sorores: liquid sisters
locus minoris resistentiae: place of least resistance
lucus a non lucendo: light that does not light
lux aeterna: eternal light
lux nova: new light
lux pura: pure light
lyra Apollinis vel Solis: the lyre of Apollo or the Sun (god)
M
magia naturalis: natural magic
magisterium magnum: the great teaching
magnum opus et strenuum: the great and strenuous work
mappa mundi: map of the world
materia prima: prime matter
mathesis: (from Greek) science, mathematics, astrology
mediator Dei et hominum: the mediator between God and man
medicina mentis: medicine for the mind
meditatio: meditation
memento mori: a remembrance of death
mens bona: good mind
mens sana in corpore sano: a healthy mind in a healthy body
misera contribuens plebs: the people pooling their miseries
Page G-7
moralitas musicae: morality of music

more geometrico: in geometric fashion
mors aeterna: eternal death
mundus situalis: world fixed as it is now
musica coelestis: heavenly music
musicae personae: musical characters
musica humana: human music
musica instrumentalis: instrumental music
musica mathematica: mathematical music
musica mundana: wordly music
mutatio specierum: the mutation of the species
mutatis mutandis: with suitable or necessary alteration
mysterium tremendum: tremendous mystery
N
natura facit saltus: nature makes leaps
natura naturans: nature naturing
natura naturata: nature natured
natura sive deus: whether nature or god
nervus rerum: the nerve, pulse of things
neque in plano via sita est: nor is the path on the flat
nobilissimi loci totius terrae: the most noble place on the whole earth
nolens volens: willing or unwilling
non liquet: it will not dissolve
non omnis confundar: let me not be utterly confounded/destroyed
non plus ultra: that which cannot be bettered
non possumus non peccare: it is impossible for us not to sin
norma agendi: legal prescription
nova instauratio scientiarum: new instauration of the sciences
numen: heavenly power, divinity
numerus clausus: limitation of numbers
numinosum: numinous
nunc aeternum: the eternal now
nunc stans: the stationary moment, the captured now
O
omnia sint communia: let everything be in common
omnia sub luna caduca: everything under the moon is mortal, fallible
orbis: globe
ordines angelorum: the orders of the angels
ordo cognitionis: order of cognition
Page G-8
ordo sempiternus rerum: the eternal order of things

origo: root, origin
P
paradisi voluptatis: paradises of pleasure
pars mentis aeterna est intellectus: the eternal part of the mind is the intellect
pars pro toto: part for the whole
pater familias: father of the family
pater noster: our father
pavor nocturnus: night-fear
pax Americana: American peace
pax Britannica: British peace
pax capitalistica: capitalist peace
pax Romana: Roman peace
per aspera ad astra: through difficulties to the stars
per definitionem: by definition
per definitionem calculi: by the definition of calculations
per se exitus: exit through oneself, suicide
perfectio motus: perfect motion, the completion of motion
perturbatio animi: disturbance of the mind
phantasma bene fundatum: well-established fantasy
phantasma utopicissime fundatum: a fantasy established in a most utopian manner
pharos: lighthouse (at Alexandria)
pictum: painted
plus ultra: that which is capable of being bettered
poesis a se: creation through itself
poetica tempestas: poetic storm
post festum: after the celebration
potentia-possibilitas: potentiality-possibility
praeludium vitae aeternae: prelude to the eternal life
pretium justum: just price
primae noctis: feudal right of the first night (droit de seigneur)
primae possibilitates: first possibilities
primum agens materiale: first agent of matter
primus inter pares: first among equals
profectus: progression
Q
qua: as
Page G-9
quale: essence
quendam vultum et gestum: a certain mien and gesture
quidditas: whatness, What-Essence (Bloch)
qui es in coelis: that art in heaven
quietas in fuga: quietness in the fugue (lit: quietness in flight)
quodditas: thatness, That-ground (Bloch)
quos ego: those whom I affect
R
ratio: reason
rebus sic stantibus: as things now stand
rebus sic imperfectibus: things thus being imperfected
rebus sic imperfectis et fluentibus: in the imperfect and fluid state of things
receptacula salutis: refuges of salvation
recta ratio: the right reasoning
regnum Christi: the reign of Christ
regnum homini: the reign for man
regressio: regressive material
res finita: finite thing
restituto in integrum: putting back together again, making whole again
Roma quadrato: the Roman square
S
sacerdos: priest
sacramentum plenum: full sacrament
sal philosophicum: philosophers' salt
saltare fabulam: to perform a play
sancta: the sacred
satis est: that is enough
seculis: ages
sed: but
sensus: physical sense
signatura rerum: the signature of things
signifer sanctus Michael: Michael the holy standard-bearer
si vis bellum para pacem: if you want war prepare for peace
socialis vita sanctorum: the social existence of the saints
societas amicorum: society of friends
sol invinctus: sun unchained
solus ipse: the individual himself
spes: hope
spes quae speratur: hope which is hoped
Page G-10
status quo ante: the status quo before

status recipientis pro meritis: state of receiving on merit
status termini: end state
status viae: transitional state
status viatoris: transitional state
studio: study
sub Iove frigido: under an icy Jove
sub specie: under the eye of
sub specie aeternitatis: in the long eye of history (lit. in the sight of eternity)
sub specie aeternitatis vel substantiae humanae: in the long eye of history or human
substance
sub specie toti: under the eye of all
sui generis: of its own or peculiar kind
sui juris: according to its own law
summum bonum: the highest good
suo modo: after its fashion
suprema spes: supreme hope
sursum corda: lift up your hearts
suum cuique: to each his own
suum esse conservare: to preserve one's being
T
terminus a quo: starting-point
terminus ad quem: finishing-point
terra australis: southern country, Australia
terra inhabilitabilis: uninhabitable country
terra utopica: utopian country
tertium non datur: there is no third possibility
theatrum mechanicum: mechanical theatre
totaliter: in a total way
toto coelo: everywhere, across the whole sky
tranquillitas animi: tranquillity of the soul
transcendere: to transcend, transcendence
tua res agitur: it is your concern
tuba mirum spargens somnum: the trumpet scattering its amazing sound
U
ubi bene, ibi patria: where good, there the fatherland
ubi lux, ibi patria: where light, there the fatherland
ultima legislatio: ultimate legislation
unio mystica: mystical union
Page G-11
unitas: oneness
universitas litterarium: university of studies
unum necessarium: the one thing necessary
unum verum bonus: the one true good
unus Christianus nullus Christianus: the solitary Christian is no Christian
urbs: city
usque ad finem: right to the end
ut aliquid fieri videatur: so that something may be seen to be done
V
vade-mecum: a book that can be carried for reference along the way
ver sacrum: sacred spring (season)
verum bonum: true good
via regia: royal road
virgo optime perfecta: the virgin of sheer perfection
virgo virginum: virgin of virgins
virtus: virtue
virtus-ingenium: virtuous talent
vis dormitiva: dormant strength
visio: perception, vision
visio beatifica Dei: beatific vision of God
vita activa: the active life
vita brevis, ars longa: life is short, art is long
vita contemplativa: the contemplative life
French
A
acte accessoire: act of accessory
aprs nous le dluge: after us the flood
au dessus de la mele: above the rabble
au fond: basically
C
cloches du monastre: monastery bells
concert la vapeur: steam concert
corriger la fortune: to correct fortune
D
donneurs d'avis: givers of advice
dure: duration
E
chapp de vue: vanished from sight
galisation des classes: the equalization of classes
pater le bourgeois: to shock the bourgeoisie
Page G-12
tat d'me: state of mind

tre humain: human being
F
femme introuvable: the woman who cannot be found
frocit et verve: ferocity and spirit
forces propres: one's own powers
G
grace l'homme: thanks to man
I
inconscient suprieur: superior unconscious
inquitude poussante: pressing anxiety
J
jardin de plaisance: garden of pleasure
juste milieu: proper medium
L
laissez faire, laissez aller: let things be done, let things go
la nuit et le moment: the night and the moment
l'art pour l'art: art for art's sake
l'art pour l'espoir: art for hope's sake
la ville radieuse: the radiant city
le nant: nothingness
l'homme machine: machine man
libert: freedom
M
malgr lui: in spite of this
mystres de l'infini: mysteries of the infinite
naturel dictionnaire de la nature: the natural dictionary of nature
P
papillons: butterflies
paradis artificiel: artificial paradise
penses fugitives: fleeting thoughts
petites perceptions insensibles: perceptions too small to be discernible
petit propritaire rural ou industriel: the little rural or industrial proprietor
portire: door-curtain
possibilits ternelles: eternal possibilities
prvoir: to foresee, a foreseeing
proprit: property
R
rsistance l'oppression: resistance to oppression
S
sans la barbe limoneuse: without the muddy beard
souvenirs de Varsovie: souvenirs of Warsaw
sret: security
V
vrits de fait: factual truths
vrits ternelles: eternal truths
violence cratrice: creative violence
Page G-13
Italian
adagio: quietly, softly
amoretti: little Cupids
atto puro: pure act
dolce far niente: sweet idleness
dopo lavoro: after work
espressivo: expressively
grave: with gravity, solemn
lento: slowly
maestoso: stately
martellato: hammered
misterioso: mysteriously
mondo senza gente: uninhabited world
oprare: to work
pastoso: soft, sticky (from 'pasta' dough)
piano: softly
presto: fast
prevenire: anticipate, an anticipation of what is coming
sostenuto: sustained
sostenuto assai: sustained effort
trepassar del segno: venture beyond the limits
vedere: to see
veduta: a view (with a full perspective)
virt ordinata: regulated virtue
vivace allegro: at a lively pace
Spanish
buen retiro: happy retreat
hidalgo: Spanish knight, junker
passacaglia: an early dance tune (of Spanish origin)
Page I-1
NAME AND TITLE INDEX
A
Abelard 771, 1075, 1375
Abeles, Frida xxii
Abert
Die Musikanschauung des Mittelalters (The Middle Ages' view of Music) 1076, 1077
Abulfeda 775
A ddison 389, 932, 1317, 1318
Adler, Alfred 578, 60, 64, 66, 1667
Der nervse Charakter (The Nervous Character) 57
Adorno, Theodor xxii, xxiv
Aeschylus 430, 121214
Prometheus Trilogy 429;
Prometheus Bound 428, 882, 121214
Agricola
De re metallica 648
Ailly, Pierre d'
Imago mundi 760
Akiba, Rabbi 1263
Alain de Lille 848
Alberti 1348
Albertus Magnus 761, 778
Alexander III (Pope) 766
Alexander of Aphrodisias 207, 850
Alexander the Great 90, 474, 488, 489, 492, 647, 738, 760, 761, 762, 766, 767, 778,
1217
Alfarabi 1077
Alfieri 107, 544, 932, 1317, 1319
Ali (Caliph) 1276, 1277
Altdorfer
Bath of Susanna 709
Althus
Politica 535
Amadis of Gaul (Romance of) 318, 367, 1036, 1037, 1039
Amalrich of Bena 207, 236
Ambrosius 1076
Amenophis IV (Pharaoh) 1191, 1216
Anaxagoras 8745
Anaximander 8769
On the Nature of Things 8769
Anaximenes 848, 878, 1152
Andersen, Hans Christian 802
The Flying Suitcase 356
The Lucky Galoshes 356, 382
The Tinderbox 1000
Andreae, Johann Valentin 528, 6349, 644
Chymische Hochzeit (Chemical Wedding) 6348
Confessio Fraternitatis 634, 635
Fama Fraternitatis 634, 635
Rei publicae Christianopolis descriptio 638
Angelus Silesius
Cherubinischer Wandersmann (The Cherubinical Wanderer) 643, 918
Annikeris 483
Anselm of Canterbury 234, 847
Antigonos Gonatas 493
Antisthenes 482
Antonius Diogenes 437
Antonius Marcus (Mark Anthony) 328
Apollonius of Tyana 679, 1188
Aquinas, Thomas 218, 402, 761, 818, 820, 825, 832, 1300, 1320, 1329, 1330, 1332
Quaestiones disputatae quodlibetales 954
Summa contra gentiles 1307, 1320
Arabian Nights 356, 362, 385, 628, 7067, 708, 753, 758, 1106
Aladdin 3567, 628, 707, 1314
Kalaf and Turandot 318, 319, 320
Sinbad the Sailor 437, 438, 753, 764
The Tale of Janshah 706
Page I-2
Aratus 496
Ariosto 882
Aristides 933
Aristippus 483
Aristophanes 4356, 591, 882
The Ecclesiazusae 435, 591
The Birds 436, 484
Aristotle xxvii, 7, 1689, 191, 194, 2067, 208, 216, 223, 228, 229, 236, 237, 242, 243,
279, 283, 429, 491, 493, 642, 687, 689, 757, 767, 778, 843, 847, 850, 857, 860, 865,
878, 879, 905, 9623, 964, 985, 986, 1351, 1364, 1373
Logic 1075;
Prior Analytics 228
Metaphysics 235, 879
Nicomachean Ethics 9623
Physics 878;
Meteorology 761
Poetics 207
Politics 738, 962
Arnim, Achim von
Die Kronenwchter (The Guardians of the Crown) 708
Arnim, Bettina von 28
Arnold, Gottfried
Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie (Impartial History of the Church and its
Heretics) 637
Arnold of Brescia 771
Arts, Hendrik 709
Artshibashev
Ssanin 1172
Asafyev
The Flame of Paris 406
Asam, Cosmas Damian 705
Aspasia 328
Augustine 160, 161, 203, 204, 269, 479, 493, 499, 501, 502, 5039, 510, 511, 512, 725,
732, 787, 8323, 8547, 860, 862, 1019, 1064, 1076, 1087, 1319, 1362
De civitate Dei (The City of God) 478, 5039, 8547, 11201, 1248, 1344
De musica 833
Confessions 71
In Joh. ev. tractatus 857
Letter to Monica 1322
Augustus, Caesar 383, 739, 959, 1257
Aurelian of Rom 1076
Aurelius, Marcus 243, 493, 495
Meditations 1106
Averros 207, 236, 674, 771, 850, 852, 1135
Avesta (see Zendavesta)
Avicebron 207, 850
Avicenna 207, 236, 850, 852, 1135
B
Baader, Franz von 7879, 1332
ber die Begrndung der Ethik durch die Physik (On the Foundation of Ethics through
Physics) 625, 7879
Babcock
Legendary Islands of the Atlantic 763
Babeuf 5756
Bach, J. S. 256, 533, 10637, 1069, 1079, 1080, 1081, 1084, 1088, 1095, 1096
Brandenburg Concertos 1067
Cantata No. 39 1082
Cantata No. 48 1066
Cantata No. 63 1063, 1098
Christmas Oratorio 1065, 1308
Mass in B minor 158, 1066, 1068, 1275
St John Passion 1352
St Matthew Passion 1266, 1286
Bachofen 81, 135, 161, 327, 5945, 111415, 1153, 1156
Das Mutterrecht (Matriliny) 595
Die Unsterblichkeitslehre der orphischen Theologie (The doctrine of immortality in
Orphic theology) 1115
Bacon, Francis xxxi, 139, 211, 269, 518, 524, 64952, 653, 6547, 666, 667, 671, 812,
859, 1028, 1328
De sapientia veterum 1215
New Atlantis xxvii, 14, 144, 457, 477, 6547
Novum Organurn 11819, 649, 650, 651, 653, 655, 656, 657, 752
Sylva Sylvarum 649, 654n
The Advancement of Learning 6501, 6567
Bacon, Roger 647
Epistola de secretis operibus artis 647
Baedeker 376
Bumer, Gertrud 590, 591
Bakunin, Michael 571, 5724, 945
Page I-3
Balfour 599n, 6056

Ball, John 471
Ballantyne 353
Balzac 384
Conres drlatiques (Amusing tales) 81
Peau de chagrin (The wild ass's skin) 383
Bar Kochba 1263
Barth, Karl 1194, 1290
Der Rmerbrief (The Epistle to the Romans) 1194
Batteux 404
Baudelaire 434
Bauer, Bruno 251, 252, 270, 271, 272
Baumgarten 212
Bayle 859
Bazard 564
Beaconsfield, Lord (Disraeli) 605
Beaumarchais 540
Beauvais, Vincent de 753
Speculum naturale, doctrinale, historiale 760
Bebel
Die Frau und der Sozialismus (Woman and Socialism) 5901
Becher, Joachim 647, 649
Nrrische Weisheit und weise Narrheit (Foolish Wisdom and Wise Folly) 647
Becquerel 663
Beer-Hofmann
Jakobs Traum (Jacob's Dream) 609
Beethoven 158, 220, 459, 833, 834, 910, 984, 999, 1057, 1063, 1069, 1079, 1080, 1085,
1086, 1087, 1094, 11013, 1162
A minor quartet 1096
Fidelio 163, 183, 368, 425, 831, 833, 910, 992, 1067, 1068, 1082, 1088, 10991100,
11011103, 1375
Hammerklaviersonata 1096
Rage over a Lost Penny 1082
The Third Symphony (Eroica) 992, 1088, 1092, 1093, 1095, 1098
The Sixth Symphony (Pastoral) 917, 1068, 1073, 1082
The Seventh Symphony 163
The Ninth Symphony 833, 911, 1096;
Hymn to Joy (Schiller text 'An die Freude') 158, 1293
Behaim, Martin 764
Bekker, Balthasar
Die verzauberte Welt (The Enchanted World) 630
Bellamy 475, 619
Looking Backward 61213
Benjamin, Walter xxi, xxii, xxiv, 880
Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (Origin of the German Tragic Play) 384, 1166,
1168, 1350
Benn, Gottfried 61
Berg
Wozzeck 1095
Bergbohm
Jurisprudenz und Rechtsphilosophie (Jurisprudence and the Philosophy of Right) 547
Bergson, Henri 59, 140, 2012, 291, 292, 682, 683, 945, 1202, 1290
Introduction la Mtaphysique (Introduction to Metaphysics) 140
L'Evolution Cratrice (Creative Evolution) 201
La Pense et le Mouvant (Thought and the Moving) 202
Berkeley 697
Berlioz, Hector 180, 181, 1057, 1068, 1099
Requiem 1100
Symphonie fantastique 10602
Bernard of Clairvaux 213, 769, 770
On Contemplation 771
Bernoulli 311n
Bernstein 581
Berossos 1218
Bertholet 1235
Bertram 957
Berzelius 686
Bessler (see Orfyrus)
Bethmann-Hollweg 33 n
Bettelheim, Bruno 62 n
Bhagavad-Gita 667, 1136, 1138
Bias 481, 839
Bible 7, 201, 221, 330 n, 502, 509, 510, 515, 518, 578, 609, 610, 642, 718, 7301, 759
60, 785, 787, 917, 963, 1150, 1166, 11945, 1198, 1231, 1232, 1237, 125674, 1276,
1278, 1279, 12823, 1291, 1301, 130410, 1349
Page I-4
Characters
Aaron 1304
Abel 506, 1268
Abraham 505, 732, 1131, 1230, 1276
Adam 478, 505, 507, 636, 637, 952, 1002, 1127, 1128, 1238, 1247, 1272, 1277, 1289,
1294
Daniel 1126, 1128, 1132, 1146, 1238
David 401, 505, 1076, 1238, 1243, 1256, 1263
Deutero-Isaiah 498, 917
Elijah 497, 605, 645, 704, 1125, 1262, 1271, 1274, 1275, 1304, 1305, 13623
Enoch 637, 1125, 1127, 1130, 1262
Esau 1268
Ezekiel 1304
Eve 478, 1247, 1294
Herod 163, 1103, 1256, 1262, 1311
Hezekiah 1267
Hosea 496
Isaac 1230, 1268
Isaiah 602, 776, 1240, 1282, 1283, 1294, 1362
Jacob 230, 480, 712, 1230, 1268, 1269
Jeremiah 496, 602
Jesus Christ 14, 32731, 465, 499501, 502, 503, 504, 505, 507, 508, 511, 512, 514, 515,
519, 542, 577, 578, 609, 950, 952, 953, 1048, 1120, 1129, 1130, 1131, 1132, 1158, 1190,
1191, 11923, 1203, 1213, 1231, 1238, 1243, 1244, 1245, 1247, 1249, 125674, 1275,
1285, 1287, 1289, 1293, 1303, 1304, 1305, 1306, 1307, 1311, 1344, 1357
Job 1150, 1215, 1234, 1235, 1239
John 1079, 1305
John the Baptist 497, 499, 510, 1129, 1233, 1245, 1257, 1263, 1300
Jonah 12823
Joseph (son of Jacob) 80, 160, 12301, 1258
Joseph (father of Jesus) 1243, 1265
Judas 609
Leah 954
Lazarus 1131
Luke 1304
Mary and Martha 9537
Micah 401
Moses 496, 607, 609, 717, 1190, 1191, 1192, 1203, 1213, 123041, 1249, 1256, 1259,
1265, 1267, 1268, 1272, 1274, 1275, 1311
Nicodemus 1267
Noah 478, 505, 1265
Paul 330, 496, 499, 501, 508, 513, 952, 1108, 1117, 1120, 1131, 1247, 1261, 1262, 1264,
1266, 1270, 1309
Peter 496, 1247
Pilate 500, 1048, 1256, 1260, 1263
Rachel 954
Samson 497
Samuel 497, 11235, 1233
Saul 401, 1072, 1125
Solomon 497, 6347, 1239
Books:
Old Testament
Genesis 711, 730, 731, 760, 769, 1125, 1197, 11989, 12301, 1237, 1238, 1267, 1268,
1269
Exodus 212, 719, 896, 1127, 1234, 1235, 1236, 1237, 1267, 1270, 12823, 1284, 1308
Leviticus 38, 1233, 1261, 1263
Numbers 1234, 1267
Deuteronomy 746
Samuel 401, 497, 1125
Kings 401, 497, 718, 1197, 1267, 1275, 1304
Chronicles 718
Job 213, 731, 1126, 1128, 1150, 1234, 1235, 1269, 1270, 1283
Psalms 103, 189, 213, 731, 781, 1126, 1239, 1269, 1291, 1357
Proverbs 1269
Ecclesiastes 288
Song of Solomon (Song of Songs) 330
Isaiah 498, 499, 500, 515, 610, 731, 776, 896, 1098, 1100, 1126, 1127, 11934, 1236,
1237, 1240, 1274
Jeremiah 1269, 1282, 1291
Ezekiel 134, 679, 776, 1238, 1269, 1340
Daniel 1126, 1238, 1243, 1273
Hosea 1233
Page I-5
Amos 4978, 515, 731

Jonah 1282
Micah 498
Zephaniah 1132 n
Hagai 1263
Books:
New Testament
Matthew 17, 451, 499, 500, 501, 516, 1128, 1133, 1135, 1260, 1261, 1262, 1263, 1264,
1267, 1269, 1270, 1271, 1300, 1306
Mark 501, 726, 1259, 1261, 1263, 1264, 1306
Luke 11, 274, 497, 499, 542, 953, 954, 1127, 1128, 1129, 1130, 1131, 1132n, 1196,
1249, 12578, 1261n, 1265, 1271, 1308
John 500, 501, 524, 970n, 1129, 1130, 1239, 1243, 1259, 1263, 1265, 1267, 1269, 1271,
1272, 1278, 1290n, 1304, 1305
Acts 496, 514, 1260, 1270, 1273
Romans 1131, 1194, 1266, 1289
Corinthians 330, 952, 1100, 1117, 1131, 1195, 1264, 1289, 1309, 1310, 1353
Ephesians 330, 729, 1120, 1273, 1289
Philippians 1256
Timothy 1130
Hebrews 1100, 1128, 1183, 1266, 1271
First Epistle of John 553 n, 1100, 1202
Jude 1127
Revelation 215, 221, 502, 733, 759, 776, 1133, 1184, 1264, 1265, 1270, 1274, 1285,
1308
Apocrypha
Book of Enoch 1126, 1127
Book of Ezra (Esdras) 1127
Jesus Sirach 1269
Bier 5461
Bindel
Die gyptischen Pyramiden (The Egyptian Pyramids) 723
Bismarck 232 n, 566, 890n, 942, 943
Bizet
Carmen 934, 949
L'Arlsienne 398
Blake, William 114
Blanc, Louis 564, 574, 903
Bla
Das Wesen der neuen Tanzkunst (The Nature of the New Art of Dance) 405
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna 1187
Isis unveiled 1186
Bleulet 1002
Bloch, Elsa xxixxii, 331 n
Bloch, Ernst xixxxxiii
Avicenna und die Aristotelische Linke (Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left) 207
Das Materialismusproblem (The Problem of Materialism) xxiii
Das Prinzip Hoffnung (The Principle of Hope) xxxxxiii
Das Weltall im Lichte des Atheismus (The Universe in the Light of Atheism) xix
Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Legacy of this Time) xxiii, 6
Geist der Utopia (The Spirit of Utopia) xxi, xxii, xxiii, 6, 157, 215, 28990, 2978, 304,
3867, 724, 733, 880, 924, 1058, 1070, 1084, 1371
Renaissance der Sinnlichkeit (Renaissance of Sensuality) xix
Spuren (Traces) xix, xxiii, xxxii, 6, 289
Subjekt-Objekt, Erluterungen zu Hegel (Subject-Object, Commentaries on Hegel) 6,
859, 1058
Thomas Mnzer als Theologe der Revolution (Thomas Mnzer as Theologian of the
Revolution) xxiii, xxx, 6, 582
ber den gegenwrtigen Stand der Philosophie (On the present state of philosophy) 1371
Bloch, Jan Robert xxiv
Bloch, Jean-Richard 909
Bloch, Karola xxii, xxiv
Aus meinem Leben (From My Life) xxii
Blok, Alexander 514
March of the Twelve 514
Blossius 495
Blher 588
Page I-6
Boccaccio
Decameron 818
Bodin, Jean 517
Bcklin 380
Bhme, Jakob 365, 637, 640, 643, 671, 712, 850, 859, 860, 861, 1188
De signatura rerum 1349
Morgenrot in Aufgang (Aurora) 712, 858
Theosophische Sendbriefe (Theosophical Missives) 928
Blsche, Wilhelm 380, 1153
Brne, Ludwig 912
Fragmente und Aphorismen (Fragments and Aphorisms) 1367
Bothius 1075
Ars musica 1075, 1077
Botie, Etienne de La
Le Contr'un ou de la servitude volontaire (The contrary man or the will to bondage) 516
Bttger 629
Bollnov 104
Bonnet
Palingnsies philosophiques 1145
Book of John (Mandaean) 1306
Borchardt, Ludwig 723
Bosch, Hieronymus 435
Boyle, Robert 647n
Brahms 1063
A German Requiem 11001
Fourth Symphony 107
Brand 62930
Breasted
The History of Egypt 730
Brecht, Bertolt xxi, xxiii, 4136, 417, 418, 419, 424, 427, 666, 746, 886, 1224, 1354
Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny) 914
Der Jasager (The Man Who Says Yes) 416
Der Neinsager (The Man Who Says No) 416
Die Ausnahme und die Regel (The Exception and the Rule) 415
Die Manahme (The Measure Taken) 415
Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera) 34, 414
Dreigroschenroman (Threepenny Novel) 475
Kleines Organon fr das Theater (Little Organon for the Theatre) 414, 415, 417
Leben des Galilei (Life of Galileo) 416
Theaterarbeit (Theatre-work) 414
Brentano, Clemens 96
Brentano, Franz 71
Brion, Friederike 974, 977n
Brissot 933
Brockhaus, Heinrich
Die Utopia-Schrift des Thomas Morus (Thomas More's Utopia-work) 51718, 519
Brotoffer
Elucidarius major
Browning, Robert 1322
Pippa Passes 172
Brown-Sequard 461
Bruckner 267, 1079
Sixth Symphony 1073
Brueghel, Pieter (The elder)
The Land of Cockaigne 357n, 813
The Tower of Babel 71112
Brning 553
Brunelleschi 648
Bruno, Giordano 207, 208, 236, 237, 242, 652, 672, 793, 84850, 852, 864, 993, 1028
De la causa, principio e uno (Cause, Principle and Unity) 236, 667
Brunswick, Duke of 294n
Brust, Alfred
Die verlorene Erde (The Lost Earth) 1159
Brutus, Marcus Jonius 152, 368, 425, 933
Budde
Die Religion des Volkes Israel bis zur Verbannung (The Religion of the People of Israel
until their Banishment) 1231
Buddha 6789, 1136, 1137, 11401, 1190, 1191, 1203, 1224, 1232, 1247, 124956,
1260, 1261, 1291, 1311, 133840
Page I-7
Speeches of Gautama Buddha, see Neumann, K.

Bchlein der Fialen Gerechtigkeit (Booklet of the Justice of Pinnacles) 714
Bchner, Georg 1172
Hessische Landbote (The Hessen Messenger) 1358
Lenz 301, 977
Woyzeck 301
Bchner, Ludwig 379, 1286
Kraft und Stoff (Force and Matter) 379n
Brger, Gottfried 437 see also Mnchhausen
Bunsen 696, 697
Burckhardt, Jakob 705, 710
Butzbach
Des Johannes Butzbach Wanderbchlein (Johann Butzbach's Little Book of Wandering)
369
Byron 107, 136, 916, 991, 999, 10034, 1010
Childe Harold 1003
Don Juan 1010
Manfred 10034, 11523
C
Cabet 5613, 607
Voyage in Icarie (Voyage to Icaria) 5623
Caesar, Julius 90, 91, 294, 492, 493, 650, 651n, 947, 1028, 1148
Cagliostro 630, 631, 633, 1177
Caiphas 1263
Calderon 421, 422, 983, 1017
Caligula 68
Calvin 1282
Cames
Lusiads 217, 1135
Campanella 139, 479, 510, 512, 5238, 529, 533, 544, 545, 552, 562, 566, 568, 656, 744
Civitas solis (City of the Sun) 458, 4756, 477, 490, 5238, 532, 534, 638, 639, 654, 656,
740, 742, 1220
De monarchia 526
De sensu rerum et magla 524
Philosophia realis 524
Caracalla 1118
Carlyle 61517, 1198
Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History 126
Past and Present 616
The French Revolution 616
The History of Frederick II of Prussia 616
Casanova 702
Catechismus Romanus 1131
Cato 933, 947, 1318
Cellini, Benvenuto 433
Cervantes 882
Don Quixote 16, 170, 320, 352, 358, 772, 1025, 1027, 1029, 103557, 1316
Czanne 1347, 1348
Grandes Baigneuses (Large Bathers) 815
Les Ondines (The Water-sprites) 815
L'Estaque 816
Chagall, Marc 398
Charlemagne 565, 567, 708, 730
Charles II 536
Chassin 573
Chekhov, Anton 794
Cherubini 1099
Requiem 1100
Chesterton 55, 930, 1262, 1344
George Bernard Shaw 326
The Return of Don Quixote 1043
The Everlasting Man 1183
Chisolfi
Ruins of Carthage 385
Chopin 180
Christian of Mainz (Bishop) 770
Chrysippos 491, 493, 503, 838
Churchill, Winston 606
Cicero 403, 492, 536, 933, 959, 960, 971, 1319
De faro 243
De finibus bonorum et malorum 1319
De oratore 403
Laelius de amicitia 963
Somnium Scipionis 761
Cieszkovski 2701
Prolegomena zur Historiosophie (Prolegomena to Historiosophy) 270
Cimabue 819
Page I-8
Clair, Ren
Chapeau de paille (Straw-hat) 408
Gaslight 408
Claudel, Paul 405
L'annonce faite Marie (The Tidings brought to Mary) 736
L'homme et son dsir (Man and his Longing) 405
Clemens of Alexandria
Stromata 758
Cleopatra 328, 704, 754
Cocteau
Orpheus and Eurydice 426
Collini 390
Columbus 732, 749, 7502, 758, 760, 762, 772, 773, 7747, 782, 785, 788, 793, 1026
Comenius 528, 636, 717
The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart 639
Comte, Augustc 474, 5678
Confucius 1191, 1196, 12218, 1261
Lun-yu 1221
Conrad, Joseph
Typhoon 661
Constantine 739
Cook 778
Cooper, James Fenimore 353
Copernicus 7856, 848
Correggio 744
Cortez 777
Cou, Emile 453, 1158
Creuzer, Friedrich 160, 1363
Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Vlker (The Symbolism and Mythology of the
Ancient Peoples) 1601
Cromwell, Oliver 1276
Cusanus (see Nicholas of Cusa)
Cyrus 754, 1232, 1240, 1263
Czepo, Daniel 1299
D
Dubler, Theodor 101
Dahn, Felix
Ein Kampf um Rom (A Struggle for Rome) 379
Dalcroze 394
d'Alembert 655
Dali, Salvador 365, 366
D'Annunzio
Il Fuoco (The Fire) 1002
Dante Alighieri 89, 218, 7612, 774, 8207, 832, 864, 1317
The Divine Comedy 98, 158, 333, 82127, 992, 1119, 1121, 11301;
Inferno 761, 10237, 1130, 1297n;
Purgatorio 761, 954, 1121;
Paradiso 94, 122, 126, 214, 776, 813, 82127, 835
Danton 1010
Danziger 588
Da Ponte 1008
Darius 1240
Darwin 469, 646, 894n
Daumier 473, 476, 1023
David of Dinant 207, 236
Davy 686
de Bonald 566
Debussy 105, 107
Decian 506
Dclaration des droits de l'homme (Declaration of the rights of man) 541
Defoe, Daniel
Robinson Crusoe 816
Dehio 301, 957
Delacroix 377
de la Roncire
La dcouverte de l'Afrique au moyen ge (The discovery of Africa in the Middle Ages)
770
de Maistre 566
tude sur la Souverainet (A Study of Sovereignty) 566
della Porta
Magia naturalis 651
Democritus 2567, 285, 8412, 843, 847, 864, 1364
Descartes 72, 1234, 147, 212, 257, 667, 739, 740
Meditations 72
Desmoulins 933
Deutsche Zeitschrift fr Philosophie xxv
Dickens, Charles
The Old Curiosity Shop 692
Dickinson, H. D.
Economics of Socialism 903
Page I-9
Diderot 1286
Essay on Painting 216
Rameau's Nephew 428, 983
Diels (with W. Kranz)
Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (The Fragments of the Pre-Socratic Philosophers) 840
1, 875, 876
Dilthey 72
Dinokrates 738
Dio Cassius 729
Dio Chrysostomos 1214
Diodoros Kronos 202, 243, 244, 245
Diodorus 1122
Diogenes 482, 543, 915
Dionysios Areopagita 833
Disraeli, see Beaconsfield, Lord
Doctor Faustus (chapbook and puppet-play) 9489, 1305
Dornseiff
Odysseus' letzte Fahrt (Odysseus' Last Voyage) 1025
Dostoevsky 817, 1047, 1048
Crime and Punishment 1004
The Brothers Karamazov 289
The Idiot 320
The Raw Youth
Dreyfus 602
Drer 232, 274, 1074, 1347
Apocalypsis Cum Figuris 221
David 319
St Jerome in his Cell 301, 932, 957, 1310
Melencolia 123, 3012, 312, 957
Duncan, Isadora 394
Duns Scotus 954, 1319
Du Prel, Carl
Magie als experimenteller Naturwissenschaft (Magic as an Experimental Science) 1186
Dutschke, Rudi xxvi
E
Ebers, Georg
Semiramis 379
Uarda 379
Eckermann 991
Eddington 697
Edison 439, 661, 748
Edrisi 757, 758, 761, 778
Egmont, Lamoral 1171
Egyptian Book of The Dead 1119, 1123
Ehrenberg, Ilya 410
Einstein, Albert 604, 664, 697, 785
Eisenstein
Battleship Potemkin 407
Ten Days that Shook the World 408
Eisler, Hans xxiii
Ekkehard I
Waltharilied 367
Eleagabal 328
El Greco 744
Emerson 1159
Empedocles 840, 841, 853, 854, 857, 874
Engels, Friedrich xxvii, xxviii, 95, 216, 249, 250, 251, 272, 279, 281, 294, 481, 515,
5301, 556, 557, 573, 574, 578, 600, 601, 617, 621, 666, 6978, 887, 891, 892, 945,
1170, 1198, 12934
Anti-Dhring 530, 669, 6978, 9689, 12934
Dialektik der Natur (Dialectic of Nature) 286
Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus (The Development of Socialism) 945
Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (Ludwig
Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy) 250, 267
The Condition of the Working Class in England 8889
Eosander 739
Epictetus 243, 491
Epicurus 168, 425, 484, 489, 535, 545, 813, 815, 842, 908, 1010, 1148, 1291
Erasmus 517, 518, 519, 957
Colloquia 518
Erdmann, J. E.
Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (Outline of the History of Philosophy) 652
Ericson, Leif 772, 1026
Erman
gypten und gyptisches Leben im Altertum (Egypt and Egyptian Life in Antiquity)
1125
Ernst Blochs Revision des Marxismus (Ernst Bloch's Revision of Marxism) xxv
Page I-10
Ernst, Max 365

Euclid 658, 743
Euemeros 48990, 494
Holy Inscription 489, 516
Euripides 429
Helen 1845
Hippolytus 1129
Euryphon 738
Eyck, Jan van 848
Gent Altar 713
(Paris) Madonna 799800
Ezra (Esdras) 1304
F
F., P. (Gent)
The Historie of the damnable life, and deserved death of Doctor John Faustus 1012n
Fabius Cunctator 226, 9401, 947
Fallada, Hans
Kleiner Mann was nun? (Little Man What Now?) 928
Faraday 663, 685
Fechner
Das Bchlein vom Leben nach dem Tode (The Little Book of Life after Death) 1155
Die Tagesansicht gegenber der Nachtansicht (The Aspect of Day compared with the
Aspect of Night) 1155
Fnelon
Aventures de Tlmaque 544
Ferdinand of Castille 776
Ferenczi 81
Feuchtersleben
Ditetik der Seele (Dietetics of the Soul) 463
Feuerbach, Anselm 541
Feuerbach, Ludwig 249286, 872, 11535, 11991200, 128490, 1291, 1296, 1356
Das Wesen der Religion (The Essence of Religion) 1183
Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity) 250, 253, 261
Gedanken ber Tod und Unsterblichkeit (Thoughts on Death and Immortality) 1154
Grundstze der Philosophie der Zukunft (Principles of the Philosophy of the Future) 250,
253, 272
Kritik der Hegelschen Staatsphilosophie (Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of State) 251
Vorlufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie (Provisional Theses for a Reform of
Philosophy) 250, 253
Reimverse auf den Tod (Rhymes on Death) 1154
Theogonie (Theogony) 1296
Fichte xxviii, 139, 147, 244, 269, 270, 476, 54855, 601, 689, 1321
Der geschlossene Handelstaat (The Closed Commercial State) 271, 524, 54855
Die Bestimmung des Menschen (The Destiny of Man) 471
Reden an die deutsche Nation (Speeches to the German Nation) 271, 554
Rechtslehre (Jurisprudence) 548
Staatslehre (Political Science) 5545
Wissenschaftslehre (Theory of Science) 553
Ficino, Marsilio 644, 645
De arte chimica 643
Theologia Platonica 643
Flaischlein, Csar
Sonne im Herzen (Sun in the Heart)
Fludd, Robert 643
Foigny
La terre australe conhue (The Australian land experienced) 779
Fontane, Theodor 170
Frau Jenny Treibel 170, 941
Forster, Georg 816
Fourier 4734, 476, 477, 545, 552, 555, 558561, 565, 566, 570, 578, 579, 580, 1044
Le Nouveau Monde Industriel (The New Industrial World), 476, 558
Thorie des quatre mouvements (Theory of the four movements) 558
Trait l'association domestique agricole (Treatise on the domestic agricultural
association) 558
Page I-11
Fra Angelico 59, 401

Fra Giocondo 741
Francis of Assisi 218, 714
Franck, Sebastian 972
Franckenberg, Abraham von 637
Oculus siderius 638
Franco 895
Frazer
The Golden Bough 1190
Frederick I (Frederick Barbarossa) 766, 770
Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great) 552, 616, 991
Freising, Otto von 770
Freud, Sigmund xxix, 517, 58, 60, 61, 6364, 66, 67, 68, 77, 7887, 94, 96, 97, 109,
11516, 128, 137, 1667, 915
Civilization and its Discontents (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur) 54
Das Ich und das Es (The Ego and the Id) 83, 116, 137
Neue Folge der Vorlesungen (New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis) 84
Vorlesungen (Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis) 87, 94, 97
Freytag, G.
Die Journalisten (The Journalists) 431
Friedrich, Caspar David 8356
Friedrich Wilhelm IV 271
Fucik *, Julius (Composer)
March of the Gladiators 364
Fucik, Julius (Writer) 1173
Fux, Josef
Gradus ad Parnassum 829
G
Galen 4634
Galileo 647, 667, 918, 1328, 1330, 1348
Galli-Bibiena, Alessandro 706
Galli-Bibiena, Giuseppe 7034, 706, 739
Galsworthy 892
Beyond 891
Garaudy, Roger 625
Garve, Christian
ber Gesellschaft und Einsamkeit (On Sociability and Solitude) 962
Gauguin 81617
Gellert, Christian Frchtegott
Geistliche Oden und Lieder (Religious Odes and Songs) 1076
Gentile, Giovanni 547, 943, 945
George, Henry 61819
Progress and Poverty 618
George, Stefan xx, 175, 405, 468, 957, 959, 999, 1337, 1338
Gershwin
Summertime 345n
Gervinus 1069
Gesell, Silvio 617
Ghiberti 818
Gibbon 1276
Giorgione
Concert in the open air 813
Sleeping Venus 798
Giotto 218, 267, 533, 711, 71213, 816, 81720, 825, 864
Annunciation to Zachariah 818
Apparition of St Francis to the Chapter at Aries 818, 820
Dream of the Palace 818
Flight into Egypt 818, 819, 820
Jesus' Return to His Parents 713
Joachim's Dream 818
Raising of Lazarus 214
The Assumption of St John 818
The Last Judgement 821
Glaucon (Plato's brother) 485
Gluck
Orpheus and Eurydice 832
Grres
Mythengeschichte (History of Myths) 135
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang xxvii, xxx, 39, 122, 134n, 147, 174, 175, 1767, 193, 213,
215, 216, 217, 223, 294, 314, 377, 387, 400, 4245, 597, 642, 670, 789, 807, 812, 821,
839, 840, 846, 880, 911, 919, 9731000, 1033, 1084, 1144, 1146, 1147, 1155, 1188,
13423, 1351
Am Rhein, Main und Neckar 1814 and 1815 (On the Rhine, Main and Neckar) 909
Anmerkungen zu Diderots 'Rameau's
Page I-12
Neffe' (Observations on Diderot's 'Rameau's Nephew') 983

Anmerkungen zu Diderots 'Versuch ber die Malerei' (Observations on Diderot's 'Essay
on Painting') 216
Benvenuto Cellini (Goethe's translation of the life of Cellini) 1000
Der Zauberflte zweiter Teil (The Magic Flute Part Two) 329
Deutsches Theater (German Theatre) 424
Dichtung and Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth) 642, 975, 979, 982, 997
Die Geheimnisse (The Mysteries) 637
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The sorrows of young Werther) 50, 322, 780, 960,
962, 9745, 981, 999, 1000, 1013, 1188n
Egmont 104n, 425, 978, 980, 1171
Erlknig (Erlking) 375, 1151
Es schlug mein Herz . . . (My heart beat . . .) 176n
Faust xxviii, xxx, xxxii, 16, 70n, 94, 98, 119, 120, 122, 157, 15860, 189, 191, 197, 214,
221, 240, 248, 293, 312, 313, 317, 325, 328, 329, 373, 395, 412, 428, 430, 597, 626,
670, 693, 811, 81217, 837, 846, 852, 8921, 949, 98081, 892, 9834, 985, 986, 987,
988, 992, 994, 996, 997, 999, 101322, 1031, 1032, 10512, 105557, 1069n, 1078,
1092, 1107, 1121, 11634, 1188, 1303, 1361, 13678
Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours) 6456
Ganymed 974
Gedichte sind gemalte Fensterscheiben (Poems are Painted Window-panes) 174, 992
Gesprche mit Eckermann (Conversations with Eckermann) 991, 1146
Gtz von Berlichingen 978, 980, 1017
Hefte zur Morphologie (Notebooks on Morphology) 984
Hermann and Dorothea 739, 999, 1146
Hochzeitslied (Wedding Song) 290
Iphigenie auf Tauris (Iphigenia on Tauris) 979
Italienische Reise (Italian Journey) 374, 376
Kampagne in Frankreich (The Campaign in France) 294
Letter to F. Stolberg 1343
Letter to Wilhelm von
Humboldt 1163
Marienbader Elegie (Marienbad Elegy) 975, 999
Metamorphose der Tiere (Metamorphosis of the Animals) 984
Mignonlieder (Mignon songs in 'Wilhelm Meister') 9947
Pandora 333, 334, 987, 997, 999
Prometheus (poem) 998n
Prometheus (dramatic fragment) 122, 1212, 1215
Relief von Phigalia (Essay on the relief of Phigalia) 811
Selige Seuhsucht (Blissful Longing) 310, 998
Stella 417
Torquato Tasso 417, 979, 980, 987, 988, 994, 996, 10523, 1369
Urfaust (The original draft of 'Faust') 122
Ur-Meister (see Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung)
Ur-Tasso (The original draft of Tasso) 979
Urworte. Orphisch (Primal Words. Orphic) 984, 992
Von deutscher Baukunst (On German Architecture) 983
Wanderers Nachtlied (Wanderer's Night-song) 177, 852
Wanderers Sturmlied (Wanderer's Storm-song) 982, 990
West-stlicher Divan 220, 310n, 329, 1136, 1312
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship) 122, 642n, 97980,
982, 987, 988, 993997, 1017
Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung (Wilhelm Meister's theatrical mission) 979, 980
Page I-13
Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Wandering Years) 999

Willkommen und Abschied (Welcome and Farewell) 176
Winckelmann 1055
Xenien 231, 948
Zahme Xenien 459, 852
Goethe, Katharina Elisabeth (Goethe's mother) 96, 973
Gtz von Berlichingen 463, 978
Goldoni
Don Giovanni 1007
Goldsmith
Vicar of Wakefield 803
Goncourt (Brothers) 211
Gorgias of Leontini 243
Gorky, Maxim 1202, 1290, 1354
The Mother 596
Gottfried von Strassburg
Tristan and Isolde 187
Gottsched, Johann Christoph 4245, 976, 1086, 1368
Goya 476
Naked Maya 798
Grabbe, Christian Dietrich 1003, 1010
Don Juan und Faust 1003, 1011
Hannibal 1003
Herzog Theodor von Gothland 1003
Marius und Sulla 1003
Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung (Joke, Satire, Irony and Deeper Meaning)
1003
Gracchus, Gaius 152n
Gracchus, Tiberius 152n, 495
Graham, Dr 455, 460
Grandville
Concert la vapeur (Concert for steam) 434
Mystres de l'infini (Mysteries of infinity) 434
Un autre monde (Another world) 434, 435
Gregor, Josef
Denkmler des Theaters (Monuments of the Theatre) 704
Gregorovius 1161
Gregory of Nyassa 1170
Griffith, D.W. 406
Birth of a Nation 406n
Grimm (Brothers) 3537, 362
Brother Lustig 356
Cinderella 353
Faithful John 3178
Frau Holle 86n, 455
Godfather Death 354
Hansel and Gretel 352
The Boy Who Went Out to Learn What Fear Was 3545, 357
The Frog King 355
The Land of Cockaigne 357, 472, 627
The Magic Table, the Golden Ass and the Cudgel in the Sack 355, 356, 472, 473, 477,
627
The Maiden of Willberg 131415
The Star-thalers 361
The Twelve Apostles 1315
The Valiant Little Tailor 353, 357
The Water-sprite 356
Grimm, Jacob 3940
Gropius, Walter 3861, 735
Grotius 537, 538, 541, 895
De Jure belli et pacis 5356
Grnewald 218, 267, 774, 819
Isenheim Altar 694, 819
Guericke, Otto von 647
Guillaume de Lorris
Roman de la Rose 804
Gundolf 175
Gunkel
Schpfung und Chaos (Creation and Chaos) 776, 1269
H
Haam, Achad 603
Haba, Alois 1091
Hadrian 729, 1116
Hckel, Ernst 1153, 1187, 1202
Weltrtsel (World-riddle) 380
Hahn
Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter (The History of the Heretics in the Middle Ages)
1302
Hall
The Effects of Civilization 556
Haller, Albrecht von
Die Alpen (The Alps) 390
Page I-14
Hallmann
Marianne 630
Hamann 134, 977
Aesthetica in nuce 838
Hammurabi 1218, 1233
Hamsun 289
Handel 1063
Julius Caesar 828
Hannibal 226n, 940, 1003
Hanno 772
Hardenberg 541
Harich, Wolfgang xxv
Harle
Jakob Bhme und die Alchymisten (Jakob Bhme and the Alchemists) 643
Harnack 1245
Dogmengeschichte (History of Dogmas) 1245
Harrington
The Commonwealth of Oceana 544
Hartlib, Samuel
A Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria 474
Hartmann, Eduard von 204
Philosophie des Schnen (Philosophy of the Beautiful) 423
Hartmann, Franz 1186
Hartmann, Nicolai 241
Hastings, Warren 891
Hauff 357
Das kalte Herz (The Cold Heart) 1314
Der kleine Muck (Little Muck) 3578
Saids Schicksale (The Fates of Said) 3556, 628
Hauptmann
Einsame Menschen (Lonely People) 569, 593
Haydn 1063
Creation 1082
Hebbel, Friedrich 184, 430
Auf die Unbekannte (To the Unknown Woman) 322
Hebel, Johann Peter
Schatzkstlein (The Little Treasure Chest) 131314
Die Juden (The Jews) 8856
Hegel xix, xxvii, xxviii, 6, 8, 18, 71, 723, 124, 131, 139, 143, 16970, 172, 1901, 203
4, 211, 215, 233, 239, 242, 244, 2456, 250, 251, 253, 263, 26970, 271, 274, 279, 280,
282, 283, 285, 291, 324, 559, 600, 620, 66970, 688, 689, 690, 710, 722, 745, 808, 812,
824, 843, 847, 857, 8612, 863, 871, 874, 875, 8824, 912, 955, 101622, 1084, 1123,
1217, 1224, 1284, 1287, 13078, 1330, 1342, 1361, 1362, 1371
sthetik (Aesthetics) 239, 808
Briefe von und an Hegel (Letters to and from Hegel) 124, 885
Die Phnomenologie des Geistes (The Phenomenology of Mind) 73, 13940, 155, 246,
257, 1015, 101622
Enzyklopdie (Encyclopaedia) 191, 203, 233, 244, 245, 246
Geschichte der Philosophie (History of Philosophy) 208
Jenenser Realphilosophie 670
Logik (Logic) 208, 244, 245
Rechtsphilosophie (Philosophy of Right) 245, 270
Hehn, Viktor 376
Heidegger 72, 1056, 109
Brief iber den Humanismus (Letter on Humanism) 1357
Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) 106, 110, 145, 11601
Vom Wesen des Grundes (On the Essence of Reasons) 1161
Was ist Metaphysik? (What is Metaphysics?) 106
Heimann, Eduard 468
Heine 147n, 321, 562, 898
Heinse 8034, 807
Ardinghello und die glcklichen Inseln (Ardinghello and the Fortunate Isles) 803
Heisenberg 697
Helen of Tyre 328
Helmholt 697
Helmont 643
Helvtius 154
Henry VIII 516
Page I-15
Heraclitus 114, 840, 841, 846, 850, 853, 854, 858, 863, 864, 877, 1098
Herbart 728
Herder 120n, 134n, 780, 781, 812
Genius der Zukunft (Genius of the Future) 286
Reisejournal 1769 (Travelogue 1769) 1034
Vom Geist der Hebrischen Poesie (On the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry) 134
Herodotus 877, 12056, 1207, 1220
Hertzka
Eine Reise nach Freiland (A Journey to Freeland) 612
Herwegh 578
Herzl, Theodor 6027, 609
Altneuland (Old New Land) 603
Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) 603
Hesiod 62, 334, 1111, 12057, 1209, 1214
Hess, Moses 271, 6002, 603, 604, 605, 607, 608, 609, 611
Rom und Jerusalem 600, 601
Hildebrandt 739
Hipparchia 482
Hippel, Theodor Gottlieb von 1143
Hippocrates 463
Hippodamos 738
Hippolitos 1268
Elenchos 1120
Historia von D. Johann Fausten (Chapbook) 1012
Hitler, Adolf xxiii, 29, 30, 68, 310, 386n, 428, 443, 587, 606, 733, 892, 894, 1172
Hobbes, Thomas 257, 5367, 543, 859, 867
De cire 536, 537
Leviathan 536, 537
Hlderlin 933, 11645, 1318, 1338
Am Quell der Donau (At the Source of the Danube) 121
An die Deutschen (1798) (To the Germans) 1365
An die Deutschen (1799) (To the Germans) 178
Der Tod des Empedokles (The Death of Empedocles) 841, 11512, 1165
Patmos 112, 939
Hoffmann, E. T. A. 357, 378, 391, 3923, 398, 803
Das Majorat (The Estate) 393
Der goldene Topf (The Golden Pot) 35860, 393, 708, 755
Don Juan 1101
Fermate 179
Lebensansichten des Katers Murr (Murr the Tom-cat's Views on Life) 17980, 323, 1003,
1060
Ritter Gluck 189
Hofmannstal
Die gyptische Helena 1845
Hogarth
Analysis of Beauty 727
Holbein (the younger) 957
Hollingworth
Jews in Palestine 605
Homer 213, 792, 1111, 1113, 1143, 1162, 1203, 12058
The Iliad 127, 313, 1207
The Odyssey 185, 304, 313, 418, 437, 758, 1020n, 10237, 12078, 1281
Honegger
Pacific 231 1081
Hooch, Pieter de 796, 797
A mug of beer 796
Hooke, Robert 647n
Horace 293, 373, 937, 959, 1214, 1257, 1318
Epistles 154n
Odes 290n, 393
Horkheimer, Max xxiv
Horseman of Bamberg (sculpture) 932
Howard, Ebenezer
Garden Cities of Tomorrow 612
Tomorrow 612
Hsia Kuei 1226
Huch, Friedrich
Trume (Dreams) 99
Hudson, W. H.
A Crystal Age 474
Hufeland
Makrobiotik (Macrobiotics) 461, 463
Hugh of St Victor 1019, 1302
Hugo
Lehrbuch des Naturrechts (Textbook of Natural Right) 547
Humboldt, Alexander von 39, 774, 1342
Ansichten der Natur (Views of Nature) 816
Kosmos 213
Page I-16
Kritische Untersuchungen (Critical Investigations) 7645, 775

Humboldt, Wilhelm von 1163
Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen (Ideas
for an attempt to define the limits of the effectiveness of the state) 540
Hume 291
Essays on Suicide, and the Immortality of the Soul 1145
Husserl 71, 1089, 230, 2912
Zur Phnomenologie des inneren Zeitbewutseins (On the phenomenology of the inner
consciousness of time) 109, 292
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World 440
Huxley, Thomas H. 567
Huygens 647
I
Iamblichus 916
De mysteriis 93
Iamboulos 510
Island of the Sun 4901, 516, 523
Ibn Khordadbeh 757
Ibn Tofail 401, 771
Ibsen 170
An Enemy of the People 421
Ghosts 170
Love's Comedy 323
Nora 373, 593, 1308
Rosmersholm 144, 569
The Doll's House 170
The Wild Duck 170, 569, 1044
The Woman from the Sea 323
I-ching (Book of Changes) 1223
Imhotep 1191, 1216
Impekoven 397
Irenaeus 1117
Isabella of Castille 776
Isidore of Seville 753
J
Jacobsen 105, 107
Niels Lyhne 934
Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig (called Turnvater Jahn) 452
Jacob of Lige
Speculum musicae 1075, 1077
James, William 2756, 291, 292, 682
Pragmatism 2756
Human Immortality 1159
Jane, C.
Selected Documents, Illustrating the Four Voyages of Columbus 775
Jannequin
Cris de Paris (Cries of Paris) 1081
Jantzen
Das Niederlndische Architekturbild (The Dutch Architectural Picture) 709
Jaspers, Karl 1161
Philosophie 1160
Jean de Meung
Roman de la Rose 8045
Jean de Muris
Speculum musicae 1075
Jean Paul (Richter) 80, 136, 31314, 8057, 869, 1150
Dmmerungen fr Deutschland (Dawnings for Germany) 314
Die unsichtbare Loge (The Invisible Lodge) 474
Flegeljahre (The Awkward Age) 1003
Titan 314, 391, 699, 8067, 1000, 1003
Vorschule der sthetik (Preschool of Aesthetics) 136
Jeans 697
Jefferson, Thomas 152
Jensen
The Wheel 1036
Jeremias
Babylonisches Im Neuen Testament (Babylonian Traces in the New Testament) 1231
Jesus the Hanged Man (Satire) 1305
Joachim of Fiore xxx, 206, 480, 498, 50915, 513, 514, 515, 610, 645, 769, 855, 1198,
1273, 1302, 1362
De concordia utriusque testamenti 510
Jochanaan ben Sakkai 679
John Lackland, King 881
Joseph of Arimathea 755
Josephson, Miriam xxii
Josephus, Flavius
Antiquitates Judaicae 718
Page I-17
Josquin 1064, 1081

Joyce, James
Ulysses 101
Jnger, Ernst 584, 1158
In Stahlgewittern (The Storm of Steel) 1158n
Jung, C. G. xxix, 56, 57, 5964, 66, 68, 77, 81, 93, 102, 1378, 160
Psychologische Typen (Psychological Types) 60
Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (The Psychology of the Unconscious) 62, 138
ber die Archetypen des kollektiven Bewutseins (Archetypes of the Collective
Unconscious) 62
Justinian 542
Juvenal 216
K
Kabasilas 679
Kafka, Franz xxi
Kamasutra 372
Kant, Immanuel xxvii, 6, 8, 147, 168, 169, 190, 244, 257, 423, 543, 549, 667, 672, 692
3, 784, 808, 810, 825, 8445, 847, 864, 86874, 8956, 951, 971, 972, 1016, 1047,
1101, 1108, 1108, 11467, 1290, 131819, 1320, 1321, 1324, 1347, 1361, 1373
Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (Natural History and Theory of
the Heavens) 783, 843
Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason) 86974, 1147, 13312
Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason) 244, 843
Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgement) 672, 693, 810
Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (Religion inside the Limits of Mere
Reason) 844
Streit der Fakultten (Dispute of the Faculties) 844, 872
Trume eines Geistersehers (Dreams of a Spirit-Seer) 245, 784, 844
Zum ewigen Frieden (On perpetual peace) 896
Karl Eugen von Wrttemberg 702
Katharine of Siena 465
Kauffmann
Von Ledoux bis Corbusier (From Ledoux to Le Corbusier) 741
Kauffmann, Arthur
Triptych of the German Emigration xxiv
Kawerau 588
Keller, Gottfried 99, 102, 213, 314, 357, 595, 654, 114850, 1155, 1163
Der grne Heinrich (Green Henry) 99100, 361, 1149
Die Jungfrau als Ritter (The Virgin as a Knight) 358
Poetentod (Death of the Poet) 94
Traumbuch (Dreambook) 366
Kellermann 294n
Kepler, Johann 95, 647, 783, 785, 1072, 1078, 1330, 1342, 1350, 1351
Harmonices mundi 1078
Kepler in seinen Briefen (Kepler in his letters) 1072
Kerner, Justinus 143
Khrushchev, Nikita xxvi
Kierkegaard, Sren 71, 72, 73, 181, 182, 183, 293, 9601, 989, 1011, 1021, 13356,
1338, 1356
Either/Or 961
For Self-Examination 1104
Sickness unto Death 1336
The Moment 1057
Kingston 353
Kipling, Rudyard
The Brushwood Boy 3612
Kjelln 584
Klages, Ludwig 59, 60, 61, 77, 102
Kleanthes 494, 496
Kleist, Heinrich von 8358, 984
Das Kthchen von Heilbronn 317
Empfindungen vor Friedrichs Seelandschaft (Impressions before Friedrich's sea-
landscape) 8356
Michael Kohlhaas 1321
ber das Marionettentheater (On the Puppet-theatre) 396
Klemperer, Otto xxiii
Kleomenes 495
Page I-18
Klettenberg, Susanne von 642, 983

Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian 1000, 1148
Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) 977
Klinger, Max 380
Klopstock 812, 998
An Freund und Feind (To Friend and Foe) 1201
Messias (The Messiah) 120, 1878
Knebel, Major 885
Knittermeier 1357
Kopp
Die Alchymie (Alchemy) 643
Koran 832, 1134, 1136, 1166, 12778
Krates 482
Kraus, Karl 427
Kreneck *
ber neue Musik (On New Music) 1090
Kriege, H. 273, 1356
Kries, John. von 241
Kritschevski 10
Kropotkin 571
Kubin, Alfred
Die andere Seite (The Other Side) 99
Krten 3467, 349
Kuhlmann 279
Kunckel 629
L
La Bruyre 154
Lactantius 121415
Lagerlf, Selma 629
Little Nils' Journey with the Wild Geese 360
La Mettrie
L'Homme machine (Machine man) 630
La Motte-Fouqu, Friedrich Baron de 995n
Landor, Walter Savage
Imaginary Conversations 1312
Lange, Helene 590, 591
Lao Tzu 304, 880, 1190, 1191, 122530, 12612, 1295
Tao-t-ching 880, 122530
Laroche, J. J. 1008n
La Rochefoucauld 154, 964
Larsson, Carl
House in the Sun 380
Lasker-Schler, Else xxii
Lassalle 555, 566, 600, 620, 1170
Franz von Sickingen 1170n
Lasso, Orlando di 1064
Lasswitz, Kurt 474, 629, 753
Auf zwei Planeten (On two planets) 753
Sternentau (Stardew) 753
Lavater 981
Lavoisier 642
Lawrence, D. H. 59, 61
Lazaretti, David 1185
Le Corbusier 735, 742
Ledoux 827, 7412, 744, 812
Lee, Anna 1185
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 6, 8, 1323, 1389, 212, 243, 257, 480, 546, 653, 673, 687,
843, 847, 856, 858, 859, 860, 8612, 863, 864, 875, 1143, 1295, 1330, 1349, 1366
De arte combinatoria 652
Monadologie 860
Nouveaux Essais (New Essays) 133, 1295
Leisegang
Die Gnosis (Gnosis) 12689
Lenau, Nikolaus 119, 181, 183, 293, 1010
Don Juan 101011
Faust 101011, 1016, 1023
Schilflieder (Reed Songs) 119
Wandel der Sehnsucht (Change of Longing) 1812, 323
Lenin 6, 910, 157, 174, 271, 281, 294, 354, 410, 554, 580, 607, 610, 622, 903, 943,
945, 1202, 13689
'Left-wing' Communism 1369
Philosophical Notebooks 208, 673
State and Revolution 574
What is to be Done? 910
Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism 277
Lenz, Jakob Michael Reinhold 301, 977n
Der Hofmeister (The Private Tutor) 427
Leonardo da Vinci 121, 6489, 670, 672, 800, 1074, 1342
Mona Lisa 800, 819, 836
Page I-19
St Anne, The Virgin and the Infant Christ with a Lamb 800
Virgin of the Rocks 800
Lermontov
A Hero of Our Time 1004
Lersch
Der Aufbau des Charakters (The Structure of Character) 104
Lessing 727, 825, 955, 976, 11437, 1182, 1354
Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (The Education of the Human Race) 1145
Emilia Galotti 544, 809, 933
Faust fragment 101213
Hamburgische Dramaturgie (Hamburg Dramaturgy) 430
Laokoon (Laocoon) 411
Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet (How the Ancients Shaped Death) 11437
Lvy-Bruhl 62
Lewin, Louis
Phantastica 89
Lewis, Sinclair xxiv
Babbitt 32
Liang Kai 1226
Liber secretus 754
Lichtenberg 353, 11489
Briefe aus England (Letters from England) 1148n
Light of Hatha Yoga 676
Lille, Duke of 702
Lincoln, Abraham 618
Lipps, Th.
Leitfaden der Psychologie (Guide to Psychology) 104
Liszt 180
Livy 946, 1193n
Locke
Civil Government 537, 1295
Lw, Rabbi 1188
Lwith
Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen (World History and Events of Salvation) 1362
Loheland 394, 396, 397
Lohenstein
Agrippina 631
Loos, Adolf 735
Lorrain, Claude 389
Acis and Galatea 817
Lotze
Geschichte der sthetik (History of Aesthetics) 1071
Louis XIV 524
Louis XVI 406
Louis Philippe 377
Lowe, A.
The Trend in World Economics 899
Loyola
Exercitia spiritualia 675, 683
Lucian
Dialogues 882
Vera Historia 4368, 1025
Lucretius 842, 1010, 1148, 12912, 1343
De rerum natura 489, 1292
Lucullus 373n
Lukcs, Georg xx, xxii, xxiii, xxv, 808, 1170, 1367
Der russische Realismus in der Weltliteratur (Russian Realism in World Literature) 817
Die Seele und die Formen (The Soul and the Forms) 1169
Die Theorie des Romans (The Theory of the Novel) 218
Geschichte und Klassenbewutsein (History and Class Consciousness) xxiii
Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels als Literaturhistoriker (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
as Literary Historians) 1170n
Die Sickingen debatte (The Sickingen Debate) 1170n
Lull, Ramon 641, 643, 6513
Luria, Isaac 1237
Luther xxx, 171, 1064, 1161, 1188n, 1234n, 1357
Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Secure Fortress is our God) 711n
Freiheit des Christenmenschen (Freedom of the Christian Man) 635
Lycurgus 486
Lytton, Bulwer
Zanoni 1186
Page I-20
M
Maa
Vetsuch ber die Leidenschaft (An Essay on Passion) 80
Mably 539
Macaulay 891
Mach 697, 774, 785
Machiavelli 942, 943, 9467
Discorsi (Discourses) 946
Il Principe (The Prince) 946, 947
Macpherson, James (Ossian) 134, 391, 77981, 783
Macrobius 111415
Maeterlinck 6812
The olive-branch 682
Magellan 7723, 777
Magus, Simon 328
Mahavira 1252
Mahler, Gustav 1083, 1092, 1102
Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth) 1092
Sixth Symphony 1083
Seventh Symphony 1092
Maimonides, Moses 732, 1128, 1241
Fhrer der Unschlssigen (Guide of the Perplexed) 732
Makart, Hans 3789, 380, 703
Malthus, Rev. Thomas 4679
Essay on the Principle of Population 468
Mandeville, Bernard de
Fable of the Bees 150
Mandeville, Sir John (Jean d'Outremeuse) 753
Manet
Djeuner sur l'herbe (The Picnic) 813, 814, 815
Mani 854, 1119, 1121, 12449, 1277, 1342
Mann, Heinrich 1163
Mann, Thomas xxiv, 1068
Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice) 111
Doktor Faustus 1004
Mantegna 705
Manu
Book of Law 1222
Manuel 766, 768
Marc, Franz 794, 837
Marcellus (Pope) 213, 1079, 1086
Marchettus of Padua 1077
Marcion 1244, 1270
Marcuse, Herbert xxvi
Mares 815
Marlitt (Eugenie John) 351
Marlowe
Doctor Faustus 654, 1012, 1016, 1017, 1029
Martinov 10
Marx, Karl xxvii, xxviii, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 17, 125, 130, 131, 141, 146, 148, 150, 152,
1556, 163, 1734, 199, 204, 208, 211, 232n, 240, 247, 24986, 294, 442, 468, 481,
483, 514, 534, 546, 559, 560, 571, 573, 576, 578, 681, 582, 583, 584, 585, 600, 601,
604, 607, 612, 615, 618, 619, 61924, 695, 813, 866, 874, 882, 884, 889, 892, 921, 932,
947, 969, 9723, 1044, 1047, 1170, 1215, 1288, 1318, 1329, 1333, 135476
Aus dem philosophischen Nachla (Posthumous Philosophical Writings) 270, 5123
Circular against H. Kriege 273, 1356
Das Kapital (Capital) 76, 261, 2656, 278, 620, 886, 9701, 1359, 1361
Der 18. Brumaire des Louis Napoleon (The Eighteenth Brumaire) 294
Differnz der demokritischen und epikureischen Philosophie (Distinction between
Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy) 263
Einleitung zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie (Introduction to the Critique of
Hegel's Philosophy of Right) 265, 279, 281, 882, 1183, 1358
Einleitung zur Kritik der politischen konomie (Introduction to the Critique of Political
Economy) 154
Elf Thesen ber Feuerbach (Eleven Theses on Feuerbach) 199, 24986, 1358
Kritik der Gothaer Programms (Critique of the Gotha Programme) 1369
Kritik der Hegelschen Staatsphilosophie (Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of State) 251
La misre de la philosophie (The
Page I-21
Poverty of Philosophy) 147n, 570, 579

Letter to Engels (1859) 1170n
Letter to Lassalle (1857) 1170n
Letter to Ruge (1843) 155, 195, 251, 1363
konomisch-philosophische Manuskripte (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts) 251,
257, 281, 6256
Zur Judenfrage (On the Jewish Question) 531
Marx/Engels
Die deutsche Ideologie (The German Ideology) 250, 252, 258, 260, 264, 266, 278, 279,
280, 2834, 920
Die Heilige Familie (The Holy Family) 154, 250, 251, 252, 264, 271, 280, 569, 671, 691,
850, 1359
Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (The Communist Manifesto) 271, 2823, 471, 515,
566, 600, 1356
May, Karl xix
Mein Leben und Streben (My Life and Strife) 352
Ma Yan 1226
Medea and Jason (pantomime) 404
Mehring, Franz 551, 575
Meinong 230
Meister Eckhart 61, 273, 292, 689, 857, 862, 954, 1141, 1274, 12991300, 1301, 1302,
1340
Melanchthon, Philip 1188
Loci Communes 1188n
Memling 709
Mendel 458
Mendelssohn, Moses 604
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix 1064
Menno Simons 512
Mercator 764
Mesmer 455, 632
Metshnikov 462
Metsu 796
Meyer, Eduard 723, 1186
Geschichte des Altertums (History of Antiquity) 1258
Meyerbeer 829, 830
Meyrink, Gustav 3646
Der Golem (The Golem) 365
Das grne Gesicht (The Green Face) 365
Michelangelo Buonarroti 220, 744, 1169
Mill, John Stuart 618
Milton 314, 781
Mirabeau 991
Moeller van den Bruck Drittes Reich (Third Reich)
Mrike, Eduard 96, 686
Maler Nolten 96, 172, 321n, 996
Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag (Mozart on the Way to Prage) 3212
Peregrina Lieder (Peregrina Songs) 321, 331
Mohammed 708, 1134, 1186, 12758, 1282
Moisseyev 397
Moleschott, Jacob 1286
Der Kreislauf des Lebens (The Circuit of Life) 1286n
Molire
Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre (Don Juan or the Feast of Stone) 1008, 1011
Molina, Tirso de
El Burlador de Sevilla (The Mocker of Seville) 1008, 1029
Molitor
Philosophie der Geschichte oder ber Tradition (Philosophy of History or on Tradition)
1349
Mommsen 294, 1210
Montaigne 516, 657, 939
Montesquieu
Lettres persanes (Persian letters) 770
Monteverdi 1064
Apollo 829
Orfeo 828
Montezuma 523
More, Thomas 14, 15, 139, 437, 438, 475, 479, 480, 510, 512, 51523, 525, 527, 528,
529, 530, 534, 537, 544, 545, 568, 585, 592, 617, 618, 744
Utopia 98, 457, 475, 476, 477, 479, 490, 51523, 638, 740
Morelly
Code de la Nature (Code of Nature) 539
Moritz, Karl Philipp 160
Page I-22
Morris, William 551, 61315, 617

News from Nowhere 613, 614
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 164, 316, 321, 390, 911, 1033, 1063, 1069, 1079, 1080,
1088, 1275
Cos fan tutti 829
La Clemenza di Tito 829
Don Giovanni 100411
Idomeneo 829
The Magic Flute 98, 127, 164, 181, 319, 322, 325, 327, 328, 329, 417, 628, 829, 1086,
1095
The Marriage of Figaro 240, 390, 417, 829, 1067, 1082
Mller, Friedrich (called Maler Mllet) 981
Life of Faust 9778
Mller, Friedrich von (Chancellor) 998
Mnchhausen 437, 438, 631, 667, 748, 1025
Mnzer, Thomas xxiii, xxx, 488, 511, 515, 608, 774, 1108, 1171, 1195, 1301, 1303,
1357, 1363
Ausgedrckte Entblssung des falschen Glaubens (Expressed Exposure of False Faith)
1256, 1301
Von dem gedichteten Glauben (On fictional faith) 512
Mulford, Prentice
Your forces and how to use them 681
Mumford, Lewis
The Story of Utopias 523
Musus
Der Schatzengrber (The Treasurehunter) 754
Musil, Robert 608
Mussolini 943n, 945
N
Nagarjuna 1251
Nagy, Imre xxv
Nansen
Farthest North 376
Napoleon 136n, 383, 565n, 991, 999, 1004, 1167
Nathan of Gaza
A Treatise on Dragons 1269
Navigatio St Brendani 763
Nearch 488
Nebuchadnezzar 1240
Neefs, Peter 709
Nemirovitch-Dantshenko 4212
Nero 68, 310, 500, 704, 729, 1118
Nestroy
Einen Jux Will Er Sich Machen (On the Razzle) 441
Neumann, Balthasar 739
Neumann, K.
Die Reden Gotamo Buddhos (The Speeches of Gautama Buddha) 678, 1140, 1141
Newcombe 660
Newton 460, 672, 784, 785, 843, 919, 1328, 1330
Opticks 687
Nicholas of Cusa 242, 526, 848, 849, 1019, 1340
Nicolai, Christoph Friedrich 1188, 1368
Nielsen, Asta 405, 407, 408
Niethammer 195
Nietzsche, Friedrich 58, 59, 68, 123, 204, 211, 274, 615, 936, 9378, 943, 94951, 959,
1004, 1207
Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra) 398n, 936, 949, 950, 1101
Die Geburt der Tragdie (The Birth of Tragedy) 1213
Menschliches-Allzumenschliches (Human-All-Too-Human) 1164
ber Wahrheit und Lge im auermoralischen Sinne (On Truth and Lies in the Extra-
moral Sense) 1331
Ntling
Die kosmischen Zahlen der Cheopspyramide (The Cosmic Numbers of the Cheops
Pyramid) 723
Nollius
Theoria philosophiae hermeticae 645
Norden
Die Geburt des Kindes (Childbirth) 1124
Nostradamus 144
Novalis 160, 970, 1315, 1350
Die Christenheir oder Europa (Christendom or Europe) 551
Heinrich von Ofterdingen 790n, 1315
Page I-23
Klingsor's Mrchen (Klingsor's fairytale) 995n

Numa Pompilius 717, 1190, 1209, 1211
O
Offenbach 427, 439
Hoffmanns Erzhlungen (Tales of Hoffmann) 426, 439, 631
La Prichole 797
Orpheus in der Unterwelt (Orpheus in the Underworld) 830
Pariser Leben (Paris Life) 441
Olschki
Der Brief des Presbyters Johannes (The Letter of Prester John) 770
Sacra doctrina e Theologia mystica 882
Olsen, Regine 182
Oncken, Hermann 519
Oppert
Der Presiterknig Johannes in Geschichte und Sage (Prester John in History and Legend)
768
Orcagna
Altar-piece in S. Maria Novella
Orfyrus (Professor Mystos) (Bessler) 632, 633, 647
Die acht verborgenen Kammern des Naturgebudes (The eight hidden chambers of the
edifice of nature) 632
Origen 510, 1248
Ossian (see Macpherson)
Otto, Luise 591
Otto, Rudolf 1194
Otto, W.
Die Gtter Griechenlandes (The Gods of Greece) 1208
Ovid
Metamorphoses 105960, 1308
Tristia 959
Owen, Robert 476, 477, 480, 528, 545, 5558, 559, 560, 561, 563, 607, 618, 620, 656
The Book of the New Moral World 556
The Social System 556
P
Pacioli 728, 1348
Padma Sambhava 1139
Palestrina 832, 833, 834, 1064, 1096
Missa papae Marcelli 1079
Palmerston, Lord 605
Panaitios 263, 491, 492
Panofsky
Idea 1348
Vortrge der Bibliothek Warburg (Lectures of the Warburg Institute) 743
Papin 659
Paracelsus 6356, 640, 645, 648, 6836, 688, 711, 784, 850, 857, 858, 859, 1348, 1351
Paragranum 645, 684
Paramirum 684, 13489
Signatura rerum naturalium 643
Pareto 547
Parmenides 311, 840, 864
Pascal 653, 1356
Patajali 678
Pausanias 1204
Pavlov 48, 57, 469
Pavlova 396
Pepper 433
Perdigon, Luis 764
Peri 1064
Eurydice 828
Pericles 328, 1112
Perret 735
Peter I of Russia (Peter the Great) 991
Petrarch 89, 774
Petrus Hispanus 1075
Petrus Martyr 516
Pfister
Kleine Texte zum Alexanderroman (Minor Texts on the Alexander Story) 767
Pfitzner
Palestrina 1079
Pherekydes 853
Philalethes 1025
Philipp of Vitry 1077
Ars nova 1075
Ars contrapuncti 1075
Philo 203, 609, 644, 1238
Odes of Solomon 6445
Picasso 1347
Pico della Mirandola 652
Piero della Francesca 800
Page I-24
Pietro da Mora
Da rosa 822
Pindar 1214
Nemean Odes 757, 983
Piotrkowska, Karola (Karola Bloch) xxii
Piranesi 741, 742, 744
Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome) 385
Pisano, Andrea 218, 334
Pissarev 10
Pistis Sophia 1120
Pius IV (Pope) 833, 1079
Plus IX (Pope) 330
Pizarro 777
Plato 7, 8, 18, 62, 140, 160, 1612, 168, 212, 256, 257, 269, 292, 305, 4778, 480, 484
8, 490, 491, 492, 493, 506, 512, 527, 553, 609, 757, 843, 8457, 999, 1086, 1207, 1244,
1320, 1321, 1348, 1363
Critias 489, 654
Cratylus 170
Gorgias 243
Laws 486
Meno 283
Parmenides 292, 846
Phaedrus 845
Philebos 847, 1319
Protagoras 671, 1214
Republic 457, 4848, 516, 523, 549, 1086
Symposium 155, 845
Timaeus 728
Plautus 939
Plekhanov 10
Pliny 753, 767
Plotinus 62, 211, 491, 840, 1141
Enneads 1214
Plutarch 464, 773, 1163
De defectu oraculorum 764
De EI apud Delphos 1236
De facie in orbe lunae 764
De fortuna Alexandri 492
De Isi et Osiri 723
Poe, Edgar Allan 392
The Fall of the House of Usher 392
The Gold Bug 357
Pppelmann, M.D. 706n
Poincar 667
Polo, Marco 752, 762, 767, 771, 772, 778
Polybius 492
Pomponius Mela 753, 761
Ponce de Len 777
Pontoppidan
Hans im Glck (Lucky Jack) 1001
Pope, Alexander 389
Mensch und Tier (Man and Animal) 1187
Poseidonios 491, 494
Poussin 389
Powel 433
Presbyter Leo
Nativitas et victoria Alexandri Magni 767
Proclos 1118
Prodikos 948
Proudhon 56972, 575, 576, 579, 580, 581, 617, 620
De la Justice dans la Rvolution et dans L'glise (On Justice in Revolution and in the
Church) 571
Id gnrale de la rvolution (General Idea of the Revolution) 5712
La Philosophie de la Misre (The Philosophy of Poverty) 147n, 5712
Qu'est-ce que proprit? (What is property?) 570
Pseudo-Justinus 1087
Pseudo-Kallisthenes
Biography of Alexander 760, 767
Ptolemy 772, 1077
Pudovkin
Storm over Asia 411
Pufendorf 546, 873
Purcell
Dido and Aeneas 828
Pushkin 136
Pythagoras 165, 1348, 13501
Pytheas 772
Q
Quesnay
Tableau conomique (Economic Tableau) 620
R
Rabelais 81, 1104
Gargantua and Pantagruel 437
Page I-25
Racine 546
Iphignie 211
Rameses II 1124
Raphael 1347
School of Athens 709
Sistine Madonna 8367, 1310
Rasputin 630
Rawley, William 654n
Reich, Wilhelm 633
Reichenbach
Physikalisch-physiologische Untersuchungen (Physical-physiological investigations) 633
Reinach, Salomon 1128
Reinhardt, Max 621
Reitzenstein
Das iranische Erlsungsmysterium (The Iranian Mystery of the Redemption) 1240
Das mandische Buch des Herrn der Gre (The Mandaean Book of the Lord of
Greatness) 1245
Rembrandt 8002, 999
Entombment of Christ 801
Man with the Golden Helmet 800
Night Watch 801
Resurrection 802
River Landscape with Ruins 801
Saskia 800
Renard, Maurice
Docteur Lerne 439
Rtif de la Bretonne
La douverte australe par un homme volant (Australia discovered by a flying man) 779
Rebeni, David 600
Reuchlin 1349
Reuleaux 662
Reventlov, Franziska 66, 467
Ricardo 545, 557, 580, 621, 1329
Richard of St Victor 1299, 1302
Richardson, Samuel 151
Richelieu 524
Richter
Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci 649
Rienzo 774
Rilke, Rainer Maria 959, 1202, 1290
Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies) 990n
Robespierre 933, 1010
Rodbertus 555, 620
Roland, Madame 933
Rolin, Chancellor 799
Rosenberg
Mythos des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (Myth of the Twentieth Century) 584
Rosenkranz
Psychologie 125
Rousseau 68, 389, 535, 53740, 541, 546, 549, 597, 816, 873, 915, 951, 976
Confessions 92
Contrat social (Social contract) 527, 53740
Emile 538, 539
Ruben
Geschichte der indischen Philosophie (History of Indian Philosophy) 676
Rubens 1099
Garden of Love 798
Rckert 928
Ruge xxviii, 155, 195, 251, 1363
Ruskin 551, 61314, 615, 617, 915
Russell, Bertrand 668, 697
Rutherford 663
Ruysbroek 1300
S
Sabbatai Zewi 328, 600, 1185, 1269
Sacco, Nicola 1173
Sachs, Hans 1083, 1085
St Boniface 12745
St Brendan 7634, 765, 766, 772, 788
St Germain, Count 455, 460
St Jerome 767
Saint-Pierre, Bernadin de
Chaumire indienne (The Indian Hut) 816
Paul et Virginie 816
Saint-Sans 398
Saint-Simon 474, 4767, 479, 480, 528, 545, 551, 560, 5638, 576, 577, 578, 616, 970
Nouveau Christianisme (New Christianity) 567
Rorganisation de la socit europenne (Reorganization of European society) 564
Page I-26
Systme industriel (Industrial System) 477, 567

Salin, Edgar 468
Salisbury, Lord 605
Sallust 373n
Salzmann 998
Sand, George, 592
Le meunier d'Angibault (The Miller of Angibault) 591
Sandschar 769
Sapor I 1244
Sartre 433, 674, 1366
L'tre et le Nant (Being and Nothingness) 433
Satie, Eric
People Dining on the Terrace of the Hall at the Spa 1081
Sauer, Josef
Symbolik des Kirchengebudes (The Symbolism of the Church-Building) 725
Scaliger, Julius Caesar 794, 812, 1215
Poetics 812
Scamozzi 741
Scarlatti 829
Cat Fugue 1073
Theodora 828
Scheeben
Die Mysterien des Christentums (The Mysteries of Christianity) 1131
Scheerbart 474, 736, 737
Scheffel, Joseph Victor von
Ekkehard 375, 379
Scheler 74, 748, 1327
Schelling xxviii, 190, 192, 194, 672, 688, 68990, 8601, 1021, 116970, 12156, 1342
Philosophie der Kunst (Philosophy of Art) 699, 1049, 1078
Philosophie der Offenbarung (Philosophy of Revelation) 1104
Philosophie und Religion 192
Vorlesungen ber die Methode des akademischen Studiums (Lectures on the Method of
Academic Study) 101920
Scher, Peter 369
Schiller, Friedrich 67, 211, 215, 417, 4201, 4234, 429, 430, 431, 540, 625, 670, 918
19, 932, 948, 951, 974, 988, 1000, 1067, 1086, 1175, 1317
An die Freude (Ode to Joy) 92n, 158, 1293
Das Lied von der Glocke (The Song of the Bell) 625, 670
Demetrius 427
Die Jungfrau yon Orleans (The Maid of Orleans) 407
Die Piccolomini 562n
Die Ruber (The Robbers) 91n, 144, 200n, 368, 426, 454, 978, 1017
Die Schaubhne als eine moralische Anstalt betrachtet (The Theatre regarded as a Moral
Institution) 423
Das verschleierte Bild zu Sais (The Veiled Image at Sais) 838
Don Carlos 144, 1044, 1051, 1320
Fiesco 416, 544, 933
Kabale und Liebe (Cabal and Love) 425, 501
Kallias letters (to Kmer) 810
Letter to Goethe (August 1794) 1163
Maria Stuart 318, 427
Spaziergang (The Walk) 1019, 1020
Turandot 318
ber den Grund des Vergngens an tragischen Gegenstnden (On the Reason for
Pleasure in Tragic Objects) 429
ber die sthetische Erziehung des Menschen (On the Aesthetic Education of Man) 97
ber die tragische Kunst (On the Art of Tragedy) 429
ber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (On naive and sentimental poetry) 918, 1034,
1051, 1053
Wallenstein 420, 1169
Wilhelm Tell (William Tell) 425, 427, 544
Xenien 231, 948n
Schlegel, A. W. 1030
Schlegel, Friedrich 390, 907
Schleiermacher 420, 1188
Schmidt yon Lbeck G. P. Des Fremdlings Abendlied (The Stranger's Evening Song)
180n
Page I-27
S
Schmieder
Geschichte der Alchymie (History of Alchemy) 643
Schnaase 715
Schnabel, Johann Gottfried
Insel Felsenburg (The Isle of Felsenburg) 474
Schnberg 108991
Erwartung (Expectation) 1090
Harmonielehre (Theory of Harmony) 1090
First string quartet 1091
First chamber symphony 1091
Second chamber symphony 1091
Three piano pieces 1091
Wind quintet 1091
Scholem
The Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 1269
Schopenhauer, Arthur 58, 59, 126, 169, 274, 793, 808, 998, 10845, 1177, 1253, 1337,
1344
Schubert, Franz 180n
Schubert, G. H.
Die Geschichte der Seele (The Story of the Soul) 1000
Schultz, Fiete 1173
Schultz-Hencke 587
Schumann 1093
Schweizer, Albert
J. S. Bach 10656
Scipio the Younger 263, 492, 971
Scott, Howard 898
Seer of Prvost 143
Seghers, Anna
Das siebte Kreuz (The Seventh Cross) 1103
Selmer, C. 764
Semon 60
Semper 715
Seneca 491
Medea 438, 773, 774, 1026
Sens, Bishop of 702
Sent M'ahesa 397
Serubabel 1263
Sesostris III 1124
Seurat
Un dimanche la Grande-Jatte (A Sunday on the Grande-Jatte) 814, 909, 920
Shaftesbury 812, 919, 951, 1215
Shakespeare 184, 213, 418, 419, 421, 422, 428, 430, 440, 518, 983, 9859, 1000, 1027
33, 1069, 1073, 1162, 1343
Anthony and Cleopatra 160
A Midsummer Night's Dream 393, 986, 1031
Cymbeline 1030
Hamlet 332, 416, 420, 422, 4278, 102732
King Lear 419, 459, 1167
Macbeth 134, 419
Othello 416
Richard the Third 428, 868, 1030, 1170
Romeo and Juliet 422
The Merchant of Venice 427, 1077
The Merry Wives of Windsor 1032
The Tempest 9869, 102933
The Winter's Tale 332, 1030
Troilus and Cressida 986
Shaw, George Bernard 1107
Shelley, Percy Bysshe 136, 933, 1317, 1318
Prometheus Unbound 372, 1215
Shi-ching 1221
Shu-ching (Book of Documents) 1221, 1223
Sickingen, Franz von 1170
Sidorov 741
Sigwart
Logik 242
Simmel, Georg xx, xxi, 668, 6823
Fragmente und Aufstze (Fragments and Essays) 683
Simonides 839
Simplikios 877
Sinclair, Upton 350
Sismondi 545, 580
Smith, Adam 151, 552, 948, 964, 1329
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations 544
Smith, Joseph 754, 1186
The Book of Mormon 1185
Smyth, Piazzi 7223
Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid 723
On the Reputed Metrological System of the Great
Page I-28
Pyramid 723
Socrates 168, 190, 269, 485, 529, 530, 532, 842, 844, 8679, 950, 1325, 1326, 1364
Sohar (Book of) 1135, 1269
Solon 460, 481, 839
Sombart 13356
Die Technik im Zeitalter des Frhkapitalismus (Technology in the Early Capitalist Age)
647
Song of Roland 1027, 1036
Sophocles 160
Antigone 416, 1171
Elektra 160
Oedipus at Colonus 1213
Oedipus the King 1213
Sorel, Georges 683, 9426
Rflexions sur la violence (Reflections on violence) 943, 944
Southcott, Johanna 1184
Spartacus 1171
Spedding, James 651n, 654n, 655n, 657n, 1215n
Speiser 1351
Spencer, Herbert 894
Spengler 584, 730, 942, 1160
Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West) 376, 1360
Sperber
Traktat von den drei seculis (Treatise on the three seculis) 645, 1079
Sphairos 495
Spinoza, Benedict 67, 72, 212, 234, 243, 244, 257, 311, 740, 793, 846, 8503, 859, 861,
864, 955, 993, 1148, 1328
Ethics 72, 155, 243, 8513, 884, 1195, 1328
On the Improvement of the Intellect 850
Theological-political Treatise 853
Spitta
J. S. Bach 1065
Spitteler
Imago 3234
Spontini 829
Spranger, Eduard 1364
Stalin 547
Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR 669
Stamitz 1092, 1093
Stangen, Louis 375
Stanislavsky 420, 421
Stein, Charlotte von 387
Stein, Karl Freiherr von 541
Stein, Lorenz von 564
Steinach 461
Steinbach, Erwin von 717
Steiner, Rudolf 11868
Stendhal
De l'amour (On love) 179
Sternberger
Panorama 410
Stevenson, R. L.
Treasure Island 353, 357
Stieglitz 715
Stirner, Max (Johann Kaspar Schmidt) 252, 279, 5689, 572, 1004
Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Lone Individual and his Property) 271, 569
Stckl
Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters (History of the Philosophy of the Middle
Ages) 652
Stolberg, F. 1343
Storm Theodor
Viola Tricolor 332
Strachey, James xxix, 54n, 62n
Strato 207, 850
Strauss, David Friedrich 911
Strauss, Richard 1068
Die gyptische Helena (The Egyptian Helen) 1845
Don Juan 1093
Don Quixote 1083
Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) 596, 1093
Frau ohne Schatten (Woman without a Shadow) 1067
Sinfonia domestica 1095
Stravinsky 1090
Stritt, Marie 590, 591
Stritzky, Elsa von (see Elsa Bloch)
Suarez, Andr 1047
Page I-29
Suetonius 729
Sulla 947, 1003, 1211
Surajah Dowlah 891
Susman, Margarete xxi
Suttner, Berta von
Die Waffen nieder (Lay Down your Arms) 895
Swedenborg 630
Swesen
Limanora, The Island of Progress 457
Swift, Jonathan
A Modest Proposal 888
T
Tacitus
Annals 72n
Germania 779, 783
Talmud 604, 1128, 1134
Tarde
Underground Man 612
Tasso
Aminta 804
Liberated Jerusalem 1135
Tausend, Franz 6334
Taut, Bruno 737, 742
Die Stadtkrone (The City Crown) 736
Tchaikovsky 1068
Telesphorus 511
Teniers 813
Teresa de Jesus 1300
Tertullian 504, 1194, 121415, 1272
Thales 18, 672, 840, 849
Theocritus 803, 11745
Theodoros 489
Theophrastus 757
Theopompos 488
The Suit of Leaves (Chinese Fairytale( 628
Thirion
Neustria 612
Tholuck, Friedrich August Gotttreu Suufismus (Sufism) 1278
Thomas Kempis
The Imitation of Christ 1260
Thomasius 976
Fundamentum juris naturae et gentium 543
Thomas of Celano
Dies irae 1067n, 1100n, 1127, 1132
Thorndike
A History of Magic and Experimental Science 754, 767
Tibetan Book of the Dead 113940
Tieck, Ludwig 1041
Der Runenberg (The Rune Mountain) 1350
Tiepolo 704, 710
Tillich, Paul xxxii
Timotheus 1081
Tintoretto 744
Titian 379, 778
Tito xxv
Tobin 433
Tocqueville 967, 968
De la dmocratie en Amique (On democracy in America) 967
Toland, John
Pantheisticon 568
Tolstoy 213, 1181, 1322
Anna Karenina 302, 1181, 1322
Death of Ivan Illyich 240, 302
Kreutzer Sonata 322
War and Peace 240, 302, 917, 1181, 1322, 13234
Torah xxv, 1128, 1241
Torre, Dona Juana de la 776
Toynbee
Civilization on Trial 1361
Trepte
Leben und Werk Stanislawskijs (Life and Work of Stanislavsky) 420
Trois Cousines (Three Cousins) 797
Trotsky 426
Turgenev
Hamlet and Don Quixote 1048
Tyndall, John 237
U
Uhland
Frhlingsglauben (Spring Faith) 224
Ulbricht, Walter xxv
Upanishads 1137, 1250, 1251, 1252
Urfaust (see Historia)
Usener
Gtternamen (Names of the Gods) 1210
Valturio 648
Van Gogh 125
Page I-30
Vanzetti, Bartolomeo 1173

Varro, M. Terentius 6
Liberated Prometheus 439
Odysseus and a half 1025
Vasari, Giorgio 220, 728, 1347
Vasari il Giovane 741
Vasco da Gama 772
Vauban 524
Vayrasse
L'Histoire des Svrambes 544
Vedas 12501
Rigveda 1250
Velde, Henri van der
Ruskin 61314
Velde, Theodoor H. van de
Ideal Marriage 350
Venus de Milo 386
Verdi 998, 10991100
Aida 830
Othello 419, 830
Requiem 1067, 1100
Vermeer 796
Verne, Jules 474, 659, 753
Around the World in Eighty Days 629
Veronese, Paolo 710
Feast in the House of Levi 710
Verweyen 241
Vespucci, Amerigo 516
Viera 765
Vignola 728
Villiers de L'Ile Adam
L'Eve future (The future Eve) 439
Virgil 1214
Fourth Eclogue 1257
Georgics 759
Vischer, F. Th. 1163
Vitruvius 699, 701, 7289, 736
De architectura 7289
Vivaldi of Genoa 1026
Voler
Einfhrung in die spanische Dichtung (Introduction to Spanish Poetry) 1034
Voltaire 17, 39, 390, 517, 1275, 1286, 1331
Voronoff 461
Voss
Luise 803
Vries, Vredeman de 709
W
Wagner, Adolf 468
Wagner, Richard 319, 420, 82931, 1057, 1063, 10679, 10835, 1344
Die Meistersinger von Nrnberg 319, 322, 831, 1067, 1083, 1085, 1095
Flying Dutchman 319, 831, 1083
Lohengrin 319, 1083
Parsifal 995n, 1084, 1135
Rienzi 830
Ring des Nibelungen 86, 420, 830, 1067, 1083, 1093;
Das Rheingold 830, 1083;
Die Walkre 830, 1068, 1083, 1085;
Siegfried 830, 1083, 1084;
Gtterdmmerung 8311, 1084, 1085, 1098
Tannhuser 830, 1087
Tristan and Isolde 51n, 830, 1069
Wallenstein 1167
Walpole, Horace
Castle of Otranto 391
Warren, Josia 572
Washington, George 565
Watt, James 660
Watteau
Embarkation for Cythera 7978
Webb, Sidney 941
Weber, Carl Maria von 829
Der Freischtz 1083
Weber, Marianne xxi
Weber, Max xxi
Gesammelte Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie (Collected Essays on the Sociology of
Religion) 1240
Wedekind, Frank
Franziska 593
Frhlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) 1106
Weill, Kurt xxiii
Weininger 594
Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character) 5934
Wei, Christian 1071
Weitling 499, 5758
Die Menschheit wie sie ist, und wie sie sein sollte (Mankind as it is, and how it ought to
be) 576
Page I-31
Evangelium des armen Snders (Gospel of the poor sinner) 577

Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit (Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom) 576, 577
Welcker 1363
Wellhausen
Israelitische und jdische Geschichte (Israelite and Jewish History) 1232
Welling
Opus mago-cabalisticum 642
Wells, H.G. 584, 617
Men like Gods 617
Mr Britling Sees It Through 611
The Time Machine 43940, 617
Welsch 739
Werner, Anton von 409
Welsch 739
Weyl, Herm.
Philosophic der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft (Philosophy of Mathematics and
Natural Science) 664
Whitehead 1362
Whitman, Walt 561
Leaves of Grass 1104
Wieland, Christoph 803, 948
Wiener, Norbert
Cybernetics 653
Wigman, Mary 398, 399
Wilamowitz 493
Wilde, Oscar 479
Wilhelm I 942n
Wilhelm II 606, 890
Wilhelm, Richard
Tao te King 1229
William of Occam 269
Williams, Roger 517
Wilson, Thomas Woodrow 584
Winckelmann 377, 385, 803, 1055
Winstanley 557
Wolfe, Thomas
You Can't Go Home Again 1370
Wolff, Christian 212, 873
Wolfram von Eschenbach 218
Parzival 218n
Titurel 707
Wollstonecraft, Mary 591
Wright, Frank Lloyd 735
Wyneken 588
X
Xenophanes 1207
Xenophon 483, 948
Xerxes 34, 49
Y
Yang Chu 1349
Yeats 1183
Yeliutaschi 76970
Young
Night Thoughts 835, 1148
Z
Zeising
sthetische Forschungen (Aesthetic Investigations) 728
Zeller
Sitzungsbericht der Berliner Akademie 1882 (Report of the Berlin Academy) 243
Zendavesta 1242, 1244, 1247
Zeno (Eleatic) 130, 243
Zeno (Stoic) 491, 492, 493, 494
Politeia 492, 493, 495
Zimmer
Indische Sphren (Indian Spheres) 677
Zimmermann, Johann
ber die Einsamkeit (On Solitude) 960
Zoroaster 1191, 1203, 1232, 1238, 1240, 12429, 1260, 1270, 1271, 1272, 1277, 1311
The Gathas 1242
Zoser (Pharaoh) 1216

Ernst Bloch The Principle of Hope Vol1

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The Principle of Hope

Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought (partial list)

The Principle of Hope

Third printing, 1996

Translators' Preface xvii

Translators' Introduction xix

Part One (Report)

1. We Start Out Empty 21

2. Much Tastes of More 21

3. Daily into the Blue 21

4. Hiding-Place and Beautiful Foreign Lands 22

At Home Already on Our Way 23

5. Escape and the Return of the Victor 24

The Glittering Bowl 26

6. More Mature Wishes and their Images 29

The Lame Nags 29

Night of the Long Knives 30

Shortly before the Closing of the Gate 31

Invention of a New Pleasure 33

Wine and Purse 36

Evocations of Youth; Counter-Wish: Harvest 36

Evening and House 39

8. The Sign that Changes 41

Part Two (Foundation)

9. What Goes Ahead as Urging 45

10. Naked Striving and Wishing, Unsatisfied 45

11. Man as a Quite Extensive Complex of Drives 47

The Individual Body 47

No Drive Without Body Behind It 48

The Changing Passion 49

12. Various Interpretations of the Basic Human Drive 51

The Sexual Drive 51

Ego-Drive and Repression 52

Repression, Complex, Unconscious Material and Sublimation 54

Power-Drive, Frenzy-Drive, Collective Unconscious 57

'Eros' and the Archetypes 61

13. The Historical Limitation of All Basic Drives; Various Locations of 65

The Urgent Need 65

Most Reliable Basic Drive: Self-Preservation 65

Historical Change of the Drives, Even of the Self-Preservation Drive 67

Mental Feelings and State of Self, Appetite of the Expectant 70

Self-Extension Drive Forwards, Active Expectation 75

14. Fundamental Distinction of Daydreams from Night-Dreams. 77

Anxiety Dreams and Wish-Fulfilment 82

A Crucial Point: The Daydream is not a Stepping-Stone to the 86

First and Second Characteristics of the Daydream: Clear Road, 88

Third Characteristic of the Daydream: World-Improving 91

Fourth Characteristic of the Daydream: Journey to the End 95

Merging of Nocturnal and Daytime Dream-Games, Its Dissolution 99

More on Inclination to Dream: The 'Mood' as Medium of Daydreams 103

More on the Expectant Emotions (Anxiety, Fear, Terror, Despair, 108

15. Discovery of the Not-Yet-Conscious or of Forward Dawning. Not- 114

The Two Edges 114

Double Meaning of the Preconscious 115

Not-Yet-Conscious in Youth, Time of Change, Productivity 117

Further Thoughts on Productivity: Its Three Stages 122

Conscious and Known Activity in the Not-Yet-Conscious, Utopian 142

Contact of the Utopian Function with Interest 150

Encounter of the Utopian Function with Ideology 153

Encounter of the Utopian Function with Archetypes 158

Encounter of the Utopian Function with Ideals 165

Encounter of the Utopian Function with Allegory-Symbols 174