page_title: Ernst Bloch
section_title: Influence
hierarchical_section_title: Ernst Bloch / Influence
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Endlose Treppe und Lutherturm in de:Ludwigshafen am Rhein
context_page_description: Ernst Bloch was a German Marxist philosopher.
  Bloch was influenced by Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious thinkers such as Thomas Müntzer, Paracelsus, and Jacob Boehme. He established friendships with György Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno. Bloch's work focuses on the thesis that in a humanistic world where oppression and exploitation have been eliminated there will always be a truly revolutionary force.
context_section_description: Bloch's work became very influential in the course of the student protest movements in 1968 and in liberation theology. 
  It is cited as a key influence by Jürgen Moltmann in his Theology of Hope (1967, Harper and Row, New York), by Dorothee Sölle, and by Ernesto Balducci. Psychoanalyst Joel Kovel has praised Bloch as, "the greatest of modern utopian thinkers". Robert S. Corrington has been influenced by Bloch, though he has tried to adapt Bloch's ideas to serve a liberal rather than a Marxist politics. Bloch's concept of concrete utopias found in The Principle of Hope was used by José Esteban Muñoz to shift the field of performance studies. This shift allowed for the emergence of utopian performativity and a new wave of performance theorizing as Bloch's formulation of utopia shifted how scholars conceptualize the ontology and the staging of performances as imbued with an enduring indeterminacy, as opposed to dominant performance theories found in the work of Peggy Phelan, who view performance as a life event without reproduction.
caption: Endlose Treppe by Max Bill, which is dedicated to the Principle of Hope by Bloch.
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