ABSTRACT
German philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) was a theorist of the avant-garde and a philosopher of expressionism. With Georg Lukacs he had studied under Georg Simmel, and was also influenced by Hegel and Schelling. Bloch was part of the Max Weber circle, and subsequently became a close associate of Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer. Politically Bloch remained a controversial figure. An outspoken critic of various political regimes, including the United States which he accused of fascism and imperialism, Bloch nonetheless supported Stalinist Russia, a gesture that effectively isolated him from many of his academic colleagues. Although he developed into a committed Marxist, Bloch’s politics remained suffused with bourgeois humanism. Likewise his intellectual position was an ideosyncratic one, embodying traces of Jewish mysticism.
