Ernst Bloch

postsecular thoughts

Vincent Geoghegan

pp. 51-70

in: Lawrence Wilde (ed), Marxism's ethical thinkers, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001

Abstract

In 1992 a group of philosophers, which included Derrida and Gadamer, met on the Isle of Capri to discuss the question of religion. This meeting can be taken as emblematic of what a recent commentator has called the "turn to religion" in philosophy – an attempt to renegotiate the relationship between philosophy and religion whose modern form was decisively shaped by the Enlightenment. This in turn is part of a broader search for a postsecular reconfiguration which has accommodated a wide range of responses across the political spectrum. Thus a number of conservatives, marshalling a host of pre- and counter-Enlightenment sources, have seized the opportunity to humble the pretensions of rationalism, and advocate a "return" to supposedly earlier forms of religiosity. What then are the theoretical resources for those who wish to build upon the achievements of both the secular and the religious? This chapter suggests that some consideration should be given to the subtle, if awed, analyses of religion developed by Ernst Bloch which, whilst central to his highly distinctive utopian Marxism, are not exhausted by that project.

Cited authors

Derrida Jacques

Gadamer Hans-Georg

Bloch Ernst

Marx Karl