10): 'The Enlightenment, therefore, will be all the more radical when it does not pour equal scorn on the Bible's all-pervading healthy insight into man.' 8) contexts that fall short of his messianic vision of full-blooded participatory democracy in which all voices, including religious ones, might be heard and respected. 7) compromised version found in 'rationalistic bourgeoise' (p. 231), is, to borrow a Habermasian expresison, the 'ideal speech community' of the Enlightenment, not in the 'half-baked' (p. His 'utopia of the light', as Bloch refers to it (p. Bloch's approach is deeply imbued with his strong humanistic Marxist conviction that dogmatic forms of both atheism and church-orientated Christianity simply talk past each other in a dialogue of the deaf. '(C)ompeting caliphates', Peter Thompson calls them (xiv). Before feminists picked up the revolution power in the peasant girl Mary's prayer, the Magnificat, with its promise that the Almighty will 'cast down the mighty from their seats … exalt the humble … send the rich away empty', Bloch was affirming the capacity, inbuilt within humanity since the Creation, to create Kingdom-life now, on earth.Īs a thought mode, atheism is commonly understood to be radically different in domain assumptions from 'religion'. Not only were Amos, Jeremiah and the psalmists of yore wont to sound war trumpets against greed and godlessness, Christ's life was a continual battle against systematic brutalization, exploitation and hubris, whether incarnated in, for instance, temple-franchised money lenders, pharasaical pride, or denial of the human rights of widows, prostitutes, lepers and the anawim of the earth. Χρειάζεται βέβαια κάποιο υπόβαθρο σχετικών γνώσεων, το οποίο εγώ δεν είχα, παρόλα αυτά μαθαίνεις πολλά.įor Bloch, scripture is soaked through with hope-filled narratives of transgression that challenge the cold moralistic pieties and hot consumer excesses of the modern world driven by the Puritan ethic and its capitalist manifestations. At the Bible’s heart he finds a heretical core and the concealed message that, paradoxically, a good Christian must necessarily be a good atheist.This new edition includes an introduction by Peter Thompson, the Director of the Centre for Enrst Bloch Studies at the University of Sheffield. Through a lyrical yet close and nuanced analysis, he explores the tensions within the Bible that promote atheism as a counter to the authoritarian metaphysical theism imposed by clerical exegesis. In the biblical promise of utopia and the scriptures’ antagonism to authority, Bloch locates Christianity’s appeal to the oppressed. He examines the origins of Christianity in an attempt to find its social roots, pursuing a detailed study of the Bible and its fascination for ‘ordinary and unimportant’ people. In the long unavailable Atheism in Christianity, Ernst Bloch provides a way out from this either/or debate. Combative atheists have denounced faiths of every stripe, resulting in a crude intellectual polarization in which religious convictions and heritage must be rejected or accepted wholesale. In the twenty-first century, religion has come under determined attack from secular progressives in documentaries, opinion pieces and international bestsellers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |