Leipzig. The regime there was initially favorably disposed toward him, but after some
time the tide turned and Bloch was forbidden to lecture or to publish. With the build-
ing of the Berlin Wall in 1961, he decided to apply for political asylum in West Ger-
many. There he became professor once more, this time at the University of
Tübingen, where he remained active until his death in 1977.
Heimatas a Utopian Category
Bloch’s masterpiece is Das Prinzip Hoffnung,which he wrote during his American
period and which was published in 1959. This imposing volume is a virtually ency-
clopedic survey of utopian aspirations, both in the personal realm and in the social
and aesthetic fields. Bloch describes the most disparate phenomena as manifesta-
tions of the utopian moment. The whole is based on a philosophical ontology that un-
derstands being as essentially incomplete: according to Bloch, being necessarily
contains a moment of not-yet-being. In every manifestation of being, therefore, one
can see a tendency toward the self-fulfillment of a utopian ideal for the future.
According to Bloch, the fundamentally utopian character of being has usually
been denied by philosophers. It is no coincidence that Terentius Varro, who was the
first person to draft a Latin grammar, is said to have forgotten to include the future
tense in his survey of the forms of the verb: Varro’s omission is symptomatic of the
neglect of the future that is typical of philosophical thought. Bloch’s stated aim was
to fill this vacuum: “A particularly extensive attempt is made in this book to bring phi-
losophy to hope, as to a place in the world which is as inhabited as the best civilized
land and as unexplored as the Antarctic.”^108
The basic theme of his philosophy, then, is “the still unbecome, still un-
achieved homeland [Heimat], as it develops outwards and upward in the dialectical-
materialistic struggle of the new with the old.”^109 Heimatis seen as the place where
utopia is achieved, the homeland where human beings and the world are reconciled
and where the dream of a better life is finally realized. This Heimatdoes not yet ex-
ist—nobody dwells there—but as children, we have all had a glimpse of it: an exis-
tence without deprivation, without alienation, and without expropriation.^110 The
creation of this Heimatis the goal of all human endeavor.
It is also the fundamental concern of art. Bloch understands art as Vorschein,
a prelude or “pre-appearance” that anticipates the realization of utopia. The best
works of art present one with a foreshadowing of that utopian moment, not liter-
ally—because the future Heimatcannot be depicted in every concrete detail—but as
the outline of a promise. Works of art direct one’s gaze toward the attempt to make
a better world, toward the desire for perfection, and for keeping hope alive. Art is like
a laboratory in which events, figures, and characters are tested for their utopian po-
tential.
In talking about utopia, therefore, one should not be understood to be refer-
ring simply to a concrete situation: “But to limit the utopian to the Thomas More va-
3
Reflections in a Mirror