Description

By (author) Bloch, Ernst; Translated by Nassar Anthony A.

Short /annotation:
Traces, a masterwork of twentieth-century philosophy, is the most modest and beautiful proof of Bloch”s utopian hermeneutics, taking as its source and its result the simplest, most familiar and yet most striking stories and anecdotes.

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Written between 1910 and 1929, Traces is considered Ernst Bloch”s most important work next to The Principle of Hope and The Spirit of Utopia. This book, which collects aphorisms, essays, stories, and anecdotes, enacts Bloch”s interest in showing how attention to “traces”—to the marks people make or to natural marks—can serve as a mode of philosophizing. In an elegant example of how the literary can become a privileged medium for philosophy, Bloch”s chief philosophical invention is to begin with what gives an observer pause—what seems strange and astonishing. He then follows such traces into an awareness of the individual”s relations to himself or herself and to history, conceived as a thinking into the unknown, the “not yet,” and thus as utopian in essence.

Traces, a masterwork of twentieth-century philosophy, is the most modest and beautiful proof of Bloch”s utopian hermeneutics, taking as its source and its result the simplest, most familiar, and yet most striking stories and anecdotes.

Table of contents:
@fmct:Contents*@toc2:Not Enough* 000Sleeping 000Drawn out 000Always in It 000Mingling 000Sing-Song 000Slight Change 000Lamp and Closet 000Learning Good Habits 000The “Mark!” 000@toc1:Situation@toc2:The Poor 000Filth 000The Gift 000Different Needs* 000Games, Regrettably 000The Useful Member 000Shaker of Strawberries* 000Bread and Games 000Narrow-Minded Comrades* 000Disturbing Whim 000@toc1:Fate@toc2:Passing It Forward 000The Negro 000The Watershed 000No Face 000Comte de Mirabeau 000Rich Devil, Poor Devil 000The Kitten as David* 000Triumphs of Misrecognition 000Scribe at the Mairie* 000The Beautiful Appearance 000The Rococo of Fate 000Spirit Still Taking Shape 000The Motif of Parting 000Supernaturalism, Stupid and Improved* 000Strange Homeland, Familiar Exile* 000Pippa Passes 000The Long Gaze 000Reunion Without Connection 000The Muse of Restitution 000Raphael Without Hands 000@toc1:Existence@toc2:Just Now 000Dark by Us 000The Fall into the Now 000The Spur of Work 000No Free Lunch* 000Ten Years” Jail, Seven-Meter Train* 000Silence and Mirrors 000Ways Not to Be Seen 000Imminent Boredom 000Moment and Image 000Potemkin”s Signature 000Incognito to Oneself* 000Motifs of Concealment 000Just Knock 000The Corner of the Blanket 000Short Excursion 000Terror and Hope 000Excursus: Human and Wax Figure 000Nearby: Inn of the Insane 000Tableau with Curve* 000Some Patterns from the Left Side 000The Twice-Disappearing Frame 000The Motif of the Door 000@toc1:Things@toc2:Half Good 000The Next Tree 000Flower and Unflower* 000The Leyden Jar 000The First Locomotive 000The Urban Peasant 000The House of Day 000Montages of a February Evening* 000An Odd Fl”neur 000Eating Olives Precisely* 000Making a Point* 000The Reverse of Things 000Greeting and Appearance 000Motifs of Temptation 000Appendix: No Man”s Land 000A Russian Fairy Tale?* 000The Clever Way out 000Disappointment with Amusement* 000The Invisible Hand 000Tales of White Magic 000Wonder 000The Mountain 000Dead and Usable* 000The Pearl* 000@toc4:Notes 000

Review quote:
“…this is a literary masterpiece. Overall, it is a must for anyone interested in Bloch”s work.”—CHOICE “This is an important addition to the corpus of Bloch”s writings in English.” —Philosophy in Review/Comptes Rendus Philosophiques

Biographical note:
Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) was