Ernst Bloch's Speculative Materialism
In this important new approach to his philosophy and politics, Cat Moir sets out to offer a fresh interpretation of Ernst Bloch's work. The reception of Bloch's work has seen him variously painted as a naïve realist, a romantic nature philosopher, a totalitarian thinker, and an irrationalist whose obscure literary style stands in for a lack of systematic rigour. Ernst Bloch's Speculative Materialism challenges these conceptions of Bloch by reconstructing the ontological, epistemological, and political dimensions of his speculative materialism. Through a close, historically contextualised reading of Bloch's major work of ontology, Das Materialismusproblem, seine Geschichte und Substanz (The Materialism Problem, its History and Substance), Moir presents Bloch as one of the twentieth century's most significant critical thinkers.
Cat Moir is Senior Lecturer in Germanic Studies at the University of Sydney. She has published widely on the history of ideas in the German-speaking world.