On Karl Marx

Description

This study of Marx serves not only as an excellent introduction to that most influential of ""worldly philosophers"" but is also a significant resume of the central issues of Bloch's own profound and wide-ranging thought. Special attention is given to the political maturation of the young Karl Marx and to his studies and intellectual relationship to important thinkers of his time. Bloch concludes with an insightful summons to the West to consider Marx anew as a thinker still vitally relevant to contemporary social issues, and not merely as the father of a sovietized political system.

Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) is one of the most important German Marxist thinkers of the 20th century and one of the great theorists of utopia. A friend of Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno, his works include The Principle of Hope, Spirit of Utopia and Traces.

Exhilarating to read... resonant with urgency, recalling the sonorous, aphoristic qualities of Nietzsche or Schopenhauer, in whose tradition he follows... `Thought provoking' hardly begins to cover it. -- Nicholas Lezard * Guardian * A coherent, lucid writer, although the intensity still fairly burns off the page... [a] heady, dizzying book. -- Owen Hatherley * New Humanist *