Tertium. Ernst Bloch's foundation of the 'Utopian Paradigm' as a key concept within cultural and social sciences research work

Ensayo , 2005 , 18 Páginas

Filosofía - Filosofía del siglo XX

Der Autor dieses Aufsatzes versucht in Form eines neuen Paradigmas eine alternative Perspektive für alle, die an zukünftiger kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Forschung als sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Zukunftsforschung interessiert sind, zu entwickeln.

Zunächst geht es um die Aufarbeitung der so grundlegenden wie originellen Vorstellungen des deutschen Sozialphilosophen Ernst Bloch (1885-1977). Ernst Bloch wollte mit Hilfe einermehrwertigen dialektischen Logik einerseits die traditionelle Aristotelische Logik überwinden und andererseits eine soziale Welt vorstellen, die voller Widersprüche zwischen Altem und Neuem, Gestern und Morgen, Nicht-Mehr- und Noch-Nicht-Sein existiert: Eine soziale Welt in ständiger Veränderung und damit grundsätzlich offen für verschiedene zukünftige Entwicklungsmöglichkeiten.

Die theoretischen Überlegungen Ernst Blochs erfordern, meint Richard Albrecht, einen anderen und differenzierteren wissenschaftlichen Zugriff zur mehrdimensionalen konzeptionellen Strukturierung gesellschaftlicher Prozesse und aller geschichtlich-gesellschaftlichen Lagen und Zeiten. Es geht um die grundlegende Vorstellung von konkret-historisch immer gegebener, empirisch sowohl offen als auch verdeckt vorkommender, Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen und Ungleichzeitigkeit des Gleichzeitigen. Dieses
komplexe Bild stellt nach Auffassung des Autors einen ernstzunehmenden human-, kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Näherungsversuch an bisher weitgehend unsichtbare gesellschaftliche Entwicklungstendenzen dar.

Richard Albrecht

TERTIUM: ERNST BLOCH´S FOUNDATION OF ´THE UTOPIAN PARADIGM´ AS A KEY CONCEPT WITHIN CULTURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES RESEARCH WORK

0.1. Zusammenfassung

"Der Autor dieses Aufsatzes versucht/e in Form eines neuen Paradigmas eine alternative Perspektive für alle, die an zukünftiger kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Forschung als sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Zukunftsforschung interessiert sind, zu entwickeln.

Zunächst geht es um die Aufarbeitung der so grundlegenden wie originellen Vorstellungen des deutschen Sozialphilosophen Ernst Bloch (1885-1977). Ernst Bloch wollte mit Hilfe einermehrwertigen dialektischen Logik einerseits die traditionelle Aristotelische Logik überwinden und andererseits eine soziale Welt vorstellen, die voller Widersprüche zwischen Altem und Neuem, Gestern und Morgen, Nicht-Mehr- und Noch-Nicht-Sein existiert: Eine soziale Welt in ständiger Veränderung und damit grundsätzlich offen für verschiedene zukünftige Entwicklungsmöglichkeiten.

Die theoretischen Überlegungen Ernst Blochs erfordern, meint Richard Albrecht, einen anderen und differenzierteren wissenschaftlichen Zugriff zur mehrdimensionalen konzeptionellen Strukturierung gesellschaftlicher Prozesse und aller geschichtlich-gesellschaftlichen Lagen und Zeiten. Es geht um die grundlegende Vorstellung von konkret-historisch immer gegebener, empirisch sowohl offen als auch verdeckt vorkommender, Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen und Ungleichzeitigkeit des Gleichzeitigen. Dieses komplexe Bild stellt nach Auffassung des Autors einen ernstzunehmenden human-, kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Näherungsversuch an bisher weitgehend unsichtbare gesellschaftliche Entwicklungstendenzen dar.“

0.2. Resumé

"L'auteur de cet article essaie de développer une perspective alternative sous la forme d'un nouveau paradigme pour tous ceux qui s'intéressent à une future recherche culturelle et sociologique en tant que recherche de l'avenir social et culturel. Il s'agit d'abord d'une mise à jour des idées aussi bien fondamentales qu'originales du philosophe social Ernst Bloch (1885 - 1977). A l'aide d'une logique dialectique polyvalente, Ernst Bloch voulait d'un côté surmonter la logique aristotélicienne traditionelle et d'autre côté présenter un nouveau monde social plein de contradictions entre l'ancien et le nouveau, hier et demain, l'existence qui n'est plus et celle qui n'est pas encore: un monde social en évolution constante et par là-même fondamentalement ouvert à diverses possibilités d'évolutions futures. Selon Richard Albrecht, les idées theoriques de Ernst Bloch exigent une approche scientifique différente et plus différenciée de la structure conceptionelle à plusieurs dimensions des procès sociaux et aussi de tous les états et périodes historiques et sociaux. Il s'agit de l'idée fondamentale toujours existante sur le plan historique concret et apparaissant empiriquement de façon aussi bien découverte que cachée de la simultanéité du non simultané et de la non-simultanéité du simultané. Selon l'auteur, cette image complexe est un essai sérieux d'approche humain, culturel et sociologique à des tendances de développements de la société généralement invisibles jusqu'à présent.»

0.3. Summary

"In this essay the author, a West German social scientist who is basically interested in futurology, tries to travel the road from sociology of future to future of sociology.

First of all the author gives an overview on the basic, and original, idea the German social philosopher Ernst Bloch (b. 1885, d. 1977) sketched to overcome traditional logic by visioning a social world full of contradictions and structurally open to different developments of the future. The genuine theory aims another different approach of focusing multidimensional structuring of historical and societal situations, both given by the very simultaneity f the non-simultaneous and the non-simultaneity of the simultaneous in every socio- historical time. Looking on social tendencies in this manner - Richard Albrecht argues- might help social scientists making things which are still invisible progressively more and more visible”.

*

I am what I am. I am my own creation. - Popular song-hit, 1991

Be realistic! Demand the impossible! -

Graffito, as seen on the wall of Vincennes University, at Paris, in May, 1968

The empirical sciences are, given their actual Status, only able to work out dependencies, better to say: determining factors. There is, up to now, no chance of getting hold of the autonomous. 'Trying to find out something which is free, that means a contradictio in adiecto'. To generalize this sentence: empirical sciences are not able to develop, and apply, a scientific strategic base for exploring 'the freewill' of the individual actor enabling him, strictu sensu. What seems to remain for scientists is only what restricts possibilities, what reduces and determines. - Wolfgang Blankenburg, 199l1

The problem in the human and social sciences is to make invisible things visible. - Marie Jahoda, 19852

If a sense of reality does exist, there must also exist another sense which one might call a sense of possibility. Whoever possesses this sense no longer states for example: this or that event actually did occur or will or must happen in the future. But he invents: this could, should, or must Happen. Insofar the sense of possibility could be strictly defined as the ability to think out everything which could happen, and will not take everything that does exist more seriously than that which does not exist. - Robert Musil3

I. Introduction

Sociology and social movement - a contradictory interrelation. In any case a specific, and by no means direct, connection, of course. Neither had been in the past. Nor will be in the future. Perhaps the most striking fact by current sociology and sociology today within our new one world - a more and more westernized one - is that there is no actual interrelation between sociology and social movements. Given this situation, one of the obvious consequences is one of non-obligation. Sociology, however it may be defined or applied, has lost its genuine subject. The subject matter of a new 'sociology of sociology* and its basic interest seems to be no longer society and societal problems but more and more the role of sociology and sociologists themselves. Not within society but within the scholarly association called 'the scientific community'.

Reflections on the specific function of sociology and the sociologist both as an intellectual partisan or as an interpretator, as Alvin Gouldner pointed out in the 60s and Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck proposed in the 80s5 did express this poor Status of concurrently well academic business called sociology. This state of the art seems to mirror - and reflect in a specific intellectual way - the quite visible loss of societal relevancy and, also, the actual fate of current sociology. But as history has no definite end and will go on and float into the future as it did in the past - it would be wrong to generalize. During the last decade serious social changes have been registered not only in the eastern European world. There is no serious argument that, even given the threat of mankind's destruction by the possibility of self-annihilation, the actual Status of sociology must be the latest Step according to a specific Gebilde [or configuration] called sociology within 'late modern age' (Giddens) or ´risky society´ (Beck) or developing modern modernity (Albrecht).

In this paper I shall try to give an idea of and will argue for a prospective sociology of the future. I shall also present arguments for new sociological thinking - a sort of widened 'sociological imagination' (C.W. Mills)6 which might enable social figures like sociologists and social scientists in general to work out a new paradigm: the Utopian one. The Utopian Paradigm has, in fact, to do with the future foreshadowing the present. Whether the new paradigm I call the Utopian one will enable us to recapture the obvious loss of societal relevancy of professional sociology or not will, of course, be not only a scholarly question but above all an eminently practical problem. What I can promise my readers is: trying to change the actual Status of Western sociology will be a sort of intellectual venture and a challenge. Moreover, my considerations are influenced by an individual reflection the Austrian writer Robert Musil identified as the sense of possibility. But his basic idea has to be widened and pluralized into a sense of possibilities like the concept of not only the one future but also of possible futures.

Given this setting, even a good old German classical figure - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - will have to be left behind. He lets his Mephistopheles say:

“Dull, dear friend, all theory must be /

But green´s in life the golden tree”7

Trying to approach a coloured theory of the social world, its possibilities and its futures, does, of course, not mean forgetting the structural differences between a theoretical reconstruction of the basic social world, its chaotic, wild, and often surprising life and its images within a science like sociology reflecting this genius. Be that as it may: even West German academic sociology and its protagonists were, as recently shown in a special issue of one of the leading scholarly Journals,8 able to overcome that cultural time lag which had dominated its development for decades. In so far, German academic sociology today seems to share the fate of current sociology in general in this new one world.

II A Forgotten Wild Social Philosopher The Intellectual World of Ernst Bloch

In the early 80ies within the last century the prominent Norwegian social scientist Johan Galtung published an essay on different intellectual styles within the Saxon, Teutonic, Gallic, and Nipponian scholarly cultures.9 But when elaborating his typology of intellectual culture such as had developed amidst general society, the author, however, neglected an important aspect of intellectual style: intuition, which, in a specific manner, represents typically the invisible on the one band, and often the autonomous on the other. The French sociologist Michel Maffesoli tried to work out some consequences of sociological intuition in his aesthetic paradigm, remembering the relevancy of looking from one's inner world at the social microcosmos.10

Moreover, Michel Maffesoli returns (like Robert Nisbet did in both a historical and a systematic sketch11) to a classical figure in sociology: Georg Simmel who delivered a number of sensitive and impressive insights into everyday life's micro-structures within the fluctuating processes of the great city and its metropolitan life at the beginning of this Century.121 have been told that Georg Simmel was the first self-conscious sociologist who chose to observe the social micro-structures as a genius and fluctuating world of its own, looking not only as an outsider generally does but also like a professional stranger when applying an individual style of sociological work in which self-evidency is no longer regarded as self-evident but more and more problematic and explainable. That old basic question of the human science called sociology - how society is possible - led to an advanced viewpoint constituting the specific reflexivity of sociological descriptions of the social world. This approach implies, in fact, thinking this world generally open, or as a serial structure, and means: "All could be quite different” 13

Taking the concept of social fluctuation seriously, there are, however, at least two points closely linked with each other: first, that fluctuation remains basically in the small world which Benita Luckmann identified as "the small life-worlds of modern man" and which Jürgen Habermas calls Lebenswelt. And second, there is, so far, no macro-sociological way of understanding the total social field of societal fluctuation according to stable macro-structures for social reproduction. In this respect above all a specific methodology of social floating is required which will, at least, be able not only to widen our perspective towards a “concrete totality" (Carl Marx) but also sketch the process of both fluctuation and stability even before its results can be seen at the social surface. I believe that old and, in the last instance, as crude a mechanic as Aristotelian logic is, it must be replaced.14 The wild but dialectic logic of the German social philosopher Ernst Bloch (b. 1885, d. 1977) actually tries to break down the walls of old deterministic logic as founded by Aristoteles, which, up to now, still deeply influences the logic of scientific discovery within the social sciences. Although the logic of Ernst Bloch has not been systematized and utilized for sociological research work, it might be thrilling to try. For Bloch's idea of the social world in which something happens and something does not happen might be able to overcome that obscure Status of ex-post-festum-analysis of what happened after it did happen. In this chapter I will take the liberty to present two central or key categories of the Bloch concept of a fluctuating social world: his concept of novum (the new), and his concept of anticipation (the anticipating consciousness).15 Connecting both ideas may lead to a new and fascinating social world between the antipodes of the past (yesterday) and the future (tomorrow). Moreover, it may open another differentiation of the field between 'yes' and 'no' coming closer to a fluctuant social world between no-longer-the-one and not-yet-the-other, mediating past and future, the visible and the invisible, latency and manifestness, backstage and frontstage of social action, in short: looking at what was called "the latent potentiality"16 of social development, and subduing a sociology which still is entrenched in applying its techniques for discovering social problems often solved practically before the sociologist himself enters the social arena.17

The approach Ernst Bloch took to multiple social realities was influenced by European philosophical tradition in general and an old question of art history especially: the problem of entelechy (how timelessness comes into times). Using, as Karl Mannheim did at the same time, the work of the at that time well-known German art historian Wilhelm Pinder (the Weimar “ Kunst-Pinder”)18 and his concept of the theory of simultaneity of the non-simultaneous and of non-simultaneity of the simultaneous,19 the author, trying to understand the impending doom of German fascism in the early 30s, works out his theory of social and political contradictions in the dimension of socio-historical time as structured by the opposite poles of Gleichzeitigkeit and Ungleichzeitigkeit. What some months after the first coup d'etat undertaken by Adolf Hitler and his nearest followers (in November, 1923, at Munich) seems to have vanished from the political front-stage like a ghost caused Ernst Bloch to a first remark characterizing the Nazis as "false friends of the revolution", adding his prediction that the social situation is, by no means, either static or stable.20 A decade later the social philosopher published his book The Inheritance of Our Time21 applying his central category of non-simultaneous social development in order to explain what happened in Germany between the World Wars.

The grand subject Ernst Bloch was interpreting - and fighting against - was the German brand of fascism, self-styled National Socialism, then a new and young social movement which, indeed, used deep human emotions neglected by the German left. One of the most striking consequences of his analysis is often quoted: "The Nazis' discourse was deceit. But they did talk towards human beings. The Socialists´ discourse was completely true. But they talked about things. What has to be done is to talk to human beings in a completely true way about their own things."22 Whereas the historical context of Ernst Bloch's theory of non/simultaneity is still an unreconstructed focus of social theory, his historical analysis of the social movement the German fascists represented became a matter of interest.

Several literary and social scientists (like Helmut Lethen and Wolfgang Emmerich in Germany) explained the German populistic mass movement in the 20´s and 30´s through the eyes of left-wing theorists like Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer. What students could learn from their writing was, in Wolfgang Emmerich's words, "that 'mass fascism' - the process of fascist politization above all of the proletarized middle classes as well as the not yet thoroughly proletarized petty bourgeoisie (clinging to its fiction of economic self-determination) - was a relevant factor within the total social reality represented by fascism which was not simple to ban at the edge of any analysis of fascism like phenomenological decoration."23 The political instrumentalization of subjective dispositions and mentalities24 within the broad middle-classes by the Nazi movement was, as Wolfgang Emmerich stresses, the (mis)use of "contradictions of objective nonsimultaneous character and their correlated potentialities of needs, and even dreams, in a subjective reactionary manner."25 Another German writer, Helmut Lethen, concisely sums up the equal problem: "The 'non-simultaneous' contradiction is exploited by the fascist Propaganda."26

What the opposite pole, the socialist movement, at that time neglected for years and years was both the mythological and utopian vision of 'a better world' (Hendrix de Man).27 In any case the historical road which in the last instance came to an end with the Nazi seizure of power was well opened by the acting of its social, political and ideological counterparts enabling the German fascists to exploit the overall hatred of all manner of politics which traditionally expressed the very feelings of the masses and their own small life-worlds.28 Interpreting the historical Situation with, on the one side, ove rsimultaneous left and, on the other, under simultaneous right political forces led Ernst Bloch not only to some sensitive views on the total complex of emotions29 and fragile Stimmungen 30 but also to a societal theory which reflects openness when analysing the "problem of multidimensionality given in every historical situa­ tion." (Wilhelm Pinder)

III. Latency and Manifestness: a Concept for Making Still Invisible Things More and More Visible

German art historians discussed, some sixty years ago, the concept of simultaneity of the non-simultaneous and of non-simultaneity of the simultaneous within the framework of the entelechy problem. Although this discussion, including the empirical fact that both processes could appear overt and covered, was, by no means, focused by overcoming the Aristotelian logic at all - there is, in my eyes, a good chance to try. Ernst Bloch travelled that road by working out a specific theory of contradictions and contradictory interrelations when using the thesis of non/simultaneity and discussing its intellectual importance under a perspective of societal development.31 Generally speaking, social development is possible both simultaneously and non-simultaneously. Moreover, there will be both genuine and 'false' contradictions moving society. The central category of the Bloch concept of societal progress is, however, the concept of non-simultaneity. One of Ernst Bloch's few reviewers did emphasize that what Bloch above all means "was such societal contradictions and social contents which are, at its best moments of the past postulating prospects of the future - an unfulfilled promise today, and that's why there'll be societal development."32

Ernst Bloch, for his part, included some introductory remarks to his Inheritance of Our Time explaining that his theory of non-simultaneity "executes nothing more than describing, analysing, and arguing the various and different conditions under which both being and conscious­ness of the proletarized members of society (those just flung into the working class) stay. The relative anachronistic Status both of the peasants' and the petty-bourgeois' social isolation -even the empirically given 'false' reaction towards the crisis - was seen as the basic feature of these social groups. The mode of production and the ideological consciousness of the small peasants, the small producers, and the small shopkeepers is, in its main feature, an old one. Moreover, it represents substantially the habitus of past decades, if not past centuries. The contradictory relation of these social groups towards the social system is, in so far, dull and stupid. The contradiction is not only ignorance resulting from the role within the process of production - which could be improved by patient enlightenment -, it is, also, separated from the Now by a deep chasm. The non-simultaneous contradiction represents subjectively dull, inprecise, and insofar divertable outrage. Objectively the non-simultaneous contradiction rep­resents the non-adopted past. The simultaneous contradiction, however, is [...] subjectively the self-conscious revolutionary act of the working class and objectively within the Now incorporated but still prevented future."33

The argument according the importance of non-simultaneous contradictions leads to a theory of historical non-simultaneity of the simultaneous, both coexisting at the same historical time and social situation. Prospective future development is blocked by dominancy of the 'dull', or preconscious, subjective and non-simultaneous contradiction. The concept of Ernst Bloch implies, in fact, not only the imagination of multidimensionality of every socio-historical situation but also a model of implied possibilities given simultaneously. As Ernst Bloch pointed out some decades later, his complex idea of multidimensional contradictory societal development also includes over-simultaneity (as historically demonstrated by labour forces rapidly urging towards socialism) and under-simultaneity. (Moreover, the model of societal development Ernst Bloch sketched views societal backstage, as given by basic feelings and emotions in every society which could be mobilized for future developments but had been, as Bloch demonstrated historically, punishably neglected by the political left in Germany.34) The approach of Ernst Bloch to possible futures shows the most important philosophical interest of the author: his "anthology of possibility, of what still is not."35 The approach to the future implies, first of all, a vision of the multidimensionality of the historical today and, second, a societal theory which takes the role of utopia seriously.36 In a specific manner Ernst Bloch is, indeed, the theorist of an amidst social world between yesterday and tomorrow emphasizing the fluctuation within the today-world and being basically interested in everything which has not (yet) happened, but could (as well) happen. What could happen is incorporated in the human sphere of subjective sensitivity, moods, dreams, and feelings, and - last but not least - in social visions and Utopia. That is why Ernst Bloch worked out the importance and "constituting role of wishes within the utopian consciousness",37 using the concept of anticipating consciousness and sketching its central features like Novum and not-yet-being.38

In his Outline of Social Utopia, published at the end of his emigration, Ernst Bloch identified two basic elements of every utopian vision which appears equally fluctuating and concrete: tendency as the "tension of the hindered oncoming", and latency as the "correlation between the unrealised and absolute possibility within the world".39 Expression of novum is both, as Ernst Bloch argues, what is not-yet-conscious in mind and what has not-yet-happened in history.40 In his Principle of Hope the author finally tries to sketch a theory of possibility using the image of anticipatory consciousness and defining the appropriation of what could happen not only as "wishful thinking” (like ´castles in the air´), but, substantially, as cognitive acting.41

What the concept intends is no less than a perception of objective tendencies: "Expectation, hope, intention"- Ernst Bloch stresses - "towards possibility which is still possible: that is not only a basic feature of the human consciousness but, when intended concretely and understood, a basic destination within objective reality."42 The image of man reminds us of an important human condition. Conditio humana still means the very ability of being orientated towards the future, envisioning and planning future. The ontology of not-yet-being implies, in fact, various grades of reality. It amounts to future by the act of anticipating future within the present by three basic modes of ideas: "First, a matter of knowledge - what is possible according to factual objectivity. Second, the structure of the object. And third, what is a real possibility representing the Status of reality of the being itself. Given this setting of the three classes of possibility and its modes, both the anticipating consciousness and the anticipated object are the focus of not-yet-being as possible development."43

Whereas any sociologist, of course, is familiar with Robert Merton's view of both forms of social function that differentiates between manifestness and latency quite well, the concept of novum and anticipation might sound a bit exotic, for it is based on what is neither visible nor happening. But whoever is interested not only in what is visible and what has happened, will regard the ideas of Ernst Bloch as a challenge to Aristotelian logic and all social science work based on it. The old Teutonic intellectual and egg-head Ernst Bloch may well cause provocation by his ambiguities which could not be imprisoned within the cage of yes and no. Above all, what perhaps could be learned from the Bloch provocation is a widened look at total societal reality in general and especially at its hidden and invisible subjective and intimate spheres. What Ernst Bloch's view on multiple social contradictions, contradictory interrelations, and social realities, as a basic feature of concrete totality and Gesamtwirklichkeit requires is, indeed, another form of scholarly thinking. The most striking problems are, in my view, for the sociological perspective whenever appropriating social structures and functions in a fluctuating manner - establishing cross connections.

The concept of simultaneity of the non-simultaneous and of non-simultaneity of the simultaneous expresses a high level of spirituality within societal fluctuations in every given social situation. It is nevertheless quite obvious that the basic concept of Ernst Bloch cannot, regarding the time and space coordination of societal developments, make any "hard prognosis" of that kind. When analysing a given social configuration in the total social field, societal contradictions will definitely develop. For that depends, of course, above all on the quickness (at the time axis) and the depth (on the space axis) and its variable relationship. It depends furthermore on the potentiality of (looking, for example, at social movements) societal generalization of typically marginal social groups primarily. But what the concept can, and will do when applied, is widen our view forwards and name the direction of potential societal developments. Anticipating consciousness tries to look at the still invisible which might be seen not only on the 'social Underground' with its emotional aspirations, reminding the researcher often of the shadowy side of societal life and enabling us to develop a sense of future possibilities by renewed and advanced sociological Imagination and intellectual creativity.

In my view, as an old Western European scholarly intellectual, the concept of novum as "novum of a processorial-concrete utopia" is not only another way of subjectifying sociological thinking, or research work, but also a plea for another look at human potentialities - empirically speaking on human mental surplus - within the emotional backstage of action (as well as non-action), its potentialities, possibilities, and chances to get hold of what the philosopher Helmuth Plessner once called the ´eccentric positionality´ of man.44

Given the still unfinished Status of human and societal development, of modern society, and even of anticipatory dialectics sketched by Ernst Bloch, there is no serious argument to negate the force of emotions, love, hate, dreams, hopes, fears, despair, bitterness, embarrassment, outrage, and even surprise and accident when analysing human action. Moreover, social utopia in Ernst Bloch's sense is more than a slight fantasy vision of happiness or a pure fiction which utilizes often dubious assumptions as a mechanism with which to overcome difficult situations and real social problems stated as being practically unsolveable.45 Social Utopia in our time includes, on the contrary, a - more or less - realistic possibility of realization when aiming towards a social order, "in which liberty and order, the individual and the state, personal happiness and public welfare come to a new mutual and self-strengthening synthesis." This, indeed, means an authentic manifestation of a just social order without any wishful thinking social utopia could renounce. "But what it cannot renounce"-Jost Hermand continues his essay on utopian thinking - "is the will to change what remains changeable within the field of social, political, and economic possibilities. Any social utopia does not want another world. It does want a better one. [...]Social utopia stands for radical change of the existing social relations by the people. It neither wants senseless anarchy nor a state of the church directed by the Holy Ghost, but a community based on a social order in which the happiness of the individual does not conflict with the happiness of all its members."46

*) this is an abridged version of the author´s essay The Utopian Paradigm - A Futurist Perspective which was first published in ´Communications. The European Journal of Communication´ (eds. Walter Nutz & Alphons Silbermann), vol. 16 (1991) 3, pp. 283-318. - At that time, now fifteen years ago, the author, 45 years old, was, after having finished his scholarly work at “Forschungsgruppe für Gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen” [FGE] (Research Unit for Societal Developments, chairman Rudolf Wildenmann, at University of Mannheim), the speaker of „Projektgruppe Soziale Innovation“ within independent „Institut für Zukunfts-Forschung“

NOTES

1 Wolfgang Blankenburg, Suizidalität und "freie Willensbestimmung"; Versicherungsmedizin, 43 (1991), l, pp. 9-13.

2 Marie Jahoda, The Psychology of the Invisible: An Interview; New Ideas in Psychology, 4 (1986), l, p. 107-118.

3 Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Roman. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1952.

4 Alvin Gouldner, The Sociologist as a Partisan: Sociology and the Welfare State; The American Sociologist, 3 (1968), 2, pp. 103-116; The Corning Crisis of Western Sociology. New York: Basic Books, 1970; The Future of the Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. New York: Seabury, 1979.

5 Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society. Outline of a Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Policy Press, 1984; Ulrich Beck, Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1986; ditto. (ed.) Soziologie und Praxis. Erfahrungen, Konflikte, Per­spektiven. Göttingen: Otto Schwarz, 1982; ditto. (with Wolfgang Bonß), Soziologie und Modern­isierung. Zur Ortsbestimmung der Verwendungsforschung; Soziale Welt, 35 (1984), pp. 381-406; ditto (eds.), Weder Sozialtechnologie noch Aufklärung ? Analysen zur Verwendung sozialwissenschaftlichen Wissens. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1989; ditto. (with Elisabeth Beck-Gemsheim), Das ganz normale Chaos der Liebe. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1990.

6 C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959, pp. 195-226: On Intellectual Craftsmanship.

7 Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe, Faust. Der Tragödie Erster Teil (Studierzimmer, 2038-39):"Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie / Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum."

8 Ulrich Beck (ed.), Soziale Welt. Zeitschrift für sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung und Praxis, vol. 40 (1989), No. 1/2, special issue: 40 years Soziale Welt, with an introduction by RalfDahrendorf.

9 Johan Galtung, Structure, culture and intellectual style: An essay comparing saxonic, teutonic, gallic and nipponic approaches; Social Science Information, 20 (1981), 6, pp. 817-856.

10 Michel Maffesoli, La violence totalitaire. Paris: Presse universitaire de France, 1979; ditto, La connaissance ordinaire. Paris: ibid., 1985; ditto, Das ästhetische Paradigma: Soziologie als Kunst; Soziale Welt, 38 (1987), pp. 460-470.

11 Robert Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition (1966); ditto, Sociology As An Art Form. London: Heinemann, 1976.

12 See his small pieces as collected in the books of Georg Simmel, Philosophische Kultur. Gesammelte Essais. Leipzig: Alfred Kröner, 1919, sec. ed.; ditto, Brücke und Tor. Essays des Philosophen zur Geschichte, Religion, Kunst und Gesellschaft, ed. Margarete Susman und Michael Landmann, Stuttgart: Koehler, 1957.

13 Heinz Bude, Auflösung des Sozialen? Die Verflüssigung des soziologischen "Gegenstandes" im Fortgang der soziologischen Theorie; Soziale Welt, 39 (1988), l, pp. 4-17; it's not surprising that Georg Simmel prefers the short form, esp. the essay, to communicate his observations. What the Simmel renaissance still neglects is the rhetorician Simmel who personally impressed his audience. A prominent expressionist writer in Weimar times, Kasimir Edschmid, recollected: "I listened to Simmel at Straßburg. Never again did I see or hear such a beautiful Speaker äs Simmel when forming an idea which first becomes a phrase and then unfolds to a perfect work of art."(Kasimir Edschmid. Ein Buch der Freunde zu seinem 60. Geburtstag, ed. Günther Schab, München: Desch, 1950, p. 56).

14 Gotthard Günther, Die aristotelische Logik des Seins und die nicht-aristotelische Logik der Reflex­ion; Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 12 (1958), pp. 360-407; ditto, Idee und Grundriß einer nicht-Aristotelischen Logik. Die Idee und ihre philosophischen Voraussetzungen. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1978 (sec. ed.); ditto, Beiträge zur Grundlegung einer operationsfähigen Dialektik. Ham­burg: ibid., 1976; 1979; 1980, three volumes; Klaus Heinrich, Dahlemer Vorlesungen. Eine religionsphilosophische Einführung in die Logik. Basel-Frankfurt/Main: Stromfeld/Roter Stern, 1981 ( = tertium datur, vol. I)

15 The general approach of Ernst Bloch is systematically reconstructed by Hans Heinz Holz, Ernst Bloch. Auswahl aus seinen Schriften, ed. Hans Heinz Holz. Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer, 1967, pp. 7-31; ditto, Kategorie Möglichkeit und Moduslehre; Ernst Bloch zu Ehren. Beiträge zu seinem Werk, ed. Siegfried Unseld. Frankfurt/Main: ibid., 1965, pp. 99-120; ditto, Logos Spermatikos. Ernst Blochs Philosophie einer unfertigen Welt. Darmstadt/Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1975.

16 Gregory Bateson, Minimal requirements for a theory of schizophrenia; Archives of General Psychiatry, 2 (1960), pp. 477-491.

17 Niklas Luhmann, Veränderungen im System der gesellschaftlichen Kommunikation und die Mas­senmedien; Die elektronische Revolution, ed. Oskar Schatz, Graz, Wien, Köln: Styria, pp. 13-20.

18 Karl Mannheim, Das Problem der Generationen; Kölner Vierteljahreshefte für Soziologie, 7 (1928), pp. 157-185; ibid., 309-330; see also Eduard Wechssler, Die Generation als Jugendgemeinschaft; Geist und Gesellschaft. Festschrift für Kurt Breysig, vol. I, 1927, pp. 66-102. - Wilhelm Pinder, Kunstgeschichte nach Generationen; Zwischen Philosophie und Kunst - Johannes Volkelt zum 100. Lehrsemester dargebracht. Leipzig: Eduard Pfeiffer, 1926, pp. 1-16; ditto, Das Problem der Generation in der Kunstgeschichte Europas. Frankfurt/Main: Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, 1928 (sec., rev. and enl. ed.).

19 Both empirically appearing overt and hidden (as Wilhelm Pinder found out).

20 Ernst Bloch, Hitlers Gewalt; Das Tage-Buch, 5 (1924), 15, pp. 474-477.

21 Ernst Bloch, Erbschaft dieser Zeit. Zürich: Oprecht & Helbling, 1935.

22 Ernst Bloch, Kritik der Propaganda; Die Neue Weltbühne, 4 (1937), 18, pp. 552-559.

23 Wolfgang Emmerich, 'Massenfaschismus' und die Rolle des Ästhetischen. Faschismustheorie bei Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht; Antifaschistische Literatur, ed. Lutz Winckler. Kronberg: Scriptor, 1977, vol. I, pp. 233-290.

24 Mentality as an individual praeconscious mental response to a given social situation (Theodor Geiger, Die soziale Schichtung des deutschen Volkes. Soziographischer Versuch auf statistischer Grundlage. Stuttgart: Enke, 1932, esp. pp. 109-122).

25 Emmerich, 'Massenfaschismus', op.cit., p. 238.

26 Helmut Lethen, Neue Sachlichkeit 1924-1932. Studien zur Literatur des "Weißen Sozialismus". Stuttgart: Metzler, 1970, p. 111.

27 Hendrik de Man, Sozialismus und Nationalfascismus. Potsdam: Alfred Protte, 1930, p. 49. And later on: "The success of the National Socialist ideology, indeed, reflects the overall progress of the socialism from utopia to science." (p. 54)

28 Rainer Stollmann, Ästhetisierung der Politik. Literaturstudien zum subjektiven Faschismus. Stutt­gart: Metzler, 1978, p. 119.

29 This was criticized by a lot of different scholars (like Jürgen Habermas, Theorie und Praxis. Sozialphilosophische Studien. Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand, 1963, pp. 336-351; or Ernst Nolte [ed.], Theorien über den Faschismus. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1967, p. 38).

30 Otto Friedrich Bollnow, Das Wesen der Stimmungen. Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1956 (third rev. and enl. ed.).

31 The Marxist orthodoxy as Marx/Engels themselves widely neglected the subjective non-simultaneity of societal developments, e.g. in The Communist Manifesto (1849) with emphatic emphasis on capitalist development which will modernize by destroying all old ties. On the other hand, Marx himself as a scholar in his “Das Kapital” did, of course, know that the capitalist mode of production incorporates remnants of other economic regimes. He worked out: "Theoretically we presume that the law of the capitalist mode of production will develop in a pure manner. Empirically we must state approximation." (Marx-Engels-Werke, vol. 23, p. 184) In a sense Ernst Bloch subjectivised the Marxian theory of societal development with his concept of non/simultaneity demonstrating that the contradiction is neither 'remnant' nor reactionary in the political field. Long before Herbert Marcuse's well-known critical review of Soviet Marxist thinking, both Theodor Geiger in his essay ´Zur Theorie des Klassenbegriffs und der proletarischen Klasse´ (Schmollers Jahrbuch für Gesetzge­bung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft, vol. 54,1930, pp. 185-236) and Eduard Heimann in his book: Soziale Theorie des Kapitalismus. Theorie der Sozialpolitik, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1929, p. 126, demonstrated its narrow-mindedness or one-dimensionality. "Given the fact", - Heimann points out - "that Marx names the working-class as the very lowest class - under which there's 'only' the "lumpenproletariat" - one must argue that his view is basically narrowed and exclusive defining as society only the economically active society - as capitalism itself does."

32 Ernst Schumacher [reviewing The Inheritance of Our Time] as quoted in: Ernst Blochs Wirkung. Ein Arbeitsbuch zum 90. Geburtstag. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1975, pp. 201-207.

33 Ernst Bloch, Bemerkungen zur Erbschaft dieser Zeit [1936]; republished in: Vom Hasard zur Katastrophe. Politische Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1934-1939, ed. Oskar Negt. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1972, pp. 42-64.

34 Ernst Bloch, Über Ungleichzeitigkeit, Provinz und Propaganda [1974]; republished in Tendenz -Latenz - Utopie. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1978 (The Collected Papers, Supplement), pp. 209-220.

35 Holz, Kategorie Möglichkeit und Moduslehre, op.cit., pp. 113 ss.

36 Otto Morf, Ernst Bloch und die Utopie; Festschrift für Ernst Bloch zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Rugard Otto Gropp. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1955, pp. 257-262.

37 Martin Schwanke, Vom Staatsroman zur Science Fiction. Eine Untersuchung über Geschichte und Funktion der naturwissenschaftlich-technischen Utopie; Stuttgart: Enke, 1957, pp. 114 ss.

38 Holz, Logos Spermatikos, op.cit., pp, 181 ss.

39 Ernst Bloch, Freiheit und Ordnung. Abriß der Sozial-Utopien. New York: Aurora, 1946, p. 188.

40 ibid, p. 189.

41 Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1951, vol. I, p. 21.

42 ibid, p. 17.

43 Holz, Kategorie Möglichkeit und Moduslehre, op.cit., pp. 117-119.

44 The sociological version was given by A.C. Zijderveld with his artificial social figure homo duplex, wandering between consent and dissent, going through all insecurities and tensions of modern society; cf. Anton C. Zijderveld, The Abstract Society. A Cultural Analysis of Our Time. Garden City: Doubleday, 1970.

45 Georg Klaus, Die Macht des Wortes. Ein erkenntnistheoretisch-pragmatisches Traktat. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1972, 6th ed., p. 135.

46 Jost Hermand, Orte. Irgendwo. Formen utopischen Denkens. Königstein: Athenäum, 1981, pp. 7 s. Anthony Giddens' essay on utopia includes his plea for a sort of amputated - or tamed - ´´social utopia´´ named 'Utopian Realism´(see his book: The Consequences of Modernity; Cambrige: Policy Press, 1990, esp. pp. 154-158; me own critical review originally appeared in: Communications, vol. 16 [1993] 3, pp. 396-398; abriged German versions in: SWS Rundschau, 31 [1991] 4, pp. 584-587; Recht und Politik, 28 (1992) 2, pp. 113-114)

Autor

Richard Albrecht ist sowohl ausgebildeter und berufserfahrener(Kultur-, Wissenschafts- und Rundfunk-) Journalist und beruflicher Ausbilder als auch in Cultural Studies promoviert und in Politikwissenschaft (mit Schwerpunkten: Zeitgeschichte und politische Soziologie) habilitiert. Er hat in den letzten dreißig Jahren fünfzehn Bücher und etwa 650 weitere Texte veröffentlicht sowie zwei Curricula und einen Recherche-Leitfaden erarbeitet. - Richard Albrecht interessiert sich als Sozialwissenschaftler (mit den Arbeitsschwerpunkten materialistische Subjektwissenschaft und kulturanalytische Sozialpsychologie) für dynamisch-reflexive Handlungsprozesse, gesellschaftliche Umbruchslagen und ihre kulturellen Ausdrucksformen. - Richard Albrecht ist seit 2000 ´älterer schwerbehinderter Mensch´ und ehrenamtlich tätig als Lehrbeauftragter („ Sozialwissenschaftliche Grundlagen des Verwaltungshandelns “) und als Editor des unabhängigen online-Magazins für Menschen- und Bürgerrechtehttp://rechtskultur.de. - Der Autor lebt in Bad Münstereifel/NRW.

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• Autor: Dr. Richard Albrecht (Autor)
• Año de publicación: 2005
• Páginas: 18
• No. de catálogo: V109171
• ISBN (Ebook): 9783640073535
• ISBN (Libro): 9783656692768
• Idioma: Inglés
• Etiqueta: Tertium, Ernst, Bloch, UTOPIAN, PARADIGM