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Chapter 5: The Utopian Function of Fairy Tales and Fantasy: Ernst Bloch the Marxist and J.R.R. Tolkien the Catholic
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The Utopian Function of Fairy Tales and Fantasy Ernst Bloch the Marxist and J.R.R. Tolkien the Catholic It might seem somewhat incongruous if not risky to couple the names of Ernst Bloch and J.R.R. Tolkien. It is almost like taking two names in vain at the same time. But in the name of the fairy tale anything goes. And, as we know from the fairy tale, risks are more often rewarded than not. So what about these names? Bloch, hardly known in the Western world except to erudite scholars and theologians, was a Marxist philosopher, who endeavored to unravel the resilient latent qualities of humankind manifested in the struggle for a better world. He viewed these qualities as constituting a principle of hope and illuminating the possibility for human beings to change and become makers of their own history. He himself was an example of what he termed the upright posture (der aufrechte Gang)-a concept he used to describe the position human beings must assume if they are to stand straight and stride forward making their own history with the integrity, courage and compassion needed to resist forces of divisiveness and oppression. The essence of his philosophy is stated succinctly in this passage from Das Prinzip HofSnung (The Principle of Hope): Humankind still lives in prehistory everywhere, indeed everything awaits the creationof the world as a genuine one.The real genesis is not at the beginning,but at the end, and it only begins The Utopian Function of Fairy Tales and Fantasy when society and existence become radical, that is grasp themselves at the root. The root of history, however, is the human being, working, producing, reforming and surpassing the givens around him or her. If human beings have grasped themselves and what is theirs, without depersonalization and alienation, founded in real democracy,then somethingcomes into being in the world that shines into everyone's childhood and where no one has yet been-home.' Born in 1885in Ludwigshafen, Germany, Bloch began very early to seize his own radical rook2His study of philosophy was pursued against his father's will, and this opposition to patriarchy marked the path which his life would take and defined his political-philosophical project. When the First World War erupted, Bloch as a socialist pacifist went into exile in Switzerland where he wrote Geist der Utopie (Spirit of Utopia).When he returned to Germany, he become more committed to socialism and began formulating his views in the Marxist Hegelian tradition which was enjoying a renascence at that time. Though the period of the 1920s was one of great personal turmoil for Bloch-he lost his first wife, remarried, got divorced, and had severe doubts about the effectiveness of his political philosophy-he continued to be productive and wrote numerous essays and books that were all part of his messianic project of hope. In 1933 he was forced to leave Berlin due to his strong anti-fascist position, and after stops in Switzerland, France, Austria and Czechoslovakia and the publication of Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Heritage of Our Times), one of the most astute analyses of the rise of fascism and the inability of the Left to respond to Nazism, he landed in Boston where he spent approximately a decade in the seclusion of Harvard's Widner Library elaborating his major philosophical and political premises. In 1948he was hired by the University of Leipzig in East Germany as professor of philosophy, his first academic job at the tender age of 63. However, after witnessing and opposing the ossification of the socialist experiment in the German Democratic Republic, Bloch left that country to accept a post as professor at the University of Tiibingen, West Germany , in 1961. There, too, he remained active in his protest against political repression and supported oppositional groups until his death in 1977.To the very end he spoke out in the name of socialism and in [3.91.249.156] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:22 GMT) Breaking the Magic Spell the spirit of a utopia which projected the possibilities for revolutionary change. Bloch's active political life was in stark contrast to his English contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien, who preferred the pedestrian, conservative way. Ironically, Tolkien, who spent most of his life in Oxford as a professor of Anglo-Saxon and English literature and tended to shun publicity and politics, achieved world fame in the 1950s as author of The Lord of the Rings. His great...