17.12 Wykład dra Luisa Martineza Andradego ,,From Principle of Hope to Principle of Liberation. Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin from Latin America”

Instytut Filozofii UW zaprasza na wykład

dr. Luisa Martineza Andradego

From Principle of Hope to Principle of Liberation.
Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin from Latin America

17.12.2018, godz. 16:45, Instytut Filozofii UW, sala 4

The religious dimension in The Principle of hope is analysed in two ways: (a) as a
producer of image of hope that consolidate alienation and (b) as a redeeming latency which
mobilises people against worldly misery. Belief as subversion is one of Bloch’s cardinal
points, as it gains political meaning, sursumcorda, in the impulse to make the world a better
place. The phrase ‘we raise our hearts’ is mediated by a messianic substrate where religion as
‘desirous essence’ is utopic in itself. The religious aspect constitutes one of the main pillars of
The Principle of hope and is found, undoubtedly, in chapter 53 where Bloch makes explicit
the utopic function and the ambivalence of religion. Ambivalent in the sense that religion can
ideologically or politically reinforce a system of oppression or, on the contrary, religion can
serve as a critical discourse on such domination. In the first sense, Bloch says that it is in
abstract utopias that desirous images are bred into alienating religion –that is, in an a-historic
delirium. In relation to the second sense –religion as subversion – Bloch insists on the
importance of the critical-explosive content in the construction of emancipatory practices.
Religion can therefore not be read exclusively as opium. For his part, the German philosopher
Walter Benjamin argues that Capitalism is “a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most
extremely cultic that ever existed”. We know that the title of his papers “Capitalism as
Religion” (1921) is directly borrowed from Ernst Bloch’s 1921 Thomas Münzer as
Theologien of the Revolution. For our part, we propose an analysis of the repercussions that
The principle of hope had on the works of Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff and the
Argentine philosopher Enrique Dussel, in order to detect the possible eclosions of the utopian
function in relation to the humanisation of nature.

Luis Martínez Andrade – PhD, a Mexican author and scholar. In 2009 he won the
internationally acclaimed ‘Thinking Against the Mainstream’ award. He is the author
of Religion without redemption. Social Contradictions and Awakened Dreams in Latin
America (Pluto Press, 2015), Las dudas de Dios: teología de la liberación, ecología y
movimientos sociales (Otramérica, 2015) and Ecologie et liberation. Critique de la modernité
dans la théologie de la libération (Van Dieren,, 2016).

Institutional affiliation:
Postdoctoral researcher, Collège d’études mondiales/Fondation Maison des Sciences de
l’Homme, Paris, France