Dear Sirs:

As I understand Dr. Ernest Bloch (Details anzeigen)^a has applied for a grant for publication |:completion:| of his manuscript, tentatively called HOPE, ITS FUNCTIONS AND ITS CONTENTS.¹

I have known Dr. Ernest Bloch (Details anzeigen)^d for about 20 years. Although not being a school philosopher h|:H:|e is one of the most brilliant minds in contemporary philosophy, combining an immense amount of historical knowledge with unique imagination and synthetic power. I believe that there is nobody in our generation as well equipped as he to deal with the problems of utopianism and eschatological archetypes. Since his first book THE SPIRIT OF UTOPIANISM (Details anzeigen)^e he has thought about this problem practically without interruption and has collected an immense empirical material.

The problem itself has become more important than ever before in our present world situation in which intellectual leaders as well as the masses of the people are at the brink of complete hopelessness. An explanation of this state of mind, not only in terms of the appearance and disappearance of symbols of hope in the collective consciousness, would be of immense value for historians, sociologists and psychologists. |:As philosopher and theologian I –:| From my knowledge of the manuscript I also can say that theologians and philosophers would greatly profit from a book in which a very large symbolic material is given and interpreted.

I have known Dr. Ernest Bloch (Details anzeigen)^k for about 20 years. He is one of the most brilliant minds in contemporary German philosophy. He is not a school philosopher but a man who combines an immense amount of historical knowledge with unique imagination and synthetic power. I do not think that anybody in our generation is as well equipped to deal with the problem of utopianism and eschatology as Ernest Bloch (Details anzeigen)^l. This is obvious to me not only by the fact that his first book deals with the spirit of utopianism |:[:|and that one of his most interesting books deals with the great utopian of the Reformation period Thomas Münzer (Details anzeigen)^m,²|:]:| but also from many discussions I had with him about the material he has collected for his suggested work.

The problem itself has come into the foreground during the last decades in Philosophy as well as in Theology. All problems of the philosophy of history center around the question of utopianism and the recent turn in theology instigated by the eschatological school in Biblical criticism and by the widespread school of so-called dialectical theology points in the same direction. Beyond this social and political ethics are fundamentally dependent on the solution of the problem of utopianism.

For all these reasons it would be |:of:| inestimable |:value:| for our present intellectual situation if the book of Ernest Bloch (Details anzeigen)^p were published.