Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 05:59:11 -0800
From: David Harvey <dharvey-AT-unr.nevada.edu>
Subject: Re: BHA: concrete utopia is materially located


Nice point Phil.
Harvey

Phil Walden wrote:

> Hi Mervyn,
>
>
>
> I would criticize the definition of concrete utopianism you are offering
> on the grounds that it does not make it clear that concrete utopia is
> materially located.  When Ernst Bloch introduced the concept of concrete
> utopia into human discourse he did so in relation to an extensive
> reading of the work of Hegel and Marx.  Bloch protested against the view
> that human desires, aspirations, and emotions are irrelevant to Marxist
> method.  For Bloch we always start with fantasy (about the future) - but
> the point is that he is saying that *fantasy is located within class
> relations* and is therefore materially located.  It cannot therefore be
> non-material.
>
>
>
> Or at a deeper philosophical level, Bloch's concrete utopia is located
> within a Hegelian paradigm according to which substance not only sets
> limits on where subject can go, but substance also at certain levels
> shows subject where to go.  So it is not just that concrete utopia is
> naturalistically grounded in a Kantian sense - as you correctly point
> out - but it is also grounded in a Hegelian sense in terms of objective
> idealism's grasp of the movement of history (in this sense Hegel was a
> dialectical materialist avant la lettre).
>
>
>
> What would be a shame is if the dictionary follows the currently
> conventional wisdom within academia - which is to gut Hegel of his
> revolutionary content (or not even mention him) and substitute a
> non-materialist and inoffensive naturalist Kantian position - and
> thereby commits a serious crime against humanity in the name of
> maintaining "academic respectability".
>
>
>
> Phil Walden
>
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