Educated Hope: Ernst Bloch on Abstract and Concrete Utopia

Abstract

In so far as Ernst Bloch's work has been incorporated into Utopian Studies, it has been seen as a justification and celebration of utopianism, and welcomed because of the ever-present need to defend utopia against those who regard it as trivial or dangerous. This article1 argues that, while this celebratory theme in Bloch's work is important, there is an equally im portant, though deeply problematic, distinction between abstract and concrete utopia. As with the distinction made by Friedrich Engels between Utopian and scientific socialism, or that made by Karl Mannheim between ideology and utopia, its epistemological basis is dubious. Nevertheless, it remains an important issue. Indeed, a parallel problem arises in recent commentaries on William Morris, which similarly attempt to assert the virtues of dreaming and hence of utopianism while preserving a distinction between 'disciplined' and 'undisciplined' dreaming. Some distinction between abstract and concrete utopia, despite its difficulties, can conse quently be seen to be fundamental to the relationship between utopia and Marxism?or, indeed, to the relationship between utopia and any political orientation involving a commitment to social transformation. Otherwise Utopians can only continue to imagine alternative worlds; the point, how ever, is to create one. In developing this argument, the article first examines Bloch's overall project and the role of the distinction between abstract and concrete utopia within it. The distinction is then compared first with Mannheim's dichotomy between ideology and utopia, and secondly with the discussion of the relationship between Marxism and utopia elaborated by Edward Thompson in William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary. The parallel between Bloch's 'docta spes, ' educated hope, which arises from the abstract/concrete dis tinction is set alongside the idea of the 'education of desire' which Thompson draws from Miguel Abensour. We then return to Bloch, and the conflict between the epistemological difficulty of differentiating abstract from concrete utopia and its political necessity. Bloch's central project in his magnum opus The Principle of Hope is the rehabilitation of the concept of utopia. In attempting this, he draws attention to the Utopian element in a wide range of cultural forms. He includes day-dreams, fairy-tales, myths, travellers' tales, the sea voyages of medieval Irish monks, and the alchemists' attempts to synthesize gold,

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