Process
Status Items Highlights Done See section below Claims None Questions None Output None
Highlights
Page 1
Every great idea may already have been thought seven times. But when it is thought again, in other times and places, it is never the same. Not only those who think great things but also the thought itself has meanwhile changed. The great idea has to prove itself again both in its own right and as something new.
✏️ Liking this because it feels like it’s related to my idea of lenses.. But also a good argument for publishing things even when you think the topic has been covered already or said enough times. Nothing is said enough and it’s okay to share an idea again. 📖 (Page 1)
None
His effusive commentaries on Western opera, Chinese fairy tales, and the ancient Egyptian pantheon can overwhelm his dutiful references to economic structures and modes of production. The fact that most of Bloch’s work available in English translation concerns aesthetics, culture, and the utopian content of religion can leave his non-German readers with the mistaken impression that he is uninterested in deeper ontological questions.
✏️ Very much can relate to this feeling and concern
None
various “layers” of possibility, particularly his distinction between what he calls “the fact-based object-suited possible” and “the objectively-real possible” or “real possibility.” The first relates to what is considered possible given the present worldly state of affairs; the second relates to what is possible given the latent tendencies of the world and the fact of ongoing human agency
✏️ Page xv The start of thinking on how we can achieve things that aren’t possible currently
None
From the first perspective, motorized travel was impossible in ancient Babylonia and medieval Strasbourg alike, as both the technology and the know-how to create it were lacking. From the second perspective, however, motorized travel was always possible, but the tools to bring it to fruition had not yet been harnessed. The first type of possibility, in other words, reflects the current state of knowledge about the world; the second type, by contrast, reflects the fact that new facets of the world regularly come into being.
✏️ Page xv Example of those layers of possibility
None
As Bloch put it, reality consists of “the events produced by working people together with the abundant interweaving process-connections between past, present, and future.” Thus, utopian thought presupposes a world capable of being radically different from its current state.
✏️ Page xv Realizing that we can imagine things outside of capitalism reality
None
Bloch accordingly saw the need for an account of the latent potential of the world that allows us to envision the growth of genuinely new social forms out of our material existence without the aid of the supernatural.
✏️ Page xvi This. Juxtapose xref with the ideas and quotes about how hard it is for society to envision a world without capitalism.
None
… what-is-considered-possible” and “what-may-become-possible.” The latter phrases more clearly convey Bloch’s meaning, which can be gleaned by reference, again, to the layers of possibility. What-is-considered-possible, the kata to dynaton, denotes that which is possible given what we know now while what-may-become-possible, the dynamei-on, is that which may become possible whether or not it accords with currently accepted notions of possibility. For Bloch, this fecund material basis of form approximates the real objectivity whereby reality is inscribed in the process of becoming.
✏️ Page xviii These are the structured and unstructured types of potentiality in Bloch’s mind. This pulls from Aristotle saying there are four key terms.. Matter, form, potentiality and actuality. Matter exists in a state of potentiality (it has capacity to become many things), which attains actuality when combined with form.
None
To put this explanation in more concrete terms, in the ancient world, a world without slavery would have been considered impossible by most, for the institution and the assumption of natural inferiority that underlay it were widespread. To argue for its end would have seemed foolishly utopian, for, in a refrain one still hears constantly, that was just the way things were. And yet the abolition of slavery was possible (had there been the will to abolish it) and remains so today; it is not a natural fact that humans must be enslaved to other humans even if it is an undeniable and morally abhorrent reality that human beings have been so enslaved since time immemorial.
✏️ Page xviii Another example to explain how we can have thoughts of different social orders than the current one, even if it were deemed practically impossible (from our narrow present viewpoint)
None
Bloch sees Marxism as a story of the fruitful interaction of a scientific, analytical impulse and a visionary, utopian impulse. These “cold” and “warm” streams of Marxism represent complementary needs: the former combats Jacobinism and extravangantism while the latter combats “the danger of economism and of goal-forgetting opportunism.” As Bloch sees it, his doctrine of coldness relates to whatis-considered-possible, operating with a conventional understanding of possibility. His doctrine of warmth, by contrast, is “solely related to that positive what-may-become-possible, not subject to any disenchantment, which embraces the growing realization and the realizing element, primarily in the human sphere.
✏️ Page xix Bloch and Marxism
None
if matter does possess latent tendencies, how exactly does one discern them or-assuming that there are multiple possibilities in the dynamei-ondistinguish between them? To put this point another way using Bloch’s categories, how does one distinguish the “not yet” from the “not” and the “never”? Art might very well describe, sketch, or enable us to espy a bright alternative future, but it can also just as easily bring us to entertain fantasies whose pursuit might lead to oppression
✏️ Page xxv A question critical of saying that all potentials are possible. How do we know what’s not yet vs not ever? It’s interesting to pick at the idea that harboring fantasies of things that could never happen might lead to oppression.. I want to dig deeper at this. Does it tie to current silicon valley daydreaming? followup
None
Without dismissing this important concern as unfounded, Bloch might respond that it ultimately misses the significance of his call to rethink the matter of our facts. The point is to prepare the world and us for the possibility of something new, to keep the possibility of a better world alive. To accept only the kata to dynaton is to resign ourselves to the prospect that the world’s potential is exhausted and that things will remain as they are. Bloch’s emphasis on the inexhaustible, if improbable, creativity of the category of dynamei-on directs our vision to the fact that the world does change: the Roman Empire fell, polio was (largely) conquered, and the category of morally equal “human” has (conceptually) expanded beyond white, male, Christian property owners. The bounds of the possible have transformed and will continue to transform, and human agency has, in fact, drawn these new possibilities out of the potential that is latent in the world.
✏️ Page xxvi How Bloch might respond to previous highlight question. I would also add that, it’s impossible for us to really make that distinction anyways. To know what’s “not yet” vs “not ever” would require a narrow view of humanity, imagination, purpose, etc. How could we truly say anything is never ever possible?