ERNST BLOCH or THE PHILOSOPHER OF HOPE

ENJOY PHILOSOPHY MEETS WEEKLY EVERY SUNDAY BETWEEN 11.30 AND 14.30 AT EDUARDO VII PARK, HERE:** https://goo.gl/maps/5e3jKFEweXkNvDdK6

ITS THE GARDEN BETWEEN THE “CARLOS LOPES PAVILLION” AND THE “PRAIA NO PARQUE” RESTAURANT AT EDUARDO VII PARK.

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We will learn, debate, enjoy and investigate philosophers and diverse themes from the philosophical perspective. Each reunion is structured as a conversation among all attendees about that day s philosopher softly moderated by the organizer. The conversation will kick-off from the very brief suggested reading providing easy access to all attendees both to the philosopher and the conversation.

Let´s be greek and dive today on…

Ernst Bloch (1885–1977), who made hope the centre of a vast philosophical inquiry. His most important work, The Principle of Hope, asks a simple question: what does it mean that human beings continually imagine a life different from the one they presently inhabit?
Bloch claims that hope is not merely a pleasant emotion or an optimistic belief that everything will eventually improve.

Hope is an essential orientation towards possibilities that have not yet been realised.

And as such, as guiding behaviour, shapes new realities.
And therefore, Hope has an undefeatable political power.

Human consciousness IS NOT imprisoned within the present: it anticipates, imagines and reaches beyond what already exists.

This “Not-Yet”—our awareness that both ourselves and the world remain unfinished appears throughout ordinary life.
The smallest daydream may contain an utopian impulse.

In distinguishing an abstract hope that escapes into fantasy without confronting reality, from a Concrete hope, that is informed by the real possibilities and contradictions of the present, Bloch asks the fundamental philosophical question: WHAT - CAN - BE ?
WHAT - IS - POSSIBLE ?

And how humans, on their daily in and outs, ask and re-ask it in their decisions, this fundamental exploration.

A better future is NOT guaranteed; but a hope that identifies what could become possible through knowledge, collective action and political struggle is the political tool through which humans can shape the world. Bloch calls this “learned hope”: hope that understands the world while refusing to accept its injustices as inevitable.

Hope becomes therefore political because it refuses to accept the miseries as unavoidable, as necessary, as a permanent status quo...

Neither certainty nor illusion.

Hope, claims Bloch, is a disciplined fidelity to possibility.

Let´s think with Ernst..

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