![]() Militant optimism should not be confused with a belief that “everything will be alright”. And the book’s notion of “militant optimism” can offer some points of reflection for the world today. His writings radically reimagined utopia, religion and daydreams as positive forces for social change.īloch’s three-volume work, The Principle of Hope, originally published in the 1950s, has been described by French-Brazilian philosopher Michael Löwy as “one of major works of emancipatory thought in the 20th century.”Īlways on the side of the oppressed and the defeated, Bloch’s work is a struggle against the status quo and aims to revive unrealised possibilities of social justice. Instead, it shows that history is what everyone actively makes every day – hence it can be addressed, contested and remade.īloch was a Marxist philosopher, described as the “ philosopher of hope”. In this way, militant optimism fights the idea that history is what happens to us. Known as “ militant optimism”, Bloch proposed that this was the active side of hope: a form of social commitment that turns hope into a concrete decision and intervention. The idea that living optimistically can lead to beneficial changes at a societal level was a key philosophy of German thinker Ernst Bloch. Indeed, as a recent poll from the strategy consultancy BritainThinks shows, just 12% of people want life to return to “exactly as it was before” once the pandemic is over. In many ways, the pandemic has also shown how hope and optimism can appear in dark times – and how, in some instances, this can even become a force for social change. Communities have been joining forces, with a surge in people donating to local food banks and looking out for their neighbours and elderly relatives. But it has also prompted public expressions of hope – people have come together to sing on balconies and clap in the streets. ![]() The COVID-19 crisis has had a grave impact on jobs, wellbeing, mental health and the economy worldwide.
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