Hans-Günter Quaschinsky · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Bloch built a philosophy around hope as a rigorous category rather than a sentiment, arguing that human history is driven forward by an unfinished, forward-looking impulse toward what is "not yet." That optimistic teleology, worked out across a body of Marxist philosophy influenced by Hegel and by apocalyptic religious thinkers, made him a central figure in a circle that included Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, shaping mid-century German critical thought well beyond his own writings.