Bloch Ernst (1885–1977), German philosopher. Influenced by Marxism, his views went beyond Marxism as he matured. He fled Germany in the 1930s, but returned after World War II to a professorship in East Germany, where his increasingly unorthodox ideas were eventually censured by the Communist authorities, forcing a move to West Germany in the 1960s. His major work, The Principle of Hope (1954–59), is influenced by German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Neoplatonism, utopianism, and numerous other sources besides Marxism. Humans are essentially unfinished, moved by a cosmic impulse, ‘hope,’ a tendency in them to strive for the as-yet-unrealized, which manifests itself as utopia, or vision of future possibilities. Despite his atheism, Bloch wished to retrieve the sense of self-transcending that he saw in the religious and mythical traditions of humankind. His ideas have consequently influenced theology as well as philosophy, e.g. the ‘theology of hope’ of Jurgen Moltmann. R.H.K.