Traces

Synopsis

Written between 1910 and 1929, Traces is considered Ernst Bloch's most important work next to The Principle of Hope and The Spirit of Utopia . This book, which collects aphorisms, essays, stories, and anecdotes, enacts Bloch's interest in showing how attention to "traces"—to the marks people make or to natural marks—can serve as a mode of philosophizing. In an elegant example of how the literary can become a privileged medium for philosophy, Bloch's chief philosophical invention is to begin with what gives an observer pause—what seems strange and astonishing.