Non-simultaneity

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Non-simultaneity is a term that was coined by the philosopher Ernst Bloch . Bloch first used non-simultaneity in the 1930s to explain the attractiveness of National Socialism and used the term again in the early 1960s with regard to cultural imperialist issues and against relativistic cultural group theories .

In his discussion of National Socialism in his book Inheritance of this Time , published in Zurich in 1935 , the non-simultaneity is related to the juxtaposition of different stages of social progress in a society: not all milieus and areas of society go through the progressive processes in the same way and to the same extent, so that this results in an "imbalance" in relation to the respective modernity of society. Bloch's analysis of non-simultaneity contradicts at the same time the orthodox Marxist analyzes of National Socialism, which according to Bloch only perceive the "simultaneity" in the contradiction of the relations of production (ownership of capital versus compulsion to wage labor) and ignored the non-simultaneous historical contradictions.

On the non-simultaneity of the petty bourgeoisie

Bloch's horror at the enthusiasm for war among Germans in World War I , including his teachers Max Scheler and Max Weber, and their inaccessibility to rational arguments and to war-related human suffering, led not only to Bloch's first emigration, but also to his political reorientation and a critical eye German history. In the first major work of his second emigration, the anti-fascist analysis of the inheritance of this time (1935), Bloch developed his theory of non-simultaneity: For Bloch, Germany is "the classic land of non-simultaneity", since the peasant wars , through 1848 to the November revolution 1918 no revolution had been won and thus antiquated attitudes could be maintained.

Bloch explained that the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous is one of the characteristics of modernity. He was referring to the connection between technical progress , rationality and a mental refusal to modernize as he presented himself to him particularly clearly under National Socialism as the “crooked governor of the revolution” carried by the “petty bourgeois pack”.

The attractiveness of National Socialism can be explained, among other things, by non-simultaneous contradictions in capitalism, which add to the main contradiction between capital owners and wage workers . Due to the lack of revolutions in Germany, certain classes (“small farmers”, “small producers”, “small traders” and employees as a petty bourgeois special case) are not only backward (“fake asynchronism”), but also intertwined in their anachronistic modes of production (“genuine asynchronism”) the capital. The Marxist analysis should therefore not only coldly analyze the simultaneous contradiction, but must also take into account the heat flow of unresolved battles and utopias.

Simultaneous progress in the "multiverse"

In the Tübingen Introduction to Philosophy in the early 1960s, Bloch referred non-simultaneity to different progress . Here he distanced himself from the “reactionary culture group theory”, since all cultures are subject to the same dialectical laws in their development and are related to the same goal content of humanity (one “concrete utopian humanity”) in a “realm of freedom”. Bloch speaks of the "multiverse" here:

"The concept of progress does not tolerate any 'cultural circles' in which time is nailed reactionary to space, but instead of a single line it needs a broad, elastic, completely dynamic multiverse, a continuous and often intertwined counterpoint of historical voices."

- Ernst Bloch : Tuebingen Introduction to Philosophy

reception

Ernst Bloch's thesis of contradiction has been taken up in cultural studies, historical and sociological terms in the last few decades: In the mid-1980s, the American contemporary historian Jeffrey Herf outlined the guiding concept "reactionary modernism" with the central unequal nature of technical-productive progress and human-moral backwardness, especially in the German society.

Simultaneity and non-simultaneity, simultaneity and multidimensionality in general and spatiotemporally given multilayeredness of all social processes and social processes in particular was described methodically by the British historian Eric J. Hobsbawm as "the multidimensionality of human beings in society" at the end of the 1980s . This idea of ​​the complexity of human beings, of life, of human life and the multiple possibilities of action of living human beings goes beyond Weberian-sociological one-dimensionality, according to which "the pursuit of income is the inevitable last driving force of all economic activity".

In the early 1990s, the social scientist Richard Albrecht Bloch took up the thesis of non-simultaneity as a theoretical concept and methodological guide for historical-cultural research and systematized it as empirically both open and covert "simultaneity of the non-simultaneous" and "non-simultaneity of the simultaneous".

literature

Primary literature

  • Ernst Bloch: Inheritance from that time. 14.-15. Th. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-01388-2 ( Library Suhrkamp 388).
  • Ernst Bloch: About asynchrony, provincial and propaganda. [1974]. In: Ernst Bloch: Complete Edition. Supplementary volume: Tendency - Latency - Utopia. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-518-07179-3 .
  • Ernst Bloch: Tübingen Introduction to Philosophy. One-time special edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-518-13308-X ( Edition Suhrkamp 3308).

Secondary literature

  • Peter Zudeick : The devil's bottom. Ernst Bloch - life and work. Revised and improved study edition. Elster-Verlag, Moos / Baden-Baden 1987, ISBN 3-89151-043-8 .
  • Hermann Bausinger : Discrepancies. From folklore to empirical cultural studies . In: Helmut Berking, Richard Faber (Ed.): Kultursoziologie - Symptom des Zeitgeist? Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1989, ISBN 3-88479-408-6 , pp. 267–285, (PDF; 170 KB) .
  • Roger Behrens : The simultaneity of real humanism. Consequences, experiments and assemblies in critical theory. Junghans, Cuxhaven 1996, ISBN 3-926848-54-5 ( Essay Philosophy 7).

Web link

  • Richard Albrecht : Tertium - Ernst Bloch's Foundation of 'The Utopian Paradigm' As a Key Concept Within Cultural and Social Sciences Research Work [1]

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Bloch: Inheritance of this time. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1962, cited p. 113.
  2. ↑ Ernst Bloch: Hitler's violence. In: Das Tagebuch [Berlin]. 5 [1924] 15 [12. April 1924], pp. 474-477.
  3. ↑ Ernst Bloch: Tübingen Introduction to Philosophy. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-518-07853-4 , p. 146 ( Suhrkamp-Taschenbücher Wissenschaft 253).
  4. ↑ Jeffrey Herf: Reactionary Modernism. Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1984, ISBN 0-521-26566-5 .
  5. ↑ Eric J. Hobsbawm: Working-class Internationalism. In: Contributions to the History of Labor & Society. 1, 1988, ISSN  0921-500X , pp. 3-16, here p. 14.
  6. ^ Max Weber: Economy & Society [1920]. Volume 1. Study edition. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1964, p. 153.
  7. ^ Richard Albrecht: The Utopian Paradigm. In: Communications. The European Journal of Communication Research. 16, 3, 1991, ISSN  0341-2059 , pp. 283-318.