Ernst Bloch's theories concerning religion

Ernst Bloch (1855 - 1977) is frequently described as being the philosopher of hope, and is credited with having returned dignity to the term utopia within critical theory. Bloch’s theory begins with the individual self-experience and pre-experience. He explains how the self is emergent from hunger, from which emotions arise, and understand us as creatures created out of internal forward reaching conflicts. For Bloch religion helps us understand what emerges from the human hunger, a hope for a better world. Bloch examines this hope content within religions, looking at various religions: Judeism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Toaism, Confusionism, and other ancient religions of classical Greece, Babylonia and Chaldaea but privileges Judeo-Christian religions within his historical analysis. He examines the characters within them as disruptive influences on the times in which they exist, and sees them as reappropriating celestial power to provide substance and critique for social change towards an idealised goal.