Will There Rather Be Nothing Than Something?

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to put Ernst Bloch’s philosophy to a test suggested by Hans Blumenberg in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. According to Blumenberg, modernity constitutes the second, successful, attempt at overcoming Gnosticism, after the first attempt, undertaken by Christianity, had failed. However – Blumenberg argues – it  was not modern philosophy, but only science which had managed to escape Gnosticism’s ontological trap of viewing the world as an illusion bordering on nothing.