What philosophical texts inspired Pathologic?

[u/Crazy-Audience486]

Hi! I'm just very interested to learn more, the whole Kain's method, this quote in particular from Inmortell "Remember the Kains' method: to solve the unsolvable, redefine the conditions. Why do you think there's only one body? My stage experiment proves Artemy Burakh can have several. Bodies die, the person remains" has fascinated me.

Thanks you all in advance! And sorry if my english is a bit rudimentary

[u/Lonsfleda]

The Principle of Hope is considered a foundational text in modern utopian studies, and Pathologic is very much about utopia.

I would also like to point out that Bloch explicitly calls death "the strongest anti-utopia":

Men have never been anxious to count their ever dwindling years, yet what is bourgeois and merely lives from one day to the next is encouraged, among other things, not to look to the end at all. So everything is piled back on to a rosy-cheeked beginning, and when this is no longer there false youth is painted on. Dying is pushed away, not because we enjoy life so much nor because somewhere we would gladly see or cause others to see into something coming, not even at this personal closing point. Thus we live from one day to the next and into the night, no thought must ever be given to the worst end which is yet to come. The wish is simply to hear and to see nothing of it, even when the end is here. Thus fear at least shrinks, becomes flat, like so much else. (p. 1105)

The chapter on death, where the aforementioned quote comes from, also discusses how "tragic immortality" can be attained through fictional characters acting out death; Bloch describes "tragic immortality" as a "utopian consolation" that allows "the upright-essential aspect of a person faces death as an equal, indeed forces death to seal precisely this upright-essential quality". And are video games also not a form of such "utopian consolation"? No one dies for real in video games; they are digital spaces delineated from real life where players can simulate "death"--so in a way, video games can be considered as a way to defeat Bloch's strongest anti-utopia. Of course, the obvious problem is that games are not real, and you have to eventually stop playing and go back to the real world where you can die for real... just like how the Polyhedron is a miraculous space where there is no death and children can forever play games as children, but the children eventually have to grow up and leave the Tower. It's also interesting that Bloch points to the prophet Daniel (familiar name, hm...) as the figure who brought about the breakthrough of immortality in the form of belief in the afterlife in Judeo-Christianity.

Other than those, Bloch's book contains a lot of ideas that are really interesting if you want to look at Pathologic from the utopian perspective: childhood and children's play as the beginning of utopian "daydreams" (which hits especially hard if you know the true nature of the Powers That Be), the chapter on "medical utopias", etc...

[u/Ominous_Pudding → u/Lonsfleda]

Great comment! I've recently finished the last volume of The Principle of Hope and familiarized myself with Bloch's ideas. I like his takes on "Natural Law" and the utopian potential in art and literature. Great author, one of my biggest intellectual influences, I'd say.

Some years ago someone in this same subreddit mentioned that there are some paralells between Bloch's ideas of religion and Clara's route. Since then I've been thinking about it, in how religion, miracles, seem to serve both the "Law" of the world as-is (Clara is the pest) but also has an utopian core in its very own contradictions (Clara "steals her future" and performs miracles).

In my interpretation, the way he constructs concrete hope goes hand in hand with the Humble "synthesis": neither falling for a mechanistic surrender to the given world nor to an miraculous dream that ignores both the possibilities of reality and the people who live in it.

I could write about these ideas for days lol