THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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is a wholly dawning borderline content; but this lies in the material process, and the process goes with brightening up of its co ntent. And this is precisely why the
philosophical overall views in the wish for penetrating knowledge also involve the will for the truly essential; — it is not the evening to end all these days yet, nor the day
to end all these mornings. Philosophies are their age, expressed in ideas, but their great themes, because they can never be exhausted and cannot even be wholly
formulated in a single epoch, lie far beyond each respective age and even society. They lie in the concern of the age, the concern of the process in general — and the
most central of these themes of process is Verum Bonum. Man as a question about it, a world as an answer to it: this is, again suo genere geographically, the wishful
landscape in philosophies. Only the truth of essence in breakthrough is its path and goal, as the pleasant truth without illusion.
42 EIGHT­HOUR DAY, WORLD IN PEACE, FREE TIME AND LEISURE
Look up: the chimney is smoking.
Brecht
I have convinced myself by experience of the truth of the quotation in the Bible and made it into my lodestar: But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.*
Hegel, Letter to Major Knebel, 30th August 1807
Even in northern regions, if we at least consider the example of the oldest and greatest nations, it seems man should not allow himself to be degraded into
a beast of burden by deprivation but be content with the little that nature can give him there or emigrate; and if anywhere work is required from one church
bell to the other if one wants to live, then only faulty state constitutions and state administrations are to blame for this, a consequent disproportionate
distribution of what nature amply gave for all, and feigned needs which nature is not obliged to satisfy; and the strange fancy can only be influential in the
sermons and catechisms of the precious Christian north that even in eternal
* The English of the Authorized Version seems to be the exact inversion of the biblical quotation Hegel cites, which could be translated ‘Seek first for food and clothing
and the kingdom of God will come to you of its own accord’, which is perhaps more in keeping with the spirit of Bloch's epigraph. We have given the Authorized
Version here. Matthew 6, 33.