Utopia and utopian consciousness have long been at the center of political discussions and artistic practices. Ivan Boldyrev’s book is dedicated to Ernst Bloch (1885–1977), a German thinker who gave this topic a special philosophical and historical status and managed to gather Marxist activism, eschatological metaphysics and avant-garde art under the banner of utopia. The book charts Bloch's intellectual evolution and traces his complex and controversial relationships with the most important philosophers of the 20th century. – Georg Lukács, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. The “polemical totality” of these relations serves to clarify the paradoxical logic of utopian messianism. The book is addressed to philosophers, political scientists, historians and sociologists.