A materialist utopian philosophy must reckon with death and sacrifice to survive.

Evidence

But, clearly, to long is not necessarily to find; and it is equally clear that a philosophy of this kind, which cannot reckon with the immortality of the soul, remains a dead letter unless it comes to terms in one way or another with death itself. This holds for the political-historical as well as for the personal and ontological level of reality: for the most urgent question of socialist construction remains that of individual sacrifice, and of the renunciations made by present generations for the benefit of generations in a future they will not themselves see. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 262

Categorization

• XREF: The generational-renunciation question is the same torsion Benjamin describes in his theology of history; also echoes Bloch’s principle of hope as it collides with mortality. — connects to: Utopian thought finds its absolute limit in unmartyred, meaningless death rather than consoled martyrdom. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 263; Utopia neutralizes death by making every present ontologically complete — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 276; Utopia conquers death by fully realizing the unobjectified core of existence — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 277 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno holds that eliminating death is the crucial test of utopian consciousness #expands (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1518
• Utopia neutralizes death by making every present ontologically complete #complicates (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 276
• Adorno’s thought begins from philosophy surviving its own death in an interregnum. #complicates (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1208
• At death a life becomes an in-itself whose meaning only others sustain. #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 63
• Utopia conquers death by fully realizing the unobjectified core of existence #corroborates (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 277
• Administrative mass death requires a humanity already dead to itself. #complicates (0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 255
• A crisis-free state capitalism would trap humanity in permanent hopelessness #corroborates (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1171