Herbert Marcuse

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Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) was a leading 20th-century New Left philosopher in the United States and a follower of Karl Marx. Marcuse's writing reflected a discontent with modern society and technology and their "destructive" influences, as well as the necessity of revolution. His application of the theories of Sigmund Freud to the character of contemporary society and politics was the subject of much research, scholarly and otherwise. He was considered by some to be a philosopher of the sexual revolution.

Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin on July 19, 1898. In 1922 he received his doctorate of philosophy from the universities of Berlin and Freiburg. Marcuse's distinctive intellectual heritage was based on the democratic and socialist philosophy originated by G. W. F. Hegel and developed by Karl Marx - combined with the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud. On this basis he took a stand against fascism, as it appeared in Europe from the 1920s until the end of World War II and as it appeared later in the allegedly fascist elements of advanced industrial society.

In 1934 Marcuse emigrated to the United States and joined the Institute of Social Research in New York City. In 1941 he became a U.S. citizen. Also in 1941 Marcuse published Reason and Revolution, a study of Hegel and the rise of social theory. Marcuse's intention was to draw a distinction between Hegel and the contemporary fascist interpretations of Hegel's theories.

Worked for U.S. Government

During World War II Marcuse served in the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, which later became the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]). He worked for the U.S. Department of State until 1950. For several years thereafter he was a member of the Russian Institutes of Columbia University and Harvard University. From 1954 to 1965 he was a professor at Brandeis University. He married Inge S. Werner in 1955.

Advocated Sexual Openness

Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955) presents a Neo-Freudian view of man. It argues for a greater tolerance of eroticism than that permitted by the status quo. The book argues that a tolerant attitude toward sexuality would lead to a more satisfactory life in a society devoid of aggression. Because of this book Marcuse is considered one of the philosophers of the "sexual revolution."

Attacked Industrial Advancement

Marcuse criticized the advanced industrial societies of the United States and the Soviet Union for constructing a civilization that requires ceaseless production and consumption of unnecessary goods and for perpetuating themselves at the expense not only of other nations but also of their own populations. In Soviet Marxism (1958) Marcuse views the Soviet Union as actually worse but potentially better than the United States.

One-Dimensional Man (1964) continues Marcuse's attack on advanced industrial society - especially that found in the United States. He writes that America's affluence is facilitated by self-serving technology - such as military defense - in which the only reason products are consumed is that they are available. As a result, humanity's authenticity is undermined, and its potential for aggression is elevated to the point at which nuclear holocaust is probable. One-Dimensional Manis a pessimistic work in which the United States emerges as the most dangerous nation on Earth. It was, however, an important work during the following decade of radical political change.

Advocated Revolution

In 1965 Marcuse joined the faculty of the University of California in San Diego. That year his controversial essay "Repressive Tolerance" appeared. It states that the United States is repressive, since dissent goes unheard and no alternative to the view of the Establishment is considered. Accordingly, in defense of tolerance it is correct to disrupt and obstruct Establishment spokesmen. At this time Marcuse collaborated on A Critique of Pure Tolerance (1965).

College campus uprisings, culminating in the revolt of French students in May 1968, rendered Marcuse open to attack. In July 1968 he disappeared from his home in California after reportedly receiving a threatening letter from the Ku Klux Klan. In October 1968 a campaign was launched to dislodge him from his teaching position. And in 1969 Pope Paul criticized his views on sex.

An Essay on Liberation (1969), written before the French student rebellion, is dedicated to the student militants. Clearly, Marcuse hoped that they might effect the revolution he deemed justifiable against the oppressiveness and aggressiveness of contemporary industrial society. He published Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Utopia in 1970.

In 1972 Marcuse published Studies in Critical Philosophy, a study of authority; From Luther to Popper; and Counterrevolution and Revolt. Then, in 1978, he focused again on Marx in The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics.

Other articles and essays Marcuse wrote include: "Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture" Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1965); Negations: Essays in Critical Theory" (1968); "Art and Revolution," Partisan Review (1972); "Marxism and Feminism," Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal (1974); "The Obsolescence of the Freudian Concept of Man" (published 1989); and "Philosophy and Critical Theory," Critical Theory and Society: A Reader (1989).

Shortly before his death in 1979, Marcuse reflected upon the inseparability of human beings and nature in "Ecology and the Critique of Modern Society," in which he stated that the natural environment must be shielded from capitalist - and Communist - destruction.

Further Reading

Sound recordings based on Marcuse's writings include: "Art as a Revolutionary Weapon," "The New Sensibility," "One Dimensional Man," and "Reason and Revolution Today" (all published by Pacifica Tape Library).

Marcuse is discussed in: Kurt H. Wolff and Barrington Moore, Jr., eds., The Critical Spirit: Essays in Honor of Herbert Marcuse (Beacon Press, 1967); Paul A. Robinson, The Freudian Left (Harper & Row, 1969); Paul Breines, ed., Critical Interruptions: New Left Perspectives on Herbert Marcuse (Herder and Herder, 1970); Alasdair MacIntyre, Herbert Marcuse: An Exposition and a Polemic (Viking Press, 1970); Robert W. Marks, The Meaning of Marcuse (Ballantine Books, 1970); Maurice Cranston, ed., The New Left: Six Critical Essays (Library Press, 1970); Michael A. Weinstein, compiler, Identity, Power, and Change: Selected Readings in Political Theory (Scott, Foresman, 1971); Eliseo Vivas, Contra Marcuse (Arlington House, 1971); Maurice Cranston, Prophetic Politics: Critical Interpretations of the Revolutionary Impulse: Che Guevara, Jean-Paul Sartre, Herbert Marcuse, Frantz Fanon, Black Power, R.D. Lang (Simon and Schuster, 1972); Jack Woddis, New Theories of Revolution: A Commentary on theViews of Frantz Fanon, Regis Debray and Herbert Marcuse (International Publishers, 1972); Paul Mattick, Critique of Marcuse (Herder and Herder, 1972); John Fry, Marcuse, Dilemma and Liberation: A Critical Analysis (Harvester Press, 1974); Sidney Lipshires, Herbert Marcuse: From Marx to Freud and Beyond (Schenkman Publishing Co., 1974); Gad Horowitz, Repression: Basic and Surplus Repression in Psychoanalytic Theory: Freud, Reich, and Marcuse (University of Toronto Press, 1977); Harold Bleich, The Philosophy of Herbert Marcuse (University Press of America, 1977); Gertrude A. Steuernagel, Political Philosophyas Therapy: Marcuse Recommended (Greenwood Press, 1979); Morton Schoolman, The Imaginary Witness: The Critical Theory of Herbert Marcuse (Collier MacMillan, 1980); Richard A. Brosio, The Frankfurt School: An Analysis of the Contradictions and Crises of Liberal Capitalist Societies (Ball State University, 1980); Raya Dunayevskaya, Marxism and Freedom from 1776 Until Today (Harvester Press, 1982); Barry Katz, Herbert Marcuse and the Art of Liberation (Schocken Books, 1982); Peter Lind, Marcuse and Freedom: the Genesis and Development of a Theory of Human Liberation (Croom Helm, 1984); Douglas Kellner, Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism (University of California Press, 1984); Richard Kearney, Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers: the Phenomenological Heritage: Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Herbert Marcuse, Stanislas Breton, Jacques Derrida (Manchester University Press, 1986); Fred C. Alford, Science and the Revenge of Nature (University Presses of Florida, 1985); Timothy J. Lukes, The Flight Into Inwardness: An Exposition and Critique of Herbert Marcuse's Theory of Liberative Aesthetics (Associated University Presses, 1985); Mark Thomas, Ethics and Technoculture (University Press of America, 1987); Robert B. Pippin, Marcuse: Critical Theory & the Promise of Utopia (Bergin & Garvey, 1988); Ben Agger, The Discourse of Domination: From the Frankfurt School to Post-Modernism (Northwestern University Press, 1992); John Bokina and Timothy J. Lukes, eds., Marcuse: From the New Left to the Next Left (University Press of Kansas, 1994); Marsha Hewitt, Critical Theory of Religion: A Feminist Analysis (Fortress Press, 1995); and Joan Alwy, Critical Theory and Political Possibilities: Conceptions of Emancipatory Politics in the Works of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas (Greenwood Press, 1995).

(1898-1979) German philosopher. Member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Escaping Nazi persecution, he settled in the United States in 1934. As an enthusiastic supporter of the student and black movements of the 1960s, he became known as the ‘father of the new left’. Arguing that ‘the task of theory’ was ‘to liberate practice’ (1928), he called for a reconstruction of Marxist social and historical theory. His work centred upon an attempted synthesis of Hegel, Marx, and Freud (his most significant text on the latter being Eros and Civilization (1955) ).

Marcuse repudiated economic determinism in favour of an affirmation of human potential. Being and consciousness were dialectical partners with neither having priority over the other. In changing the world, humans re-create themselves (what his mentor Heidegger termed ‘authentic existence’). Here Marcuse was a precursor of phenomenological writers such as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.

One Dimensional Man (1964) described how advanced technological society was able to contain the forces of revolution by co-opting the working class through consumerism, creating ‘false needs’, compounding alienation, and producing a system where people are enslaved but believe they have freedom (‘unreal freedom’). In Repressive Tolerance (1965), he argued that liberal democracy defined the parameters of political debate and so blocked any real criticism (although this could be argued to be an un falsifiable statement).

Marcuse acclaimed the New Left for its confrontational politics and its creation of a new sensibility. It would act as a catalyst both for working-class and Third World revolutionary struggles. He saw the events of 1968 as an instinctual act of liberation.

— Geraldine Lievesley

Marcuse, Herbert (1898-1979) Political and social theorist. Marcuse was born in Berlin, and became associated with the Frankfurt school. His early work was a synthesis of Marxism, phenomenology, and existentialism. In 1934 he fled Nazi Germany to America and began teaching at Columbia university, subsequently holding posts with the Office of Strategic Services and the Office of Intelligence Research. He held posts at Brandeis (1954) and at San Diego (1965). His first work in English, Reason and Revolution (1941), is an introduction to Hegel and Marx, while Eros and Civilization (1955) ropes Freud into the cause of sketching a non-repressive society. Marcuse's fame rests largely on his elevation to ‘Father of the New Left’ when his book One-Dimensional Man (1964) became a bible of radical student movements of the 1960s. Like other analysts of the Frankfurt school, and theorists such as Gramsci, Marcuse argued that the workers in modern society were stupefied by the products of their own labour; revolution, therefore, must come from those outside the system, such as students, intellectuals, and minorities.

Marcuse, Herbert (märkū'zə), 1898-1979, U.S. political philosopher, b. Berlin. He was educated at the Univ. of Freiburg and with Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer founded the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research. A special target of the Nazis because of his Jewish origins and Marxist politics, he emigrated (1934) to the United States and became a naturalized citizen in 1940. Marcuse served with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and later taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Brandeis before becoming (1965) professor of philosophy at the Univ. of California at San Diego. He is best known for his attempt to synthesize Marxian and Freudian theories into a comprehensive critique of modern industrial society. In One Dimensional Man (1964), his most popular book, he argued for a sexual basis to the social and political repression in contemporary America; the book made him a hero of New Left radicals and provided a rationale for the student revolts of the 1960s in the United States and Europe. His other works include Reason and Revolution (1941), Eros and Civilization (1955), An Essay on Liberation (1969), and Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972).

Bibliography

See studies by A. MacIntyre (1970), P. Mattick (1972), J. Woddis (1972), C. Fred Alford (1985), and P. Line (1985); R. Wolin, Heidegger's Children (2001).

1898-1979

Herbert Marcuse, an American philosopher of German origin, was born in Berlin in 1898 into an assimilated Jewish family and died in 1979 in Starnberg, Germany, where he had returned after World War II. He studied philosophy in Berlin and Fribourg, and his doctoral dissertation, Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity (1987), was sponsored by Martin Heidegger. He militated against social democracy, defended a critical Marxism, and participated, along with Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, in the creation of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Marcuse left Germany for the United States and taught at different universities: New York, Columbia, Harvard, Brandeis, and the University of California at San Diego.

He had a Marxist training and in 1958 published Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis. He also harbored a passionate yet critical interest in psychoanalysis. These two facets of Marcuse contributed to his writing, where one can discern individual libidinal structures and economic, political, and social realities characterized by domination and alienation continuously coming into conflict. His best-known works were widely read by students in the United States and Europe in the 1960s. In Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955) and One Dimensional Man (1964), he denounced "repressive sublimation" in consumer society, where society caters to the individual's drives only to better control the individual. Ever the rebel, Marcuse also published Reason and Revolution (1941), An Essay on Liberation (1968), and Counterrevolution and Revolt (1973).

Bibliography

Marcuse, Herbert. (1941). Reason and revolution: Hegel and the rise of social theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

——. (1958). Soviet Marxism: A critical analysis. New York: Columbia University Press.

——. (1955). Eros and civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon.

——. (1964). One dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. Boston: Beacon Press.

——. (1968). An essay on liberation. Boston: Beacon Press.

——. (1973). Counterrevolution and revolt. Boston: Beacon Press.

——. (1987). Hegel's ontology and the theory of historicity (Seyla Benhabib, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Nicolas, André. (1969). Marcuse, ou la quête d'un univers trans-prométhéen. Paris: Seghers.

Palmier, Jean Michel. (1969). Sur Marcuse. Paris: Union générale d'éditions. (Also published under the title Présentation d'Herbert Marcuse.)

—ROGER DADOUN

(1888-1979)

1955

Eros and Civilization. The sociologist and political philosopher attempts to relate sexual repression to political and social repression. Advocating more sexual freedom and openness, the book is considered one of the theoretical sources for the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Marcuse immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1934. He taught at Columbia, Harvard, Brandeis, and the University of California at San Diego.

1964

One-Dimensional Man. Marcuse provides an influential study of modern consumer culture and of "today's man who finds that even as his life fills with gadgetry and convenience, it is emptied of meaning and fulfillment."

Quotes:

"If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Establishment are shared by the underlying population."

"Freedom of enterprise was from the beginning not altogether a blessing. As the liberty to work or to starve, it spelled toil, insecurity, and fear for the vast majority of the population. If the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself on the market, as a free economic subject, the disappearance of this freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilization."

"The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment."

"Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to expressions of its own morality but to those of another."

"The web of domination has become the web of Reason itself, and this society is fatally entangled in it."

"Self-determination, the autonomy of the individual, asserts itself in the right to race his automobile, to handle his power tools, to buy a gun, to communicate to mass audiences his opinion, no matter how ignorant, how aggressive, it may be."

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