Herbert Marcuse

Agora

Herbert Marcuse

1898–1979

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Consumer society keeps people content and conformist, absorbing every form of protest – so real freedom requires refusing the whole system.

Placement

Socialism, Anarchism, Marxism & Critical Theory · Western Europe · Society & History, Politics & Law

One-Dimensional Man: consumer society absorbs all resistance.

Key ideas

One-dimensionality
Repressive tolerance
Great Refusal

Teachers: Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger

Students: Angela Davis

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Influence

Influenced by 4

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

influenced by
Marcuse interpreted Hegel’s ontology of life (Hegels Ontologie, 1932) and in Reason and Revolution (1941) defended Hegel’s dialectic as critical thought against positivism and fascist readings. H. Marcuse, Hegels Ontologie und die Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit (1932); Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941); SEP “Herbert Marcuse”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831
Karl Marx

influenced by
Marcuse reviewed the newly printed Paris Manuscripts in 1932, reading them as a philosophical foundation of historical materialism centred on labour and alienation. H. Marcuse, “Neue Quellen zur Grundlegung des Historischen Materialismus”, Die Gesellschaft 9 (1932); K. Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte (written 1844, printed 1932)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Sigmund Freud

influenced by
In Eros and Civilization (1955) Marcuse historicised Freud’s reality principle as the ‘performance principle’ of capitalist society and distinguished necessary from ‘surplus repression’. H. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955); SEP “Herbert Marcuse”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
Edmund Husserl studied with

studied with
In his second period in Freiburg (1928–32) Marcuse studied with Husserl as well as with Heidegger, though Heidegger was his main teacher; he had already taken his doctorate there in 1922, in German literature. SEP “Herbert Marcuse”; D. Kellner, Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism (1984)
Evidence: AI draft
Edmund Husserl › 1859–1938

Influenced 1

Angela Davis taught

taught ✓
Davis attended Marcuse’s lectures at Brandeis as an undergraduate (BA 1965) and, after her Frankfurt years, followed him to the University of California, San Diego, to work towards a doctorate under him (MA 1968). A. Davis, An Autobiography (1974)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Angela Davis › b. 1944

Criticism

Criticizes 2

Martin Heidegger studied with

studied with
Impressed by Being and Time, Marcuse returned to Freiburg in 1928 to study with Heidegger and wrote Hegels Ontologie und die Grundlegung einer Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit (1932) as a Habilitation thesis, which did not lead to a Habilitation; in 1933 he joined Horkheimer’s Institute. SEP “Herbert Marcuse”; D. Kellner, Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism (1984)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
criticised
Marcuse asked Heidegger in 1947 to disavow National Socialism, and later called the concreteness of Being and Time ‘to a great extent a phony, a false concreteness’ (1977). H. Marcuse to M. Heidegger, 28 Aug. 1947, and Heidegger’s reply, 20 Jan. 1948; F. Olafson, “Heidegger’s Politics: An Interview with Herbert Marcuse”, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 6 (1977)
Evidence: AI draft
Martin Heidegger › 1889–1976
Erich Fromm

criticised
In the epilogue to Eros and Civilization (1955) Marcuse attacked Fromm’s neo-Freudian revisionism for dropping drive theory and turning psychoanalysis into an idealist ethics of adjustment. H. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (1955), Epilogue “Critique of Neo-Freudian Revisionism”; Fromm’s reply and the ensuing exchange in Dissent (1955–56)
Evidence: AI draft
Erich Fromm › 1900–1980

Works

1955Eros and Civilization
A non-repressive civilization is conceivable.
1964One-Dimensional Man
False needs and total administration.

Position

Marcuse combined Marx and Freud to analyse advanced industrial society. In Eros and Civilization he argued that civilisation demands more repression than is necessary – a “surplus repression” serving domination – and that a non-repressive culture is conceivable. One-Dimensional Man described a society that integrates all opposition by satisfying “false needs” through consumption and administration, so that people no longer imagine alternatives. Even tolerance can become repressive when it neutralises critique. Hope lies in the “great refusal” of those outside the system. His books made him one of the most widely read authors of the 1968 movement.

Life & context

Marcuse, from a Berlin Jewish family, studied with Heidegger in Freiburg before joining the Institute for Social Research. He emigrated to the United States in 1934, worked for the US government during the war and later taught at Brandeis and the University of California in San Diego. In the 1960s he became a leading intellectual of the New Left and the student movement.