Eros and Civilization

Introduction

Marcuse published the book in Boston in 1955, subtitled “A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud”. He accepts Freud’s claim that civilisation requires the repression of drives but distinguishes necessary repression from “surplus repression” imposed by domination, and the reality principle from its historical form, the “performance principle” of a society organised around alienated labour. Since technology could greatly reduce necessary labour, a non-repressive civilisation is conceivable; its mythical figures are Orpheus and Narcissus rather than Prometheus. An epilogue attacks the “revisionist” psychoanalysts around Erich Fromm, which led to a public dispute. In the 1960s the book became a key text of the student movement.

Connections

Responds to

• Civilization and Its Discontents1930 · Sigmund Freud

Criticized in

• The Will to Knowledge (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1)1976 · Michel Foucault

More works by Herbert Marcuse

• 1964One-Dimensional Man