Abstract

This article seeks to clarify the potential that Herbert Marcuse's and Theodor W. Adorno's psychoanalytic accounts may have with respect to the philosophy of education today. Marcuse and Adorno both share the view that psychoanalytic theory enables a deeper understanding of the social and biological dynamics of consciousness. For both thinkers, psychoanalytic theory provides conceptual tools for thinking through contradictions between the needs of an individual and those of the governing entity. In fleshing this out, I first explore Marcuse's radical account of sublimation which seeks to demonstrate how the revision of instinctual energy makes it possible to establish a subjectivity which utilises the human potentiality to its fullest. I then turn to Adorno who emphasises the importance of understanding that exterior conditions transform our instinctual energies. After recapitulating Adorno's conception of natural, instinctual impulses and his use of psychoanalytic theory, I will explore the possibility of a critical rationality through a critique of rationality's current mode. From the perspective of Adorno's and Marcuse's theories, both rationality and sensuous desire play their respective roles in enabling critical rationality. In conclusion, the article reflects the different advantage points of Marcuse's and Adorno's accounts from the perspective of philosophy of education. Thus, education should provide individuals with the ability to recognise the subtle and invisible ways through which the calculating mode of rationality operates in late-capitalist society. Regarding education, Adorno's conception of non-identity could be developed in the direction of promoting ways of experiencing non-conformity within such a society.