Abstract

A severe critique of contemporary society as one in which there remains no significant class or group capable of radically opposing things as they are. Marcuse works on the assumption that advanced industrial society is indeed sick, much as some recent sociologists have depicted it to be. He sees evidence of alienation in political and cultural life, in the technical jargon of the bureaucracy, in the technological cult of "operationalism," and especially in contemporary analytic philosophy, which he sees as the triumph of "one-dimensional thought." His conclusion is not optimistic: at this juncture in history, he believes, the only possible task for "critical philosophy" is to be negative.--W. L. M.