In his most seminal book, Herbert Marcuse sharply objects to what he saw as pervasive one-dimensional thinking-the uncritical and conformist acceptance of existing structures, norms and behaviours. Originally published in 1964, One Dimensional Man quickly became one of the most important texts in the politically radical sixties. Marcuse's searing indictment of Western society remains as chillingly relevant today as it was at its first writing.

In this classic work, Herbert Marcuse takes as his starting point Freud's statement that civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of the human instincts, his reconstruction of the prehistory of mankind - to an interpretation of the basic trends of western civilization, stressing the philosophical and sociological implications.

An Essay on Liberation outlines the new possibilities for contemporary human liberation.

This classic book is Marcuse's masterful interpretation of Hegel's philosophy and the influence it has had on European political thought from the French Revolution to the present day. Marcuse brilliantly illuminates the implications of Hegel's ideas with later developments in European thought, particularily with Marxist theory.

It is of the very definition of any "classic" work that it not only introduce a new depth and direction of thought, but that its original insights endure. Such is the case with Herbert Marcuse's Reason and Revolution. When this study first appeared in 1940, it was acclaimed for its profound and undistorted reading of Hegel's social and political theory. As its many editions bear witness, especially this one hundredth anniversary edition commemorating the author's birth, the appreciation of Marcuse's work (...) has remained undiminished, and indeed it is today more relevant than ever before. (shrink)

Developing a concept briefly introduced in Counterrevolution and Revolt, Marcuse here addresses the shortcomings of a Marxist aesthetic theory and explores a dialectical aesthetic in which art functions as the conscience of society. Marcuse argues that art is the only form of expression that can take up where religion and philosophy fail and contends that aesthetic offers the last refuge for two-dimensional criticism in a one-dimensional society.

-- Douglas Kellner, University of Texas, Austin.

The foundation of historical materialism.--A study on authority.--Sartre's existentialism.--Karl Popper and the problem of historical laws.--Freedom and the historical imperative.

This collection assembles some of Herbert Marcuse’s most important work and presents for the first time his responses to and development of classic Marxist approaches to revolution and utopia, as well as his own theoretical and political perspectives. This sixth and final volume of Marcuse's collected papers shows Marcuse’s rejection of the prevailing twentieth-century Marxist theory and socialist practice - which he saw as inadequate for a thorough critique of Western and Soviet bureaucracy - and the development of his revolutionary (...) thought towards a critique of the consumer society. Marcuse's later philosophical perspectives on technology, ecology, and human emancipation sat at odds with many of the classic tenets of Marx’s materialist dialectic which placed the working class as the central agent of change in capitalist societies. As the material from this volume shows, Marcuse was not only a theorist of Marxist thought and practice in the twentieth century, but also proves to be an essential thinker for understanding the neoliberal phase of capitalism and resistance in the twenty-first century. A comprehensive introduction by Douglas Kellner and Clayton Pierce places Marcuse’s philosophy in the context of his engagement with the main currents of twentieth century philosophy while also providing important analyses of his anticipatory theorization of capitalist development through a neoliberal restructuring of society. The volume concludes with an afterword by Peter Marcuse. (shrink)

Acclaimed throughout the world as a philosopher of liberation and revolution, Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. His penetrating critiques of the ways modern technology produces forms of society and culture with oppressive modes of social control indicate his enduring significance in the contemporary moment. This collection of unpublished or uncollected essays, unfinished manuscripts, and correspondence between 1942 and 1951, provides Marcuse's exemplary attempts to link theory with practice, and develops ideas that can (...) be used to grasp and transform existing social reality. These papers vividly chronicle Marcuse's increasing, yet reluctant estrangement from Max Horkeimer, director of the Institute for Social Research and his years as an analyst with various U.S. government agencies. Marcuse's later attempts to link theory and practice in the 1960s and 1970s in regard to the New Left, National Liberation Movements and other new social movements were grounded in his work from the 1940s. As the 1940s witnessed the rise to global prominence of German fascism and its defeat in World War Two, and the emergence of the Cold War, Marcuse strived to preserve the radical vision of his youth during a difficult historical period while many turned toward more conservative positions. Precisely the sort of broad theoretical and political theorizing that Marcuse undertook througout his life is needed today to analyze the momentous changes that we are currently undergoing. Excerpt: Personal history is interwoven with intellectual and political events in these papers. We debated whether letters belonged here: whether some should be published at all. My father had a deep sense of personal privacy, both as a character trait and as a political expression of resistance to the commodification of the private. Yet the letters contain substantive discussions also. We could have edited out, expurgated some of the material. While not publishing every letter my father wrote, our selection was based on interest, and every letter that is included is included in full. That decision was in part painful for me personally. The juxtaposition of the letters to Horkeimer and the exchange with Heidegger highlights the point. --from the Foreword by Peter Marcuse. (shrink)

Academics from diverse disciplines are recognizing not only the procedural ethical issues involved in research, but also the complexity of everyday “micro” ethical issues that arise. While ethical guidelines are being developed for research in aboriginal populations and low-and-middle-income countries, multi-partnered research initiatives examining arts-based interventions to promote social change pose a unique set of ethical dilemmas not yet fully explored. Our research team, comprising health, education, and social scientists, critical theorists, artists and community-activists launched a five-year research partnership on (...) arts-for-social change. Funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council in Canada and based in six universities, including over 40 community-based collaborators, and informed by five main field projects, we set out to synthesize existing knowledge and lessons we learned. We summarized these learnings into 12 key points for reflection, grouped into three categories: community-university partnership concerns, dilemmas related to the arts, and team issues. In addition to addressing previous concerns outlined in the literature, we identified power dynamics hindering meaningful participation of community partners and university-based teams that need to be addressed within a reflective critical framework of ethical practice. We present how our team has been addressing these issues, as examples of how such concerns could be approached in community-university partnerships in arts for social change. (shrink)

This collection assembles significant, and in some cases unknown texts from the Herbert Marcuse archives in Frankfurt, including: ? critiques of positivism and ...

Dans les tentatives pour donner à la philosophie un fondement nouveau, le concept d’essence constitue le point central de la discussion, La phénoménologie de Husserl aussi bien que Feidétique de Scheler et de ses successeurs avait pour but de fonder, grâce à la doctrine de l’essence, une connaissance absolument certaine des vérités intemporelles. Cette prétention montre que la doctrine moderne de l’essence est la dernière étape de la pensée bourgeoise dont l’origine est la philosophie de Descartes. L’article se propose d’interpréter (...) les différentes conceptions de l’essence en tant que moments de l’évolution historique de cette pensée bourgeoise. La bourgeoisie dans sa période ascendante exigeait des vérités essentielles qu’elles fussent capables de se justifier devant la raison critique autonome de l’individu : au contraire la philosophie moderne fait de l’essence l’objet d’une intuition que la raison doit accepter telle quelle. Les tendances rationnelles de la doctrine de l’essence sont refoulées : la raison devient réceptrice, hétéronome. Cette démission de la raison critique reflète l’adaptation de la philosophie à l’idéologie antirationaliste des systèmes nouveaux d’autorité : dans la dernière phase de l’évolution, la doctrine de l’essence devient mythologie politique. Le positivisme représente l’opposition non dialectique à cette doctrine de l’essence : il veut entièrement chasser de la science le concept d’essence, mais du même coup il tombe dans le défaut de rabaisser tous les faits sur le même plan, sans établir entre eux de différences. Dans l’idée d’essence opposée au phénomène sont contenus des éléments positifs, critique de la réalité « mauvaise », processus de réalisation des possibilités aflxthentiques de l’homme et des choses. Ces éléments positifs, la doctrine dialectique de l’essence les conserve. — La deuxième partie du travail cherche à montrer la formation du concept d’essence dans la philosophie dialectique qui, grâce à ce concept, surmonte le relativisme sans retomber dans la métaphysique dogmatique. L’opposition de l’essence et du phénomène est conçue ici comme une relation historique, et dans la constitution de celle-ci les intérêts sociaux de la théorie pénètrent à titre d’élément constitutif. La praxis historique à laquelle la théorie est liée et qui doit supprimer (aufheben) l’opposition, rend les intérêts particuliers vraiment généraux et fonde un type nouveau de vérité universelle. Le concept d'essence qui est au centre de la doctrine dialectique et qui détermine tous les autres concepts est le concept de l’homme. Le souci d’atteindre l’homme véritable remplace le souci de connaissance absolument certaine qui caractérise la philosophie idéaliste. De même que les formes phénoménales de l’henime et des choses ont leur origine dans la structure sociale présente, ainsi cette structure dessine à l’avance l’image de l’essence et des possibilités humaines que l’homme doit comprendre comme des tâches historiques, dont la voie de réalisation est marquée par la réalité elle-même.During the last decades the concept of essence has been widely discussed in the various attempts to seek a new foundation for philosophy. Both the phenomenology of E. Husserl and the theory of essence of M. Scheler and his followers were devoted to discovering through their theories of reality the unconditioned and exact knowledge of eternal verities. This attempt characterizes modern theory of reality as the last stage of bourgeois thought which began with Descartes. — The article endeavors to interpret the various conceptions of essence as specific stages of the historical development of that thought. With the rise of modern society the demand was made that the essential verities justify themselves before the critical and autonomous reason of the individual, whereas contemporary theory regards them as objects of an intuition and believes that reason has to accept them in the way in which they manifest themselves. The critical and rational tendencies in the theory of reality are abandoned, reason becomes receptive and heteronomous. This abdication of autonomous critical reason mirrors the adjustment of philosophy to the anti-rational ideology of the new form of authoritarian state. In the last phase of development the theory of reality turns out to be political mythology. — Positivism represents the undialectical opposition to this theory of reality. It wishes to remove completely the concept of essence from science, but thereby arrives only at an indifferent levelling of all facts. The idea of reality as opposed to appearance contains the positive elements of a critique of reality and of the process of realization of the essential potentialities of man and things. They are preserved in the dialectical conception of reality. — The second part of the essay attempts to point out the function of the concept of reality in dialectical philosophy, with the help of which it overcomes relativism. The opposition between appearance and reality is here conceived as a historical relationship, in the determination of which enter as integral elements the social interests of the theory. In the course of the historical trend, with which the theory is bound up and which is supposed to abolish the opposition between appearance and reality, the particular interests become truly general, and a new kind of universally valid truth arises. Reality which stands at the center of the dialectical theory and determines all other concepts, refers primarily to the essence of man. Concern about concrete man is taking the place of concern about the unconditioned exact truth of idealist philosophy. In the same way as man’s (and thing’s) forms of appearance is grounded in the present social structure, likewise the idea of his essence and the process of its realization arise out of this structure, and its realization must be conceived as a historical task. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse war einer der bedeutendsten Philosophen und Sozialwissenschaftler des 20. Jahrhunderts. Die sozialphilosophischen, ästhetischen und psychologischen Auseinandersetzungen seiner Zeit wurden entscheidend durch ihn geprägt. Mehr noch: kaum ein Theoretiker hatte, bei aller kritischen Distanz, solch entscheidenden Einfluß auf die emanzipatorischen politischen Bewegungen diesseits und jenseits des Atlantiks wie er. Die Titel seiner Schriften waren Programm: "Der eindimensionale Mensch" entschleierte die selbstverschuldete Unmündigkeit der Konsumbürger; "Die Permanenz der Kunst" betonte die prinzipielle Unabgegoltenheit echter Kunstwerke; "Repressive Toleranz" zeigte, daß Toleranz nicht (...) als höchster Wert eines vernünftigen Gemeinwesens gelten darf, da sie totalitären Entwicklungen Vorschub leisten kann. Die Ausgabe im Überblick: Band 1: Der deutsche Künstlerroman. Frühe Aufsätze, 594 Seiten; Band 2: Hegels Ontologie und die Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit, 368 Seiten; Band 3: Aufsätze aus der Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 1934-1941, 320 Seiten; Band 4: Vernunft und Revolution. Hegel und die Entstehung der Gesellschaftstheorie, 399 Seiten; Band 5: Triebstruktur und Gesellschaft. Ein philosophischer Beitrag zu Sigmund Freud, 232 Seiten; Band 6: Die Gesellschaftslehre des sowjetischen Marxismus, 260 Seiten; Band 7: Der eindimensionale Mensch. Studien zur Ideologie der fortgeschrittenen Industriegesellschaft, 282 Seiten; Band 8: Aufsätze und Vorlesungen 1948-1969, 319 Seiten; Band 9: Konterrevolution und Revolte; Zeit-Messungen; Die Permanenz der Kunst, 241 Seiten. (shrink)

In dieser Arbeit, unter dem Einfluss eines Lehrers Martin Heidegger entstanden und 1932 erstmals veroffentlicht, unternimmt Marcuse den Versuch, die hegelsche Ontologie in ihrer ursprunglichen Orientierung am Seinsbegriffs des Lebens und seiner Geschichtlichkeit aufzuweisen. Mit der hegelschen Ontologie ist gemeint Hegels Ansatz des Sinns von Sein uberhaupt und die systematische Entfaltung und Auslegung dieses Seinssinns in den verschiedenen Weisen des Seins. Hegel zeigt, dass erst mit dem Sein des Lebens die Geschichte des Seienden so weit erfullt ist, dass das Seiende (...) als Seiendes in seiner Wahrheit wirklich ist. (shrink)

Em 1968, Herbert Marcuse proferiu um discurso ao Conservatório de Música da Nova Inglaterra. Trata-se de um texto do teórico crítico voltado exclusivamente para a música. No Discurso, Marcuse mobiliza autores como Adorno, Hegel e Schopenhauer, e também músicos como Bach, Mahler e Schoenberg, explicitando as relações entre a música e a realidade estabelecida. O resumo e as palavras-chave são de autoria do tradutor.

The foundation of historical materialism -- A study on authority -- Sartre's existentialism -- Karl Popper and the problem of historical laws -- Freedom and the historical imperative.

The New Left and the 1960s is the third volume of Herbert Marcuse's collected papers. In 1964, Marcuse published a major study of advanced industrial society, One Dimensional Man , which was an important influence on the young radicals who formed the New Left. Marcuse embodied many of the defining political impulses of the New Left in his thought and politics - hence a younger generation of political activists looked up to him for theoretical and political guidance. The material collected (...) in this volume provides a rich and deep grasp of the era and the role of Marcuse in the theoretical and political dramas of the day. This volume contains articles, letters, talks, and interviews including: "On the New Left," a transcription of the 1968 talk at the Guardian newspaper's twentieth anniversary; "Reflections on the French Revolution," which contains comments on the 1968 French student and worker uprising; "Liberation from the Affluent Society," which presents Marcuse's contribution to the 1967 Dialectics of Liberations conference; and "United States: Questions of Organization and the Revolutionary Subject," a conversation between Marcuse and the German writer Hans Magnus Enzenberger, published here in English for the first time. Edited by Douglas Kellner, this volume will be of interest to all those previously unfamiliar with Herbert Marcuse, generally acknowledged as a major figure in the intellectual and social mileux of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as to specialists, who will here have access to papers and articles collected in one volume for the first time. (shrink)

Introduction: What is the critical spirit?--Utopianism, ancient and modern, by M.I. Finley.--Primitive society in its many dimensions, by S. Diamond.--Manicheanism in the Enlightenment, by R.H. Popkin.--Schopenhauer today, by M. Horkheimer.--Beginning in Hegel and today, by K.H. Wolff.--The social history of ideas: Ernst Cassirer and after, by P. Gay.--Policies of violence, from Montesquieu to the Terrorist, by E.V. Walter.--Thirty-nine articles: toward a theory of social theory, by J.R. Seeley.--History as private enterprise, by H. Zinn.--From Socrates to Plato, by H. Meyerhoff.--Rational society (...) and irrational art, by H. Read.--The quest for the Grail; Wagner and Morris, by C.E. Schorske.--Valéry; Monsieur Teste, by L. Goldmann.--History and existentialism in Sartre, by L. Krieger.--German popular biographies; culture's bargain counter, by L. Lowenthal.--The Rechtsstaat as magic wall, by O. Kirchheimer. (shrink)

|347| Introduction À titre provisoire, commençons par déterminer l’objet de notre enquête, en le prenant tel qu’il nous est donné. Le matérialisme historique intervient dans le contexte gnoséologique du marxisme ; or ce dernier n’apparaît pas comme une théorie scientifique, comme un système de vérités dont le sens résiderait uniquement dans leur exactitude en tant que connaissances, mais comme une théorie de l’agir social, de l’acte historique. Le marxisme est la théorie de la révolution prol...

This note was written in the hope that it would make a small contribution to the revival, not of Hegel, but of a mental faculty which is in danger of being obliterated : the power of negative thinking. As Hegel defines it, “Thinking is, indeed, essentially the negation of that which is immediately before us.” What does he mean by “negation,” the central category of dialectic?