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Name:
Herbert Marcuse
Dates:
Born: July, 19th 1898 in Berlin, Germany
Died: July 29th, 1979 in Starnberg, Germany
Ph.D. from the University of Freiburg: 1922
Joins the Frankfurt School: 1933
Flees Germany: 1933
Biography:
Herbert Marcuse was a German philosopher who was originally born in Berlin but he had
to flee his post teaching at the University of Freiburg due to Nazi persecution over
his Jewish origins and Marxist politics. He is most widely known because of his
efforts to combine the writings of both Marx and Freud in an attempt to create a novel
critique of modern industrial society.
Marcuse became a hero of radicals with the New Left after the publication of his book One Dimensional Man (1964), where argued that the social and political repression in contemporary society had a fundamentally sexual basis. He also argued that the corporate basis of contemporary American culture had a tendency to inhibit human freedom in ways which people were unable to see and, hence, unable to resist. One of the primary methods of accomplishing this, according to Marcuse, is by getting people to believe that the satisfaction of material desires is sufficient for leading a happy and productive life. This is what causes Americans to become one-dimensional, embracing a consumerist culture which lacks creativity and life.
His challenges of American culture were closely related to those made by other members of the Frankfurt School, but his were more practical and less theoretical - he was writing for the masses and the students, not simply the intellectuals of society. In various writings of his Marcuse also argued that some social ills were so deeply rooted that it would not be possible to overcome them through normal democratic means, thus giving legitimacy to more radical actions by reformers.
According to Marcuse, the violence necessary to overthrow the repressive system would be more noble and more moral than the violence used by that system to keep people passive and repressed. One facet of the overthrow of the current system would be the adoption of an official policy of intolerance of traditional and conservative ideas. Marcuse believed that a system of superficial tolerance of all ideas served to perpetuate the current system because the "true" analysis of the problems in American life were guaranteed to be lost in the turbulence of the market.
Major Works:
Eros and Civilization (1955)
Soviet Marxism (1958)
One Dimensional Man (1964)
"The Aesthetic Dimension" (1978)
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: none
Common Misspellings: none
Related Resources:
What are Political and Legal Philosophy
The Philosophy of Politics and the Philosophy of Law are often studied separately, but they are presented here jointly because they both come back to the same thing: the study of force. Politics is the study of political force in the general community, while jurisprudence is the study of how laws can and should be used to achieve political and social goals.What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?
