Customer Reviews (2)

H. Marcuse= A modern Day H.D. Thoreau
A RESPONSE TO "Liberation from the Affluent Society"

My first impression of Herbert Marcuse' speech was the title.Upon reading it I thought why would anyone want to be liberated from an affluent society?It seemed rather odd to me that anyone would want to be freed from prosperity.However, upon further and deeper reading I soon learned exactly what the author meant by his title.Marcuse sees western society as an enslaving system which crushes its members into a life of bondage towards gain.Marcuse sees a need to fight against the society and to not be a normal citizen while society dictates so much in its members' lives.I believe that although Marcuse has a place in awakening the reader against the drudgery of life, overall Marcuse is a man who is too revolutionary to ever be content in the modern state of mass society.
I realized how much in common Marcuse had with the great Nineteenth Century Transcendentalist Henry Thoreau.Both men are radicals of their time. On that basis both unhesitatingly confronted the contemporary world, however shocking or bizarre their claims might seem to the conformist consensus of the establishment.Just as Thoreau challenged the government's moral decision in the Mexican War and his opposition to social conformity due the drudgery of life, Marcuse also pitted himself against the War in Vietnam and his opposition to mass society due to his position of seeing the great limitations of capitalism.Both men have basically the same struggle and that struggle is against the enslavement of society.However, they differ in the sense that Thoreau does not advocate a new social order just a method of passive resistance, whereas Marcuse in another essay advocates a Utopian alternative to the restraints of capitalism.
The central question of Marcuse's thought appears clearly in this short speech.The question being from what standpoint can society be judged now that it has succeeded in feeding its members? Recognizing the arbitrariness of mere moral outrage, Marx measured capitalism by reference to an immanent criterion, the unsatisfied needs of the population. But that approach collapses as soon as capitalism proves itself capable of delivering the goods. Then the fulfilled needs of the individuals legitimate the established system. However, Marcuse' radicalism means opposition, not just to the failures and deficiencies of that system, but to its very successes. Marcuse sees that this affluent society has ruined its members by the very nature of gain in capitalism.In his discussion of the divisions of the hippies he commends the sector that goes beyond the norm to radically oppose capitalism for its inability to bring true fulfilled in life.
It is viewed that the conflict between rationalism and irrationalism was a major division in the main thinkers of the modern era.However, Marcuse wants to go beyond that to redefine rationalism. He believes that collectively in society we have become irrational-rationales who define rationalism only as efficiency.The same efficiency was used by the Nazis to slaughter millions of Jews, but would we define that as rational? I think not. Marcuse' only real solution to this irrationality is education.
I believe overall men such as Marcuse and Thoreau have an important place because in a sense these men are like mirrors.They help the reader to step back from the chaos of life rethink our motives as to why we behave the way we do and whether or not this behavior is for our benefit.

Everybody should read this.
Well, the book is about 30 years old but so far it is probably one of the best observations of the forces behind the scenes which are running the western culture. It does not offer any clear conclusion but it definitely raises the level of consciousness and what is also funnier it makes visible to many social mechanisms around in the present time. Definitely a good reading, written in a good normal language which is easy to understand... Enjoy. ... Read more

Book Description
The theorist of radical liberation analyzes what it is that causes oppression.

"Verso's beautifully designed Radical Thinkers series, which brings together seminal works by leading left-wing intellectuals, is a sophisticated blend of theory and thought. The authors whose writings are included in the series have worked tirelessly to expose the mechanisms by which culture and knowledge are manufactured, managed and controlled."—Ziauddin Sardar, New Statesman ... Read more

Book Description
Originally published in 1964, One-Dimensional Man quickly became one of the most important texts in the ensuing decade of radical political change. This second edition, newly introduced by Marcuse scholar Douglas Kellner, presents Marcuse's best-selling work to another generation of readers in the context of contemporary events."Marcuse shows himself to be one of the most radical and forceful thinkers of this time." -The Nation ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Very exciting.
Not disillusioned with the central theme of Marxism, Marcuse attempts to explain the arrested development of post-Marxist revolution, along with totalitarianism of both capitalist and communist systems, production for the sake of production, the sciences infiltrated by totalitarian ideology which leads to catastrophic consequences, the dialectic which portrays man's potential and man's defeat in the face of modern society and the systematic adjustment and tolerance to rebellion against existing society, like Che Guevara designer t-shirts.

Trenchant social critique
I first read this in college, and it is still one of my favorite books, full of perceptive, although not positive insights into western society

A surprisingly disappointing book
This is Marcuse's most famous work and one that was a major influence on and during the student revolts all over the European continent of 1968. Many of the catchphrases of that time, such as "repressive tolerance" and the like, are derived directly from Marcuse. He has since lost much of his popularity and audience, and in my view, quite deservedly so.

His main thesis is that modern man has become one-dimensional due to the totalitarian, all-encompassing exercise of power by the entrenched capitalist class. While this of itself is not such a bad idea, though certainly romanticizing and exaggerating reality, his approach to explaining and attacking it leaves very much to be desired. Marcuse overuses empty or unexplained phrases endlessly (like "cutting off perspectives through an overwhelming ossified concreteness of imagery" and similar things) while at the same time hardly making use of any prior thought or philosophy on the subject at all. This makes the impression of much ranting and little content. Even worse is his general laziness as a thinker - he never actually bothers to explain why such a full-spectrum dominance has occurred or how he wants to prove its existence, he merely asserts it and then goes on about the manifold bad effects it has.
Rather bizarre in this context, and perhaps even nihilistic, is his general dislike of what he perceives as "rationality". He only uses this word in negative contexts (particularly in the context of industrial expansion) and seems to consider it the primary form of "one-dimensional thinking", affected by the symbolism of capitalism. Now it is one thing to say that the fashionable concept of rationalism is false and ill-founded, but to reject relying on rational processes altogether as he seems to do is a bit too much.

To put it bluntly, everything Marcuse has written in this book has also been written in, say, Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle", and then in half as many words and quite more philosophically coherent. The early Marcuse (of Eros and Civilization) was much better; this book warrants no more interest than a purely antiquarian historical one.

Lacking any kind of perspective.
The idea that modern life is administered and that we could only begin to be happy if the government provided us with food, clothing and shelter is foolish naivety. In his pampered life of academia his absurd ramblings missed the mark in enumerable ways. Marcuse has a total lack of historical or psychological perspective - he understands nothing about mankind. The middle ages was far more administered than the late twentieth century. We currently have access to any and all information but in the Middle Ages the only input for the average person was the from the church.
His idea that life would be much improved if men did not have to prove themselves in the marketplace is really intellectual absurdity to the Nth degree. While he sucked his living off the very people that had proved themselves in the market place - he wrote this trash.

When We Dead Awake
By pure chance I found an old, tattered copy of this in a used book shop many years ago. I still recall the bizarre sensation of realizing that someone else, much older than me and way ahead of my own experiences, had expressed so accurately, so vividly, a view of society that I understood, and suspect is resonant among many, but perplexing to articulate in a way that isn't flippantly dismissed outright by those who gauge the intrinsic worth of human existence by a poisoned belief structure's merits.

Marcuse's book is a damning examination of the dynamics of 'democratic unfreedom;' technological servitude in the guise of liberty. I remember how the notion struck me, that if such societal/institutional analysis was on target in the early 1960s, just how indoctrinated and delusional must the situation be in our currently perceived time? Precisely.

Thankfully there are a few truly aware pockets of critical thought to be found, but by and large, the Few Big easily control the UNcritical masses through a constant barrage of institutional, cultural and media propaganda(entertainment equals indoctrination)and the strategically manufactured 'values' and exhaulted social practices of this UNreality are then impressed upon one person to the other as the herd 'polices' and indoctrinates via familiarity, example and ostrcism, making opposition to greed and superficiality appear absurd, futile.

Marcuse discusses artistic alienation, how the inherent properties of truth and protest found in artistic expression were defanged:
"The absorbent power of society depletes the artistic dimension by assimilating its antagonistic contents. In the realm of culture, the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference. Prior to the advent of this cultural reconciliation, literature and art were essentially alienation, sustaining and protecting the contradiction-the unhappy consciousness of the divided world, the defeated possibilities, the hopes unfulfilled, and the promises betrayed. They were a rational, cognitive force, revealing a dimension of man and nature which was repressed and repelled in reality. Their truth was in the illusion evoked, in the insistence on creating a world in which the terror of life was called up and suspended-mastered by recognition. This is the miracle of the chefd'oeuvre; it is the tragedy, sustained to the last, and the end of tragedy-its impossible solution. To live one's love and hatred, to live that which one *is* means defeat, resignation, and death. The crimes of society, the hell that man has made for man become the actual unconquerable cosmic forces."

It's fascinating when observing various societal/cultural trends, tendencies and practices, to go back and see how it corresponds with Marcuse's prophetic warning...and yes, that is meant quite literally: this book is no less prophetic than Orwell's 1984, and what's more, is far more chilling in its range and scope due to it's realistic exploration of cultural indoctrination, mass delusion and mass denial. In Orwell's novel, 1984, Winston Smith's world is controlled through ideology, yes, but the Big Stick of state violence looms above perpetually, ensuring the perpetuation of an automatized populace.

Marcuse's book, on the other hand, is an irrefutable postulation of the Big Lie, the comfortably horrific ease in which society has become fatally entangled within a stupor of brainwashed self deception, welcomed, enthusiastic exploitation, zombie consumerism run amok, repression and lunatic militarism.

He uses words in a manner of stark clarification, refusing to allow modern society to slip the proverbial noose, and find comfortable, convenient excuses, denials and justifications. As the "Newsweek" review quoted on the cover appropriately exclaims: "A bitter cry of social protest, fortified by uncommon erudition and rationality."

What honest chance for our civilization, for our species, remains in such endless cycles of lunacy? Your hair would stand on end if you knew how many times we've come seconds close to accidental nuclear holocaust. That is reality, and to passively ignore it is to do so at our own peril. I wonder just how few people can actually comprehend that?...what is says about us.

The corporations and the 'Few Big' dominate the globe, and next they want the full militaristic dominance of outer space with their astonishingly psychotic "Star Wars" missle defense plan, which naturally has NOTHING to do with defense and everything to do with parting ways with long standing non proliferation treaties, and of course, global domination. Billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars are pathologically spent on nuclear weapons every year...gee, with the Soviet Union gone, who or what do ya s'pose they're gearing up for when they've already amassed enough weapons to implement race suicide a hundred times over?

This is the crucial point Marcuse is making: the populace is strategically marginalized into apathy and indifference, out and away from the concerns of policy making decisions by vested interests who strive to make huge profits by 'dumbing down' standards of humanity, tricking the public into subsidizing high end military technology, and appealing to base attractions and distractions(greed, superficiality, apathy)in order to secure the compliance of a mass of stunningly indifferent, dumb people who are actively participating in their own degredation and ultimate demise, if only by their inability and/or unwillingness to acknowledge what should be flagrantly obvious. We're all guilty of this to some degree. People tend to talk about what matters to them most...or, what they've been conditioned and programmed to care about most, right? So when you *don't* hear many around you discussing these common sense issues, life and death issues, think of the potential consequences for our species. Encourage those around you to read Marcuse's book, it outlines a lot of basic groundwork for what we, if we're to be honest, face today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An addendum written in the midst of decline
Marcuse's short work Counterrevolution and Revolt, written in 1972, has four sections: "The Left Under the Counterrevolution," "Nature and Revolution," "Art and Revolution" and "Conclusion." One must imagine the political situation to which Marcuse addresses the work: the New Left, whose advances and promises were so recently great, has suffered a quick decline for two key reasons. The first was that the adaptability of the capitalist-consumer system to convert "the entire individual-body and mind-into an instrument, or even part of an instrument: active or passive, productive or receptive, in working time and free time," all for service of the system (14). Commodification had become universal; culture, even "high" culture was available in commodity form. The proletariat no longer exists as the negation of the capitalist system, but rather, as an absorbed part of it through commodity accumulation. Individual identity resides in commodity and one's job. Counter institutions, such as those the New Left desired, were difficult, if not impossible, to establish in a fashion that could gain popular support. In fact, the New Left itself had dissension and division that was the other key reason for its decline. Marcuse admonishes the New Left for its concretion of Marxian theory, he cites the difficulty of a critical language's ability to stay negative of that which it opposes without being absorbed by it. Drawing form the difficulties of the New Left, Marcuse proclaims "While it is true that people must liberate themselves from their servitude, it is also true that they must first free themselves from what has been made of them in the society in which they live. This primary liberation cannot be 'spontaneous' because such spontaneity would only express the values and goals derived from the established system. Self-liberation is self-education but as such it presupposes education by others" (46-47), revealing the "authoritarian tendencies among the New Left" (47). Much of Marcuse's arguments here draw from his seminal work One-Dimensional Man (1964, highly recommeded), which was considered as a type of bible for certain members of the New Left. Also of interest from Marcuse are his An Essay on Liberation (1969, like CRR, may be considered an addendum to One-Dimensional Man) and Negations (a collection of essays originally written in German 1934-38, trans. 1968). As for others, Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle (1967), Jean Baudrillard's Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976) and Simulacra and Simulation (1981), and much of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. Certainly, other Frankfurt School (Critical Theory) figures such as Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin (esp. his "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in Illuminations). ... Read more

Book Description
The Essential Marcuse provides an overview of Herbert Marcuse's political and philosophical writing over four decades, with excerpts from his major books as well as essays from various academic journals.Marcuse's writings are noteworthy for their uncompromising opposition to both capitalism and communism.His words are as relevant to today's society as they were at the time they were written. ... Read more

Book Description
"Dr. Marcuse's book deserves a warm welcome.It is the first coherent and sympathetic account in English for many years past of what a great and original thinker set out to do." -- The Times Literary Supplement

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.

We are now faced with a political future that initiated itself with the sudden collapse of Soviet Communism and the unexpected declaration of a "New World Order."In this rapidly changing sea of political realities, there is no better guide to where we have been and to what we might expect than Marcuse.As he well understood, turbulent and spectacular political events always ran within channels earlier set by political theory; he equally understood that it was Hegel's often unappreciated and often misunderstood theory that actually set the fundamental path toward modern political life.It is a fortunate combination to have a scholar of Marcuse's unquestioned brilliance and lucid honesty addressing the sources and consequences of Hegel's social theory. ... Read more

Book Description
A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud"A philosophical critique of psychoanalysis that takes psychoanalysis seriously but not as unchallengeable dogma. . . . The most significant general treatment of psychoanalytic theory since Freud himself ceased publication." -Clyde Kluckhohn, The New York Time ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

interesting parallels
I read this book perhaps 20 years ago then came across a copy again quite recently. For those interested in an anthropological approach to psychology-as-myth (the chapter on 'Origin of Repressive Civilization' is especially interesting not least because it is so very clearly wrong!) that more or less parallels a similar approach to myth and culture in the (somewhat contested) spirit of Frazer, De Santillana, Graves or even Weston this book will be of interest -- although I must say that anyone familiar with those authors will almost certainly be familiar with this one.

Interesting predecessor to Deleuze and Guattari
The most annoying feature of this book is the the continual use of the Freudian concepts of ego, Es, and so on... in the first part. To accept that, you really need to believe in the orthodox psychoanalytical theory, which maybe is a bit hard these days.
But Marcuse trascends the boundaries of psychoanalytical theory, and develops a range of arguments that stand on their own.
He thinks that society throughout History ha s been one huge repressive endeavour, accepted by the individuals because it allowed them to survive, even though it deprivedthem of the possibility of happiness.
But nowadays, we should have reached the stage whereeveryone's basic needs can be satisfied with a minimal amount of work; in fact, penury subsists only because those detaining power create it in order to justify their domination.
If everyone could free their libido, the Death instinct would disappear, because it exists only on the basis of the "Nirvana principle"(we desire destruction because death equalls with the quiet of complete satisfaction).
A porttrait of a society where everyone wouold be free to apply their libido to everyone else, and to engage in work in a way more akin to playing follows.
This soundsbit distressing, especially the concept of "jolly work", if I dare name it so. The most interesting parts are in fact the "asides", where Marcuse explains how we imagine "complete satisfaction" always to reside in a past which our memory conserves as a token both of the oppression of the individual and of the human species, how art is limited by form, the existence of which defines it as something incapable of influence on reality, the way that philosophy since Plato has cooperated with oncoming Christianity to define "Nirvana" as finding itself substantially "beyond" our world etc..
And of course, the parts where he speaks of libido applied to everyone and everything reccalls our friends Deleuze and Guatari's "desire" tracing its rhyzomatic paths.

Essential reading for all Freudo-skeptics
Marcuse's "Eros and Civilization" lays the foundations for a major critique of the fundamental tenets of Freud's theory of the mind. The German philosopher demonstrates how Freud transformed what was essentially a psychology of society into a sociology of the mind. ('Freud's "biologism" is social theory in a depth dimension"'). For Marcuse Freud's mistake was to see the repression of istincts not as a historically situated pheomenon due to particular (and therefore mutable) social conditions, but as an absolute given indispensable to the growth of civilization. Perhaps for reasons of expediency(Freud's ideas might have been still too influential in 1956 for an overt attack), Marcuse elaborates his counterargument that a non-repressive society IS possible within a Freudian framework. But the damage is done: once you read this book Freud's idea that repression is salutary and necessary for psychic development will look a lot more like what it was(late Victorian moralism) and much less like what it wasn't (science). For more along these lines try Rieff, Freud: the Mind and the Moralist.

Indispensable reading
Marcuse's attempt to combine Marx and Freud, and his vision of a non-repressive civilization (as well as his views on phantasies, art, myths and even perversions as anticipiations of such a society) is one of the masterpieces of utopian thought. After reading it your daydreams will never be the same again. It is not an easy text: the first part is certainly dry at times, and presupposes some familiarity with Freud (it is useful to read his Civilization and its discontents along with Marcuse's text).But the second part is truly of masterpiece. Anybody intesested in art, sexual liberation, ecology or psychoanalysis will find this essential reading. Far from being a rehash of Fromm, Marcuse accuses Fromm et. al. of removing the truly subversive elements from Freud. But read it, anf find out for yourself.

savage teenagers in the sixties
In my opinion this is a book written for teenagers. It seems that we are reading Erich Fromm. If you want to read Marcuse, try One Dimensional Man, that is one of his best books. It's impossible a comparison between this book and Christopher Lasch's "Culture of narcisism". To know thereal Frankfurt ideas try Adorno or even the founding father of that schoolWalter Benjamin. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Delving in the emancipatory aesthetic
Marcuse uses a critical approach, not to merely argue against a Marxist perspective on art, but rather to highlight the emancipatory potential in art. This is because its form is autonomous relative to a set of social relations, and insofar that `content becomes form' (p. 8), art is able to represent the prevailing and petrified un-freedom.

Against the perspective of a social construction of art, Marcuse capitalizes on the notion of "subjectivity" as the counter-force to ground his thesis. That is, `the radical qualities of art ... are grounded precisely in the dimensions where art transcends its social determination and emancipates itself from the given universe of discourse and behavior while preserving its overwhelming presence'. This is to say that art's emancipatory potential lies in its refusal to subjection, in its survival to preserve its subjectivity. Against maybe Adorno, for Marcuse this is the case because `art's separation from the process of material production' points to some unique qualities of art: its own language and dimension of affirmation and negation.

Despite the emancipatory potential, Marcuse is well aware that art cannot change the world but rather change consciousness, so as to hope for change the world: art is a means, and an effective one on condition that the tension between art and radical praxis is kept alive. This, however, should not be understood in a materialist sense, that the more emancipatory pieces of work are produced, the more likely to change the world is. Indeed, speaking of Goethe, Marcuse claims that `it is absurd to conclude that we need more Iphigenies' (p. 58) to express emancipatory humanism. Rather, this ideal transcends given praxis, along with social changes, hence a continuous need for such emancipatory art irrespective of materialist considerations.

If art for Marcuse fights reification, it also fights against the risk of "forgetting" by making the petrified world speak!This is to say, here is a worthy attempt to remind us of the importance of creativity in making a difference in our society!

Despite the rating, an important book
Give him a "5" for effort but a "0" for logic.Marcuse attempts the case for a sort of cultural Marxism - a society in which every single facet of human existence is politicized.I read this work (very short) some time ago and thought that few would take seriously these statements since they seem to contradict our basic beliefs about art, subjectivity and artistic freedom.Marcuse speaks with the conviction of the ideologue.His views of aesthetics mirror his views on the nature of mankind.

One must remember that Marcuse interprets other subjects in the same manner as he does aesthetics. For example, education is important only so far as it is political indoctrination. His views on art mirror those of Deconstructionism, the literary component of cultural Marxism.Both language and art are to be divorced from their source, interpreted by "experts" and judgedby the degree to which they affect political thought. And this is the rub - in a Marcusian world, the purpose of art is not beauty or enjoyment but instead is the shaping of a collective, radical consciousness.

He calls for "standards" on judging art but one quickly discerns that those standards are NOT based on skill. style or technique.In other words, art is not judged on artistic but ideological standards. Artistic judgement has always been (except in dictatorships) a subjective act but then Marcuse has never been shy in advocating an authoritarian society that would "force" people to be free (shades of Chomsky).This is an enlightening book considering its enormous influence in academia.

pithy and to the point
Herbert Marcuse, originalmember of the so-called 'Frankfurt School',here presents a critique of Marxist aesthetics in one of his last books. Although only 72 pages long, the book is powerful in its argument againstthe orthodox Marxist view that 'art represents its the interests and worldoutlook of particular social classes.'Marcuse argues for the importanceof art in itself, apart from its source, writing, 'the criteria for theprogressive character of art are given only in the work itself as a whole:in what it says and how it says it.'He truly believes that art's place inthe world is not to change the world directly but to influence how peopleperceive the world and thereby lead them to change it.

Marcuse alsotouches upon other aspects of aesthetics, like his belief in a constantstandard allowing us to distinguish between high and low art and thequestion of the 'end of art' as posited by Bertolt Brecht and others. Nevertheless his main argument is most powerful: he ends the book bypraising art's role in representing 'the ultimate goal of all revolutions:the freedom and happiness of the individual.'

Truly a valuable book forall students of art, aesthetics and philosophy.

read this book
wonderful stop read it immediately stop I'm sure it's good, though I haven't actually read it myself stop ... Read more

Book Description
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 new 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 an interviews including: "On the New Left," a transcription of the 1968 talk at The Guardian newpaper's 20th 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 "USA: Questions of Organization and the Revolutionary Subject", a conversation between Marcuse and the German writer Hans Magnus Enzenburger, 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 previously disparate papers. ... Read more

Book Description
Acclaimed throughout the world as a philosopher of liberation and revolution, Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential thinkers ofthe 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 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Relevant and interesting early work
Marcuse was retained by the United States Office of War Information and later the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor of the CIA) because of his insight into German society.
His insights are attractive to this nonsociologist. Although Lady Thatcher, who seems to be descending into a form of insanity, said recently "there is no such thing as society", ordinary working people, who cannot afford gated communities, must perforce live in society.


Numeric results, innocent of theory, are useless for insight and only theory can match the qualitative texture of daily life. This is perhaps why Adorno's American typists at the Princeton Radio Research project both understood his "complex" prose and were sympathetic to his conclusions, while his "educated" superiors thought him "elitist."


One of Marcuse's insights into Nazi society describes the ordinary person as informed by "matter of fact cynicism". Perhaps because of Marcuse's German background, he here fashions a surprising neologism, a Katzenjammer, a jamming-together of concepts useful precisely because it is striking. This neologistic fashioning of terms-of-art is a permission German gives the speaker which his withheld, superficially, by English.


The cynical are not usually thought of as matter-of-fact, and the matter-of-fact, not usually thought of as cynical. The two sets, while not considered disjoint, are not considered to largely intersect.

Nonetheless, Marcuse's insight captured something about German society during the war that many observers missed. The ordinary German mind was thought by Anglo-American commentators to share in the mysticism of Hitler.


But Marcuse saw that the ordinary German, although silenced, was quite cynical about the war and Hitlerdom. Much later, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's research has confirmed Marcuse's hypothesis, for in the latter's book HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS, Goldhagen finds that many Germans were, as matter-of-fact cynics, not willing to participate in the Holocaust but equally unwilling to make a protest. This combination may have resulted from what Marcuse described as the destruction of pre-war Wilhelmine patriarchy and the regression to the matter-of-fact cynicism which is the protective coloration of silenced women.

The execution of a Rosa Luxembourg had shown countless Germans the consequence of protest while not necessarily convincing them that their leaders were anything but fools and madmen. The patriarchal response, commencing with the German revolts to Napoleon's rule during its awakening in 1800, was to act on the revolutionary belief. The matter-of-fact cynical response was quietism.


The Nazis in their origin in reaction to the Left revolutions of 1918 had succeeded in "debunking" liberatory narratives and in making resistance seem foolish. Young Germans of the Weimar period would be psychically familiar to young Americans of today, in the naivete of believing oneself free of "illusions."

The destruction of German patriarchy also foreshadows the consequences of the destruction of patriarchy good and bad in American life, where Lost Boys, filled with fancies but empty of "illusions", curse women in darkened streets and bars reminiscent of Cabaret.


This is the most troubling aspect of Marcuse's work: the fact that modern Americans, at least prior to the watershed of Sept 11 2001, were in their high levels of cynicism, their growing inability to treat their psychological troubles with anything other than legal or illegal drugs, and their pseudo-sophisticated, "ironic" rejection of narrative grand and small, closer to Weimar and Hitler period Germans than their grandparents.


Marcuse's insights led him in later life to a more general critique of society as composed of "one-dimensional", disempowered atoms. Only by actively maintaining an alternative stance to generalized depression can one prevent cynical matter-of-factness from taking over one's life.

Marcuse's Genius
There is so much to be said about Herbert Marcuse that this short space will not suffice.

What can be said about this collection of essays is its outline of the modern age, relating as the title suggests:"Technology, war and fascism."

Often, we think of technology asbeing simply the increasing of our tools' efficacy, in all other waysbenign, that war is perpetrated by nations and leaders, and that fascism isa dead ideology based on hate, suspicion, and opposition to everthing inthe status quo.Marcuse helps us find an understanding of these elementsof the twentieth century, placing them in the context of worldcivilization, industrialization, political development, andcapitalism.

In relation to my personal collection, I do not have a bookmore relevent to understanding the world, than those which Marcusecontributed. ... Read more

Book Description

Martin Heidegger is perhaps the twentieth century's greatest philosopher, and his work stimulated much that is original and compelling in modern thought. A seductive classroom presence, he attracted Germany's brightest young intellects during the 1920s. Many were Jews, who ultimately would have to reconcile their philosophical and, often, personal commitments to Heidegger with his nefarious political views.

In 1933, Heidegger cast his lot with National Socialism. He squelched the careers of Jewish students and denounced fellow professors whom he considered insufficiently radical. For years, he signed letters and opened lectures with ''Heil Hitler!'' He paid dues to the Nazi party until the bitter end. Equally problematic for his former students were his sordid efforts to make existential thought serviceable to Nazi ends and his failure to ever renounce these actions.

This book explores how four of Heidegger's most influential Jewish students came to grips with his Nazi association and how it affected their thinking. Hannah Arendt, who was Heidegger's lover as well as his student, went on to become one of the century's greatest political thinkers. Karl Löwith returned to Germany in 1953 and quickly became one of its leading philosophers. Hans Jonas grew famous as Germany's premier philosopher of environmentalism. Herbert Marcuse gained celebrity as a Frankfurt School intellectual and mentor to the New Left.

Why did these brilliant minds fail to see what was in Heidegger's heart and Germany's future? How would they, after the war, reappraise Germany's intellectual traditions? Could they salvage aspects of Heidegger's thought? Would their philosophy reflect or completely reject their early studies? Could these Heideggerians forgive, or even try to understand, the betrayal of the man they so admired? Heidegger's Children locates these paradoxes in the wider cruel irony that European Jews experienced their greatest calamity immediately following their fullest assimilation. And it finds in their responses answers to questions about the nature of existential disillusionment and the juncture between politics and ideas.

Customer Reviews (10)

MR. WOLIN, PLEASE MAKE UP YOUR MIND!
The author of Heidegger's children can't make up his mind: are "Heidegger's Children" Jewish or not? First he calls them "non-Jewish Jews," but then they are "Jewish," then they are "assimilated Jews," etc. Assimilated Jews aren't Jewish? Mr. Wolin maintains that Hannah Arendt wasn't really Jewish because she supported a two-state solution in Palestine. Mr. Wolin also sensationalizes and exagerates Heidegger's involvement with National Socialism. In my opinion, Wolin's book is not fit to be called scholarship.

Shadenfruede
mr Wolin doesn't like Heidegger. Therefore, he feels compelled to attack Jews who like Heidegger. Derrida. Levinas. Arendt. In my opinion, Mr. Wolin is a reactionary, with a deep aversion to philosophers (Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas, Arendt) of far greater talent and intelligence.

The Second of Wolin's Books I've Read
This book ends by stating "Only an understanding of Heidegger's children that appreciates their relationship to the German catastrophe and the traumas it bred will prove capable of doing justice to their powerful and complex philosophical legacy."This sentence could as easily have begun the book, for it effectively introduces what Wolin set out to do:to present the intellectual and historical roots of Heidegger's "children" (Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas, Herbert Marcuse).

Whether he succeeds in this depends upon how one understands the lineage of intellectual development, and how to account for any thinking that appears new.Wolin is excellent at providing parallel and complementary ideas from the milieu in which each of the "children" lived and worked.He has a gifted eye for similar and potentially influential observations and arguments; whether that means he has explained the finished product represented by each of the title subjects' works, is a distinct question.

I'm glad to have read Wolin--it was time worth spending.There were numerous proofreading errors ('it' instead of 'if', e.g.) that are unsettling in a mode of writing that heavily depends upon precision about often complex distinctions, but the gist of his writing is never in doubt.My understanding of Heidegger's philosophy and specifically of his relationship to national socialism, has definitely been enhanced.

It is Wolin's core use of what I call "contagion theory," that gives me greatest pause about both his analysis in this volume and the overall utility of his work.I found myself mentally summoning a voice from America's Fifties, asking "Have you ever been, or are you now..." in considering just how I should frame and weigh the by-now predictable Wolin approach in addressing thinkers of whom he disapproves.

For disapproval it is, far more than mere disagreement.Give the man his due:he's thoughtful and obviously bright.Whether this means his "contagion" analysis is substantively or even fatally flawed, is for me an open question...as is whether it would be time well spent to read yet another of his volumes.

An acceptable inquiry into Heidegger's legacy
Richard Wolin's "Heidegger's Children" is an overview of Heidegger's pupils, Heidegger's effect on them philosophically and the position of Heidegger's political choices in this relation. Judging by the tone and a general lack of depth, the book is mostly intended for people of intellectual caliber but not very well-versed in the subject, which makes it excellent for academics who know nothing about Heidegger, for example. Of course this will not satisfy any real Heidegger scholar, but contrary to other reviewers, I don't think that's necessarily a problem.

Wolin's rapid overview of the philosophies of Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas and Herbert Marcuse is generally good, and critical where deserved. He never really goes into the issues with their works themselves, but stays on the subject of the connection between their thought and Heidegger, often mainly relying on biographical analysis. Wolin's overall tone in reflecting on Heidegger and his pupils is that of the 'left-liberal' (continentally speaking) wondering what could have gone wrong, which is a bit annoying at times, but should not bother the reader too much.

On the whole, the book succeeds well for its purpose, but is a little superficial. One also would have wished that the two chapters on Heidegger himself had been in the front of the book instead of the back, since now one is basically 'reading backwards' into what Heidegger thought, so to speak. The conclusion is also rather stronger in criticism than the book itself allows. Therefore, I would recommend it mostly for intellectuals who want a basic overview of four of Heidegger's main pupils, but not for those knowledgeable about Heidegger or interested in an in-depth analysis of his work.

Wherefore loyalty?
The controversy over Heidegger is likely to continue into future generations.One of the great intellectuals of the twentieth century, he blotted his copybook (so to speak) by becoming one of the leading intellectuals of the National-Socialist movement in Germany in the 1930s, changing from a professor who attracted the best and brightest of students from all over Europe to one of the more rigid and dogmatic defenders of Nazi ideals, even at the expense of colleagues, students and friends.Even after the destruction of Germany, Heidegger remained unrepentent about his history and views.

This book, while a stand-alone text, represents the conclusion of a multi-volume task to examine Heidegger's work and intellectual legacy.The first two texts, 'The Politics of Being' and 'The Heidegger Controversy', represented an attempt to look both the politics and the philosophy of Heidegger -- the latter book having created a bit of a fire-storm due to the inclusion of an article by Derrida, who objected to the inclusion.

One of the more bizarre twists in the tale of Heidegger, however, was in the continuing intellectual development of his legacy among his Jewish students.Many of the top students in Heidegger's following in the 1920s and early 1930s were Jewish, and they would ultimately have to reconcile their associations and attachments to Heidegger (the person and the philosophical ideas) in response or reaction to his actions.Richard Wolin's text looks specifically at four key figures:Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas and Herbert Marcuse.

All of these four thinkers, acclaimed in their own rights, considered themselves more assimilated Germans than Jews; however, this was not the thinking of the powers-that-were in the 1930s/40s Germany.Each would have to, in the course of careers including academia and writing, have to reconcile to the past idolisation of Heidegger.Germany was, after all, the centre of culture, a nation of writers and thinkers, all to go horribly mad.Wolin's introductory chapter sets a context -- the real problem for Heidegger's students was to determine whether or not there was something integral, something necessary in the connection between the political totalitarian and vicious National-Socialism and Heidegger's existentialist ideas.Wolin gives a brief overview of the development of philosophy to existentialism.In the second chapter, Wolin gives a brief history of German-Jewish relationships, and looks to the points of divergence that culminated in holocaust.

Wolin devotes a chapter to each of the key 'children'.Hannah Arendt was not only Heidegger's student, but also carried on an affair with him, making Heidegger's betrayal personal as well as political.Arendt's problem was not just a 'Heidegger problem', but also a 'Jewish problem', in the sense of her writing allowing that the line between victim and villain was not as distinct as might be believed.Karl Lowith is less well known outside the German speaking world, but his work in philosophy has made him a significant figure, particularly in examining the history of philosophical development -- this development is very much in line with much of Heidegger's methodology, despite the obvious problem that such development leads to a Heidegger.Hans Jonas did confront Heidegger's past openly and publically, in lecture format no less, causing a shift from theological Heideggerian developments such that the trend fell quickly from vogue.Herbert Marcuse is perhaps the most interesting development among Heidegger's children, having been more of an interested pupil rather than proto-disciple; Marcuse combined Heideggerian influences into a general Marxist framework.

In the final chapters, Wolin looks at the overall synthesis and development of these ideas, the post-war German and European intellectual experience, and the problems and strengths that continue from Heidegger's primary work, 'Being and Time".In the conclusion, Wolin states that while it is hard to find better histories of philosophy than those produced by Heidegger and his students, they make the mistakes of confusing philosophy and history, and this can also explain part of Heidegger's general political trouble.

There are a few issues -- Wolin is occasionally choppy, and sometimes repetitious needlessly.Also, Wolin's lack of inclusion of a few key figures (Strauss comes to mind here) leaves something to be desired.However, the construction with the four figures here is well-done and thorough.This is a fascinating text, highlighting a lesser-known but strangely pervasive strand in intellectual history, and helps to highlight difficulties and opportunities in the continuing development out of the work of Heidegger. ... Read more