Product Description
El hombre unidimensional es un análisis de las modernas sociedades occidentales que. bajo un disfraz seudodemocrático. esconden una estructura totalitaria basada en la lucha de clases y la explotación del hombre por el hombre. La obra se basa en dos hipótesis aparentemente contradictorias: de un lado. Marcuse afirma que la sociedad industrial avanzada es capaz de reprimir todo cambio cualitativo; por otro lado. parece prevalecer la hipótesis que quiere que en esta sociedad existan fuerzas capaces deponer fin a la represión y de hacer explotar las mortales contradicciones que laten en su seno. La conclusión de Marcuse es de una lúcida desesperación: el sujeto revolucionario no puede estar constituido ni por el subproletariado urbano. ni por los intelectuales. ni por la unión de ambas fuerzas. consideradas hasta hoy como las más progresivas La solución. según el autor. es despertar y organizar la solidaridad en tanto que necesidad biológica para mantenerse unidos contra la brutalidad y la explotación inhumanas . ... Read more

Book Description
Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader is a collection of brand new papers by seventeen Marcuse scholars, which provides a comprehensive reassessment of the relevance of Marcuse's critical theory at the beginning of the 21st century. Although best known for his reputation in critical theory, Herbert Marcuse's work has had impact on areas as diverse as politics, technology, aesthetics, psychoanalysis and ecology. This collection addresses the contemporary relevance of Marcuse's work in this broad variety of fields and from an international perspective. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Essays for Marcuse's 100th Birthday
Interesting collection of essays.Begins with one by Angela Davis, and continues with writings by authors who have become familiar with Marcuse's work over the years.The third section is devoted to enviromental philosophy, and Marcuse's contributions to that movement.
The contributions are for the centenial of Marcuse's birth.Many examine particular aspects of his major works: "Eros and Civilization" and "One Dimensional Man."Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader ... Read more

Book Description
The Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) studied with Martin Heidegger at Freiburg University from 1928 to 1932 and completed a dissertation on Hegel's theory of historicity under Heidegger's supervision. During these years, Marcuse wrote a number of provocative philosophical essays experimenting with the possibilities of Heideggerian Marxism. For a time he believed that Heidegger's ideas could revitalize Marxism, providing a dimension of experiential concreteness that was sorely lacking in the German Idealist tradition. Ultimately, two events deterred Marcuse from completing this program: the 1932 publication of Marx's early economic and philosophical manuscripts, and Heidegger's conversion to Nazism a year later. Heideggerian Marxism offers rich and fascinating testimony concerning the first attempt to fuse Marxism and existentialism.These essays offer invaluable insight concerning Marcuse's early philosophical evolution. They document one of the century's most important Marxist philosophers attempting to respond to the "crisis of Marxism": the failure of the European revolution coupled with the growing repression in the USSR. In response, Marcuse contrived an imaginative and original theoretical synthesis: "existential Marxism."Richard Wolin is Distinguished Professor of History, Political Science, and Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of, among other works, Heidegger's Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse and The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Poststructuralism. John Abromeit is an assistant professor in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago. He is the coeditor, with W. Mark Cobb, of Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader. ... Read more

Book Description
By examining the aesthetic, social, and educational philosophy of Herbert Marcuse, the author documents and demonstrates the structure and movement of Marcuse's thought on art, alienation, and the humanities. Reitz's work stresses the centrality of Marcuse's argument that the arts and humanities may act as disalienating educational forces. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Overcoming alienation through Arts
Art, Alienation and the Humanities: A Critical Engagement with Herbert Marcuse
By Charles Reitz. SUNY 336 pp.

Alienation, reification, estrangement, disempowerment, and exploitation, are some of the concepts Charles Reitz addresses. Reitz presents an elaborate and lucid discussion of Marcuse's misplaced emphasis on aesthetic dimension as a purportedly disalienating dimension and as a means to overcoming the one dimensionality of existence. Reitz's discussion of Marcuse's aesthetic finds a parallel line of discussion regarding Marxian beliefs in the causes of alienation and the means of effective dealienation leading to the dissolution of Marcuse's. The philosophical discussion is complex and requires a good knowledge of the competing philosophical orientations such as those of Dilthey, Comte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schiller, Goethe, Nietzsche, Marx and Heidegger among others.

Reitz's unique contribution lies not only in presenting Marcuse either as a non-Marxist or even as an anti-Marxist, but in attempting to "recall" viable and promising "theory and conduct of education" embedded in Marcuse's critical theory and work even though he finds Marcuse's argument flawed with contradictions.

Marcuse's work in the United States introduced the American academics to the Frankfurt School's views of Marxism. Later Marcuse came to believe that both the Hegelian "dialectic of historical progress" and historical materialism found in classical Marxism (the inevitablity of the transition from capitalism to socialism) were not sufficiently convincing. Marcuse instead suggests the "aesthetic arguments" as a substitute for the Marxist structural and historical analysis of social change. That is, he opts for Dilthey's belief in"emotional" and "political" potential of humanities and intellectual history as opposed to Marx's historical materialism with labor as its foundation. To Marx, in a commodity driven market "art" finds its highest level of appreciation like any other commodity by the need for it and its price.
In his later years as contrasted with his middle period (1932-1970) and indeed throughout his intellectual life, Marcuse was in Reitz's estimation suffering from a crippling contradiction between Hegelian idealism and Marxian materialism. In Marcuse's estimation according to Reitz,knowledge and particularly educational knowledge is ontological and the word spirit occupies a central position in the pursuit of philosophical truth (ala Dilthey), replacing the core of Marxism -- Historical Materialism. Thus the selection of idealism and the rejection of materialism and the substitution of ontological aesthetic based on the classical German Idealism from Kant to Heidegger for the historical materialism (p.234).

The discussion in "The Future" section is very insightful. Reitz skillfully applies the core of the critical theory and specifically Marcuse's concept of "one dimensional man" to current realities of consumerism, alienation, reification and apathy. Globalization of production, grueling labor process, sold out politicians and politically, economically, and socially overpowering transnational corporations are reasons for Reitz's suggested course of ction.
On many issues regarding Marcuse's Marxism, anti-Marxism, idealism etc., Reitz is tormented between the pole of respect for an intellectual giant whose ideas appear to be timeless and the pole of distrust of a "third way" or approach to analyzing society that shakes the foundation of Marxism, historical materialism, by introducing the "libido" and the "erotic will" as meaningful substitutes categories.

Neither Marcuse believes nor Reitz is accusing him of arguing that aesthetics are free from political influence, and or neglecting the impact of commodification of sex, and the impact of abuses of the sensual and the sublime on the alienation process. Marcuse sees technical progress and the advancement of science as prerequisites for freedom, provided that their direction is altered and their goals are redefined free from the influence of alienating forces so they may become a vehicle of liberation -- "technology of liberation" -- an aesthetic morality which is vehemently opposed to the pollution of life by the "spirit of capitalism." The revolution demands a solid "real foundation" composed of the historical and the sensuous -- life instincts which must be rescued from crude materialistic reductionism. It is difficult to see these as anything but revolutionary and I am sure that Reitz agrees that it is all good materialism.
To Marcuse "The radical social content of the aesthetic needs becomes evident as the demand for their most elementary satisfaction is translated into group action on an enlarged scale...from...drive for better zoning regulations to...decommercialization of nature...control of the birth rate.....The quantity of such reforms would turn into the quality of radical change..." sufficiently so as to "weaken" the structural power which stands in opposition to them (An Essay On Liberation, p. 28). Here Marcuse is the Green of the late twentieth century, or is it the Greens including Reitz who reiterate Marcuse of yesteryear.

Marcuse however is walking a fine line between idealism of greater good for everyone and Marxism and its emphasis on structural causes of mass misery and alienation. Marcuse adds an interesting statement regarding the interplay of objective and subjective realms which are discussed in detail by Marx. To Marcuse "[T]he term `aesthetic,' in its dual connotation of `pertaining to the senses' and `pertaining to art,' may serve to designate the quality of the productive-creative process in an environment of freedom" (Marcuse p.24).To Marx, aesthetics and in particular art in an alienated (capitalistic) environment cannot function beyond the realm of consumption. In order for arts to be liberating and disalienating, the social environment in which art is relegated to mere objects of consumption must be transformed into a free society in which art becomes art in itself. But Reitz is certainly looking at broader issues of exploitation and reification disguised and sadly presented as individual freedom regardless of the means (escapism in the form of sex, violence, sports, and consumerism) by which the whole structure is reproduced and in the spirit of postmodernism the wholehearted acceptance of these as inevitable.

In the 1930s Aldous Huxley predicted the rise of sexual freedom, promiscuity, warfare, militarism and aggression accompanied by reduction in political and economic freedoms. Well aware of these similarities, Reitz presents the reader with hope and aspirations by increasing the level of anxiety as did Marcuse's lecture on the ills of capitalist societies back then.

Mehdi Shariati ... Read more

Product Description
The Critical Spirit is a collection of essays in honor of Herbert Marcuse, for many years professor of politics and philosophy at Brandeis University and often called "the foremost philosopher of the New Left". Contributors include E. H. Carr, Peter Gay, Leo Lowenthal, Hans Meyerhoff, Barrington Moore, Herbert Read, Kurt Wolff, Howard Zinn. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Modern Age, published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2005. The length of the article is 4434 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Marcuse factor.(GREAT TEACHERS IN OUR LIVES)(Herbert Marcuse)
Author: Paul Gottfried
Publication: Modern Age (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 47Issue: 2Page: 113(8)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more