Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
Author of One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
About the Author
Image credit: From Owen Barfield Website
Works by Herbert Marcuse
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964) 2,503 copies, 23 reviews
The Essential Marcuse: Selected Writings of Philosopher and Social Critic Herbert Marcuse (2007) 70 copies, 1 review
Technology, War and Fascism: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Volume 1 (Herbert Marcuse: Collected Papers) (1998) 41 copies
The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Volume 3 (Herbert Marcuse: Collected Papers) (2004) 20 copies
Art and Liberation: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Volume 4 (Herbert Marcuse: Collected Papers) (2006) 17 copies
Marxism, Revolution and Utopia: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Volume 6 (Herbert Marcuse: Collected Papers) (2014) 11 copies
Materialismo histórico e existência 5 copies
Per una nova definició de la cultura 5 copies
Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Emancipation: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Volume 5 (Herbert Marcuse: Collected Papers) (2011) 5 copies
Kapitalismus und Opposition : Vorlesungen zum eindimensionalen Menschen : Paris, Vincennes 1974 (2015) 4 copies
Marx vivo: la presenza di Karl Marx nel pensiero contemporaneo (1969) — Contributor — 4 copies, 1 review
A la busqueda del sentido (Revolucion o reforma? / La anoranza de lo completamente otro / La funcion de la teologia en la sociedad) (1976) 4 copies
Die Permanenz der Kunst: Wider e. bestimmte marxist. Asthetik : e. Essay (Reihe Hanser ; 206) (German Edition) (1977) 3 copies
Schriften, 9 Bde. Kt, Bd.9, Konterrevolution und Revolte, Zeit-Messungen, Die Permanenz der Kunst (1987) 3 copies
Görünmeyen Diktatör 3 copies
Socialist Humanism? 2 copies
Scritti e interventi. Oltre l'uomo a una dimensione. Movimenti e controrivoluzione preventiva (Vol. 1) (2005) 2 copies
Right Turn: William Bradford Reynolds, the Reagan Administration, and Black Civil Rights (2018) 2 copies
Filosofia i política 2 copies
Marcuse 2 copies
NJERIU NJËDIMENSIONAL 1 copy
La teoría crítica en la era del nacionalsocialismo: Ensayos (1934-1941) (Estructuras y procesos. Filosofía) (2025) 1 copy
Protest demonstration revolt 1 copy
Eros si civilizatie 1 copy
FREUD E A PSICANÁLISE 1 copy
Kritische Psychologie 1 copy
ENSAYO SOBRE LA LIBERACION 1 copy
LA SOCIEDAD CARNÍVORA 1 copy
Marxismo y religión 1 copy
LA ESCUELA DE FRANKFURT 1 copy
Gespräch ohne Schopenhauer 1 copy
The Obsolescence of Marxism 1 copy
A Note on Dialectic 1 copy
Progresso social e liberdade 1 copy
On Science and Phenomenology 1 copy
Marcuse [Opere di] 1 copy
La protesta juvenil 1 copy
EROSI DHE QYTETËRIMI 1 copy
Associated Works
Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator (1949) — Preface, some editions — 77 copies
The democratic and the authoritarian state;: Essays in political and legal theory (1964) — Preface, some editions — 51 copies
"L'Homme unidimensionnel", Marcuse: Analyse critique (Profil d'une oeuvre ; 211) (French Edition) (1975) — Contributor — 2 copies
Dialettica della famiglia. Genesi, struttura e dinamica di un'istituzione repressiva (1974) — Author, some editions — 1 copy, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Marcuse, Herbert
- Legal name
- Marcuse, Herbert Hermann
- Birthdate
- 1898-07-19
- Date of death
- 1979-07-29
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Freiburg (Ph.D|1922)
- Occupations
- writer
social theorist
philosopher
political activist
sociologist
lecturer (show all 7)
professor - Organizations
- Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt
Office of Strategic Services
Office of War Information
Brandeis University
University of California, San Diego
American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division / President, 1968-1969) - Relationships
- Marcuse, Irene (granddaughter)
Marcuse, Harold (grandson)
Lowenthal, Leo (collaborator)
Moore, Barrington (friend)
Marcuse, Peter (son) - Short biography
- Herbert Marcuse was born and raised in a German Jewish family in Berlin. He was drafted into the German Army in World War I, but served only in a supportive job. In 1919, he participated in the failed socialist uprising of the Spartacists. He earned a Ph.D. in 1922 from the University of Freiburg and then moved back to Berlin, where he worked in publishing. In 1924, he married Sophie Wertheim, a mathematician. With his academic career blocked by the rise of the Nazi party, Marcuse joined the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurth in 1933 and was considered one of the most promising political theorists of his generation. Marcuse had to flee Germany and in 1934 he emigrated to the USA. Although he never returned to Germany to live, he remained one of the major theorists associated with the Frankfurt School. During World War II, Marcuse first worked for the U.S. Office of War Information on anti-Nazi propaganda projects and then for the Office of Strategic Services (which later became the CIA). After the war, Marcuse was employed by the U.S. State Department as head of the Central European section, retiring in 1951. In 1952 he began a teaching career as a political theorist, first at Columbia University, then at Harvard University, Brandeis University and the University of California, San Diego. He married two more times after the death of his first wife. Marcuse devoted his life to teaching, writing and giving lectures around the world.
- Cause of death
- stroke
- Nationality
- Germany (birth)
USA (naturalized 1940) - Birthplace
- Berlin, Germany
- Places of residence
- Berlin, Germany
San Diego, California, USA - Place of death
- Starnberg, Bavaria, Germany
- Burial location
- Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, Berlin, Germany
- Map Location
- Germany
Members
Reviews
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, 2nd Edition by Herbert Marcuse
One-Dimensional Man is one of those unique books who grow into their predictions.
Marcuse examined the popular culture and technological achievements of his time and correctly saw their underlying logic -- that of the 'rational', 'scientific' way of managing society, which was not solely a tool of the Western elite but had also been adopted by the Soviet Bloc.
This way of management, no less totalitarian than Mussolini's Italy or Nazi Germany uses the manipulation of language, a cowed, self show more abasing intelligentsia and complete administration of society to maintain its indefinite dominance and nip any attempt at autonomy in the bud. The products we buy, the television (and now internet) we view and the language we use all imprison our minds in a way more complete than any fanatic or fascist could imagine. One can indeed trap more flies with honey than vinegar.
Fifty years later, the fantastic success of technology at producing material goods and at achieving mass communication has gone on unabated, and we are still buying into the insane, dichotomous logic of perpetual war -- first with the Soviet Union, now with the more nebulous enemy of 'terror' -- of the need for more and more consumption of limited resources, of less and less real freedom. Incessant attacks on Imagination and the humanities for not being 'realistic' or 'rational' continue, the biosphere is in as dire straits as ever it was... and for what?
Today it is difficult to read this book as anything but a prescient jeremiad, albeit with more hope than it ought to have. show less
Marcuse examined the popular culture and technological achievements of his time and correctly saw their underlying logic -- that of the 'rational', 'scientific' way of managing society, which was not solely a tool of the Western elite but had also been adopted by the Soviet Bloc.
This way of management, no less totalitarian than Mussolini's Italy or Nazi Germany uses the manipulation of language, a cowed, self show more abasing intelligentsia and complete administration of society to maintain its indefinite dominance and nip any attempt at autonomy in the bud. The products we buy, the television (and now internet) we view and the language we use all imprison our minds in a way more complete than any fanatic or fascist could imagine. One can indeed trap more flies with honey than vinegar.
Fifty years later, the fantastic success of technology at producing material goods and at achieving mass communication has gone on unabated, and we are still buying into the insane, dichotomous logic of perpetual war -- first with the Soviet Union, now with the more nebulous enemy of 'terror' -- of the need for more and more consumption of limited resources, of less and less real freedom. Incessant attacks on Imagination and the humanities for not being 'realistic' or 'rational' continue, the biosphere is in as dire straits as ever it was... and for what?
Today it is difficult to read this book as anything but a prescient jeremiad, albeit with more hope than it ought to have. show less
This slender mid-1960s volume assembles essays from a trio of leftist Harvard academics, addressing shortcomings in the vernacular political understanding of tolerance for modern American society. The three pieces are arranged in ascending authorial age, as well as anger. As the authors remark in their foreword, "The tone of indignation rises sharply from essay to essay" (vi).
The junior contributor (and now only surviving one) was Robert Paul Wolff, an expert on Kant. In his essay "Beyond show more Tolerance," he discusses the different ways that tolerance operates in the pluralist industrialized world of the twentieth century, as contrasted with the ideas and ideals of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century individualist liberalism. He allows that pluralism does go some ways to accommodate community concerns, but concludes that liberal tolerance fails to support needed reforms in a pluralist setting. He also observes and explains the peculiar antagonism between pluralism and socialism (50-1), showing how--in 1965, as more than half a century later--the ingrained pluralism of the Democratic Party is the really motivated and effective opposition to any possible socialist Left in the US. Ultimately, Wolff argues for the obsolescence of pluralism on just these grounds.
The second essay is by sociologist Barrington Moore, Jr. For his purpose of addressing "Tolerance and the Scientific Outlook," he characterizes the "scientific" very broadly as the "secular and rational," offering this useful touchstone: "For the essence of science, I would suggest, is simply the refusal to believe on the basis of hope" (55). While acknowledging the difficulty of making rational determinations regarding political change, he also emphasizes its necessity on the part of those intellectuals whose role is to criticize both the oppressive status quo and poorly-conceived brutal attacks on it.
Herbert Marcuse is best known as a member of the Frankfurt School and serves as a bogeyman in today's right-wing scaremongering about "cultural Marxism." His "Repressive Tolerance" in this volume is in fact a frequently-referenced document in such discourse. On its own, and in combination with the other two essays of the book, I found it to be reasonable and still relevant. Marcuse points out that while a tolerant society is an unimpeachable liberal ideal, the practice of indiscriminate tolerance in an existing oppressive society redounds to the advantage of the oppressors and the perpetuation of oppression.
"Tolerance toward that which is radically evil now appears as good, because it serves the cohesion of the whole on the road to affluence or more affluence. The toleration of the systemic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda, the release of destructiveness in aggressive driving, the recruitment for and training of special forces, the impotent and benevolent tolerance toward outright deception in merchandising, waste, and planned obsolescence are not distortions or aberrations, they are the essence of a system which fosters tolerance as a means for perpetuating the struggle for existence and suppressing the alternatives." (83)
So much has that system advanced in the last half-century, that we can easily see the intensified versions for each of Marcuse's examples. Publicity and propaganda are now personally tailored to each brainwashed smartphone user. Gun "rights" and ammosexual cultural politics foster homicide rates challenging for automobiles to compete with. Mercenary soldiers employed by the US outnumber enlisted personnel in deployments to combat zones, while "volunteers" continue to be damaged and destroyed by "forever wars." And climate catastrophe is a collateral benefit of a petrochemical-driven disposable consumer society. (It perpetuates struggle and suppresses alternatives.)
The perceived currency of Marcuse's essay likely stems from its closing passage, with its clear relevance to the Black Lives Matter movement's protests against police violence. Again, I see nothing to argue with here. In fact, I find it refreshing to see my own view on the question set forth so succinctly. Here is the passage in question:
"Law and order are everywhere and always the law and order which protect the established hierarchy; it is nonsensical to invoke the absolute authority of this law and this order against those who suffer from it and struggle against it--not for personal advantages and revenge, but for their share of humanity. There is no other judge over them than the constituted authorities, the police, and their own conscience. If they use violence, they do not start a new chain of violence but try to break an established one. Since they will be punished, they know the risk, and when they are willing to take it, no third person, and least of all the educator and intellectual, has the right to preach them abstention." (116-7)
My 1969 copy of the book includes a "Postscript 1968" for Marcuse's essay. In it, he returns to his earlier provocation in suggesting "the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction" (119). He admits that to implement such a proposal would apparently require some sort of elite dictatorship to judge between progressive and regressive agendas, extending tolerance only to the former. But he concludes, "the alternative to the established semi-democratic process is not a dictatorship or elite, no matter how intelligent, but the struggle for a real democracy" (122). Still, a necessary ingredient of that struggle is the disavowal of "the pernicious ideology that tolerance is already institutionalized in this society" (123). Fair enough, but it's also easy to see how advocates of regressive politics would seize on the somewhat confused rhetoric Marcuse constructs around this point in the original essay as an opportunity to indict him. show less
The junior contributor (and now only surviving one) was Robert Paul Wolff, an expert on Kant. In his essay "Beyond show more Tolerance," he discusses the different ways that tolerance operates in the pluralist industrialized world of the twentieth century, as contrasted with the ideas and ideals of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century individualist liberalism. He allows that pluralism does go some ways to accommodate community concerns, but concludes that liberal tolerance fails to support needed reforms in a pluralist setting. He also observes and explains the peculiar antagonism between pluralism and socialism (50-1), showing how--in 1965, as more than half a century later--the ingrained pluralism of the Democratic Party is the really motivated and effective opposition to any possible socialist Left in the US. Ultimately, Wolff argues for the obsolescence of pluralism on just these grounds.
The second essay is by sociologist Barrington Moore, Jr. For his purpose of addressing "Tolerance and the Scientific Outlook," he characterizes the "scientific" very broadly as the "secular and rational," offering this useful touchstone: "For the essence of science, I would suggest, is simply the refusal to believe on the basis of hope" (55). While acknowledging the difficulty of making rational determinations regarding political change, he also emphasizes its necessity on the part of those intellectuals whose role is to criticize both the oppressive status quo and poorly-conceived brutal attacks on it.
Herbert Marcuse is best known as a member of the Frankfurt School and serves as a bogeyman in today's right-wing scaremongering about "cultural Marxism." His "Repressive Tolerance" in this volume is in fact a frequently-referenced document in such discourse. On its own, and in combination with the other two essays of the book, I found it to be reasonable and still relevant. Marcuse points out that while a tolerant society is an unimpeachable liberal ideal, the practice of indiscriminate tolerance in an existing oppressive society redounds to the advantage of the oppressors and the perpetuation of oppression.
"Tolerance toward that which is radically evil now appears as good, because it serves the cohesion of the whole on the road to affluence or more affluence. The toleration of the systemic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda, the release of destructiveness in aggressive driving, the recruitment for and training of special forces, the impotent and benevolent tolerance toward outright deception in merchandising, waste, and planned obsolescence are not distortions or aberrations, they are the essence of a system which fosters tolerance as a means for perpetuating the struggle for existence and suppressing the alternatives." (83)
So much has that system advanced in the last half-century, that we can easily see the intensified versions for each of Marcuse's examples. Publicity and propaganda are now personally tailored to each brainwashed smartphone user. Gun "rights" and ammosexual cultural politics foster homicide rates challenging for automobiles to compete with. Mercenary soldiers employed by the US outnumber enlisted personnel in deployments to combat zones, while "volunteers" continue to be damaged and destroyed by "forever wars." And climate catastrophe is a collateral benefit of a petrochemical-driven disposable consumer society. (It perpetuates struggle and suppresses alternatives.)
The perceived currency of Marcuse's essay likely stems from its closing passage, with its clear relevance to the Black Lives Matter movement's protests against police violence. Again, I see nothing to argue with here. In fact, I find it refreshing to see my own view on the question set forth so succinctly. Here is the passage in question:
"Law and order are everywhere and always the law and order which protect the established hierarchy; it is nonsensical to invoke the absolute authority of this law and this order against those who suffer from it and struggle against it--not for personal advantages and revenge, but for their share of humanity. There is no other judge over them than the constituted authorities, the police, and their own conscience. If they use violence, they do not start a new chain of violence but try to break an established one. Since they will be punished, they know the risk, and when they are willing to take it, no third person, and least of all the educator and intellectual, has the right to preach them abstention." (116-7)
My 1969 copy of the book includes a "Postscript 1968" for Marcuse's essay. In it, he returns to his earlier provocation in suggesting "the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction" (119). He admits that to implement such a proposal would apparently require some sort of elite dictatorship to judge between progressive and regressive agendas, extending tolerance only to the former. But he concludes, "the alternative to the established semi-democratic process is not a dictatorship or elite, no matter how intelligent, but the struggle for a real democracy" (122). Still, a necessary ingredient of that struggle is the disavowal of "the pernicious ideology that tolerance is already institutionalized in this society" (123). Fair enough, but it's also easy to see how advocates of regressive politics would seize on the somewhat confused rhetoric Marcuse constructs around this point in the original essay as an opportunity to indict him. show less
A re-examination of Freud and an early call to the philosophy of the 1960's.
That line may not do this book any favours for, whilst it is a cry for 60's thinking, it is also a studied work. I must have read the book three times, as I read and re-read each section to get a grip on Marcuse's thought pattern. It was worth it.
This may be a pre-hippie tome, but it also has things to say about today: particularly, upon the subject of automation and how we live in a world where most real work can be show more done by machines and AI. Marcuse is alert enough to realise that the outcome may be more time without the drudgery of labour but, that it might also lead to a society festooned with unnecessary made up jobs, just to keep a Capitalist system functioning - and that rings so true... show less
That line may not do this book any favours for, whilst it is a cry for 60's thinking, it is also a studied work. I must have read the book three times, as I read and re-read each section to get a grip on Marcuse's thought pattern. It was worth it.
This may be a pre-hippie tome, but it also has things to say about today: particularly, upon the subject of automation and how we live in a world where most real work can be show more done by machines and AI. Marcuse is alert enough to realise that the outcome may be more time without the drudgery of labour but, that it might also lead to a society festooned with unnecessary made up jobs, just to keep a Capitalist system functioning - and that rings so true... show less
Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought) by Herbert Marcuse
After hearing much praise for the cogency of Marcuse's ideas, I was disheartened to find that he seems to have inherited the same impenetrability of thought as Hegel himself embodies and Kant too sometimes reaches in the more strained arguments of his Critique of Pure Reason. I am still holding out hope that I might be able to get some idea of how to comprehend the string of subjectless predicates qualifying other subjectless predicates that Hegel employed and his German interlocutors show more inherited. For now, though, Marcuse's remains nothing more than earnestly-stated gobbledygook. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 132
- Also by
- 9
- Members
- 7,277
- Popularity
- #3,358
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 60
- ISBNs
- 376
- Languages
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- Favorited
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