Marxist philosopher, born in Berlin, Germany. He studied at Berlin and Freiburg, and became an influential figure in the Frankfurt School. He fled to Geneva in 1933, and after World War 2 moved to the USA, working in intelligence. He later held posts at Columbia (1951), Harvard (1952), Brandeis (1954), and California, San Diego (196576). His books include Reason and Revolution (1941), Eros and Civilization (1955) and, more famously, One Dimensional Man (1964), condemning the repressive tolerance of modern industrial society which both stimulated and satisfied the superficial material desires of the masses at the cost of more fundamental needs and freedoms.
|
Western Philosophy 20th century |
|
|---|---|
| Name: | Herbert Marcuse |
| Birth: | July 19, 1898 (Berlin, Germany) |
| Death: | July 29, 1979 (Germany) |
| School/tradition: | critical theory |
| Main interests: | social theory, marxism |
| Notable ideas: | The Totally Administered Society |
| Influences: | Kant, Heidegger, Hegel, Lukacs, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl |
| Influenced: | Angela Davis, Abbie Hoffman, Jürgen Habermas |
Herbert Marcuse (July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a prominent German and later American philosopher and sociologist of Jewish descent, and a member of the Frankfurt School.
Biography and career
Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin to a Jewish family, served in the German Army caring for horses in Berlin during the First World War. With his academic career blocked, in 1933 Marcuse joined the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, emigrating from Germany that same year, going first to Switzerland, then the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1940.
During World War II Marcuse first worked for the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) on anti-Nazi propaganda projects. After the dissolution of the OSS in 1945, Marcuse was employed by the US Department of State until 1951 as head of the Central European section, retiring after the death of his first wife in 1951.
Marcuse's critiques of capitalist society (especially his 1955 synthesis of Marx and Freud, Eros and Civilization, and his 1964 book One-Dimensional Man) resonated with the concerns of the leftist student movement in the 1960s. Because of his willingness to speak at student protests, Marcuse soon became known as "the father of the New Left," a term he disliked and rejected. Marcuse's 1965 essay "Repressive Tolerance", in which he claimed capitalist democracies can have totalitarian aspects, has been vilified by conservatives. (See the Marcuse Haters Page) Marcuse argues that genuine tolerance does not tolerate support for repression, since doing so ensures that marginalized voices will remain unheard.
Herbert Marcuse was not related to the émigré literary scholar Ludwig Marcuse (1894-1971);
User Comments Add a comment…