Marcuse Family website > Herbert Marcuse homepage > Links to Web Sites about Herbert Marcuse
screenshot of Google results screenshot of Google results, October 2004

Links to Web Sites about Herbert Marcuse

compiled and annotated by Harold Marcuse
Harold's UCSB homepage

to the Official Herbert Marcuse homepage,
Publications, Books About, Courses, Links Pages

created October 2004, last updated 7/12/14
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comprehensive
websites
sites with texts
encyclopedia entries (defunct)
short
biographies
other languages
generic links

Comprehensive Web Sites (back to top)screenshot of Kellner's Illuminations Marcuse page, Nov. 2002

  • The International Herbert Marcuse Society, formally founded as a non-profit organization at its 5th biennial conference in 2013, has a website that serves to connect scholars currently working on topics related to Marcuse's work.
  • The best scholarly website on Herbert is UCLA professor Doug Kellner's Marcuse page, which has several essays, including a long and detailed biography. See also Kellner's critical theory website "Illuminations" at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has made one of Herbert's lectures available as two RealAudio files: The Radical Movement (part 1), part 2. You can also listen to Doug's own lecture on The Frankfurt School.
    Doug wrote the introduction to the 1992 edition of One-Dimensional Man, and is the editor of the English edition of Herbert's hitherto unpublished papers, a series planned to reach 6 volumes. Thumbnail of book jacket, Technology, War and FascismThe first volume, Technology, War and Fascism, was published in 1998 (see listing on our Papers Page). Doug is now a professor of the philosophy of education at UCLA (see Kellner's UCLA homepage).
    Doug's critical theory website at the University of Texas, Austin still exists, but is no longer updated.
  • Theresa MacKey's entry on Herbert in the Dictionary of Literary Biography vol. 242(2001), 13 text pages plus 11 pages of bibliography, offers an excellent discussion of Herbert's life and works. It is not a web page per se, but is archived here.
  • The International Herbert Marcuse Society website, www.marcusesociety.org, was begun in Spring 2009 to archive and publicize the biennial conferences begun at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia in 2005.
  • Herbert-Marcuse-Association is a web screen shot of Herbert Marcuse Association homepage, Oct. 2002site run by Christian Fuchs, a Marcuse-scholar and devotee at the Technical University of Vienna.
    (Begun ca. Feb. 3, 2002; counter 800 on 2/13/02; 1000 on 3/4/02; 7600 on 11/25/02; 8000 on 12/2/02; 17,600 on 7/30/03, 17,660 on Aug. 1, 03; 18,800 on Sept. 8, 2003; 36,000 on Oct. 4, 2004. Clicking on any page on the site increments the counter.  47,070 on 5/22/05; extremecounter.com gives 43,786 unique visitors plus 55,444 reloads)

    Its "archive" has taken most of the links from my site (this page), with a few others from search engines. They are listed with typos but without commentary. The site has not been updated since Aug. 2003.
  • worldsocialism.org has an informative and thoughtful page about Herbert's relationship to Marxism, written by A. Buick. [archive copy] (web archive has pages from February 2002 until March 2004)
  • Prof. Martin Ryder at theUniversity of Colorado, Denver, School of Education (Ryder's homepage), maintains an excellent list of links about Herbert on his Contemporary Philosophy, Critical Theory and Postmodern Thought page. The list starts with biographical profiles, then Herbert's works, then essays about his work
  • Patrice Deramaix' Frankfurt School site (in French) has a biographical page and a comprehensive annotated bibliography of secondary and primary works in French.
  • in German:
    praxisphilosophie homepage
    Praxisphilosophie.de
    Marcuse page
    Praxisphilosophie.de's Marcuse-Seite has an excellent discussion of contemporary relevance, with links and secondary literature.
  • Google Directory's Herbert Marcuse page is much better than Yahoo.com's, which only has a single link to one essay at Kellner's old UTA site (July 2002, ditto July 2003). In Dec. 2003 there is also a link to the marxists.org archive, and sponsored links to Questia and alibris.

Sites with texts (back to top)

  • Thumbnail of Herbert and young Nick Feenberg Andrew Feenberg, professor of philosophy at San Diego State University, has several pages about Herbert:
    • "Obstinacy as a Theoretical Virtue," a commentary on one of Herbert's last speeches, published in Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, Sept. 1992, pp. 38-40 (text).
    • a Nov. 1998 conference paper "Can Technology Incorporate Values? Marcuse's Answer to the Question of the Age" (text), and
    • "Marcuse or Habermas: Two Critiques of Technology," Inquiry 39, 1996, pp. 45-70. (text)
    • an old picture of Herbert with Feenberg's son Nick.
    • Iain Thomson (Ph.D. UCSD 1999) at the University of New Mexico (homepage) wrote an essay: "From the Question Concerning Technology to the Quest for a Democratic Technology: Heidegger, Marcuse, Feenberg," Inquiry 43:2 (2000), 203-16.
  • The City and University Library in Frankfurt/Main holds the archive of Herbert's papers and manuscripts. It also has a short biography.
    • note: in May 2005 I wrote to ask them to correct some minor errors in their biography
  • SWIF: Sito Web Italiano per la Filosofia Marcuse page
    • archives full texts of 33 articles in Italian that were published from July 1998 to June 2003 in major Italian newspapers
    • a cura di Vittorio Bertolini, University of Bari
    • it appears that the site was founded in 1997; the newspaper article section was last updated in December 2003, but the main page is active in 2005.
  • Wbenjamin.org has an on-line version of Herbert's essay Aggressiveness in Advanced Industrial Society (1967), ending in a nice list of links.
  • Hans-J�rgen Krahl's F�nf Thesen zu Herbert Marcuse als kritischer Theoretiker der Emanzipation, a defense of Herbert after an "attack" by Rolf Hochhuth (1971; archived on partisan.net: http://www.bemorecreative.com/one/1865.htm [10/04: offline]). Thumbnail of book jacket, Eros and Civilization, Routledge edition
  • 1969 review of Eros and Civilization by Robert Young (at human-nature.com, originally published in the New Statesman in Nov. 1969). (another copy at herbertmarcuse.com)
  • undated (2001?) and incomplete ("to be continued") review of Essay on Liberation, by sociology graduate student Frank Samson III at Stanford Univ. (The webarchive.org lists it from March 2002 to Feb. 2004 [webarchive listing]; archive copy.)
  • Ted Talbott, 'How Marcuse views consciousness and ideology,' on the web site of Praxis International, a web site for "people who are both theoretically and practically active in the communist movement." Undated, found May 2005, not in internet archive.
  • Bluereality.org (a social criticism website) has a copy of Herbert's text Aggressiveness in Advanced Industrial Society (1967) (probably taken from wbenjamin.org) and chap. 5 of One Dimensional Man ("Negative Thinking: The Defeated Logic of Protest") on its Marcuse page.
  • Case Western Reserve University (in Cleveland) has a cryptic (who made it?) site about the Frankfurt School, with a page about Herbert's best-known work, One Dimensional Man.
     
  • Copyriot.com. "Repressive Tolerance" Herbert, thinking with his hands foldedis one of the best-known concepts coined by Herbert. His 1965 essay of that title, now available on this site, also in German translation (originally from copyriot.com, which also has "Staat und Individuum im Nationalsozialismus," 1942, taken from the 1998 publication Feindanalysen).
  • Frank Moretti, Teachers College at Columbia University has this entry from the 1993 Columbia Encyclopedia (5th ed.) on his password protected website project about Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Frederic Jameson (from his links it looks like this page hasn't been updated since the project's inception in Sept. 1999):
    Herbert Marcuse 1898-1979, U.S. political philosopher, b. Berlin. He was educated at the Univ. of Freiburg and with Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer founded the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research. A special target of the Nazis because of his Jewish origins and Marxist politics, he emigrated (1934) to the United States and became a naturalized citizen in 1940. Marcuse served with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and later taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Brandeis before becoming (1965) professor of philosophy at the Univ. of California at San Diego. He is best known for his attempt to synthesize Marxian and Freudian theories into a comprehensive critique of modern industrial society. In One Dimensional Man (1964), his most popular book, he argued for a sexual basis to the social and political repression in contemporary America; the book made him a hero of New Left radicals and provided a rationale for the student revolts of the 1960s in the United States and Europe. His other works include Reason and Revolution (1941), Eros and Civilization (1955), An Essay on Liberation (1969), and Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972).
    See Also: Studies by Alasdair MacIntyre (1970), Paul Mattick (1972), Jack Woddis (1972), C. Fred Alford (1985), and Peter Line (1985). [link to jameson biography]
    [this text is also in the 2001 6th edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia at bartleby.com]
    Bartleby's dictionary also offers the following (with audio pronunciation):
    SYLLABICATION: Mar·cu·se
    PRONUNCIATION: mär-kz [additional symbols on original site]
    DATES: 1898�1979
    German-born American political philosopher whose works of social criticism include Eros and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964).

  • Good, long quotations about big concepts (capitalism, democracy, 1917 revolution) on redthread.com, a non-hierarchical, anarchist-Marxist site apparently run out of Austria. [July 2003: server www.redthread.f2s.com no longer available] [archive copy].
  • Scroll down on this page at creativequotations.com for 5 short quotations and their sources [archive copy].
  • Memorablequotations.com (affiliated with Amazon.com) has some more, unattributed, quotations--less cool, but more substantive. [August 2003: these are taken from the on-line Columbia Encyclopedia of Quotations at bartleby.com. See the Quotations page on this site for details]
  • Goodreads.com has a collection of 28 quotations by Herbert (3 in Arabic, also Italian, Turkish), as on July 2014. You can "like" them (if you're into web 2.0 interactivity)
  • Wikiquote's Herbert Marcuse page offers 18 (printed) pages of quotations, organized chronologically by book (version modified April 2014). It was begun in 2005, tripled in size in 2008, and got a huge boost (20 fold increase) by wikipedian "Peter1c" in 2012. According to his wikiquote biography Peter Capofreddi is an electrical engineer, technology critic, and student of German literature who lives in State College, Pennsylvania.
  • Herbert's son Peter and third wife Erica Sherover wrote this Sept. 1979 letter to the New York Review of Books, suggesting that people send checks to Rudi Dutschke to help the East German dissident Rudolf Bahro. [Dutschke died unexpectedly in December of that year.]
  • Henk Tuten offers a very abbreviated, interpretative summary of One Dimensional Man, and Eros and Civilization, on his Dutch 21st Century Paradigm Shift site. See also his Critical Theory page (moved to new URL Jan. 2010, links here updated 8/27/12)
  • "Buddha and Marcuse: An Interview with Traktung Rinpoche on the betrayal of radical critique by the Western Buddhist Movement" (March 2001 according to internet archive)
  • A site about competitive rowing discusses Marcuse's ideas about liberation and aesthetics: "Macro Ideas and A Micro Community of Educators: Rowing Coaches on Urban Waterways & Illuminating Aspects of Critical Theory and Adult Learning"
  • A reader of ephilosophers.com posted the New York Times's announcement of the burial of Herbert's ashes (link).
  • CoForum.de has a collection of links to some of Herbert's texts (a few to this site)
     
  • Doctoral Student Filip Kovacevic Kovacevic's quotations pageat the University of Missouri, Columbia maintained a "Herbert Marcuse's Home Page" from 1997 to 2001: <web.missouri.edu/~tapscifk/dolcevita1.html>. It had links to on-line articles about his work, but the page disappeared from the UMissouri server prior to August 2001. Maybe Filip graduated (he was supposed to receive his Ph.D. in summer 2002). I list the page here because it was probably the one of the first sites about Herbert ("established 1997")--in 2001 more web pages had links to it than any other site about Herbert, even though it wasn't the most informative site. [webarchive copy]
    I've retrieved these pages from the internet archive (www.archive.org) and created an archive page of FK's favorite Marcuse quotations here.

Short biographies (back to top)

  • Marxists.org's Marcuse page has a short biographical sketch as well as some full-text chapters from Reason and Revolution (1941), and One-Dimensional Man  (1964)(chap. 5, "Negative Thinking: The Defeated Logic of Protest"). (And the ink portrait used for the logo on this site.)
    • Looking through Herbert's texts available on this site, it appears that Andy Blunden (an Australian scholar of Marxism, born 1945; see Blunden's homepage) did a lot of work on the Marcuse main page and the available texts.
  • The Berlin German Historical Museum's "LEMO" Marcuse page has nice time-line type biography and a couple of portraits in its on-line exhibition (in German). Several minor mistakes were corrected at our prompting in October 2004. (These errors are repeated on Christian Fuchs's "Herbert Marcuse Association" page in Vienna, and the Frankfurt City Library's page.) See the original page archived on the internet archive from January 2000 to February 2004.
     
  • The University of Texas at Austin has an informative short biographical timeline, probably from Doug Kellner's original Illuminations project [next time try to spell "Freiburg" right]. (Taken offline in July 2003, this link courtesy of the internet archive.)
  • The American National Biography On-line has an excellent biographical article written by Doug Kellner. Unfortunately, ANB itself is a pay site (http://www.anb.org/articles), but Doug has his Herbert entry on his University of Texas Illuminations site. Note that the rightwing "vanguard news network" has a copy of the article, with an antisemitic introduction. (archive copy on this site)
  • European Graduate School Marcuse page.
    • Swiss institution.
    • Has standard biography gleaned from this site's Herbert Marcuse homepage, plus some interesting characterizations of Herbert's books. (added 10/4/04)
  • Sven Oliveira Cavalcanti, "Herbert Marcuse – Zum 25. Todestag," - sehr informativer Artikel über Leben und Werke, mit Belegen, auf sopos.org, der Internetseite von Sozialistische Positionen: Beiträge zu Politik, Kultur und Gesellschaft (Hannover).
  • EpistimeLinks.com section on Herbert.
    • This is a comprehensive collection of links in the following categories: Main Page, · Encyclopedia Entries, · Academics Homepages, · Classroom Resources, · Quotations, · Amazon Books, · eBay Auctions, · Search Engines.
    • This site was created by Thomas Ryan Stone. He has a BA in philosophy from the University of Rochester (1995). After one year of graduate work in philosophy at Ohio State University, he elected to go into the computer field. (added 10/4/04)
  • "Philosopher of the Month" (Feb. 2003) at Loyola University of Chicago's Philosophy Club's website. (Their first one, in Jan., was Sartre, in March Judith Butler. It looks like they ran out of web steam after that.)
  • ErraticImpact.com (a philosophy research database that sells books) has a page of links and texts, many of which are outdated. The internet archive first archived this page in May 2000; it was last updated in February 2003.

Encyclopedia Entries (back to top)

  • English Wikipedia article about Herbert. Wikipedia Herbert Marcuse entry, May 2005This is an excellent short text.
    The open source internet encyclopedia wikipedia began the entry with a 1-liner ("author of One-Dimensional Man") in Oct. 2001. In October 2002 "Uri" replaced it with the exact biographical text from my Herbert Marcuse homepage; a photo was added in April 2003, and wiki-links were added by "JASpencer" in May 2003. A few substantive additions in June 2003 were slightly erroneous (see my Feb. 2004 comments under the "discussion" tab at top). I fixed those mistakes in Feb. 2005.
  • German wikipedia.de page about Herbert, Wikipedia German entry for Herbert, May 2005written mainly by Peter-Erwin Jansen, is excellent (in German). He started it in Sept. 2003. After numerous small additiions by others he added substantive discussions of Herbert's main works on 28 February 2005.
  • The Literary Encyclopedia's Marcuse entry was first published in May 2005 by Kelsey Wood, College of the Holy Cross. It offers an excellent, detailed discussion of both biography and works. On June 15, 2005 I submitted pages from this site as links to round out that entry.
  • The Biographisch-Bibliographischen Kirchenlexikon's Herbert page site has a detailed entry (in German) with a good bibliography of primary and secondary works
    • It is densely formatted in small font and relatively hard to read, so I made a reformatted archive copy with a few explanations and an English translation.
  • Philolex.de's Herbert page has a very short German-language assessment by Peter M�ller, Berlin. The main text is inserted below. M�ller's Frankfurter Schule page is worth reading.
    Herbert Marcuse
    Als Einleitung zu diesem Aufsatz empfehle ich den Aufsatz über die Frankfurter Schule.
    Allgemeines: Herbert Marcuse (1898 - 1979). Deutsch-Amerikanischer Philosoph jüdischer Abstammung. Während der Revolution 1918/19 Mitglied in einem Soldatenrat. Ursprünglich Schüler Husserls und Heideggers. Versuchte dann phänomenologische und marxistische Gedanken zu verbinden. Zu Beginn der Nazi-Zeit in die USA emigriert, wo er auch nach Ende des 2. Weltkrieges blieb. Wird vielfach der Frankfurter Schule zugerechnet. Im Gegensatz zu Max Horkheimer und Theodor W. Adorno engagierte er sich für die Studentenbewegung der späten 60er Jahre. Wurde zu einem der wichtigsten Theoretiker der Neuen Linken und der Studentenbewegung (68ff) in vielen Ländern.
    Moderne Industriegesellschaften seien geprägt durch Technisierung, Rationalisierung und Bürokratisierung, sowohl in den kapitalistischen wie in den real-sozialistischen Systemen. Die Menschen würden durch "human engineering" gelenkt, lebten in oberflächlichem Glück, aber wirkliche Opposition und Freiheit gebe es keine mehr. Die Arbeiter würden ins System integriert. [Das klinkt mir zu sehr nach Verschwörungstheorie.]
    Marcuse rief auf zum "totalen Protest" zur "großen Weigerung" um kein "eindimensionaler Mensch" zu werden, der keine Alternativen mehr habe.
    Kritik an Ma[r]cuse
    Obwohl sich Marcuse in einigen Punkten von den Hauptvertretern der Frankfurter Schule unterscheidet, trifft die Kritik an der "Frankfurter Schule" vielfach auch auf ihn zu.

  • glbtq Marcuse page: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture's Marcuse entry was written in March 2004 by Jeffrey Escoffier.
    The excellent, in-depth article begins as follows:
    German-born philosopher Herbert Marcuse was one of the leading theorists of the New Left in Europe and the United States in the late 1960s. Much like Michel Foucault in a later generation, Marcuse had an enormous influence on theories of sexual liberation, particularly in the early post-Stonewall gay movement and on the left.
    Many young people in the 1960s adopted Marcuse-like sexual politics as the basis for the counter-culture's radical transformation of values. By exploring drugs, music and sex, they sought to experience what Marcuse described as an "erotic sense of reality."
    Marcuse's book Eros and Civilization (1955), a synthesis of the thought of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, also played an influential role in the writing of early proponents of gay liberation, such as Dennis Altman and Martin Duberman, and it influenced radical gay groups such as the Gay Liberation Front's Red Butterfly Collective.
  • Initiative für Praxisphilosophie's Herbert Marcuse page has Praxisphilosophie's Herbert Marcuse page, May 2005a commented overview of Herbert's works with links and bibliography (in German).
  • Microsoft Encarta's Marcuse page offers the following:
    Marcuse, Herbert (1898-1979), German American philosopher, known as a leading theoretician of the radical left and New Left and as an incisive critic of the established order. Born in Berlin, and educated at the universities of Berlin and Freiburg, he was associated with the Institute of Social Research, Frankfurt, until 1933, when the National Socialist Party came into power and the school was closed. Marcuse immigrated to the United States, joining the Institute of Social Research, Columbia University, in 1934. During the 1940s he was employed by various intelligence agencies of the federal government. After 1950 he taught successively at Columbia, Harvard, and Brandeis universities and at the University of California, San Diego.
    Marcuse's influence with student leaders was evident during the university rebellions in Europe and the U.S. in the late 1960s. In his writings Marcuse held that some social ills can be overcome only if the democratic process is discarded. He maintained that the most effective challenge to the established order will come from students and minority groups and not from workers, who, he claims, are committed to the status quo. His social philosophy is set forth in Eros and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964).

  • Answer.com's Marcuse page has a dictionary entry, the Columbia 6th ed. and Wiki entries.
  • The British portal tiscali.co.uk's Marcuse entry has the following:
    "Marcuse, Herbert
    German-born US political philosopher. His theories combining Marxism and Freudianism influenced radical thought in the 1960s and 1970s. He preached the overthrow of the existing social order by using the system�s very tolerance to ensure its defeat; he was not an advocate of violent revolution.
    Marcuse was born in Berlin and became an influential member of the Frankfurt School. In 1934 he moved to the USA as a refugee from Hitler�s Germany and taught philosophy at several universities, including Columbia 1934�40, Brandeis 1954�65, and the University of California at San Diego 1965�79. He wrote several books, including Eros and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964)."

  • 21stcenturyschools.com has a brief timeline biography in table form
  • Penguin Dictionary of Sociology Marcuse entry Penguin Dictionary of Sociology Marcuse entrywas put on the web by the Sociology & Anthropology department of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
  • The University of Amsterdam's SocioSite Project has entries for Marcuse, and Habermas (among others).
  • PhilosophyPages.com Marcuse blurb and links (scroll down). By Garth Kemerling, in Oct. 2004 this had last been updated in August 2002. It has definitions of concepts like "alienation," recommended readings, and a few links. (added 10/4/04)
  • A&E biography Marcuse page has the following text from crystalreference.com:
    "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 (1965-76). 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."
  • Free On-line Dictionary of Philosophy (FOLDOP)'s Marcuse page reads as follows:
    <biography, history of philosophy> german-american political philosopher associated with the Frankfurt School (1898-1979). Author of Eros and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964). Marcuse combined Marx's economic analysis with Freudian psychology in an effort to show that a fundamental social transformation could liberate individual human beings from the alienation and repression that characterize patriarchal capitalist societies.
    Recommended Reading:
    Herbert Marcuse, Towards a Critical Theory of Society, ed. by Douglas Kellner (Routledge, 2001);
    Joan Nordquist, Herbert Marcuse: A Bibliography (Ref. and Res. Serv., 2000);
    Douglas Kellner, Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism (California, 1992);
    Marcuse, ed. by Robert Pippin, Andrew Feenberg, and Charles P. Webel (Greenwood, 1987);
    Charles Reitz, Art, Alienation, and the Humanities: A Critical Engagement With Herbert Marcuse (SUNY, 2000).
  • BrainyEncyclopedia.com's Herbert entry is the verbatim biography text taken from the homepage on this site (marcuse.org), with Wikipedia-style hyperlinks. It was first found by the internet archive in October 2004. That earlier entry was again my text from this site, but with the additional final paragraph that was added to an early version of the English Wikipedia entry.
     
  • Douglas Kellner's Encyclopedia entries (not available on the internet)
    • Douglas Kellner, "Herbert Marcuse," "The Frankfurt School," The Social Science Encyclopedia (London: Routledge, 1985), 349-350, 483.
    • Douglas Kellner, "Herbert Marcuse," The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, edited by J. O. Urmson and Jonathan Ree (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 191.
    • Douglas Kellner, "Herbert Marcuse," in: Routledge Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Political Thinkers, edited by Robert Benewick and Philip Green (London: Routledge 1993), 149-152.
    • Douglas Kellner, "Herbert Marcuse," in: Leaders from the 1960s, edited by Daniel De Leon. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), 563-569.
    • Douglas Kellner, "Herbert Marcuse," Scribner Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons), 506-508.
    • Douglas Kellner, "Herbert Marcuse," Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford University Press, ?1997).
    • Douglas Kellner, "Herbert Marcuse," Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics, Michael Kelly, editor, (Columbia University Press, ?1997).
       
  • Bookrags.com
  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's Herbert Marcuse page
    • Written by Arnold Farr (Univ. of Kentucky), first published Wed Dec 18, 2013.
    • Prints on about 23 pages. Here is the table of contents:
      1. Biography
      2. The Aesthetic Dimension
      3. The Search for a Philosophical Foundation for Marxism and the Radical Subject 3.1 Phenomenological Marxism 3.2 Philosophical Anthropology and Radical Subjectivity: 3.3 Negative (Dialectical) Thinking and Social Change:
      4. Psychoanalysis and Utopian Vision: 4.1 The Historical and Social Nature of Human Drives 4.2 Repression: 4.3 Eros and Logos 4.4 The Ideology of Scarcity 4.5 Fantasy, Utopia, and the Rationality of Gratification
      5. One-Dimensional Thinking and the Democratic Rejection of Democracy
      6. The Dialectic of Technology
      7. The Specter of Liberation: The Great Refusal and the New Sensibility
      8. Marcuse and Feminism
      Bibliography; Primary Sources; Secondary Sources; Other Works Cited; Academic Tools; Other Internet Resources; Related Entries

Encyclopedia Entries no longer available (back to top)

  • http://herbertmarcuse.com/, HerbertMarcuse.com, 2001-2004by Brian Gonsalves,
    (internet archive copy: Sept. 2001-Sept. 2004)
    has a clearly organized set of links to texts and reviews on other websites:
    HERBERT MARCUSE
    Philosopher for Our Time
    Herbert Marcuse is one of my favorite modern philosophers. A member of the neo-marxist Frankfurt School and something of a guru to 1960's radicals, he offered forth an abundance of ideas which were (and continue to be) of profound social significance. It was the reading of his work which awakened me from a protracted period of political apathy. I was made aware of how much each one of us, whether we know it or not, is part and parcel of the repressive order of global corporate capitalism. Consciousness of one's own servitude is a prerequisite to unbinding oneself from repression. Perhaps if I had not read Marcuse I would not have gotten fired up enough to take part in the protests during Seattle's WTO convention in 1999. Ah, such great days!.
    All I have for now is a wide range of links to Marcuse resources on the Internet. I strongly encourage you to visit the Illuminations website run by Douglas Kellner. It contains a large number of excellent essays on Marcuse and related thinkers. If you'd like to get directly acquainted with Marcuse's philosophy a great place to start would be with his short book An Essay on Liberation, written during the high tide of '60's radicalism. From there you might move on to the earlier Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man, his two most challenging and rewarding works.
  • http://www.popcultures.com/theorists/marcuse.html, by Sarah Zupko, had a page with links to several articles about  Herbert's work. Internet archive copies indexed from October 1999 to October 2004 (last update Dec. 2002).
  • http://socialism.org/people/marcuse_herbert.htm
    (no longer available; internet archive copy, Feb. 2002-March 2004)
    text resurrected here, 2/20/05:
    Marcuse, Herbert (1898-1979)
    adapted from University of Texas at Arlington's Illuminations copyrighted by Douglas Kellner
    Herbert Marcuse gained world renown during the 1960s as a philosopher, social theorist, and political activist, celebrated in the media as "father of the New Left." University professor and author of many books and articles, Marcuse won notoriety when he was perceived as both an influence on and defender of the "New Left" in the United States and Europe. His theory of "one-dimensional" society provided critical perspectives on contemporary capitalist and state communist societies and his notion of "the great refusal" won him renown as a theorist of revolutionary change and "liberation from the affluent society." Consequently, he became one of the most influential intellectuals in the United States during the 1960s and into the 1970s. And yet, ultimately, it may be his contributions to philosophy that are most significant and in this entry I shall attempt to specify Marcuse's contributions to contemporary philosophy and his place in the narrative of continental philosophy.
  • XREFER.com, a search engine of on-line reference works, had a marcuse page, with links to pages on 9 other reference sites, such as an art-specific biography, and Oxford Univ. Press's Who's who page. [site no longer free to the public after June 17, 2003, web archive since 3/01]
    • The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, © Oxford University Press 1995
      Marcuse, Herbert (1898 - 1979)
      One of the most original and provocative non-Soviet Marxists of the century, Marcuse received a doctorate in literature (1922) but soon became attracted to Heidegger's philosophy with its focus on the individual as thrown into a world of objects and populated with others.
      But the writings of the young Marx convinced Marcuse that a genuine theory of individuality must take into account prevailing socio-economic structures. Joining the Frankfurt School in 1933, he contributed to the development of the dialectical criticism characteristic of the school: major concepts were analysed and traced to their material origins, and then reconstructed to show their altered political functions.
      His post-Second World War writings, however, present his most characteristic proposals and social critique. Freudian psychology provided a theory of human instincts, which are repressed under capitalism but which, when liberated, can be the basis for a life of sensousness, playfulness, peace, and beauty. This liberation requires a total transformation of present society: technology would be utilized to abolish poverty and provide for abundance; there would be a different relation to nature in which art and production are unified; the sexes and generations would overcome artificial constraints, and a new kind of person with advanced sensibilities would appear.
      Marcuse's optimism for the actual achievement of these transformations was at its lowest in One Dimensional Man (1964); the student rebellions of the 1960s gave him renewed hope (e.g. Essay on Liberation (1969)). Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972) retreats from advocating revolutionary violence and confrontation and recommends working for change within the system. The Aesthetic Dimension (1978) argues that the sensuous appearance of beauty in the artwork preserves the memory of a liberated way of living and so escapes the domination of the present, repressive order.
      Marcuse's revised Marxism provides both a broad critique of advanced capitalist society and utopian proposals for a post-capitalist world.
      C.C. [Prof. Charles Crittenden, California State University, Northridge]
      See also Marxist philosophy.
      Bibliography Barry Katz, Herbert Marcuse and the Art of Liberation: An Intellectual Biography (London, 1982).
      Douglas Kellner, Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism (Berkeley, Calif., 1984).
    • Bloomsbury Biographical Dictionary of Quotations, © Bloomsbury 1997
      Marcuse, Herbert (1898 - 1979)  German-born US philosopher, noted for his radical anti-authoritarian views. His books include The Ethics of Revolution (1966)
      Not every problem someone has with his girl friend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production. --The Listener 1978
    • The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, © Oxford University Press 1996
      Marcuse, Herbert (1898 - 1979)  German-born American philosopher.
      He was an associate at the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research (see Frankfurt School) until 1933, when he left Germany and eventually settled in the US. His works include Eros and Civilization (1955), Soviet Marxism (1958), a rejection of bureaucratic Communism which argues that revolutionary change can come only from alienated élites such as students, and One-Dimensional Man (1964).
    • Oxford Paperback Encyclopedia, © Oxford University Press 1998
      Marcuse, Herbert (1898 - 1979)  German-born US philosopher.
      He was an associate at the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research and a leading figure in the Frankfurt School (the school of philosophy involved in reappraising Marx) until 1933, when he left Germany and eventually settled in the USA. His works include Eros and Civilization (1955), Soviet Marxism (1958), a rejection of bureaucratic Communism, which argues that revolutionary change can come only from alienated élites, such as students, and One-Dimensional Man (1964).
    • Who's Who in the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, © Market House Books 1999:
      Marcuse, Herbert (1898 - 1979)
      German-born US philosopher, famous in the 1960s as the theorist of the new revolutionary left.
      Born in Berlin, Marcuse was educated at the University of Freiburg, where he gained his doctorate in 1922; he then became an associate at the influential Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt. With the rise of Hitler, however, Marcuse left Europe for the USA, where he remained for the rest of his life. He taught at Columbia, Brandeis, and the University of California, La Jolla. During World War II Marcuse worked for military intelligence.
      In 1964, with the publication of his One-Dimensional Man, the sixty-six-year-old Hegelian social philosopher became an international celebrity. Like other Frankfurt colleagues he argued that while the modern industrial society had satisfied the material needs of man it had done so only by ignoring his true needs and by restricting his liberty. The apparent freedom present in many industrial societies was discounted by Marcuse as 'repressive tolerance'. There was, therefore, no way in which a 'liberated' man could ever come to terms with capitalism. In addition to the repressions of capitalism, Marcuse also identified, in his Eros and Civilization (1955), the repressions imposed on us by the unconscious mind. In this area he recognized fairly orthodox Freudian solutions. In the political domain, however, as he argued in his Soviet Marxism (1958), Marcuse rejected the approach of bureaucratic communism. Revolutionary change, it seemed, could therefore only come from an alienated elite, such as the students of Paris and Berkeley. Although such views seemed highly plausible at one time, they failed to survive the student movement of the 1960s.
    • The Macmillan Encyclopedia 2001, © Market House Books Ltd 2000
      Marcuse, Herbert (1898 - 1979) German-born US thinker.
      His radical anti-authoritarian philosophy evolved from the Frankfurt School of social research. Marcuse attacked both Western positivism and orthodox Marxism, the former because it led to analysis rather than action, the latter because it lacked relevance to 20th-century conditions. His books include The Ethics of Revolution (1966) and Counter-Revolution and Revolt (1973).
  • Philosophenlexikon.de had a very short, philosophically oriented biography (in German) at www.philosophenlexikon.de/marcuse.htm. The internet archive's versions show that it was created in August 2000 and was taken off line between Feb. and June 2002. The text:
    • Herbert Marcuse (1898 - 1979)
      Der Philsoph Herbert Marcuse studierte Literaturgeschichte, Philosophie und Nationalökonomie. 1922 promovierte er in Literaturgeschichte.
      Von 1928 bis 1932 war er Schüler Husserls und Heideggers.
      Von 1933 bis 1942 Mitglied des von M. Horkheimer geleiteten Instituts für Sozialforschung. Von 1942 bis 1950 war er im amerikanischen Staatsdienst als Sektionschef im State Department. Danach Lehrtätigkeit an verschiedenen Hochschulen, zuletzt Prof. an der University of California, San Diego.
      Marcuse hat sich bemüht eine Philosophie der Revolution zu entwickeltn. Nachdem er zunächst versuchte, eine Theorie der Revolution im Anschluß an die Daseinsanalyse Heideggers auszuarbeiten, wandte er sich der Psychoanalyse Freuds zu, um die Revolution als Befreiung der menschlichen Triebnatur einsichtig zu machen.
      In seinen späteren Arbeiten will Marcuse u. a. auf die revolutionäre Rolle von Randgruppen und Minderheiten hinweisen.


Biographies in Languages other than English and German (back to top)

  • Spanish. (infoamerica.org) has an essay on HM's thought; collection of links and texts.
    "Nació en 1898 en Berlín. Sirvió en el ejército alemán en la Primera Guerra Mundial. Estudió en la Universidad de Friburgo, donde se doctoró en Literatura en 1922. Seis años más tarde volvió a la Universidad para estudiar Filosofía con Martin Heidegger, que dirigió su tesis sobre Hegel. En 1933 se trasladó a Francfort, para trabajar en el Institut Sozialforschung, identificándose con los proyectos interdisciplinares del instituto, con el desarrollo de la teoría crítica, cerca de figuras como Horkheimer y Adorno. En 1934, su condición radical y el origen familiar judío le llevó a huir del nazismo, exiliándose en los Estados Unidos, donde se reencontraron los pensadores del Institut, dando vida en la Universidad de Columbia a la Escuela de Francfort. Allí, durante una década, trabajó en la divulgación del pensamiento dialéctico en los Estados Unidos, con una significativa influencia en el espacio académico.
    En 1941 se integró en los servicios secretos del Departamento de Estados norteamericano, guiado por su compromiso político contra los fascismos europeos. Después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial trabajó en el Instituto de Investigaciones sobre Rusia, de la Universidad de Harvard. Regresó a la producción intelectual con la edición de Eros y Civilización (1955) y Marxismo Soviético (1958).
    Dejó la Universidad de Harvard, por discrepancias de la dirección con sus trabajos, y, en 1958, comenzó a impartir docencia en la Brandeis University, que también abandonó, en 1964, tras la publicación de El hombre unidimensional. Ingresa entonces en la californiana Universidad de Berkeley, que pasaba por ser la más liberal de los Estados Unidos. Allí se convierte en el referente ideológico de los movimientos estudiantiles.
    En los últimos tiempos de su vida regresó a Alemania, donde falleció en Stamberg en 1979."

  • Danish, at http://www.leksikon.org. Originalopslag fra pax Leksikon (1978-82)
    "Marcuse (1898-1979), tysk-nordamerikansk marxist og samfundskritiker. Herbert Marcuse voksede op i Berlin. Der sluttede han sig til det socialdemokratiske parti (SPD) i 1917, men forlod det efter mordene på Karl Liebknecht og Rosa Luxemburg i 1919. Siden var han ikke medlem af noget politisk parti. Marcuse studerede filosofi i Freiburg under Martin Heidegger og skrev en doktorafhandling om Hegel og Heideggers filosofi. Også i Marcuses senere marxistiske forfatterskab er påvirkningen fra Heideggers eksistensfilosofi tydelig. Fra Freiburg drog Marcuse til Frankfurt am Main, hvor han sluttede sig til kredsen omkring Max Horkheimer på «Institut für Sozialforschung» (Frankfurterskolen).
    I de næste årtier markerede Marcuse sig som en af Frankfurterskolens vigtigste teoretikere - og utvivlsomt som dens mest militante repræsentant. Som marxist og jøde måtte Marcuse forlade Tyskland i 1933. Han boede først et år i Schweiz og drog derefter til USA, hvor han slog sig ned for bestandig. Han var tilknyttet flere nordamerikanske universiteter: Columbia, Harvard, Brandeis og endelig San Diego hvor han var fra 1965 til han gik af i 1970. Marcuses navn er uløseligt knyttet til 1960'ernes studenteroprør - mere end nogen anden blev Marcuse oprørets teoretiker.
    De vigtigste skrifter publicerede Marcuse forud for studenteroprøret. I 1930'erne skrev han flere programmatiske essays om kritisk teori i «Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung», Frankfurterskolens husorgan. Han skrev også den første filosofiske præsentation af Marx' nyopdagede ungdomsskrifter (1932). Hans vigtigste filosofiske værk er «Fornuft og revolution» (1941). Marcuse søger her at klarlægge forskellen mellem to konkurrerende samfundsteorier: den dialektiske og den positivistiske. Det centrale i studiet er analysen af Hegels fornuftsfilosofi som optakt til Marx' revolutionære samfundsteori, kontrasteret med positivismen og dens udgangspunkt i Comtes filosofi.
    I «Sovjet-marxismen» (1958) analyserer Marcuse dialektikkens forfald indenfor sovjetisk filosofi, etik og politik. Men det er særligt i de to studier «Eros og civilisation» (1955) og «Det en-dimensionale menneske» (1964) at Marcuse udformer sin særegne samfundsfilosofi - en dristig syntese af marxisme og psykoanalyse.
    I analysen af det industrielle overflodssamfund må Marx' økonomiske begreber ifølge Marcuse dels udfyldes og dels erstattes med et sæt af politiske, moralske og æstetiske begreber. Marcuses analyser kredser især omkring revolutionens mulighed i de højt udviklede industrisamfund. Revolution vil ikke bare sige at ændre samfundets organiserende princip fra marked til planlægning eller at afskaffe den private ejendomsret til produktionsmidlerne. Ud fra Marcuses radikale tænkning vil revolution sige en omvæltning, som griber dybt ind i det enkelte menneske, i dets personlighedsstruktur, i forholdet til naturen, i forholdene mellem kønnene.
    Marcuse knytter revolutionens mening til ideen om et «nyt menneske» - en menneskehed som er oplært til en ny følsomhed, sandhed og solidaritet. I denne analyse griber Marcuse tilbage til Freuds psykoanalyse for at give marxismen et driftspsykologisk grundlag. Revolutionen skal, med Freuds termer, ændre menneskets driftsstruktur: Den destruktive, nedbrydende energi omformet til erotisk, skabende energi.
    I en kort periode omkring 1968 fik Marcuse en enestående tilslutning som en medrivende og begejstrende samfundsfilosof. Senere blev hans position svagere, særligt overfor den dogmatiske og blaserte venstrefløj. Imidlertid giver manglende konkret samfundsanalyse og strategisk tænkning hans teorier et skær af utopisk romantik. I perspektiv fremstår Marcuse som en af de yderst få dristige og nytænkende teoretikere indenfor moderne marxisme.
    R.S."

  • French, on Patrice Deramaix' Dialectiques site, http://www.chez.com/patder/
    " Herbert Marcuse est probablement le représentant le plus connu de "l'école de Francfort", son destin fut étroitement lié à la contestation étudiante des années soixante, non qu'il suscitât qu'une quelconque manière ces mouvements, mais du fait que un certain nombre de leader de la contestation, tel Rudi Dutschke se réclamèrent explicitement de sa pensée.
    Il y a effectivement de nombreuses convergences entre la critique du capitalisme avancé de "l'Homme unidimensionnel" et les "thèmes de mai-68" (et du radicalisme étudiant aux USA) mais la pensée marcusienne s'enracine beaucoup loin. Si ses aspects radicaux et "freudo-marxistes" sont connus, peu reconnu est sa dette envers la phénoménologie husserlienne et heideggerienne. En effet toute sa démarche et son engagement est une tentative de réponse à l'engoissante question du voilement de l'être sous l'impact de l'encerclement technicien et de la prédominance positiviste dans la pensée. A cette aliénation ontologique il apporte une réponse une réponse profondément différente, quoique les racines soient communes, de celle d'Heidegger.
    [5 more paragraphs]"
    • links to an annotated bibliography in French
  • Italian, in the Italian Enciclopedia Multimediale:
    "Herbert Marcuse è nato a Berlino l'8 febbraio del 1898. A Friburgo è allievo di Martin Heidegger con il quale si laurea nel 1921. In questo periodo segue l'indirizzo fenomenologico. Ben presto si avvicina al marxismo e nel 1932 viene a far parte dell'Istituto per la ricerca sociale di Francoforte lavorando con Theodor W. Adorno e Max Horkheimer. Nel 1932 esce L'ontologia di Hegel e la fondazione di una teoria della storicità . È tra i numerosi intellettuali tedeschi che con l'avvento del nazismo emigrano negli Stati Uniti. Insegna in numerose a università americane e tra queste lavora all'Istituto per la ricerca sociale della Columbia University. Muore a Starnber (Baviera), il 29 luglio 1979. Del 1955 e del 1964 sono i due libri che gli procureranno una vasta conoscenza di pubblico:Eros e civiltà e L'uomo a una dimensione. L'ideologia della società industriale avanzata."
  • Polish. WIEM: Category World Polska Leksykon Encyklopedia at http://wiem.onet.pl/wiem
    • Marcuse Herbert (1898-1979), filozof i socjolog niemiecki. Jeden z twórców tzw. szkoly frankfurckiej, od 1932 zwiazany z Institut für Sozialforschung. Od 1933 przebywal na emigracji, najpierw w poka¿ powiazane Marcuse Herbert filozof i socjolog niemiecki. Jeden z twórców tzw. szkoly frankfurckiej, od 1932 zwiazany z Institut für Sozialforschung. Od 1933 przebywal na emigracji, najpierw w Szwajcarii , potem w USA , gdzie dzialal na uniwersytetach w Waltham i San Diego Poslugujac siê teoriami alienacji K. Marksa i stlumienia S. Freuda , przeprowadzil krytykê cywilizacji wspólczesnej. Wskazal na jej represyjno¶æ, stwierdzajac, ¿e - m.in. poprzez absolutyzowanie warto¶ci pracy kosztem wypoczynku i masowo¶æ propagowanej przez siebie kultury - tworzy czlowieka jednowymiarowego, którego traktuje jako ¶rodek, nie jako cel. Przedstawil projekt "spoleczeñstwa nierepresywnego", rzadzacego siê ideal ami wolno¶ci i milo¶ci. Utrzymywa³, ¿e sil tzw. syndromu rewolucyjnego, zdolnych zmieniæ rzeczywisto¶æ, poszukiwaæ trzeba nie w¶ród robotników, którzy w krajach komunistycznych stali siê kolejna klasa panujaca, lecz np. w¶ród radykalnej inteligencji czy zbuntowanych studentów. Takie stanowisko sprawilo, ¿e Marcuse stal siê jednym z patronów mlodzie¿owej rewolucji obyczajowej lat 60., w tym paryskiej rewolty 1968. Glówne prace: Rozum i rewolucja (1941, wydanie polskie 1966)
  • A Swedish site, at http://home6.swipnet.se, offers the following:
    "Marcuse, Herbert [-kozæ] 1898-1979, tysk-amerikansk filosof, en av de viktigaste företrädarna för Frankfurtskolan, från 1934 verksam i USA, från 1965 som professor vid University of California. Marcuses tes - utgående från Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud och Frankfurtskolans kritiska teori - att det västerländska samhället skapat falska behov och ett teknokratiskt förtryck fick stort inflytande under 1960-talet, särskilt för den revolterande studentgenerationen. Bland hans skrifter märks Den endimensionella människan (1964, sv 1968)."

Generic Links (back to top)

  • Prof. B. Ollman, New York University Dept. of Politics, Select Bibliography and Reading List on "Political Theory: Communism" lists several of Marcuse's works.
    • It's also a very comprehensive and interesting site!

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