Marcuse, Herbert (1898–1979)

Herbert Marcuse was one of the most prominent members and a founder of the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research), later known as the Frankfurt School. The project of the institute was to develop a multidimensional critical social theory, which, actually, was a synthesis of Marxism, existentialism, and psychoanalytical theory supported with Marxist aesthetic theory and cultural criticism. In connection with this project, Marcuse's works aimed at a multidimensional critique of the existing capitalist and socialist societies. Marcuse's critiques were very influential on the political life of the 1960s; especially on the student movements, which took place in United States and France, and also on the development of the New Left.

Marcuse studied German literature and political philosophy at Humboldt University in Berlin. It was at the University of Freiburg, however, that he completed his doctoral dissertation, “Der deutsche Künstlerroman” (The German Artist-Novel), in 1922. His dissertation investigates the relation between art and society. Marcuse argued that artist and society oppose each other, and this opposition results in a dialectical relationship, in which artist and society redefine one another. This dialectical relation, for Marcuse, is the key to a genuine understanding of a work of art.

While he was a student in Freiburg, Marcuse joined the Spartakusbund, which was a socialist movement founded by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1916. Finding this movement too dogmatic and too disconnected with existing social conditions, Marcuse left the group and joined the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) in 1917. After the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht in 1919, he quit his membership in USPD and returned to his academic studies.

In 1929, Marcuse started work on writing “Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity” under Martin Heidegger's supervision. He could not complete this work because of the rise of Nazism in Germany and Heidegger's participation in the National Socialist Party in 1933. In the same year, Marcuse was invited [Page 901]to join the institute, and he started to work at the Geneva office.

In 1934, Marcuse immigrated to the United States, and 6 years later he became a naturalized citizen. His first major work in English, Reason and Revolution, was published in 1941. In this work, Marcuse illuminates the similarities between Hegel's philosophy and Marxism and investigates the rise and the development of modern social theory.

During World War II, Marcuse worked for the Office of War Information (OWI) and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as an intelligence analyst. After the war, he continued to work for the U.S. government in the State Department's Central European Bureau until his resignation in 1951.

Afterward, Marcuse retuned to his academic career. He did not leave his intelligence work, however. Because of the emergence of the Cold War, his studies at that time were concentrated on the USSR. Between 1951 and 1954, he was a member of both the Russian Institute of Columbia University and Russian Research Center of Harvard University. His studies of the USSR, during that time, resulted in the publication of Soviet Marxism in 1958, which broke the taboo in Marxist groups against criticizing Soviet communism. In his critique of Soviet communism, Marcuse used “immanent critique,” which aims at criticizing the society in terms of its potentials that are repressed or unrealized.

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