Herbert Marcuse | Biography

A leading philosopher of the New Left and follower of Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse became popular among student leftist radicals in the latter half of the twentieth century, especially after rebellions at New York City's Columbia University, the Sorbonne in Paris, and in West Berlin (1968). Despite his student following, he disapproved of campus demonstrations. He said, "I still consider the American university an oasis of free speech....Any student movement should try to protect this citadel...[but] try to radicalize the departments within the university." Marcuse's writings reflect a discontent with modern society and the necessity of revolution, based on Marxist theories.

Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin, Germany, on July 19, 1898, and in 1922 earned a PhD from Freiburg University, where he joined the Social Democratic Party. Fleeing the coming of the Nazis, he emigrated to the United States in 1934. He taught at Columbia University, joined the Institute of Social Research in New York City, and became a U.S. citizen. In 1941, his Reason and Revolution was published, studying the philosophy of German-born Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and fascist interpretations of his theories. In the twentieth century, the idea developed among some scholars that Hegel's theories showed a direct line to the development of Hitler. Marcuse wrote the book to dispute that theory and to argue that, instead, Hegel was a revolutionary.

During World War II, Marcuse worked for the American government as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army. At war's end, he headed the Central European Section of the Office of Intelligence Research until he returned to teaching duties in 1951. In 1955, he married Inge S. Werner. Marcuse taught at Columbia; Harvard University; Brandeis University (1954-1965); and the University of California at San Diego (1965-1976). After his retirement, he held the title of honorary emeritus professor of philosophy until his death on July 29, 1979.

Outside academic circles, Marcuse was virtually unknown until the 1960s. Then in 1964, One-Dimensional Man was published. Students and young radicals of the time embraced it. Marcuse argued that modern technological society was inherently repressive. Workers had become so traumatized by the products of their own labor that they were now in a "state of anesthesia," which could be changed only by those outside the system-- intellectuals, minorities, and students. That work, Marcuse's best known, has been called by some the single most influential publication of radical social theory of the 1960s. In 1965, he published a controversial essay, "Repressive Tolerance," in which he said that the United States is a repressive country because dissent is not heard and alternatives to the established views are not considered. Therefore, it is proper to disrupt or obstruct those who speak for the establishment.

With Marcuse's popularity in some circles came unrest. After student revolts, a campaign was started to fire him from his teaching position in California. He reportedly received a threat from the Ku Klux Klan. For his loss of hope in the working class, the Maoist Progressive Labor Party attacked Marcuse as a CIA agent because of his World War II duties. Added to that, in 1969, Pope Paul objected to Marcuse's views on sex. This stemmed from his 1955 publication Eros and Civilization in which Marcuse argued for greater tolerance of eroticism, claiming that tolerance toward sexuality would bring society a more satisfactory life. Because of this publication, some consider Marcuse to be a philosopher of the "sexual revolution."

Marcuse wrote extensively on the culture of Nazi Germany. He said Naziism was "becoming the executive organ of the imperialist economic interests." He argued that Nazi culture rested on "abolition of highly sanctioned taboos." When the system encouraged extramarital relations or ended discrimination toward unwed mothers or out-of-wedlock children, this led to more repression, not more liberty, because the new sexual release merely reinforced the Nazi system.

After World War II, Marcuse's hopes for a radical transformation to the left in West Germany were disappointed. As the decade of the 1960s and student rebellions faded into the early 1970s with its decline of social unrest, so Marcuse faded in popularity. He continued to write, however, publishing Counterrevolution and Revolt and Studies in Critical Philosophy in 1972.