Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse
Marcuse in 1955
Born	(1898-07-19)July 19, 1898 Berlin, German Empire
Died	July 29, 1979(1979-07-29) (aged 81) Starnberg, West Germany
Nationality	German American
Alma mater	University of Berlin University of Freiburg
Notable work	Eros and Civilization (1955) One-Dimensional Man (1964)
Spouses	Sophie Wertheim ​ ​ (m. 1924; died 1951)​ Inge Neumann ​ ​ (m. 1955; died 1973)​ Erica Sherover ​ (m. 1976)​
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Frankfurt School Western Marxism
Doctoral students	Angela Davis Andrew Feenberg[1] Paul Gottfried William Leiss[1]
Main interests	Social theory communism socialism industrialism technology
Notable ideas	Technological rationality great refusal[2] one-dimensional man work as free play repressive tolerance repressive desublimation negative thinking totalitarian democracy
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Part of a series on the
Frankfurt School
Major works Dialectic of Enlightenment Eclipse of Reason Eros and Civilization Escape from Freedom Minima Moralia Negative Dialectics One-Dimensional Man Reason and Revolution The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere The Theory of Communicative Action "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
Notable theorists Adorno Apel Benjamin Fromm Forst Grünberg Geuss Habermas Honneth Horkheimer Jaeggi Kluge Kracauer Kirchheimer Kompridis Kuhlmann Löwenthal Marcuse McCarthy Negt Neumann Offe Pollock Schmidt Sohn-Rethel Wellmer Wingert
Important concepts Advanced capitalism Antipositivism Communicative rationality Critical theory Culture industry Dialectic Legitimation crisis Non-identity Popular culture Praxis Privatism Psychoanalysis
Related topics Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory Freudo-Marxism Marxist humanism Recognition Reification Social alienation Western Marxism
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Herbert Marcuse (/mɑːrˈkuːzə/; German: [maʁˈkuːzə]; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin and then at Freiburg, where he received his PhD.^[3] He was a prominent figure in the Frankfurt-based Institute for Social Research – what later became known as the Frankfurt School. In his written works, he criticized capitalism, modern technology, Soviet Communism, and popular culture, arguing that they represent new forms of social control.^[4]

Between 1943 and 1950, Marcuse worked in US government service for the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency) where he criticized the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the book Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (1958). In the 1960s and the 1970s, he became known as the preeminent theorist of the New Left and the student movements of West Germany, France, and the United States; some consider him "the Father of the New Left".^[5]

His best-known works are Eros and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964). His Marxist scholarship inspired many radical intellectuals and political activists in the 1960s and 1970s, both in the United States and internationally.