Introduction
In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in the philo- sophical, social, and political theory and activism of Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse was a Marxist philosopher and member of the first generation of the philosophers, sociologists, economists, and political theorists who found their intellectual home at the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt, Germany (i.e., the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School). He had a career as an academic, philosopher, public intellectual and political activist that spanned both world wars and extended across six decades, from the early 1920s until the late 1970s. The renewed interest in his enormous oeuvre initially was prompted by the resurgence of social movements and political protest in the 1990s that occurred in response to attempts by Western governments such as the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany, in coordi- nation with their corporate allies, to globalize their economies. In the early 2010s, the protests and property seizures of the worldwide “Occupy” movement, which occurred in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, led intellectuals and activists interested in Marcuse’s work to make comparisons between those protests and the earlier movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s that Marcuse had written and spoken about during his lifetime.
This renewed interest, which has only grown in recent years, has taken the form of numerous reviews and critiques of Marcuse’s work, both sympathetic and critical. Incorporating aspects of both, Andrew Feenberg’s recent (2023) book, The Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing; Nature and Revolution in Marcuse’s Philosophy of Praxis stands out in terms of the sheer breadth and depth of his scholarship on virtually the entire corpus of Marcuse’s major writings, as well as the uniquely personal perspective he brings to bear on them. Feenberg was a student of Marcuse from the mid-1960s through the late years of that decade, as well as a colleague up until Marcuse’s death in 1979. In the years since, he has remained an extremely incisive and critical interpreter of Marcuse’s work in the best tradition of critical theory. His book is one of the few that takes Marcuse’s early work, written while he was a student of Martin Heidegger, seriously. He does an excellent job not only of explicating some of Marcuse’s key writings from that period; he also shows how some of their early themes were carried forward in his later writings. Another strength of the book is that he looks at Marcuse’s work in the context of that of some of the other members of the Frankfurt School, such as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. It also has the advantage of focus- ing upon some of the important aspects of his work that bear upon our contemporary geopolitical situation. While the conclusion that Feenberg draws from that work about the possibilities for transforma- tive social change today bears particular scrutiny, as it falls well short of what one would expect given his thoroughgoing knowledge of Marcuse’s overall project, he nevertheless leaves the door open for other possible interpretations, and this is a particular strength of the book as well.
There are two theoretical issues – one explicit, one implicit – raised by Feenberg’s book that make potentially important contributions to our understanding of Marcuse’s critical theory. The first – the relation- ship between theory and practice – is crucial to understanding Marcuse’s work as a whole, as well as to evaluating the contribution of that work to contemporary critical theory and political action. The second - the relationship between individual subjectivity and radical political action – plays an important part in Marcuse’s early work incorporating Heideggerian phenomenology. While Feenberg’s treatment of both these relationships relevant to the ways in which Marcuse understood and approached the political challenges he focused on during the last two decades of his life – the ecological crisis, social and economic inequality, racism, women’s rights, poverty, and the looming threat of fascism – as well as the social movements that arose in response to them, and provide important insights into the possibilities for radical political activism today, it is the former one that I will focus on in what follows.
The initial chapter of Feenberg’s book, entitled “Remembering Marcuse,” contains his personal reminiscences. What stands out here is his narrative of Marcuse’s early encounter with the work of Martin Heidegger, with whom he studied at the University of Freiburg from 1928 until 1932. That encounter greatly impacted Marcuse, particularly in terms of the influence of phenomenology and ontology on his work. Feenberg highlights how these two philosophical traditions influenced Marcuse’s earliest contributions to Marxist theory and, combined with his studies of the work of Edmund Husserl (with whom Marcuse studied briefly at Freiburg) and Georg Lukács, led Marcuse to analyze Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 through the lenses of all three of these perspectives. These early influences con- tinued to impact Marcuse’s work throughout the rest of his life (even though, in the case of Heidegger, Marcuse himself at times greatly downplayed that influence). While it is well known that Heidegger was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933 until the end of World War II, Feenberg makes clear that this had no impact on Marcuse’s early writings, as he had left Germany by the time this fact became known to him.1
In the chapter entitled “Marcuse’s Marx,” Feenberg continues his discussion of Heidegger’s influence on Marcuse in a more theoretical vein, arguing that the latter’s 1932 interpretation and critique of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 was based largely upon a phenomenological reading of that text. According to Feenberg, Marcuse’s understanding of the phenomenological concepts of “lifeworld” and “experience” “are essential to every aspect of Mar- cuse’s thought” (31). Since, for Marcuse as well as Heidegger, the life- world was directly accessible to an individual through his lived experience of that world, it was only through that experience that the lifeworld had meaning for an individual (32). Feenberg goes on to say that “[the] meaning [of an experience] implicates the subject as a whole person, engaged with reality not only cognitively but also practically … .” (32–33; emphasis added). Several paragraphs later, he states, “Marcuse’s interest [in the lifeworld] was ontological: he argued that the realization of reason in reality requires a revolution.” What Feenberg calls “this inspired notion” meant, for Marcuse, that reason could only be realized (i.e., made actual and effective in the world) through revolutionary practice aimed at changing the circumstances of one’s existence (i.e., the capitalist relations of production as well as oneself)(35). In quoting the statement from Marcuse above, Feenberg raises for the first time the issue of the relationship between theory and practice in Marcuse’s work (21). He raises this issue again in the chapter entitled, “The Logos of Life,” where he shows how Marcuse’s theoretical roots in Hegel as well as Marx led him in his writings of the 1930s and 1940s to “a new way of thinking about the normative grounds of revolution” (78). This “new way of thinking” involved an “ought,” or internal meaning, that guided or gave purpose to human life. Reason, as an expression of that life, therefore contained “the essential possibilities of a human existence … .” (80). Feenberg shows how Marcuse was able to ground the notion of possibility ontologically by incorporating in it the idea of potentiality, which refers to the existential character of things such that they have within themselves the potential to develop and transform into something else. He points to what he calls “the double structure of potentiality” in Marcuse’s work, which refers to the philosophical idea that potentialities are “an aspect of both the world and the human subject.” Once a human being is able to recognize these potentialities in herself as well as in nature, she will of necessity “try to put this truth into action … .” (99). This relation- ship between potentiality and action is what Marcuse called “the internal unity of theory and practice.”
In the following chapter (“The Politics of Eros”), Feenberg details how Marcuse critically appropriated the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud to give anthropological as well as ontological sub- stance to his earlier theory of revolutionary subjectivity. Marcuse did this by showing how the “logos of life” is erotic and historical as well as cognitive. In Eros and Civilization, a new configuration of the erotic and the cognitive takes the form of what Marcuse called libidinal rationality, in which reason would be guided by the logos of instinctual gratification rather than repression, in harmony with reason. Feenberg explains how, in grounding his theory of radical subjectivity in Freud’s work, Marcuse was able to historicize the instincts (primarily Eros, the life instinct and Thanatos, the death instinct) by showing their malleability according to the achieved levels of economic, social and technological development of different forms of civilization. He contends that Marcuse, in arguing that the instincts were simultaneously expressions of human subjectivity and of the world of external nature (or what he referred to as “nature in the wider sense”), provided a firmer ontological basis for his critical theory by grounding the potential for radical social transformation in the instinctual structure of human beings inhabiting a shared lifeworld. According to Feenberg, eros, in the form of the emergence of a new sensibility and a corresponding libidinal rationality no longer tied to the “rationality” of domination and the ethos of the performance principle, provided for Marcuse the historical as well as ontological basis for the experience of “the unity of humanity and nature” which had been validated scientifically by studies of ecology. From this, Feenberg draws the conclusion that, in Marcuse’s view, “theoretical and practical reason are truly united in the struggle to save the environment as a human lifeworld” (126).
Feenberg’s analysis and interpretation of Marcuse’s critical theory is both formidable and incisive. At the same time, the conclusions he draws about its implications for contemporary political practice are surprisingly narrow and limited. This is ironic, given the emphasis Feenberg places on the importance of the relationship between theory and practice in Marcuse’s work. This begins to become clear in the chapter entitled “A New Concept of Reason?”, where he addresses the possibility of the transformation of natural science, based upon Marcuse’s concept of aesthetics, as applied to the logic and organization of science and technology. In the spirit of Marcuse’s call for a new science and technology informed by the life instincts, Feenberg then argues for the “contestation” of “socially-embedded scientific-technical disciplines” such as medicine, medical and pharmacological research, and climate science by social movements (171–172). By “contestation,” he means the struggle by intellectuals, activists, and their scientific and professional allies to engage in morally-relevant dis- cussions with scientists, engineers, and policy-makers on issues of public concern in order to effect change. Theoretically, this contestation involves establishing a connection between the experiential dimension of the lifeworld, in which natural science as well as human life are grounded, and conventional science, which abstracts from the concrete specificity of that lifeworld. In practice, it involves a process of translation, whereby the purposes and outcomes of scientific research are guided and informed by lifeworld values, such as reducing or eliminating suffering, minimizing damage to human and natural environ- ments, or – as in the case of the climate crisis – moving as quickly as possible to alternative, renewable, non-toxic forms of energy production and consumption. Feenberg spends the rest of this chapter dis- cussing how to apply Marcuse’s concepts of a “successor science” and “translation” to modern scientific disciplines, including climate change research.
But while he hints at “the possibility of revolutionary scientific change” (193), what Feenberg comes up with in terms of a Marcusean version of contemporary praxis is considerably less ambitious politi- cally than the kind of revolution Marcuse envisioned, particularly with regard to the two most important technology-related issues humanity faces today – the existential threats posed by the climate crisis and the increasing possibility of the use of nuclear weapons. For Feenberg, the struggle for a new “scientific rationality” in the spirit of Marcuse’s aesthetics, apparently does not extend, for example, to the scientists and engineers engaged in continuing research on and development (i.e., “modernization”) of these horrific weapons of mass destruction. This omission is unfortunate, as Feenberg’s expla- nations of Marcuse’s critical theory and its implications for practice are otherwise expansive, well-articulated, and cogent. Despite his occasional criticisms of certain aspects of Marcuse’s work, he is, on the whole, theoretically faithful to the latter’s ideas, including Marcuse’s revolutionary intentions and socialist commitments.
In his epilogue to the book (“Conclusion: A Look Back”), Feenberg briefly recapitulates Marcuse’s critique of science and technology as detailed in One-Dimensional Man. While characterizing as implausible Marcuse’s belief that overcoming the “one-dimensional outlook” of modern science “would require a radical transformation of the natural sciences,” he nevertheless argues that “there are resources in Marcuse’s theory that can be repurposed in a critique of the techno sciences” he believes Marcuse would have endorsed (223). He then summarizes his revision of Marcuse’s thesis by acknowledging that “I have reduced Marcuse’s ambitious argument for general ontological transformation to a more modest argument for the transformation of regional ontologies, which involve nature in its various forms relevant to human life.” He claims that this revision “echoes the change in meaning” that Marcuse described in his essay on Marx’s manuscripts, and parallels Marcuse’s contention that “[r]evolution is only possible when social objects acquire new meanings in general consciousness”(224). While his interpretation of Marcuse here is undoubtedly correct, he limits his analysis of the possibilities for what Marcuse termed “rebellious subjectivity” to the participants in these technosciences.
Given Feenberg’s overall theoretical commitment to Marcuse’s analysis and critique of advanced capitalist societies, as well as his echoing of Marcuse’s calls for the revolutionary socialist transform- ation of those societies, why then does he shy away from considering the possibilities for the growth and transformation of the kinds of citizen protest movements he alludes to into revolutionary movements oriented to addressing these contemporary existential threats to human survival as well as the economic, political, and social systems of inequality, oppression, and organized violence that perpetuate them? While on the one hand he claims that “the dystopian ‘end of history’ no longer threatens,” on the other hand he acknowledges, in the very next sentence, that “struggles for a just and peaceful world continue and have intensified in recent years.” He gives as examples of the latter the School Strike for the Climate movement and Extinction Rebellion, which most certainly are not examples of the kind of “technical politics” Feenberg previously described and argued for (224).
One can only guess at the reasons for the discrepancy between Feenberg’s theoretical faithfulness to the deep ontology of Marcuse’s thought and the practice that one might expect would result from it. Perhaps the reason for this discrepancy lies in the fact that Feenberg sees the possibilities for radical, transformative, mass political action to address these existential issues as equally implausible; or because, given his decades-long study of and groundbreaking scholarship in developing a neo-Marcusean critical theory of technology, the latter project is the one he feels most qualified to devote his intellectual and practical energies to. In any case, the reader who has theoretical and political commitments similar to Feenberg’s, and follows closely the argument of his book, may be somewhat dissatisfied with his conclusions.
On the other hand, the book provides an in-depth, penetrating analysis of Marcuse’s work, tying together chronologically as well as conceptually its most important themes. Furthermore, Feenberg does so in ways that make that work relevant and accessible to social and political theorists, intellectuals, educators, scientists and policy experts, as well as to social movement organizers, political activists, and an educated lay public. While the conclusions he draws about the potential for transformative political and policy change are not commensurate with the radical character of Marcuse’s own theory and practice, The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing makes an important and timely contribution to our understanding of Marcuse’s work, and of what is at stake politically, morally, and existentially in this time of multiple, intersecting global crises.
1. While Feenberg makes clear that Marcuse’s break with Heidegger occurred in 1932, he also asserts that Marcuses writings from 1955 on revived themes from those early writings.
