Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia

by Andrew Feenberg, Robert Pippin, Charles P. Webel

Distinguished scholars--Jurgen Habermas, Claus Offe, Douglas Kellner, and Martin Jay, among others--draw upon historical, theoretical, and biographical information to assess Marcuse's philosophy, from its grounding in classical German idealism, through the break with Heidegger, to his role in the American counterculture of the sixties and seventies. Indispensable for anyone interested in an in-depth understanding of one of the most burning issues of our the relation of critical theory to social action.

Genres: Philosophy, Sociology

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 1987

About the author

Andrew Feenberg is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology Lab. He has also taught for many years in the Philosophy Department at San Diego State University, and at Duke University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the Universities of California, San Diego and Irvine, the Sorbonne, the University of Paris-Dauphine, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and the University of Tokyo and the University of Brasilia.

He is the author of Lukacs, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory (Rowman and Littlefield, 1981; Oxford University Press, 1986), Critical Theory of Technology (Oxford University Press, 1991), Alternative Modernity (University of California Press, 1995), and Questioning Technology (Routledge, 1999). A second edition of Critical Theory of Technology appeared with Oxford in 2002 under the title Transforming Technology. Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History appeared in 2005 with Routledge. Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity appeared with MIT Press in 2010. Translations of several of these books are available. Dr. Feenberg is also co-editor of Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia (Bergin and Garvey Press, 1987), Technology and the Politics of Knowledge (Indiana University Press, 1995), Modernity and Technology (MIT Press, 2003), and Community in the Digital Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). His co-authored book on the French May Events of 1968 appeared in 2001 with SUNY Press under the title When Poetry Ruled the Streets. With William Leiss, Feenberg has edited a collection entitled The Essential Marcuse published by Beacon Press. A book on Feenberg's philosophy of technology entitled Democratizing Technology, appeared in 2006.

In addition to his work on Critical Theory and philosophy of technology, Dr. Feenberg has published on the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro. He is also recognized as an early innovator in the field of online education, a field he helped to create in 1982. He led the TextWeaver Project on improving software for online discussion forums under a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education of the US Department of Education. For the latest web based version of this software, see http://webmarginalia.net/. Dr. Feenberg is currently studying online education on a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Reviews

[kac attac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid scholarship, if dense. Though some of the contributors seem to have been personally acquainted with and fond of Marcuse, the discussion is admirably sober and there is no shortage of criticism. Recommended for readers seeking an angle on a particular aspect of Marcuse's thought. For me this was aesthetics, and Bronner's essay (Ch. 7) is an exemplary contribution.

With the possible exception of Section V, "The Political Dimension," the rest of the collection is very dense and specialized and I cannot claim to have understood it well. The work on Marcuse's relationships to Hegel and Heidegger is especially difficult for a non-specialist and probably not terribly relevant either. Ditto the final essay on technology and Marxism. But if you're a glutton for punishment like I am, you'll at least come away with some new additions to your reading list and a better sense of the academic aftershocks of Marcuse's work.