The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Nature and Revolution in Marcuse’s Philosophy of Praxis

by Andrew Feenberg

How Marcuse helps us understand the ecological crisis of the 21st century

For several years after 1968, Herbert Marcuse was one of the most famous philosophers in the world. He became the face of Frankfurt School Critical Theory for a generation in turmoil. His fame rested on two remarkable books, Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man. These two books represent the utopian hopes and dystopian fears of the time.

In the 1960s and 70s, young people seeking a theoretical basis for their revolution found it in his work. Marcuse not only supported their struggles against imperialism and race and gender discrimination, he foresaw the far-reaching implications of the destruction of the natural environment. Marcuse’s Marxism was influenced by Husserl and Heidegger, Hegel and Freud.

These eclectic sources grounded an original critique of advanced capitalism focused on the social construction of subjectivity and technology. Marcuse contrasted the “one-dimensionality” of conformist experience with the “new sensibility” of the New Left. The movement challenged a society that “delivered the goods” but devastated the planet with its destructive science and technology.

A socialist revolution would fail if it did not transform these instruments into means of liberation, both of nature and human beings. This aspiration is alive today in the radical struggle over climate change. Marcuse offers theoretical resources for understanding that struggle.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics

256 pages, Paperback

Published February 28, 2023

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

[Grace Kantrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense read that I would not recommend to people who haven't read any theory. Useful background: Marx, Weber, Freud, Gramsci, Habermas, Hegel, Heidegger, Horkheimer/Adorno. As a Sociology major I was kind of pissed to have not been introduced to Marcuse's work in any Sociology or Philosophy class. In particular, I struggled with making sense of competing theories of Instrumental Rationality (systems doom humanity) and Communicative Action/other theories that highlight rational communication between individuals in civil society. I was looking for a missing piece that Marcuse finds in ontology (Heidegger). As Feenberg explains, his ontological background is particularly interesting because Heidegger came out as a Nazi which forced Marcuse to abandon ontology as a formal reference. As Feenberg shows, though, it's clear that despite the renunciation, ontology is clearly still the backbone of much of Marcuse's theoretical work. He just gets more vague about it. Marcuse uses some of Marx's most controversial and confusing writings (his early Manuscripts) that "needs are ontological affirmations of beings and that nature is the inorganic body of man" and extends it to his idea of the "transformative interaction of the collective subject of labor with nature." You have to go back to Hegel to understand the idea of "life depending on a world that is also its essential adversary" in which people and objects interact in tension with one another, requiring reconciliation and transformation. Marcuse uses the concept of "potentiality", whereby idealizations belong to a possible trajectory of the social world, to apply this life-theory to a critique of capitalism. He is skeptical of technology under capitalism. Technical power simultaneously increases the potentiality for peace and freedom and increases formal logic, which permits the suppression of human beings and potentialities for peace and freedom. Technical power under capitalism is inherently oriented towards Thanatos (Freudian term- desire for destruction) rather than Eros (Freudian term - life affirming quality). Marcuse turns to the physical sciences' quantification of worldly experience and argues for the reformulation of science for a new society. This is where Marcuse runs into a dead end, because what exactly is this new science and how does it work?! You can't just not have microscopes. Feenberg gets very creative in his application to the realm of "technoscience" via "translation" (medicine, environmental science -- areas of science that objectify its subject yet interact with it in reality), in which scientific concepts enter the vernacular and receive additional normative content. The best example is the concept of "pollution" which was originally a scientific measurement representing the presence of certain chemical compounds in the air and water. In the real world, pollution came to designate the sickness or healthiness of an environment. The term is thus charged with normative content that influences how it is studied. Therefore, there is a complementary relationship between science and the lifeworld, as long as there are social movements that can push them forward. Reminds me of Fraser's Subaltern Spheres whereby members of subordinated groups invent and circulate counter-discourses that differ from mainstream discourse, except the interaction is between the institution of science and the lifeworld rather than strictly within the public sphere. A question I have for Feenberg would be how the barriers between institutions and the lifeworld differ from publics/counterpublics within the public sphere.
Marcuse argues for a science guided by aesthetics rather than profit margins, and Feenberg's application is innovative in that it stays true to these basic tenets yet examines socially-embedded fields of science rather than science itself.
As someone who is about to enter the tech space, Marcuse's ideas are attractive to me because I struggle with the destructive qualities of the internet as a rationalized, algorithmic, profit-driven entity. This book has helped me ponder the usefulness of an aesthetics-driven mentality for tech that orients itself towards life-affirming values rather than $$.