Herbert Marcuse - Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Emancipation

LONDON AND NEW YORK

Herbert Marcuse, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Emancipation

Douglas Kellner, Clayton Pierce, and Tyson Lewis

Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Emancipation, Volume 5 of the Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, presents for contemporary readers Marcuses unique syntheses of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and critical social theory, directed toward human emancipation and social transformation. Within these disciplines, Marcuse critically engaged disparate currents ranging from Heidegger and phenomenology to Hegel, Marx, Dewey, and Freud to create unique philosophical perspectives and analyses, often overlooked in favor of his social theory and political interventions with the New Left, the subject of previous volumes.

The collection assembles significant, largely unknown, texts from the Herbert Marcuse archives in Frankfurt, important, and in some cases unknown, critiques of positivism and idealism, Deweys pragmatism, and the tradition of German philosophy; philosophical essays from the 1930s and 1940s that attempt to reconstruct philosophy on a materialist base; Marcuses unique attempts to bring together Freud, philosophy, and critical social theory; philosophical reflections on death, human aggression, war, and peace; and his later critical philosophical perspectives on science, technology, society, religion, ecology, and human emancipation.

These philosophical themes are connected to genealogical lines of development that appear as one assesses Marcuses intellectual and political growth, which help define his unique critical theory project. The task we undertake in the Introduction to this volume is to make prominent these threads of Marcuses critical theory that play a major role in his theoretical synthesis. We see Marcuse as moving beyond traditional approaches to philosophical and social problems in a highly productive and relevant manner. Struggling against the conceptual and political limitations of various thinkers and movements, Marcuse developed a synthetically robust and historically attuned critical theory capable of confronting the multifaceted problems facing contemporary civilization as it continued to produce damaged conditions for human and non-human life under capitalist organization.

In this sense, Marcuses Marxist reworking of Heideggerian interpretations of being and historicity, the development of a Freudian critical theory of the psyche and society, and critiques of intellectual movements such as idealism, positivism, and pragmatism should be understood as philosophical endeavors interested in constantly reevaluating the capabilities of critical theory for developing a metacritique of human domination that ultimately aimed at human emancipation. The subjectobject relation, the psyche/society/nature dialectic, and perhaps most importantly, the effects of science and technological rationality on human life are just some of the examples of philosophical and social problems that Marcuse reinterpreted in novel ways within his constantly evolving critical theory of society.

In sum, Heidegger, Hegel, Marx, and Freud appear as privileged interlocutors because they open up the path for reconceptualizing the strengths and weaknesses of critical theory in light of historical tendencies. Primarily a philosopher, Marcuse demonstrated that philosophy could concern itself both with the crucial political issues of the day and with traditional philosophical problems and prospects for human emancipation. The Introduction to the volume will situate Marcuses engagement with philosophy in the context of main currents of twentieth-century philosophy and the development of his own philosophical perspectives. Marcuses enduring philosophical contributions will be presented, along with the intense controversy over his work and its continuing relevance for challenges of the contemporary moment.