Marcuse, Herbert (märk

`zə), 1898–1979, U.S. political philosopher, b. Berlin. He was educated at the Univ. of Freiburg and with Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer founded the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research. A special target of the Nazis because of his Jewish origins and Marxist politics, he emigrated (1934) to the United States and became a naturalized citizen in 1940. Marcuse served with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and later taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Brandeis before becoming (1965) professor of philosophy at the Univ. of California at San Diego. He is best known for his attempt to synthesize Marxian and Freudian theories into a comprehensive critique of modern industrial society. In One Dimensional Man (1964), his most popular book, he argued for a sexual basis to the social and political repression in contemporary America; the book made him a hero of New Left radicals and provided a rationale for the student revolts of the 1960s in the United States and Europe. His other works include Reason and Revolution (1941), Eros and Civilization (1955), An Essay on Liberation (1969), and Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972).

Bibliography

See studies by A. MacIntyre (1970), P. Mattick (1972), J. Woddis (1972), C. Fred Alford (1985), and P. Line (1985); R. Wolin, Heidegger's Children (2001).

Marcuse, Herbert

(born July 19, 1898, Berlin—died July 29, 1979, Starnberg, Ger.) German-U.S. political philosopher. A member of the Frankfurt school, he fled Germany after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. After working in U.S. intelligence in World War II, he taught at several universities, principally Brandeis University (1954–65) and the University of California at San Diego (1965–76). In his best known and most influential work, One-Dimensional Man (1964), Marcuse argued that society under advanced capitalism is unfree and repressive and that modern man has become intellectually and spiritually complacent through his psychological dependence on the blandishments of consumer society, a phenomenon he termed “repressive desublimation.” He was also hostile to the Soviet system. His works were popular among student leftists, especially after the 1968 student rebellions at Columbia University and the Sorbonne. His other writings include Eros and Civilization (1955) and Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972).

Marcuse, Herbert (1898–1979) political philosopher; born in Berlin, Germany. Fleeing Hitler, he came to the U.S.A. in 1934 and was naturalized in 1940; much of his career was spent at Brandeis University (1954–65) and the University of California: San Diego (1965–70). A committed but critical Marxist, he made a synthesis of Marx and Freud in Eros and Civilization (1955). After the publication of One-Dimensional Man (1964), which criticized capitalist societies as repressive, he won notoriety as an inspiration to and apologist for the New Left movement of the 1960s. He retired in La Jolla, Calif., continuing to travel and lecture; in 1971 he was shouted down by European radicals, and he died in Germany where he had gone to lecture.