Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse | |
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University of Berlin University of Freiburg | |
Notable work | (1964) |
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Era | 20th-century philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
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Herbert Marcuse (
Between 1943 and 1950, Marcuse worked in US government service for the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency) where he criticized the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the book Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (1958). In the 1960s and the 1970s, he became known as the preeminent theorist of the New Left and the student movements of West Germany, France, and the United States; some consider him "the Father of the New Left".[5]
His best-known works are Eros and Civilization (1955) and One-Dimensional Man (1964). His Marxist scholarship inspired many radical intellectuals and political activists in the 1960s and 1970s, both in the United States and internationally.
Biography
Early years
Herbert Marcuse was born July 19, 1898, in
In 1919 he attended Humboldt University in Berlin, taking classes for four semesters. In 1920 he transferred to the University of Freiburg to concentrate on German literature, philosophy, politics, and economics.[6] He completed his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Freiburg in 1922 on the German Künstlerroman, after which he moved back to Berlin, where he worked in publishing. Two years later he married Sophie Wertheim, a mathematician.
He returned to
Institute for Social Research
In 1932 Marcuse stopped working with Heidegger, who joined the Nazi Party in 1933. Marcuse understood that he would not qualify as a professor under the Nazi regime.[6] Marcuse was then hired to work for the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt. The Institute deposited their endowment in Holland in anticipation of the Nazi takeover, so Marcuse never actually worked in the school there,[6] but instead began his work with the Institute in Geneva, where a branch office was formed, having left Germany for Switzerland in May 1933.[6] While a member of the Frankfurt School, Marcuse developed a model for critical social theory, created a theory of the new stage of state and monopoly capitalism, described the relationships between philosophy, social theory, and cultural criticism, and provided an analysis and critique of German National Socialism. Marcuse worked closely with critical theorists while at the Institute.[7]
Emigration to the United States
Marcuse emigrated to the United States in June 1934. Marcuse served at the Institute's Columbia University branch from 1934 through 1942. He traveled to Washington, D.C., in 1942, to work for the Office of War Information, and afterward the Office of Strategic Services. Marcuse then went on to teach at Brandeis University and the University of California, San Diego later in his career.
World War II
This section needs additional citations for verification. (April 2024) |
During World War II, Marcuse first worked for the US
Directed by the Harvard historian William L. Langer, the Research and Analysis (R&A) Branch was the largest American research institution in the first half of the twentieth century. At its zenith between 1943 and 1945, it employed over twelve hundred, four hundred of whom were stationed abroad. In many respects, it was the site where post-World War II American social science was born, with protégés of some of the most esteemed American university professors, as well as numerous European intellectual émigrés, in its ranks.
In March 1943, Marcuse joined fellow Frankfurt School scholar Franz Neumann in R&A's Central European Section as senior analyst; there he rapidly established himself as "the leading analyst on Germany".[8]
After the dissolution of the OSS in 1945, Marcuse was employed by the
Post-war career
Marcuse first began his teaching career as a political theorist at
Marcuse was a friend and collaborator of the political sociologist Barrington Moore Jr. and of the political philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, and also a friend of the Columbia University sociology professor C. Wright Mills, one of the founders of the New Left movement. In his "Introduction" to One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse wrote: "I should like to emphasize the vital importance of the work of C. Wright Mills."[11]
In the post-war period, Marcuse rejected the theory of
Marcuse's critiques of
Marcuse defended the arrested East German dissident Rudolf Bahro (author of Die Alternative: Zur Kritik des real existierenden Sozialismus [trans., The Alternative in Eastern Europe]), discussing in a 1979 essay Bahro's theories of "change from within."[15]
Marriages
Marcuse married three times. His first wife was mathematician Sophie Wertheim (1901–1951), whom he married in 1924 and had his first son Peter with in 1928. Before emigrating to New York in 1934, they resided in Freiburg, Berlin, Geneva, and Paris. They lived in Los Angeles/Santa Monica and Washington, D.C., in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1951 Sophie Wertheim died due to cancer.[16] He would later marry Inge Neumann (1914–1973), the widow of his close friend Franz Neumann (1900–1954). After his second wife Inge died in 1973, Marcuse married Erica Sherover (1938–1988), a former graduate student at the University of California, in 1976.[17]
Children
In his first marriage with Sophie Wertheim, they had one son Peter Marcuse born in 1928. Peter Marcuse was a professor emeritus of urban planning at Columbia University located in New York. Although Marcuse didn't have any children with Inge Neumann Marcuse, he helped raise her two sons, Thomas Neumann and Michael Neumann.[18] Thomas (now Osha) is a Berkeley-based writer, activist, lawyer, and muralist. Michael works as a philosophy professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.[19]
Marcuse's granddaughter is the novelist Irene Marcuse and his grandson, Harold Marcuse, is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Death
On July 29, 1979, ten days after his eighty-first birthday, Marcuse died after suffering a stroke during his trip to Germany. He had just finished speaking at the Frankfurt Römerberggespräche, and was on his way to the Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg, on invitation from second-generation Frankfurt School theorist Jürgen Habermas.
In 2003, after his ashes were rediscovered in the United States, they were buried in the
Philosophy and views
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Marcuse's concept of repressive desublimation, which has become well-known, refers to his argument that postwar mass culture, with its profusion of sexual provocations, serves to reinforce political repression. If people are preoccupied with inauthentic sexual stimulation, their political energy will be "desublimated"; instead of acting constructively to change the world, they remain repressed and uncritical. Marcuse advanced the prewar thinking of critical theory toward a critical account of the "one-dimensional" nature of bourgeois life in Europe and America. His thinking has been seen as an advance of the concerns of earlier liberal critics such as David Riesman.[20][21]
Two aspects of Marcuse's work are of particular importance. First, his use of language more familiar from the critique of Soviet or Nazi regimes to characterize developments in the advanced industrial world. Second, his grounding of critical theory in a particular use of psychoanalytic thought.[22]
Marcuse's early "Heideggerian Marxism"
During his years in Freiburg, Marcuse wrote a series of essays that explored the possibility of synthesizing Marxism and Heidegger's fundamental ontology, as begun in the latter's work Being and Time (1927). This early interest in Heidegger followed Marcuse's demand for "concrete philosophy," which, he declared in 1928, "concerns itself with the truth of contemporaneous human existence."[23] These words were directed against the neo-Kantianism of the mainstream, and against both the revisionist and orthodox Marxist alternatives, in which the subjectivity of the individual played little role.[24] Though Marcuse quickly distanced himself from Heidegger following Heidegger's endorsement of Nazism, thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas have suggested that an understanding of Marcuse's later thinking demands an appreciation of his early Heideggerian influence.[25]
Marcuse and capitalism
Marcuse's analysis of capitalism derives partially from one of Karl Marx's main concepts: Objectification,[26] which under capitalism becomes Alienation. Marx believed that capitalism was exploiting humans; that by producing objects of a certain character, laborers became alienated, and this ultimately dehumanized them into functional objects themselves.
Marcuse took this belief and expanded it. He argued that capitalism and industrialization pushed laborers so hard that they began to see themselves as extensions of the objects they were producing. At the beginning of One-Dimensional Man Marcuse writes, "The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment,"
The very mechanism that ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs that it has produced. Most important of all, the pressure of consumerism has led to the total integration of the working class into the capitalist system. Its political parties and trade unions have become thoroughly bureaucratized and the power of negative thinking or critical reflection has rapidly declined.[29] The working class is no longer a potentially subversive force capable of bringing about revolutionary change.
Marcuse evolved a theory over the years that stated modern technology is repressive naturally. He believed that in both capitalist and communist societies, workers did not question the manner in which they lived due to the mechanism of repression of technological advances. The use of technology allowed people to not be aware of what is occurring around them such as the fact that they might soon be out of their jobs because these technologies are carrying out their same jobs quicker and cheaper. He claimed the modern-day workers were not as rebellious as before during the Karl Marx era (19th century). They just freely conformed to the system they were under for the sake of satisfying their needs and survival. Since they had conformed, the people's revolution that Marcuse felt was necessary never happened.
As a result, rather than looking to the workers as the revolutionary vanguard, Marcuse put his faith in an alliance between radical intellectuals and those groups not yet integrated into one-dimensional society: the socially marginalized, the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other ethnicities and other colors, the unemployed and the unemployable. These were the people whose standards of living demanded the ending of intolerable conditions and institutions and whose resistance to one-dimensional society would not be diverted by the system. Their opposition was revolutionary even if their consciousness was not.[28]
The New Left and radical politics
Many radical scholars and activists were influenced by Marcuse, such as
Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left. Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements that promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or that oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.[34]
Marcuse later expressed his radical ideas through three pieces of writing. He wrote An Essay on Liberation in 1969, in which he celebrated liberation movements such as those in Vietnam, which inspired many radicals. In 1972 he wrote Counterrevolution and Revolt, which argues that the hopes of the 1960s were facing a counterrevolution from the right.[7]
After Brandeis denied the renewal of his teaching contract in 1965, Marcuse taught at the
Marcuse and feminism
Marcuse felt that societal reform may be found among the outcast of society, thus he supported movements such as the Feminist movement.[6]
Marcuse was particularly concerned with Feminism near the end of his life, for reasons he explained in a public lecture Marxism and Feminism in 1974,[36] mentioning this in a Stanford lecture, "I believe the Women’s Liberation Movement is perhaps the most important and potentially the most radical political movement that we have - even if the consciousness of this fact has not yet penetrated the Movement as a whole".[37] Many themes and ambitions from Marcuse's work found embodiment in socialist feminism, especially ideas developed in Eros and Civilization.[36] It involved changes not only in the structural power relations of society, but in the instinctual drives of individual human beings. Although he regarded women's participation in the labor force as positive, and a necessary condition for women's liberation, Marcuse did not consider it sufficient for true freedom. He hoped for a shift in moral values away from aggressive and masculine qualities towards feminine ones.[36][6]
Jessica Benjamin and Nancy Chodorow believed that Marcuse's reliance on Freud's drive theory as the source of the desire for societal change is inadequate for both philosophers since he fails to account for the individual's intersubjective growth.[6]
Criticism
The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre asserted that Marcuse falsely assumed consumers were completely passive, uncritically responding to corporate advertising.[28] MacIntyre frankly opposed Marcuse. "It will be my crucial contention in this book," MacIntyre stated, "that almost all of Marcuse's key positions are false.[38] For example, Marcuse was not an orthodox Marxist.[39] Like many of the Frankfurt School, Marcuse wrote of "critical theory" not of "Marxism" and MacIntyre notes a similarity in this to the Right Hegelians, whom Marx attacked.[40] Hence, MacIntyre proposed that Marcuse be regarded as "a pre-Marxist thinker".[41] According to MacIntyre, Marcuse's assumptions about advanced industrial society were wrong in whole and in part.[42] "Marcuse," concluded MacIntyre, "invokes the great names of freedom and reason while betraying their substance at every important point."[43]
Legacy
Herbert Marcuse appealed to students of the New Left through his emphasis on the power of critical thought and his vision of total human emancipation and a non-repressive civilization. He supported students he felt were subject to the pressures of a commodifying system, and has been regarded as an inspirational intellectual leader.[28] He is also considered among the most influential of the Frankfurt School critical theorists on American culture, due to his studies on student and counter-cultural movements on the 1960s.[44] The legacy of the 1960s, of which Marcuse was a vital part, lives on, and the great refusal is still practiced by oppositional groups and individuals.[28]
Eros and Civilization is one of Marcuses most notable works and his insensitivity to human relatedness portrayed in this project is considered the key failure of this work. His insights of psychoanalytic object relations theory in this project have not been wedded or reinterpreted, without abandoning its core principles.[45]
Marcuse's thought remains influential in the 21st century. In the introduction to an issue of
Marcuse is not widely remembered outside of contexts where critical theory is taught or referenced.[49] This theory, rooted in Marxist philosophy, remains as one of the main components of Marcuse's influence.
Bibliography
- Books
- Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity (1932), originally written in German,[50] in English 1987.[51]
- Studie über Autorität und Familie (1936) in German, republished 1987, 2005. Marcuse wrote just over 100 pages in this 900-page study.
- ISBN 978-1-57392-718-5
- ISBN 978-0-415-18663-6
- Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (1958)[52]
- One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964)
- A Critique of Pure Tolerance (1965) Essay "Repressive Tolerance," with additional essays by Robert Paul Wolff and Barrington Moore Jr.
- Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (1968)
- An Essay on Liberation (1969)
- Five Lectures (1969)
- ISBN 978-0-8070-1533-9
- ISBN 978-0-8070-1519-3
- Essays
- "Neue Quellen zur Grundlegung des Historischen Materialismus" (1932)[53][54][55]
- "Repressive Tolerance" (1965)[34]
- "Liberation" (1969)[56]
- "On the Problem of the Dialectic" (1976)
- "Protosocialism and Late Capitalism: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis Based on Bahro's Analysis" (1980)
References
- ^ a b "Essential Marcuse". Archived from the original on 2021-05-27. Retrieved 2020-10-07.
- ^ "The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory" Archived 2018-02-18 at the Wayback Machine, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- ^ a b Lemert, Charles. Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings. Westview Press, Boulder, CO. 2010.
- ^ Mann, Douglas. 2008. "A Survey of Modern Social Theory". Oxford University Press.
- ISBN 978-1-35129562-8. Archivedfrom the original on 2020-08-03. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Herbert Marcuse". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. April 10, 2019. Archived from the original on September 1, 2018. Retrieved September 2, 2018.
According to Marcuse, his childhood was that of a typical German upper-middle-class youth whose Jewish family was well integrated into German society
- ^ a b c d e f Douglas Kellner. "Illuminations: Kellner". Archived from the original on November 1, 2019. Retrieved October 1, 2012.
- ^ Neumann, Marcuse & Kirchheimer 2013, p. 3.
- ^ Romano, Carlin (2011-12-11). "Occupy This: Is It Comeback Time for Herbert Marcuse?". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Archived from the original on 2020-11-11. Retrieved 2020-08-04.
- ^ Elliott, Anthony & Larry Ray. Key Contemporary Social Theorists. Blackwell Publishers. 2003.
- ^ One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. xvii
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19285109-3.
- S2CID 146295576.
- ^ a b c d e f "Tom Bourne (Sept. 1979)" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-07-09. Retrieved 2017-10-31.
- ^ Stefan Meretz. "Protosozialismus und Spätkapitalismus. Versuch einer theoretischen Synthese von Bahros Ansatz (von Herbert Marcuse)". Open theory. Archived from the original on 2013-05-30. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ^ "Sophie Wertheim (1901–1951)". Marcuse.org. Archived from the original on 2019-09-27. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ^ "Erica Sherover-Marcuse (1938–1988)". Marcuse.org. Archived from the original on 2019-10-25. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ^ "Herbert Marcuse". Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2021-10-23.
- ^ "Inge Neumann (1913–1973)". Marcuse.org. Archived from the original on 2019-10-25. Retrieved 2018-07-05.
- ISBN 9780631219729. Archivedfrom the original on 2021-04-14. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ^ Mestrovic, Stjepan (1997). Postemotional Society. London: Sage. p. 43.
- ^ Elliot, Anthony and Larry Ray. Key Contemporary Social Theorists. Blackwell Publishing. 2003.
- ^ Marcuse, Herbert. "On Concrete Philosophy." 1929. In Heideggerian Marxism. Eds. John Abromeit and Richard Wolin. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. p. 49.
- ^ For a thorough discussion of Marcuse's perspectives on the Marxisms of his day, see Benhabib's introduction to Hegel's Ontology. (Marcuse, Herbert. Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity. 1932. Trans. Seyla Benhabib. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. pp. xi–xix.)
- ^ See, e.g., Marcuse, Herbert. Heideggerian Marxism, edited by Richard Wolin and John Abromeit, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005, pp. xi–xxx.
- ^ "Glossary of Terms: Ob". Marxists.org. Archived from the original on 2013-10-19. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ^ "marcuse.org (quotations)". Archived from the original on 2009-02-21. Retrieved 2009-10-14.
- ^ ISBN 9780135248850. Archivedfrom the original on 2021-04-14. Retrieved 2020-11-06.
- ^ "SEP". Archived from the original on 2018-09-01. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
- ISBN 978-0-8047-3885-9.
- ^ Davis, Angela (July 1971). "Rhetoric Vs. Reality: Angela Davis tells why black people should not be deceived by words". Ebony. Vol. 26, no. 9. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company. pp. 115–120. Archived from the original on 2021-04-14. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
- ^ Barsky, Robert (1997). Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. p. 134.
- ^ "marcuse.org (books about)". Archived from the original on 2006-09-01. Retrieved 2006-08-28.
- ^ a b "Repressive Tolerance, by Herbert Marcuse (1965)". Marcuse.org. Archived from the original on 2020-01-08. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
- ^ "William McGill, 75, President Who Led Columbia After Years of Distress, Dies", The New York Times, 21 October 1997
- ^ S2CID 147495131.
- .
- ^ MacIntyre 1970, p. 2.
- ^ MacIntyre 1970, p. 64.
- ^ MacIntyre 1970, pp. 19, 41, 58, 67, 72, 106.
- ^ MacIntyre 1970, pp. 18–19.
- ^ MacIntyre 1970, pp. 69–82, 76.
- ^ MacIntyre 1970, p. 106.
- ^ Mann, Douglas. A Survey of Modern Social Theory. Oxford University Press. 2008.
- JSTOR j.ctv1p2gksc.12, retrieved 2023-10-05
- S2CID 220348659.
- S2CID 143670657.
- S2CID 52209633.
- JSTOR 466719– via JSTOR.
- ^ Hegels Ontologie und die Grundlegung einer Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit (Frankfurt 1932).
- ^ Translated and introduced by Seyla Benhabib, published by MIT Press 1987.
- ^ The Vintage 1961 reprint "inexplicably" (Kellner, p. xi, n8) omits Marcuse's 13-page "Introduction" in the 1958 original issue by Columbia University, whose complete 1985 edition contains a new 11-page "Introduction" by Douglas Kellner, yet this edition omits Marcuse's 12-page "Preface to the Vintage Edition" of 1961.
- ^ Marcuse's review of 1844 writings by Karl Marx, which were later translated as Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.
- ^ Marcuse's review was translated by Joris de Bres in 1972 as "The foundation of historical materialism", and included at pp. 1–48 in Marcuse, From Luther to Popper (London: New Left Books 1972, London: Verso 1983).
- ^ Karl Marx, Early Writings (New York: Vintage 1975), pp. 279–400: "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)".
- ^ "Book Review: Herbert Marcuse's An Essay on Liberation Herbert Marcuse's An Essay on Liberation". Marcuse.org. Archived from the original on 2012-11-01. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
Further reading
Herbert Marcuse
- John Abromeit and W. Mark Cobb, eds (2004), Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader, New York, London: Routledge.
- Andrew Feenberg and William Leiss (2007), The Essential Marcuse: Selected Writings of Philosopher and Social Critic Herbert Marcuse, Boston: Beacon Press.
- Technology, War and Fascism. Collected papers of Herbert Marcuse, volume 1 (London: Routledge 1998)
Criticism and analysis
- C. Fred Alford (1985), Science and Revenge of Nature: Marcuse and Habermas, Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
- Harold Bleich (1977), The Philosophy of Herbert Marcuse, Washington: University Press of America.
- Paul Breines (1970), Critical Interruptions: New Left Perspectives on Herbert Marcuse, New York: Herder and Herder.
- ISBN 978-0-520-05295-6.
- Paul Mattick (1972), Critique of Marcuse: One-dimensional man in class society Merlin Press
- Alain Martineau (1986). Herbert Marcuse's Utopia, Harvest House, Montreal.
- MacIntyre, Alasdair (1970), Herbert Marcuse. An exposition and a polemic, New York: Viking.
- Neumann, Franz; Marcuse, Herbert; Kirchheimer, Otto (2013), Laudani, Raffaele (ed.), Secret Reports on Nazi Germany. The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort, Princeton University Press.
- ISBN 0-87000-112-4
- Andrew T. Lamas, Todd Wolfson, and Peter N. Funke, eds (2017), The Great Refusal: Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Social Movements. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2017.
- Barrington Moore, Jr., eds (1967), The Critical Spirit. Essays in honor of Herbert Marcuse. Beacon Press, Boston.
- J. Michael Tilley (2011). "Herbert Marcuse: Social Critique, Haecker and Kierkegaardian Individualism" in Kierkegaard's Influence on Social-Political Thought edited by Jon Stewart.
General
- Anthony Elliott and Larry Ray (2003), Key Contemporary Social Theorists.
- Charles Lemert (2010), Social Theory: the Multicultural and Classic Readings.
- Douglas Mann (2008), A Survey of Modern Social Theory.
- Noel Parker and Stuart Sim (1997), A-Z Guide to Modern Social and Political Theorist
- "Herbert Marcuse | American philosopher". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-10-23
External links
- Comprehensive 'Official' Herbert Marcuse Website, by one of Marcuse's grandsons, with full bibliographies of primary and secondary works, and full texts of many important works
- International Herbert Marcuse Society website
- "Herbert Marcuse (on-line) Archive" at the Marxists Internet Archive
- Herbert Marcuse Archive, by Herbert Marcuse Association
- "Marcuse: professor behind 1960s rebellion" at the Wayback Machine (archived December 10, 2004) from worldsocialism.org
- "Illuminations: The Critical Theory Project" (detailed biography and essays, by Douglas Kellner).
- Douglas Kellner, "Herbert Marcuse"
- Bernard Stiegler, "Spirit, Capitalism, and Superego"
- "Herbert Marcuse Biography Indonesian" at aprillins.com
- Azurmendi, J. 1969: Pentsalaria eta eragina Jakin, 35: 3–16.
- Goodbye Comrade M obituary of Marcuse by David Widgery, Socialist Review (September 1979).
- Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Herbert Marcuse