Lukes, Timothy J. (1985) - The Flight Into Inwardness. An Exposition and Critique of Herbert Marcuse's Theory of Liberative Aesthetics

The Flight into Inwardness
The Flight
into Inwardness
An Exposition and Critique
of Herbert Marcuse’s Theory
of Liberative Aesthetics
Timothy J. Lukes
S
SELINSGROVE
Susquehanna University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lukes, Timothy J., 1950—

The flight into inwardness.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Marcuse, Herbert, 1898-1979—Aesthetics.
2. Aesthetics, Modern—20 century. I. Title.
B945.M2984L85 1985 701 83-40508
ISBN 0-941664-04-X
An earlier version of chapter 10 appeared as “Marcuse and Lear:

The Politics of Motley,” in The Midwest Quarterly 22, no. 1
(Autumn 1980), 32-45.
Printed in the United States of America

For Elaine__
But only if she will do my tax returns for the next twenty-five years.
Contents
Preface 9
Introduction 15
Part I Outlined 16
Part 11 Outlined 19
Part III Outlined 20
Part IV Outlined 23
Part I
The Obstacles to Liberation
1 Technological Rationality and the Persistence of Universal 31
The Logic of Marcuse’s Support of Universal 32
Universal and “Human Nature” 34
The Role of the Aesthetic Dimension 35
Summary of the First Chapter 37
2 Eros, Thanatos, and Necessity 39
Marcuse’s Interpretation of Freud 41
The Pacification of Thanatos 42
The Constant Threat of Thanatos 44
The Death of Civilization? 45
The Resurgence of Eros 46
Instinct and Aesthetics 47
Summary 49
3 Historical and Social Determinism 52
Determinism I: Historical Determinism 53
Determinism II: Social Determinism 55
Aesthetics and Determinism 57
Conclusion to Part I 59
Part II
The Kantian Foundation of Marcuse’s Aesthetics
4 The Kantian Origins of Marcuse’s Aesthetics 65
The First Critique 66
The Second Critique 68
The Imagination 71
The Third Critique 73
Marcuse’s Ambivalent Appreciation of Kant 77
Summary 81
A Brief Outline of Marcuse’s Position on Kant’s “Evolution” 82
Part III
Marcuse’s Aesthetic Taxonomy
5 Scientific Art 87
Scientific Art I: Socialist Realism 88
A Work of Socialist Realism 91
Nature Conquered 92
Scientific Art II: That of the “Technologically Rational”
Society 93
A Technologically Rational Work of Art 96
6 Affirmative Art 99
The Separation of Form and Fact 100
The Promise of Equality 101
7 Anti-Art 104
Dadaism 104
The Deficiencies of Anti-Art 106
8 Critical Art 109
The Schism 110
Schonberg’s Critical Art 111
9 Liberative Art 117
The Promise of Affirmative Art 120
A Causal Sequence 123
A Paradoxical Relationship 125
Marcuse’s Aesthetic Taxonomy Diagrammed 127
Part IV
A Critique of Marcuse’s Liberative Aesthetics
10 The Politics of Motley 131
The Fool 133
The Liberative Success of the Fool 136
A Dangerous Proposition 140
11 An Empirical Diversion 144
Artistic Efflorescence and Political Disturbance 145
The Phase-Cycle Theory Applied 147
The Conservative Possibilities of Liberative Art 149
A More Modern Example 151
Conclusion 154
12 Conclusion 157
Duty 158
The Sublime 160
The Premature Abandonment of Politics 162
The Division Retained 165
Select Bibliography 167
Index 175
Preface
“The ‘flight into inwardness’ and the insistence on a private

sphere may well serve as bulwarks against a society which admin
isters all dimensions of human existence.” 1 As a resident of the
San Francisco Bay area in the sixties, and a student at Berkeley in
the seventies, I was able to sec firsthand the “flight into inward
ness” of a great many political activists. That experience, more
than any other, has caused me to write this book. As a student of
politics, I became interested in the political ramifications of the
flight into inwardness, and I have come to think that as a bulwark
against oppression, inwardness is a barrier more like straw than
brick. This work is an attempt to clarify my position.
In 1964, the steps leading to the University of California
administration building, Sproul Hall, were cluttered daily with
an impressive array of public address paraphernalia, and Sproul
Plaza was jammed from Sather Gate to Telegraph Anvenue with
people listening to the likes of Mario Savio reveal the next tac
tic in the ongoing game-plan of the Free Speech Movement. The
participant was part of a “community” ; and although groups
varied dramatically as to the level of their organization, all
seemed to claim some kind of Hegelian corporatism, wherein
the individual could gain true political efficacy and identity only
when submitting to the “ organization.”
But then, due to a number of factors—many of them still
unclear— the mass movements were replaced by communes and
cooperatives, and around Berkeley, Robert Owen became a
popular topic. Small groups of people were retreating into their
own New Lanarks. They seemed to turn their backs on the world
(and the need to change it), preferring to “get their own house in
order.” Perhaps the movement had demanded too much of the
individuals’ identities, and the cooperative offered the advantages
of corporatism while still permitting equality and autonomy.
9
10 The Flight into Inwardness
However, as seems to be the case with all groups preoccupied
with escape, the withdrawal was not complete enough to escape
contradictions and hypocrisy (growing communal gardens with
unemployment benefits), and the communal movement lost
momentum.
The “flight into inwardness” seems to be complete now. Sproul
Plaza is no longer a sanctuary for delicate social and political
causes; rather, the plaza seems to have metamorphosed into a
type of street carnival, in which minstrels, mime troupes, and
occultists have replaced the activists of the past. Of course, music
and theatrics arc not new to the plaza; they were often used as a
device to entice potential sympathizers into the fray. However,
the music itself was rarely thought of as a complete political act.
The “flight into inwardness” seems to have taken politics with
it; or at least, the boundary between politics and poetry seems to
have become increasingly blurred. Maharishis, movie stars, and
rock concerts have replaced demonstrations, conventions, and
general strikes as the preoccupations of contemporary radical
“politicos.” Berkeley has been annexed into the Woodstock
Nation and, in the words of Abbie Hoffman, “ In Woodstock
Nation, there are no writers, only poet-warriors.”2 The new poli
tical artillery is the poem or the song: the concert is no longer
an interlude from the political— it is the political.
This “aestheticization of politics” is not without its philosoph
ical impetus and support. Herbert Marcuse, especially in his most
recent works, provides an excellent philosophical framework in
which to discuss the phenomenon. He finds it a hopeful phe
nomenon, while I am more doubtful. This essay is an attempt to
discuss and to evaluate the political benefits of investing in Mar
cuse’s aesthetic alternative. I will discuss my reasons for dis
agreeing with Marcuse’s optimism as to the possibilities of the
political potency of the aesthetic practice.
Aesthetics and Art
Marcuse himself often uses the preface as a forum in which to

clarify crucial terms to be used in his work. I will follow his format
and attempt a preliminary definition (and distinction) of art and
aesthetics, at least as Marcuse uses the terms. However, no defini
Preface II
tion or distinction can be very precise, first because Marcuse him
self does not always distinguish the terms impeccably. For in
stance, his last book was published in German under the title,
Die Permanenz der Kunst (der Kunst would translate as art),
whereas the English title (Marcuse’s translation) is The Aesthetic
Dimension. And the distinction between art and aesthetics is
complicated even more because of the significant changes that
occur in the development of Marcuse’s thought, especially re
garding the volatility of art. However, 1 think that these com
plications make it all the more important to attempt at least a
preliminary “working” definition and distinction. (Beyond this
initial discussion, however, Marcuse’s definitions of art and aes
thetics should solidify as my own discussions develop. See espe
cially chapter 4 on the Kantian origins of Marcuse’s aesthetics,
and chapter 9 on “ liberative art.”)
For Marcuse, aesthetics in the most general sense has to do
with the relationship of the imagination, “which is its [aesthetics’]
constitutive mental faculty,”3 and the drive for sensual pleasure.
With Freud, Marcuse speaks of a prehistoric era in which human
ity operated under a “pleasure principle,” where simple erotic
drives were provided with opportunities for immediate fulfill
ment. However, with the historical entrenchment of the patriar
chal system, wherein the drive for sensual pleasure could not be
directly satisfied, sensual fulfillment was forced into the dimen
sion of the imagination; fulfillment could be only partially
achieved in “fantasy.”
In technological society, where practical existence has become
so complex, and so distant from simple sensual satisfaction, a
“technology” has developed that helps the imagination to portray
fantasies in ways that are acceptable, “understandable,” to mod
ern individuals. According to Marcuse, the whole idea of a sepa
rate entity called “aesthetics” indicates at once the repression and
the irrepressiveness of the drive for sensual satisfaction. “The dis
cipline of aesthetics installs the order o f sensuonsness as against
the order o f reason.”4 What bothers Marcuse, at least in his ear
lier aesthetic treatments, is that the satisfaction of the aesthetic
faculty in the present technological world is removed from its
proper impulsive, sensual origin; gratification is forced into the
rarefied, cognitive atmosphere of the aesthetic form: “The sen
sual origin is ‘repressed,’ and the gratification is in the pure form
of the object.”5 And as might be expected, Marcuse describes the
aesthetic statement (the materialization of the aesthetic imagina
tion) in the modern world as the work of art.
In his earlier treatments, especially Eros and Civilization, Mar
cuse is quite cautious about granting any liberative potential to
art; for by conforming to a “technology” of taste, the artistic
statement loses the volatility of the imaginative, aesthetic insight.
Orpheus and Narcissus, representing simple instinctual desires
(fantasies) to alleviate repression, can be rendered harmless in
our advanced technological society by forcing their representa
tions into complex, technical, rigorous modes of artistic expres
sion. Simple aesthetic impulses (fantasies) are translated into the
“science” of aesthetics—into a technology of form. And in the
technological status quo, these statements (works of art) become
quite understandable and thus manageable by the given forces:
Style, rhythm, meter introduce an aesthetic order which is itself

pleasurable: it reconciles with the content. The aesthetic quality of
enjoyment, even entertainment, has been inseparable from the es
sence of art, no matter how tragic, how uncompromising the work of
art is.6
In Eros and Civilization, then, art that is “enjoyed” is seen as

quite unvolatile; its enjoyment indicates its affinity to the repug
nant society in which it is enjoyed.
Thus, in his early discussions of aesthetics, Marcuse sym
pathizes with the perspective of his Frankfurt colleague, Theodor
Adorno, and holds that liberative potential is only in that kind of
art which demonstrates a rejection of the accepted, “enjoyable”
forms: “Art survives only where it cancels itself, where it saves its
substance by denying its traditional form and thereby denying re
conciliation: where it becomes surrealistic and atonal.”7 But in
his latest and most complete work on aesthetics and art, The Aes
thetic Dimension, Marcuse abandons Adorno’s (and the surreal
ists’) preoccupation with the rejection of the given aesthetic
forms:
While the abandonment of the aesthetic form may well provide the
most immediate, most direct horror of a society in which subjects and
objects are shattered, atomized, robbed of their words and images,
the rejection of the aesthetic sublimation turns such works into bits
Preface 13
and pieces of the very society whose “anti-art” they want to be. Anti-
art is self-defeating from the outset.8
In contrast to his brief statements in Eros and Civilization, Mar

cuse now finds more liberative potential in art that retains ele
ments of enjoyment and that is subjected to aesthetic form:
Art draws away from this reality, because it cannot represent this
suffering without subjecting it to aesthetic form, and thereby to the
mitigating catharsis, to enjoyment. Art is inexorably invested with
this guilt. Yet this does not release art from the necessity of recalling
again and again that which can survive even Auschwitz and perhaps
one day make it impossible.9
In his more recent treatments, Essay on Liberation, Counter

revolution and Revolt, and especially The Aesthetic Dimension,
Marcuse shows a new respect for “affirmative,” bourgeois art,
which although expressed through the given “technology of
aesthetics,” still contains the purest, and thus most potentially
liberating, alternative insights. Surrealism, dadaism, and even
Adorno’s critical aesthetics (to be discussed later) are criticized as
too bound up with the present to offer any qualitatively different
alternatives.
Thus Marcuse’s definitions of art and aesthetics are complicat
ed by a change in his position as to the characteristics and effects
of art. So I should mention that, especially in my discussion of the
“ aesthetic taxonomy,” I shall be relying more on Marcuse’s later
works, especially The Aesthetic Dimension, for a comprehensive
view of the kind of art that Marcuse sees as potentially liberating.
Marcuse shows a continual and consistent faith in the aesthetic
dimension as a repository of liberating insights.10 It is only recent
ly that he has recognized a particular kind of “art” as the proper
medium to transmit those insights. My discussions of “liberative
art” follow this recognition.
Liberation and the Pacification of Existence
Another term that appears throughout the present work is

liberation. I think that Marcuse uses the term liberation, rather
than freedom, or independence, because it more strongly implies
that the present state is one of imprisonment. When Marcuse ex
presses his interest in a liberated environment, he has in mind
one in which impeding forces have been removed, rather than
one in which new qualities or habits have been added. He uses
verbs like return and remember as often as he speaks of tran
scending and inventing.
This, of course, puts Marcuse in the tradition of the “ state of
nature” philosophers, who think that civil society must somehow
reflect rather than suppress human nature. And, indeed, when
Marcuse describes the liberated environment as one that allows
the pacification o f existence (another crucial term), I think he
means an existence in which humanity and nature are not at odds
but in harmony (peace) with each other. Liberation is the remov
al of forces that block the appreciation and expression of not only
human nature but all of nature.
Notes
1. Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique o f Marxist Aesthetics

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), p. 38.
2. Abbie Hoffman, Woodstock Nation (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), p. 10.
3. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (New
York: Vintage Books, 1962), p. 157.
4. Ibid., p. 165.
5. Ibid., p. 169.
6. Ibid., p. 131.
7. Ibid., p. 132.
8. Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, p. 49.
9. Ibid., p. 55.
10. Marcuse’s interest in aesthetics dates from as early as his graduate education. His
dissertation at Freiburg was on the German "artist-novel," and in his introduction
Marcuse makes clear his view that literature and art can provide a haven from hum
drum reality. Sec Herbert Marcuse, Der deutsche Kunstlerroman, in Schriften
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Vcrlag, 1978), 1 :9-19.
Introduction
This work is divided into four distinct parts. In the first part, it is
my intention to examine why Marcuse demands the inclusion of
aesthetics in the liberated environment; I want to discuss the
aspects of his earlier works that contribute to his eventual preoc
cupation with aesthetics. In the second part, I intend to examine
just why Marcuse selected Kant as a template for his own aesthe
tic; I think that showing the links (and ruptures) between Kant’s
and Marcuse’s aesthetics can be quite helpful in specifying Mar
cuse’s aesthetic position. In the third part of this work, I want to
isolate the precise type of aesthetic activity that Marcuse believes
to be the most potentially liberating; in order to do so, I have
constructed an “aesthetic taxonomy,” which attempts to define a
hierarchy of aesthetic activity, finally precipitating a “highest”
form. And then, in the fourth part, I criticize Marcuse’s theory of
liberative aesthetics.
As will become obvious, however, my critique is not a con
demnation; rather, it is a concern with the logic of the “last step”
in Marcuse’s philosophical syllogism. I wholeheartedly share his
concern with the highly ambivalent possibilities of technology,
the technocratic creation of “false needs” and “false guilt,” and
the continual sacrifice of alternative-thinking to the demands of
“ necessity,” despite the growing possibilities, or potential, for
increased freedom. It is only his reliance on “ the aesthetic
dimension”—the flight into inwardness—as a means to relieve
the more negative aspects of modern technological society, with
which I take issue. Admittedly, Marcuse reserves a special role
for the aesthetic pursuit; he often speaks of the need to keep
aesthetics directly out of politics. Aesthetics, however, is seen as
able to provide the impetus for political action—even though
“the rest is not up to the artist.” 1 What I want to show is that
placing even an indirect political responsibility on the aesthetic
15
practice is unwise. Liberative art as Marcuse describes it is, in
my opinion, incapable of a consistent, trustworthy political
contribution.
1 should make clear that this is not a full discussion of Mar
cuse’s theory of liberation; rather it is a discussion of the aesthetic
practice as a contributor to a liberated environment. “Elite” uni
versities, students, the feminist movement, labor unions, ad
vanced technology, and deep psychoanalysis have all been aspects
of Marcuse’s liberative strategy. I will discuss aesthetics as that
portion of the liberative strategy which I believe to be the most
interesting and the most important. Fortunately, a recent work
has done some pathbreaking regarding the central role of aesthet
ics in Marcuse’s work. In his Herbert Marcuse and the Art o f Lib
eration, Barry Katz discusses “the primacy of aesthetics in the
evolution of his thought.”2 Katz’s work, although mostly bio
graphical, alleviates some of the insecurity of making Marcuse’s
aesthetic deliberations the linchpin of my own work.
Part I Outlined
An argument might be made that it is only desperation that

draws Marcuse into the aesthetic dimension; and, indeed, the evi
dence is not sparse:
When the horror of reality tends to become total and blocks political
action, where else than in the radical imagination, as refusal of
reality, can the rebellion, and its uncompromised goals, be
remembered?3
Yet to argue that Marcuse’s growing interest in aesthetics stems

only from a position of desperation is to ignore a good deal of
groundwork that progressively anticipates and prepares for his
theory of liberative aesthetics. It is the purpose of the first part of
this work to outline important aspects of that preparation, not
only to weaken the “desperation” theory, but also to introduce
some indispensable prerequisites to an informed discussion of
Marcuse’s aesthetics. Put simply, Part I will begin to show how
Marcuse’s recent “ near total intellectual commitment”4 to art
“ fits in” with the concerns that preceded the commitment.
Introduction 17
I think that the whole of Marcuse’s project may be character
ized as an excavation of the forces that militate against human
liberation—the discovery, critique, and plans for removal of such
forces. Part I of this work is divided into three chapters, each
dealing with a major “obstacle” to human liberation. Chapter 1
addresses Marcuse’s discussion of the frustrating ambivalence of
modern technology. Chapter 2 discusses the psychological, in
stinctual obstacles to liberation. And chapter 3 discusses “deter
minism” as yet another obstacle to liberation. But behind all
three discussions lies an attempt to elucidate the groundwork
upon which Marcuse prepares for the eventual emergence of aes
thetics as a major implement of liberation. I do hope that the
groundwork may also be helpful as a more general introduction
for those who may not be too familiar with Marcuse’s work. I
have tried to avoid the jargon endemic to many of the more
esoteric discussions of members of the “ Frankfurt School,” partly
because I am unable to master the dialect, but also because I
think Marcuse especially is in need of unencumbered explication.
Chapter I Outlined
In chapter 1 I examine Marcuse’s discussion of the opiating

tendencies of modern technological society (relying substantially
on One-Dimensional Man), and begin to show the potential role
of the aesthetic dimension in transforming a repressive technolo
gy into a liberating one. The culprit is “technological rationality,”
which involves popular acceptance of the belief that the given
technology, without any serious restructuring, can solve any
problems with which it is confronted.
Marcuse, rejecting technological rationality, attempts to dem
onstrate that the total defense of the given technological universe
is suicidal; all the important questions have not been asked, and
moreover, the belief that technology or any other implement
alleviates our need to raise new questions is in itself a denial of
what it means to be human. According to Marcuse, the need to
recombine particulars into wholly new “univcrsals” is nothing
less than an ontological need. His discussion of universals in One-
Dimensional Man (amplified in The Aesthetic Dimension) is
essential in his assault on technological rationality. The “ forced
satisfaction” of technological rationality must and can be re
jected. Marcuse’s theory of universals contributes the all-
important goal to which liberation is to be directed, and by which
liberative efforts may be evaluated. And, as 1 show in chapter 1,
aesthetics is a useful accompaniment to the pursuit of universals.
Chapter 2 Outlined
In the discussion of the nature of Marcuse’s concept of lib

eration, and the crucial human propensity to “univeralize,”
it becomes apparent that liberation would involve individuals
autonomously cultivating their imaginations and impulses. So one
wonders if this kind of liberation is really beneficial, especially in
light of Freud’s argument that the imaginative and impulsive ten
dencies of human beings must be controlled or deflected in order
to preserve sociability and civilization. Marcuse believes that
Freud is convinced that “ Reality Principles,” which foster the
repression of natural, instinctual impulses, and redirect them into
nature-dominating rather than nature-reflective manifestations,
must remain for the sake of civilization. Thus liberation (and the
aesthetic implement) is confronted with another obstacle: what is
true, rational, and liberative may be inconsistent with more basic
survival needs; the surmounting of technological rationality is not
the only barrier in the way of human liberation. Marcuse must
confront the problems raised by theories about the psychological
constitution of the individual.
Marcuse, in order to vindicate his attachment to the pursuit of
a “ natural” human existence, through the aesthetic or any other
means, must refute Freud’s position. This Marcuse does most
thoroughly and directly in his Eros and Civilization; and so, in
chapter 2 , 1 examine that work as Marcuse’s attempt to show that
liberation (the pacification of existence) can indeed be a desirable
human goal, and that Freud was short-sighted in his belief in the
ubiquitous need for the repression of certain human propensities.
By showing that the release of human instincts need not neces
sarily be destructive, Marcuse vindicates his commitment to
pacification, and thus also vindicates the aesthetic practice. But
more than this, I show in the conclusion of chapter 2 that the
imaginative, aesthetic pursuit is more than just “innocent” of the
detrimental potential assigned to it by Freud; rather, there is evi
dence in Eros and Civilization that the aesthetic practice not only
Introduction 19
contributes to the realization of a society in which people are free
to “universalize,” but also actually helps in ensuring that the
liberative goal is conducive to the maintenance of civilization.
Thus in the first two chapters I initiate a discussion of a connec
tion between the aesthetic implement and the alleviation of what
are undoubtedly two of Marcuse’s major concerns—the misuse of
technology as exhibited by the technologically rational society,
and the needless accumulation of psychological repression in the
individuals of modern society. In those chapters I suggest that
Marcuse’s later preoccupation with aesthetics, rather than an un
expected movement of desperation, is the culmination of a philo
sophical groundwork executed in his earlier, mostly nonaesthetic
discussions. As Marcuse isolates more clearly the problems of
technological society, so too does aesthetics seem to be the most
compelling remedy.
Chapter 3 Outlined
In his recent work The Aesthetic Dimension, Marcuse seems to

locate yet another roadblock to liberation. This barrier I call
“social determinism.” Social determinism is associated by Mar
cuse with certain Marxist theories that assert the primacy of social
determinants (class conflict) over any individual determinants of
human action. In chapter 3 I discuss Marcuse’s refutation of so
cial determinism and his earlier refutation of the more familiar
brand of determinism, historical determinism, as the final part of
his effort to free the individual to pursue the liberative goal. And,
again, especially as a defense against social determinism, the aes
thetic implement will be seen as the most beneficial tool to ensure
the independence and autonomy of the individual—crucial ingre
dients of liberation.
Part II Outlined
Part II continues the discussion of how and why Marcuse be

lieves the aesthetic practice to be a crucial component of the
liberated environment. Marcuse says that it is Kant who first dis
covered (although he was not fully aware of the ramifications of
his discovery) the potential of the aesthetic practice in terms of its
liberative contribution. Of Kant’s aesthetic conception Marcuse
says, “his conception still furnishes the best guidance for under
standing the full scope of the aesthetic dimension.’’5 Thus, in
order to get the full picture of Marcuse’s aesthetics and his belief
in the liberating capabilities of the aesthetic practice, I found it
necessary also to examine the aesthetic theory of Kant. So in Part
II, which takes the form of a single chapter (chapter 4), I discuss
Kant’s theory as it helps toward a better understanding of Mar
cuse’s.
It is hardly coincidental that Marcuse abandons Hegel in his
quest for an aesthetic foundation and turns rather to Kant, for as
Part II shows, Kant’s conception of aesthetics, which involves the
recombination of particulars into more harmonious “schema,”
correlates pleasingly with the “universalizing” process that serves
as a crucial aspect of Marcuse’s liberative goal. According to
Marcuse, Kant’s concept of aesthetics nourishes the most ad
vanced, and most fragile, aspects of human “nature.”
That Marcuse is indebted to Kant, however, does not mean
that he is totally satisfied with Kant’s aesthetic theory, for he
accuses Kant of philosophic meekness: “The great conception
which animates Kant’s critical philosophy shatters the philo
sophical framework in which he kept it.”6'So in Part II I also
delineate Marcuse’s theory in terms of how it “improves” upon
Kant. For Marcuse claims that his aesthetics is the culmination of
an evolution that spans Kant’s three critiques, and in Part II I
discuss this evolution in Kant’s theory and show the way in which
Marcuse claims to have advanced it. Thus, in addition to describ
ing Marcuse’s affinity to Kant’s aesthetic theory, in Part III hope
to approach a closer understanding of Marcuse’s theory by show
ing how he expands Kant’s theory.
Part III Outlined
Perhaps the overriding purpose of Parts I and II is to articulate

the possibility of such a thing as liberative aesthetics. In Part III I
discuss the question of exactly what kind of aesthetic activity is,
according to Marcuse, the most potentially liberating. Kant is not
at all satisfying in answering this question. When he says that
poetry is better than visual art or music at rearranging particulars
Introduction 21
in noninstrumental, autonomous "univcrsals”7 it is obvious that
he is not referring to limericks or nursery rhymes, but it is not
obvious precisely what kind of poetic expression best represents
his theory of aesthetic transcendence.
Rather than focusing on any particular artistic medium as being
the most liberating, Marcuse develops a somewhat imprecise
taxonomy8 of aesthetic expression that ranks artistic statements,
regardless of medium, in terms of their liberating potential. Mar
cuse is much more concerned than Kant about what kinds of art
represent the liberative aesthetic, and so he has much more to say
about dividing modes of aesthetic expression. Part 111 is an
attempt to isolate qualities of Marcuse’s most revered, liberative
art form by first examining and weeding out the lesser forms. To
do this, I have taken the liberty of tightening Marcuse’s levels of
artistic expression, and I have tried to provide examples of
artworks that best represent each aesthetic category. Beyond the
fact that I think that it is valuable and interesting in itself to do so,
I think that constructing Marcuse’s aesthetic taxonomy is also
helpful in determining more precisely the characteristics of the
most liberative aesthetic (and artistic) form. And, for the pur
poses of this work, precision in articulating the artistic expression
that best represents Marcuse’s liberative aesthetics is crucial, lest
my criticism of the liberating potential of true liberative aesthetics
and art be dismissed as only a misunderstanding of what kind of
aesthetic activity is truly liberating.
Chapter 5 Outlined
Before arriving at the characteristics of the form of art that best

represents liberative aesthetics, I discuss four inferior categories
of aesthetic expression. The first category contains what are, to
Marcuse, undoubtedly the least liberative forms of “art.” This
category consists of two subdivisions: the Stalinist version of
socialist realism, and the “ instrumental” art of “technologically
rational” societies. I discuss these art forms together, in chapter
5, under the title “scientific art,” because, as I hope to show,
these art forms try to subordinate artistic expression to the prog
ress of “science,” and thus lose all critical and transcendental
capabilities.
These art forms can be distinguished, however, in that while
socialist realism fights against reactionary alternative cultures
with censorship and propaganda ministers, technologically
rational art eliminates the volatility of alternatives by not recog
nizing any. In the latter form of scientific art, science is seen as
having provided all the answers to important questions, and art
becomes a tribute to the success of technology.
Chapter 6 Outlined
The second level of the aesthetic taxonomy, discussed in chap

ter 6, is affirmative (bourgeois) art, which according to Marcuse
maintains aesthetic transcendence (and thus the potential of pro
ducing radical alternatives), but only in the intellectual realms of
the soul or the museum. Despite the success of technological
rationality, its accompanying “art form” can never totally repress
the inherent human drive to transcend the status quo. And this
drive is expressed (and is itself proved) in the continued appear
ance of transcendental aesthetic statements. Unfortunately, and
this is the source of its ironic ambivalence, affirmative art is
potentially more liberating because it retains transcendence, but
it is potentially more oppressive, too, because it can be main
tained in an atmosphere where interaction with the transcenden
tal occurs without any significant opposition to the reality that is
being transcended.
Chapter 7 Outlined
The third aesthetic level, discussed in chapter 7, is that kind of

expression which Marcuse calls “anti-art.” Anti-art rejects the
detachment of affirmative art, mocking the separation of beauty
from reality. Of course, Marcuse finds the resistance to the isola
tion of aesthetics to be an admirable project. Indeed, he praises
anti-art, especially surrealism, in Eros and Civilization, as the
only valid kind of aesthetic statement that can be made in one
dimensional society. As his work progresses, however, Marcuse
comes to see anti-art as too preoccupied with criticism to offer
any significant alternatives. Anti-art is too dependent on the sta
tus quo to really transcend it. And so anti-art, seemingly so alien
to one-dimensional society, poses no real threat: “The rebellious
music, literature, art, are thus easily absorbed and shaped by the
market— rendered harmless.”9
Introduction 23
Chapter 8 Outlined
The fourth level of my version of Marcuse’s aesthetic taxonomy

is that art which I call “critical art,” and it is discussed in chapter
8. Critical art is that kind of aesthetic statement favored by Mar
cuse’s Frankfurt colleague Theodor Adorno. Adorno’s critical
art, exemplified by the atonal music of Arnold Schonberg, is akin
to anti-art in that it refuses to abide by the acceptable, comfort
able forms of aesthetic expression; yet critical art is more than
mere opposition, because in its condemnation of affirmative cul
ture, it provides an alternative. Schonberg’s music is quite dif-
erent from Tristan Tzara’s nonsense poems, for although ato-
nality is (or was) alien to the given technology of form, it did
(through the twelve-tone technique) provide an alternative struc
ture or vision.
Chapter 9 Outlined
In his later treatments, Marcuse objects to the seriousness of

Adorno’s critical art. For Adorno, art should not, in a repugnant
society, be a playful affair. Marcuse, on the other hand, suggests
playful, careless transcendence as the only way to insure aban
donment of the debilitating status quo. This is why Marcuse sees
such potential in affirmative art—if only it could break out of the
confines of the soul and the museum. Marcuse strongly believes
that the affirmative traits of bourgeois art cannot “cancel the
indictment” ;10 the transcendental dream that can be found in all
“authentic” affirmative artworks provides a constant pressure to
alter the given social arrangement. Marcuse believes that this
indictment can be translated into political, “revolutionary”
action— albeit “indirectly.” It is this translation that provides the
major focus of chapter 9.
Part IV Outlined
Following the provision of information about Marcuse’s posi

tion on the contribution of the aesthetic practice to a liberated
environment, Part IV, containing three chapters, provides my cri
tique. I argue, from a variety of perspectives, that Marcuse puts
too much faith in the “political value of art.” 11 I do not attempt to
deny that the aesthetic pursuit is a crucial requisite of a liberated
environment; I only question the wisdom of turning so readily to
the aesthetic dimension, the flight into inwardness, to assist in the
realization of the liberated environment.
Chapter 10 Outlined
Chapter 10 revolves around a statement, made by Marcuse in

An Essay on Liberation, that what is needed to advance the
liberative cause is a conversion to the “cynical defiance of the
fool.” 12 Indeed, I think that the aesthetic perspective necessary to
produce authentic art is that of the fool, who while displaying
“cynical defiance” (the pessimism of authentic art), nevertheless
chooses to oppose reality by leaving it behind—defying reality by
not giving in to it. I hope to show in chapter 10 that Marcuse’s
choice to describe the liberative aesthete as a fool was a felicitous
one, and I then want to show, in opposition to Marcuse, just how
dangerous it is to invest any liberative hope in the fool. The fool
in Shakespeare’s King Lear provides a good vehicle through
which the liberating potential of the fool can be evaluated.
Chapter 11 Outlined
In chapter 111 refer to recent empirical research in the sociolo

gy of aesthetics (along with some of my own) to show that during
periods of high artistic expression (the very type of expression
that Marcuse labels “authentic,” and thus potentially liberating),
there is much higher integrative than agitative social response.
This research tends to erode Marcuse’s contention that the vola
tility of authentic art must be constantly checked by dominant
social forces in order to subvert its explosive potential. I will pro
vide evidence that suggests that authentic art is not very volatile
at all, and that, rather than requiring external intervention to di
vert its “revolutionary” potential, authentic art itself, without
outside manipulation, may be a refuge from agitation rather than
a repressed source of revolution.
Chapter 12 Outlined
Chapter 12 concludes the work. It clarifies my position: that

although I do think that the freedom that aesthetic transcendence
Introduction 25
provides may be a crucial element of the liberated environment, 1
do not think that aesthetic transcendence of the kind displayed by
Marcuse’s liberative aesthete is well suited to the establishment of
such an environment. It is a desirable end for humanity to pursue,
but a very dangerous means through which that end might be
pursued.
Referring again to Kant, I try to show in yet another way how
liberative art is inherently more integrative and reflective than it
is revolutionary and agitative. Marcuse is highly selective as to
the arguments he borrows from Kant, and he fails to address the
discussions in Kant that amplify the pacifying characteristics of
the transcendent aesthetic imagination. I hope to amplify my
position that Marcuse’s claims about the political, material poten
tial of authentic art are based on unfounded assertions, and that
when a thorough examination is made as to the characteristics of
his concept of aesthetics, it is clear that Marcuse attributes politi
cal, revolutionary, material efficacy to a faculty that really stimu
lates very little of those things.
To conclude the book I examine the possibility that Marcuse
abandons “pure” politics prematurely in his quest for liberation. I
would like to show that liberative potential remains in a pursuit,
politics, that is admittedly lacking in its ability to produce tran
scendent alternatives. But it is this lack that allows the politician
to maintain contact with the mundane, material aspects of life.
I think it is very dangerous to “ transcend” those concerns before
they are politically eliminated. Thus, until an environment con
ducive to the liberative melding of aesthetics and politics is estab
lished, I think their separation is crucial.
Notes
1. Herbert Marcuse, "Art in One-Dimensional Society,” Arts Magazine 41, no. 7 (May
1%7): 28. See also Barry Katz, Herbert Marcuse amt the Art o f Liberation (London:
Verso, 1982), pp. 189-92.
2. Katz, Herbert Marcuse, p. 12.
3. Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 44-45.
4. Charles M. Holmes, “Herbert Marcuse and the Supreme Fiction," Humanities in
Society 2, no. 3 (Summer 1979): 293.
5. Herbert Marcuse, Eros amt Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (New
6. Marcuse, Essay on Liberation, p. 30.
7. Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique o f Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1952), p. 177.
8. Katz corroborates: “Herbert Marcuse was neither systematic nor always explicit in his
view of the integration of the political and the poetical transformation of the world.”
Herbert Marcuse, p. 12.
11. Ibid., p. 51.
The Flight into Inwardness
Part /
The Obstacles to Liberation

1
Technological Rationality and the
Persistence of Universals
Undoubtedly, Marcuse’s best-known discussions are those which

condemn modern technological society for its needless constric
tion of individual members. According to Marcuse, one-dimen
sionality (the catch-phrase for this constriction) is encouraged
not because the allowance of alternative-thinking and acting
would plunge humanity back into the depths of rampant scarcity;
rather, alternative-thinking might stimulate a popular recognition
of the fact that technology, having provided the means for the
elimination of scarcity, may now be ready for subservience to a
newer, more advanced goal: a “pacified existence,” in which the
universe of objects is seen as complementary to human life rather
than as a constant challenge to be overcome by more sophisti
cated applications of human ingenuity.
Such a goal, of course, is anathema to the controllers of tech
nology and production, for it would demand that technology and
the associated productive forces would be responsible to an over
arching consideration. No longer technology for its own sake
(and the sake of its representatives), technological rationality
would be replaced by a humanist rationality, in which the uses of
human productivity and technology would be seriously and con-
tinously evaluated.
But in order to condemn technological rationality (the thought
less conformity to the given structure), which admittedly does
quite well in providing material well-being to a good many partic
ipants, Marcuse must demonstrate that there is something
better— that the technologically rational existence is incomplete
and ultimately unacceptable. This he does, philosophically at
least, in One-Dimensional Man, by supporting the existence of
31
transcendent universals that militate against the reification of
technological rationality. It is only the satisfaction of “false
needs” that erodes the individuals’ drive to challenge the present
with a view of something better. For Marcuse, the persistence of
universals indicates an irrepressible human inclination to “sur
pass the given.” And liberation, then, which involves the extrica
tion from the one-dimensionality of technologically rational soci
ety, means the creation of an atmosphere in which individuals are
allowed to pursue this ontological drive to recombine particulars
into ever-expanding universals.
The Logic of Marcuse’s Support of Universals
Marcuse is aware of the danger of proposing the universal

validity of anything, especially in an era where such concepts as
“natural law” are seen as antiquated implements of a simpler
time:
Today we no longer call it natural law, but I believe that if we say

today that what justifies us in resisting the system is more than the
relative interest of a specific group and more than something that we
ourselves have defined, we can demonstrate this. If we appeal to
humanity’s right to peace, to humanity’s right to abolish exploitation
and oppression, we are not talking about self-defined, special, group
interests, but rather and in fact interests demonstrable as universal
rights.1
Of course, given the prior definition of one-dimensional, tech

nologically rational society, it is easy to see why the dominant
interests would be quite pleased to operate in a world of a reified
given, where no alternative could be demonstrated to be of a
higher “value.” Marcuse is saddened, however, by the fact that
technological rationality and its repression of the drive to seek
alternatives is supported by a substantial sector of modern phi
losophy. So, in order to argue convincingly against submitting to
the seductiveness of one-dimensional society, Marcuse finds he
must take on these modern “analytic philosophers,” who attempt
to dissolve metaphysics (and thus universals) into wholly tangible
categories. According to Marcuse, the analytic philosophers fail
because, despite their efforts, the “ghosts” of metaphysics (the
Technological Rationality 33
intangibles) continue to haunt:
W h ile e v e ry in te r p r e ta tio n o r tra n s la tio n m a y d e s c rib e a d e q u a te ly a

p a r tic u la r m e n ta l p r o c e s s , a n a c t o f im a g in in g w h a t I m e a n w h e n 1 say
“ I , ” o r w h a t th e p r ie s t m e a n s w h e n h e say s th a t M a ry is a “ g o o d g ir l,”
n o t a sin g le o n e o f th e s e re fo r m u la tio n s , n o r th e ir s u m - to ta l, s e e m s to
c a p tu r e o r e v e n c irc u m s c rib e th e fu ll m e a n in g o f su c h te rm s a s M in d ,
W ill, S e lf, G o o d . T h e s e u n iv e rs a ls c o n tin u e to p e r s is t.2
If metaphysical universals so blatantly persist, why then do

even the philosophers tread so carelessly the path of technologi
cal rationality and the repression of transcendent thought? Mar
cuse believes their “oversight” is prompted by fear. He argues
that there has been a historical trend in philosophy to purge exis
tence of unsettling obscurity; and the “universal,” as representa
tive of something other than simple, recognizable circumstance,
has necessarily had to suffer. And the given forces, who represent
technological rationality, can take advantage of this anxiety, for,
unfortunately, it is easy to give in to the security of one-
dimensionality:
T h e p r o te s t a g a in s t th e v a g u e , o b s c u re , m e ta p h y s ic a l c h a r a c te r o f
s u c h u n iv e rs a ls , th e in s is te n c e o n fa m ilia r c o n c re te n e s s a n d p ro te c tiv e
s e c u rity o f c o m m o n a n d sc ie n tific s e n se still re v e a l s o m e th in g o f th a t
p r im o r d ia l a n x ie ty w h ic h g u id e d th e r e c o rd e d o rig in s o f p h ilo s o p h ic
th o u g h t in its e v o lu tio n fro m re lig io n to m y th o lo g y , a n d fro m m y th o l
o g y to lo g ic ; d e f e n s e a n d s e c u rity still a r e la rg e ite m s in th e in te lle c
tu a l a s w ell a s n a tio n a l b u d g e t.3
Yet giving in to one-dimensionality does not divert the persis

tence of the idea of something different. Marcuse opposes the an
alytic philosophers, and technologically rational society, with a
position that is essentially classical. With the classics, Marcuse
posits a separation between mere perceived reality and a more
transcendent, “abstract” condition—of which mere perceived
reality is only an incomplete, and thus inaccurate segment.
“ However ‘man,’ ‘nature,’ ‘justice,’ ‘beauty’ or ‘freedom’ may be
defined, they synthesize experiential contents into ideas which
transcend their particular realizations as something that is to be
surpassed, overcome.”4 Universals, then, seem to be ghostlike
reflections of mundane objects—albeit reflections which, having
traveled through the prism of abstraction, have become more
than they were originally. The beautiful sunset can never be
beauty itself.
However, Marcuse, perhaps reflecting his familiarity with his
phenomenological mentors, deviates from the classical concep
tion of universal by refuting the historical neutrality and immuta
bility of the universal; for although univcrsals are necessarily
“abstract,” they are nevertheless recognized only in the context
of historical objects. Univcrsals may transcend historical reality,
but they are dependent on that reality as a basis of transcendence.
Marcuse reflects upon an appropriate passage from Whitehead’s
Science and the Modern World: “To be abstract is to transcend
the particular occasion of actual happening. But to transcend an
actual occasion does not mean being disconnected from it.”5
This idea docs not lead Marcuse to reject all objectivity in favor
of historical relativism, for what remains ahistorical in Marcuse’s
concept of univcrsals is the very historical, universal-particular
tension of univcrsals—a kind of objectivity in subjectiveness; and
we can now understand what Marcuse means when he says that
“the internal historical character of the philosophic concepts, far
from precluding objective validity, defines the ground for their
objective validity.”6
It is as if Marcuse here develops a ‘relative absolute,” but an
absolute all the same. To exist truthfully, humanity must be
allowed to pursue transcendent projects; yet the projects them
selves, although laying claim to univcrsals such as beauty or truth,
remain related to the ever-changing realm of particularity. The
univcrsals, then, are “relative” ; what is “absolute” is the need to
pursue univcrsals. Thus there is one universal that rises above all
the rest: individuals have an absolute, universal need to “univer
salize.” It is the process that is really universal, not any particular
universal occurring within the process.
Universals and “ Human Nature”
Because of the objective nature of “universals” or “universal

izing” (as opposed to the lack of objectivity of any particular
universal in its relationship to historical reality), Marcuse can
then make proposals as to the “ truth value of different historical
projects.”7 For if all mundane historical data are necessarily
accompanied by metaphysical counterparts, then a truthful “proj
ect” must confront rather than deny the metaphysical universals,
and exhaust all feasible means of approaching these more
obscure, but no less undeniable, phenomena. The quest is for a
“pacified” existence—one in which all available material and in
tellectual resources are exercised in an effort to realize rather
than ignore or conquer the revelations of historical truth.8
Marcuse can generalize, given his definition of universals and
their hazy reflection of “higher rationality,”9 as to the proper
manner in which universals (or in his adopted existential lan
guage, “projects”) can be selected and sought after; for having
established a lasting concept of universals, Marcuse is able to
establish a lasting value system. He logically maintains that his
torical truth must necessarily remain consistent with the nature of
universals: not to pursue alternative combinations of the given
would be to ignore what is truthful and rational. Therefore, indi
viduals (in order to lead a “true” existence) must be allowed the
opportunity to transcend immediate reality in pursuit of the purer
universal, and thus exercise a higher form of rationality—if the
truth or “nature” of existence is to be realized. The goal is the
“pacification of existence”— the union of the universal and the
particular, of man and nature; a truthful (rational) existence,
then, demands the “ free development of human needs and
faculties.” 10 Human beings must be free to pursue their nature;
this is the transcendent value that liberation must logically pur
sue. And in order to do this, avenues of transcendence, of con
structing universals from particulars, must remain open. Marcuse
closes his Essay on Liberation with what he thinks is the “heart”
of the concept of freedom: “ for the first time in our life, we shall
be free to think about what we are going to do.” 11
The Role of (he Aesthetic Dimension
One may begin to see now why aesthetics, as representative of

the impulsive and imaginative in mankind, assumes such promi
nence in Marcuse’s thought; for it is aesthetics (at least a particu
lar kind of aesthetic practice, the attributes of which will be dis
cussed later) that appears as a means of “universalizing”—of
translating given particulars into transcendent universals. In his
latest work Marcuse clearly shows how aesthetics is linked to his
concept of universals. The aesthetic pursuit, although never
transcending the relative nature of particular universals, contri
butes best to the process of universalizing. Art can never be ex
pected to resolve the disparity of universal and particular. On the
contrary:
It b e a rs w itn e ss to th e in h e r e n t lim its o f fre e d o m a n d fu lfillm e n t, to

h u m a n e m b e d d e d n e s s in n a tu r e . In all its id e a lity a r t b e a r s w itn e s s to
th e tr u th o f d ia le c tic a l m a te r ia lis m — th e p e r m a n e n t n o n - id e n tity b e
tw e e n s u b je c t a n d o b je c t, in d iv id u a l a n d in d iv id u a l.12
Yet it is only the freedom to recognize this disparity and to envi

sion ever greater “ universals” that is of ultimate value to Mar
cuse; and while art may be insufficient in combining all particulars
into a satisfactory, “pacified” universal, art is seen by Marcuse as
an excellent means to resuscitate and maintain the tension be
tween a deficient reality and a more desirable “other:”
T h e in s titu tio n s o f a so c ia list s o c ie ty , e v e n in th e ir m o st d e m o c r a tic

fo rm , c o u ld n e v e r re so lv e all th e c o n flic ts b e tw e e n th e u n iv e rs a l a n d
th e p a r tic u la r, b e tw e e n h u m a n b e in g s a n d n a t u r e ___ H e r e is th e lim it
w h ich d riv e s th e re v o lu tio n b e y o n d a n y a c c o m p lis h e d s ta g e in f r e e
d o m : it is th e stru g g le fo r th e im p o s s ib le , a g a in s t th e u n c o n q u e r a b le
w h o se d o m a in c a n p e r h a p s n e v e r th e le s s b e r e d u c e d ___
A rt re fle c ts th is d y n a m ic in its in s is te n c e o n its o w n tr u th , w h ic h h a s
its g r o u n d in so cia l re a lity a n d is y e t its “ o t h e r . ” 13
In this statement one begins to see the relationship between the

aesthetic expression through art and the concept of universals.
Art, while remaining attached, and thus “relative,” to particular
ity, nevertheless expresses an expanding, transcendent, picture of
that reality. Art participates in the “ relative absolute” of the uni
versal: it is at once proof that the consideration of alternatives is a
persistent human interest (thus verifying Marcuse’s support of the
concept of universals), and it is a means by which transcendent
universals may be invented (thus contributing to pacification by
allowing the expression of human nature).
Summary of the First Chapter
In this chapter 1 have discussed technological rationality and its

debilitating power. Marcuse is interested in a “liberation” from
the one-dimensionality of technological rationality, and he
attempts to show philosophically, through his concept of univer
s a l, that human beings have a persistent interest in going beyond
any given arrangement, especially one that inhibits the persistent
drive to transcend the given arrangement. The protection and
nurturing of this drive forms a crucial part of Marcuse’s theory of
liberation; his interest is in a pacified existence—one in which
human beings are allowed to pursue their natural inclinations
(which this chapter has shown to be the inclination to surpass the
given). And finally, I hope that this chapter has aroused some
interest in the aesthetic implement as a means by which techno
logical rationality might be opposed, and pacification pursued.
Notes
1. Herbert Marcuse, Five Lectures, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shierry M. Weber
(Boston: Beacon Press. 1970), p. 105. The encroachment of relativism in modern phi
losophy is most clearly represented (among the Frankfurt School treatments) in Max
Horkheimer, Eclipse o f Reason (New York: Scabury Press, 1947). Sec especially
chapter 1, “Means and Ends,” pp. 3-58. Of course, a somewhat hidden side-effect of
relativism is an indifference that promotes a reluctance to pursue strongly any alterna
tives, which in turn promotes the status quo. Marcuse touches on this phenomenon in
his essay “Repressive Tolerance” in Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and
Herbert Marcuse, A Critique o f Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965),
pp. 81-123.
2. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology o f Advanced Indus
trial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 203.
3. Ibid., p. 211.
4. Ibid., p. 214.
5. Ibid., p. 215, citing Alfred N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York:
Macmillan, 1926), pp. 228f.
6. Ibid., p. 217.
7. Ibid., p. 219.
8. Ibid., p. 220
9. Ibid. Marcuse labels this historical truth (the pacification of existence) "rational,"
since he secs as impossible the separation of reason and truth. Marcuse takes irra
tionality to mean refusing to accept the truth. A rational person must be interested in
the truth of his or her existence, and thus, the closer that person comes to historical
truth (the more that person attunes his or her life to the most feasible means of pur
suing the pacification of existence), the more rational that person has become.
10. Ibid., p. 220.
11. Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 91.
13. Ibid., pp. 71-72.
2
Eros, Thanatos, and Necessity
Marcuse summons some impressive collaborators for his theory

of the pacified existence; indeed, he argues convincingly that a
good part of Western philosophy, from Aristotle to Hegel, has
anticipated a time when humanity and nature could reflect rather
than oppose each other.1 Marcuse poignantly mentions that
Hegel closes his treatment of the subject-object relationship
found in his Encyclopaedia with the word enjoys;2 and this,
according to Marcuse, is an expression of Hegel’s desire to
achieve what is truthful and natural for humanity—the “enjoy
ment” rather than the conquest of nature.
The enjoyment of nature has until now, however, necessarily
been only a yearning. In Sigmund Freud’s words, humanity has
had to wage an “eternal primordial struggle for existence,” and in
order to win that struggle could not afford the luxury of enjoying
nature, including human nature. And, although there is evidence
that questions his interpretation, Marcuse interprets Freud as
convinced that Reality Principles (Marcuse labels the modern in
dustrial Reality Principle the Performance Principle), which fos
ter the repression of natural, instinctual impulses and redirect
them into nature-dominating rather than nature-reflective man
ifestations, must remain for the sake of civilization. Thus libera
tion (and the aesthetic implement) is confronted with another
obstacle: what is true, rational, and liberating may be inconsistent
with more basic survival needs; and aesthetics, as a contributor to
liberation, may be an accessory to this destructiveness. Indeed,
Aristotle did yearn for something like a pacified existence, but he
was not so naive as to claim it for any but a minority of society.
Pacification could exist only when the survival needs of the few
were catered to by a subservient caste—the slaves. Yet, for Mar-
39
cuse, selective freedom is no freedom at all.3
In his discussion of universals, Marcuse concludes that the re
pression of individuals* needs and aspirations in order that they
coincide with the aptitudes required by technological society is
inimical to the individuals’ propensity to “universalize.” That
which ought to be in the domain of the unrestricted individual is
succumbing to the one-dimensional, instrumental rationality of
advanced industrial society. The pacification of existence de
mands the release of human nature; and in One-Dimensional
Man, human nature is attractively portrayed as a striving for
transcendence and the construction of ever-more-sophisticated
universals. Yet the question remains: “are there not, in the in
stincts themselves, asocial forces that necessitate repressive con
straints regardless of scarcity or abundance in the external
world?”4 Eros and Civilization is Marcuse’s attempt to show that
such repression is not essential for the prolongation of society.
Whereas One-Dimensional Man is the more philosophic argu
ment against the constrictiveness of the present social arrange
ment, Eros and Civilization attempts to repel the argument that
although admittedly repressive, the present arrangement is ne
cessitated by negative aspects of human psychodynamics.
According to Marcuse’s interpretation of Freud, along with the
new ability to pursue universals that the realization of a pacified,
or natural, existence would provide, would be the release of an
instinct, Thanatos, which is so destructive that the negative
effects of suppressing human nature by imposing modes of be
havior on “ unfree” individuals would far surpass the positive
effects of removing the impositions. Thanatos, which is the im
pulse to remove disruptive stimuli by returning to an inorganic
state (death)5 is a significant obstacle to the pacification of exis
tence; for the “pacification” of Thanatos (the elimination of ex
terior constraints) would mean the very destruction of existence.
In order to vindicate his liberative goal, Marcuse must show
that the “eagerness to die” does not become an increasingly
attractive goal as individuals are released from unnecessary, “sur
plus” repression. Thus Marcuse’s task, in discussing Freud, is to
neutralize the power of Thanatos in individuals who are allowed
easier access to ontological propensities; in this way Marcuse
vindicates his normative vision, and simultaneously vindicates the
,
Eros Thanatos, and Necessity 41
implement, aesthetics, which will be seen as a major contributor
to the realization of the vision.
Marcuse attempts to show that Thanatos is a derivative of a
more primary impulse, the Nirvana impulse (the drive to reduce
tension), and that the inclination toward death is powerful only in
a reality filled with abrasive stimuli—a reality that need not be
present in a pacified society. Marcuse attempts to demonstrate
that the death instinct, which is only derivative, does not neces
sarily accompany the Nirvana instinct. This grossly simplified
explanation demands some discussion, especially if the pacified
existence is to be exonerated from the accusation that it is
more dangerous than salutary.
Marcuse’s Interpretation of Freud
Marcuse attempts to loosen our confidence in Freud’s instinct

theory first by demonstrating the equivocal nature of Freud’s dis
cussions on human instinct. Marcuse points out that Freud’s first
formulation of the instinct pits the drive for simple genital sexual
satisfaction (libido) against the drive for self-preservation (ego).
Only later did Freud assert that the ego itself (and thus the drive
for self-preservation) is not primary or instinctual; rather, the ego
is the realm of human reason, which regulates and defends the
organism from the total release of the instincts. The ego is to
maintain a delicate balance between opposition to reality, be
cause reality forces the ego to “postpone” instinctual gratifica
tion, and support for reality, because only in the reality of sub
limated, postponed gratification, can “enjoyment” take place
without endangering life itself. Thus the ego supports the Reality
Principle, “which means that the struggle for existence takes
place in world too poor for the satisfaction of human needs with
out constant restraint, renunciation, delay.”f> Ego, with its con
stitutive faculty, reason, concludes that “ the id, blindly striving to
gratify its instincts in complete disregard for the superior strength
of outside forces, could not otherwise escape annihilation.”7
The ego, now clearly a secondary, derivative phenomenon, is
seen to restrain and delay Eros, which is a greatly expanded sex
ual instinct (now called the life instinct), and Thanatos, the death
instinct, takes the place of ego as the oppositional counterpart of
Eros. Eros, through such means as sexual bonding, is the drive
“to combine organic substances into even larger unities,”8 while
Thanatos is the drive to leave the insecurity of organic life
altogether—the drive toward death.
It is not difficult to see why Freud and Marcuse (even more so)
are inclined to link these two drives, Eros and Thanatos, to a
more common instinct, for both drives, albeit with different
strategies, attempt to “ reduce, to keep constant or to remove in
ternal tension due to stimuli.”9 One way, the path of Eros, is to
harmonize the organism with external stimuli by engulfing exter
nality into a larger, organic, harmonic whole. The path of Thana
tos, which is the other means to the same basic end, would be to
eliminate tension by returning to the inorganic state where ten
sion is also absent. This more general goal of removing tension
| j under which both Eros and Thanatos seem to fit is described as
the Nirvana Principle. It is important to Marcuse’s argument that
; ! it be remembered that Eros and Thanatos may be merely two
means toward the satisfaction of a common end.
The Pacification of Thanatos
Certainly, it is at first puzzling why humanity is still in existence

at all, since Thanatos appears as a much more feasible means to
achieve Nirvana. Death is a much more immediate possibility
than the greater unity of life. Marcuse describes this implication
of the Nirvana Principle as “frightening,” since what is revealed is
“a compulsion inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state
of things which the living entity has been obliged to abandon
under the pressure of external disturbing forces.” 10
It is only due to intervening environmental forces that Thana
tos surrenders to Eros. Marcuse believes that the external force
responsible for redirection away from the Thanatos option of Nir
vana and toward Eros may be due to the intervention of the effect
of the primal father. Marcuse hypothesizes that the natural union
of Eros and Thanatos in the Nirvana Principle is the sexual drive
for the mother in the primal horde.11 Sexual relations with the
mother, in addition to forming a “ larger organic whole” (Eros),
also represent a return to the internal peace of the womb, where
Eros, Thanatos, and Necessity 43
all need and desire are absent (Thanatos). The primal father, by
restricting the sons’ access to their mother, prevents the direct
satisfaction of the Nirvana drive, and in so doing, prevents sur-
r render to the death instinct. “ Perhaps the taboo on incest was the ;
first great protection against the death instinct: the taboo on Nir
vana, on the regressive impulse for peace which stood in the way
of progress, of Life itself.” 12
The forced separation of son and mother stimulates the attrac
tiveness of Eros, “the drive for greater organic unities,” as the
best means to satisfy the instincts. The sons are prevented from
immediate satisfaction by the father, and arc driven by hatred of
the father, combined with a desire to satisfy their instinctual dic
tates, to band together in greater unities (Eros) to depose the
father. Yet when the father is deposed (in advanced civilization,
this occurs in the psyche rather than in physical reality), the sons
want to maintain the advantages of liberation for themselves, so
they as a group commit the sins of the primal father on their sons,
the next generation. Thus each generation is confronted with the
need to postpone gratification and combine in opposition to the
fathers. This repressed instinctual energy becomes available for
sublimation in work,13 which (due to the “wisdom” of the ego) is
seen as the only means to create an atmosphere in which erotic
gratification might “someday” take place.
In addition, the sons who take part in the deposition suffer
from guilt. They arc guilty from the mere fact of hating one for
whom they feel biological closeness and affection; but they are
guilty also because they take on the same characteristic of author
ity from which they liberated themselves. They want to ensure
that they may continue to revel in the plunder of their deed, and
thus they find themselves restricting those younger and weaker
than they. This feeling of guilt satisfies Thanatos, for the destruc
tiveness inherent in the death instinct is satisfied with
th e p u n itiv e s u b m is s io n o f th e p le a s u re e g o to th e re a lity p r in c ip le —
In th is tr a n s f o r m a tio n , th e d e a th in s tin c t is b ro u g h t in to th e se rv ic e o f
E r o s ; th e a g g re ss iv e im p u lse s p ro v id e e n e rg y fo r th e c o n tin u o u s
a lte r a tio n , m a s te ry a n d e x p lo ita tio n o f n a tu r e to th e a d v a n ta g e o f
m a n k i n d .14
This feeling of guilt and its mobilization of Thanatos allows indi

viduals to transfer their destructive drive away from themselves
to things, animals, and human enemies, thus building rather than
destroying civilization and thereby assisting Eros:
th is d e s tru c tiv e e n e rg y is d iv e r te d fro m th e o rg a n is m its e lf a n d

d ire c te d to w a rd th e o u ts id e w o rld in th e fo rm o f so c ia lly u se fu l
a g g re s s io n — to w a rd n a tu r e a n d s a n c tio n e d e n e m ie s — o r , in fo rm o f
c o n s c ie n c e , o f m o ra lity , it is u s e d by th e s u p e re g o fo r th e so c ia lly
u se fu l m a s te ry o f o n e ’s o w n d r iv e s .15
The Constant Threat of Thanatos
This release of Thanatos in the service of Eros remains danger

ous, because there is always the possibility that the “release” of
destructiveness in manifestations that assist the life instinct can
transgress the boundaries of what is life-enhancing into what is
life-depreciating. This occurs when the life instinct is so repressed
and so postponed that the death instinct, formerly subordinate to
Eros, now is perceived as a more immediate, attractive possibil
ity. According to Marcuse, the more sophisticated the level of
civilization, the more strict are the repressors of impulse:
T h e m o re c iv iliz a tio n p ro g re s s e s , th e m o re p o w e rfu l its a p p a r a tu s fo r

th e d e v e lo p m e n t a n d g ra tific a tio n o f so cia l n e e d s b e o m e s , th e m o re
o p p re s s iv e a r e th e sa c rifices th a t it h a s to im p o s e o n in d iv id u a ls in
o r d e r to m a in ta in th e n e c e s s a ry in s tin c tu a l s t r u c t u r e . 16
Marcuse forecasts the time when the Reality Principle (in the
present society the Reality Principle is specified as the Perform
ance Principle) becomes so efficient at postponing the immediate
satisfaction of Eros (through the ego that reasons as to the in
appropriateness of such impetuousity, and the superego that sup
ports the feelings of guilt) that destructiveness is no longer an
assistant to delayed “life,” but is inimical to it. No longer sub
ordinate to Eros, Thanatos will transgress the life-enhancing pa
rameters. Those who gain from society as it is must tighten the
repressive clamps because productivity demands more and more
discipline, and because productivity is creating an environment
that could really support many unrepressed impulses. In order to
maintain the discipline, and prevent the consciousness of “ fulfill
ment without repression,” the repressive forces are amplified to
the point of totalitarianism:
T h e r a tio n a lity o f d o m in a tio n h a s p r o g re s s e d to th e p o in t w h e re it

th r e a te n s to in v a lid a te its fo u n d a tio n ; th e r e f o r e it m u st b e re a ffirm e d
m o re e ffe c tiv e ly th a n e v e r b e f o re . T h is tim e th e r e sh a ll b e n o k illin g
o f th e f a th e r , n o t e v e n a “ s y m b o lic ” k illin g — b e c a u s e h e m ay n o t find
a s u c c e s s o r .17
The ego, which “ reasons” as to the inappropriateness of in

stinctual impetuousity and determines the “safe” areas of instinc
tual fulfillment, and the superego, which allows a venting of the
drive to “destroy” by establishing, through guilt, an adversary
relationship of ego to id,18 become so successful at postponing
and restricting erotic fulfillment that Eros as a goal seems too
distant or too inaccessible. A much more accessible goal would
seem to be total destruction—the return to the inorganic state.
The destruction of the Performance Principle, and subsequently,
the predominance of the drive to death seem imminent:
It is th e failure o f E r o s , lack o f fu lfillm e n t in life , w h ich e n h a n c e s th e

in s tin c tu a l v a lu e o f d e a th . T h e m a n ifo ld fo rm s o f re g re s s io n a re
u n c o n s c io u s p r o te s t a g a in s t th e in su ffic ie n cy o f c iv iliz a to n : a g a in s t
th e p r e v a le n c e o f to il o v e r p le a s u re , p e r fo r m a n c e o v e r g ra tific a tio n .
A n in n e r -m o s t te n d e n c y in th e o rg a n is m m ilita te s a g a in st th e p rin c i
p le w h ic h h a s g o v e rn e d c iv iliz a tio n a n d in sists o n r e tu r n fro m
a l i e n a t i o n .19
The Death of Civilization?
Is one to believe, then, that death is civilization’s ultimate

accomplishment, and that the continuing dissatisfaction with the
Performance Principle will lead to mass suicide? Marcuse answers
in the negative. He recalls the common and more fundamental
origin of both Eros and Thanatos, and emphasizes that “the
death instinct is destructive not for its own sake, but for the relief
of tension.”20 His proposal, which is perhaps the crux of his work
on Freud, is that death need no longer be the only realm of re
lieved tension, and that the Performance Principle, although now
outmoded, has created a life environment in which tension need
not be an overwhelming characteristic. Death is the most attrac
tive means of relieving tension only in an atmosphere of substan-
tial dissonance. The Performance Principle originated in a world
of antagonism, where “organic existence”— life in the world—
necessitated a painful confrontation with nature, and tension
seemed unavoidable; yet according to Marcuse, technology offers
the possibility of a life in which tension is substantially reduced,
and thus provides an alternative to death as satisfaction of the
Thanatos instinct. Marcuse discusses the possibility that,
o c c u rrin g a t th e h e ig h t o f c iv iliz a tio n , a s a c o n s e q u e n c e n o t o f d e f e a t

b u t o f v ic to ry in th e stru g g le fo r e x is te n c e , a n d s u p p o r te d b y a fre e
s o c ie ty , su ch lib e ra tio n m ig h t h a v e v e ry d iffe re n t re s u lts . It w o u ld still
b e a re v e rs a l o f th e p ro c e s s o f c iv iliz a tio n , a s u b v e rs io n o f c u ltu r e —
b u t after c u ltu re h a d d o n e its w o rk a n d c r e a te d th e m a n k in d a n d th e
w o rld th a t c o u ld b e f r e e .21
The two disparate elements of Nirvana can finally be reunited in

an atmosphere where Eros, the drive to create larger unities,
need not be accompanied by tension and domination; Eros may
be pursued in an atmosphere of peace, and thus Thanatos (the
elimination of tension) is satisfied in the arena of life. “The ‘con
servative nature’ of the instincts would come to rest in a fulfilled
present. Death would cease to be an instinctual goal.”22
The Resurgence of Eros
Of course, one may now become concerned that the destruc

tion of the Performance Principle will soon topple the conducive
environment, perhaps not through mass suicide or destruction,
but through licentiousness, and preoccupation with immediate
sensual gratification. “These prospects seem to confirm the ex
pectation that instinctual liberation can lead only to a society of
sex maniacs—that is, to no society.”23 Marcuse answers this
objection with his concept of nonrepressive sublimation and
culture—an environment in which
th e sex in s tin c ts , a f te r th e e lim in a tio n o f all s u rp lu s - r e p r e s s io n , c a n

d e v e lo p a “ lib id in a l r a tio n a lity ” w h ich is n o t o n ly c o m p a tib le w ith b u t
e v e n p r o m o te s p ro g re s s to w a rd h ig h e r fo rm s o f c iv iliz e d f r e e d o m .24
Marcuse hypothesizes that it is only the Performance Principle

,
Eros Thanatos, and Necessity 47
that restricts the potentially polymorphous, constructive Eros
drive into crude, immediate genital preoccupation. Marcuse cites
Freud’s position that “sexuality in its original function is ‘deriving
pleasure from the zones of the body,’ no more and no less.”25
According to Marcuse, this supports the “polymorphous-
perverse” character of sexuality: “in terms of their object, the
instincts are indifferent with respect to one’s own and other
bodies; above all they are not localized in specific parts of the
body or limited to special functions.”26 Only the Performance
Principle has relegated sexuality and Eros to mere genitality.
With the destruction of the Performance Principle, and with
the elimination of an aggressive and “tense” civilization, Eros can
transcend mere genitality and maintain civilization without the
repressiveness of a Performance Principle, but through the “self
sublimation of sexuality.”27 When sexuality is released from its
preoccupation with genitality, it is transformed into Eros, and the
aim becomes the sustenance of pleasure for the entire body (geni-
tofugal), and thus there appears the need to refine and intensify
the human faculties for creating and experiencing pleasure. Sub
limation of immediate gratification occurs automatically because
of the complexity of the task. No longer bound by the restrictive
ness of the Performance Principle, Eros is expanded to encom
pass such things as the elimination of disease and pollution—
anything that threatens “greater unities” of life, and an environ
ment of reduced tension. Sublimation and work will occur, but
rather than appearing as repressive, the sublimation that occurs
in the post-Performance Principle society complements rather
than restricts the expansion of Eros. “There is sublimation and,
consequently, culture; but this sublimation proceeds in a system
of expanding and enduring libidinal relations, which are in them
selves work relations.”28
Instinct and Aesthetics
In the previous chapter on universal I have shown that for

Marcuse there is a fundamental, “ natural” human propensity to
transcend the given, and I have only briefly mentioned aesthetics
as an important means that Marcuse recommends to achieve the
transcendence. In this section I have discussed the possibility that
other aspects of human nature are not so attractive, and that a
“true,” “rational,” or “pacified” existence may not be consonant
with mere human survival. I think it is now possible to address
that concern.
Freud argues that repression, to a degree that makes important
aspects of life painful, is essential to the prolongation of civiliza
tion. Marcuse counters Freud by introducing the possibility of a
civilization that, without the repressiveness of a Performance
Principle, does not succumb to the “death instinct.” Rather, an
advanced technological society is capable of substantially reliev
ing the “tensions” of life without encouraging death. Further
more, Marcuse argues that the success of this society depends
upon its ability to expand liberated sexuality into polymorphous
modes of satisfaction. This necessitates the introduction of sophis
ticated tools of nonrepressive sublimation. And here there may
be a pleasing coincidence, for the propensity to transcend the
given, and the aesthetic vehicle that is known to assist in the
transcendence, may not be merely neutral to survival needs.
Rather, transcendence of given modes of interaction through
such faculties as the aesthetic imagination may be a tool that
makes unrepressed survival possible.29 Marcuse argues that to
achieve an advanced civilization devoid of surplus repression,
Eros must be expanded to motivate all facets of human activity. It
strikes one that the aesthetic implement, with its ability to subli
mate immediacy through complex imaginative calisthenics, might
be an important means of broadening Eros, and thus making a
nonrepressive “culture” possible. The propensity to universalize
and the aesthetic implement can perhaps assist in preventing
“post-Performance” individuals from succumbing to immediate
gratification and eventual decay:
A r t c h a lle n g e s th e p re v a ilin g p rin c ip le o f r e a s o n : in r e p r e s e n tin g th e

o r d e r o f s e n s u o u s n e s s , it in v o k e s a ta b o o e d lo g ic — th e lo g ic o f g r a t
ific a tio n a s a g a in s t th a t o f re p re s s io n . B e h in d th e s u b lim a te d a e s th e t
ic fo rm , th e u n s u b lim a te d c o n te n t sh o w s fo rth : th e c o m m itm e n t o f a r t
to th e p le a s u re p r in c ip le .30
According to Marcuse, the “prevailing principle of reason” was

necessitated by the adversary status of nature. In order for human
ingenuity to build the potential for a pacified existence, the pleas
ure principle needed to be abandoned, and sensuality sacrificed
to reason. Reason is the result of the division of the sensual and
cerebral faculties; yet, for Marcuse, the division is no longer
needed. Technology has provided an environment in which sen
suality, a crucial aspect of human nature, can be incorporated
back into the realm of human cleverness.
In order to satisfy the erotic drive but still retain the advantages
of a highly advanced technology, there remains the need of an
implement like “reason,” albeit an implement that does not
segregate sensual fulfillment into unimportant aspects of life. For
Marcuse, the aesthetic imagination holds the promise of such an
implement (although in his earlier works, especially Eros and
Civilization, the promise is a precarious one). In anticipation of
the discussion of the Kantian origin of Marcuse’s aesthetics, it
seems that it is the aesthetic imagination which can maintain com
plex reorganizations of reality within the universe of sensual satis
faction. The aesthetic imagination, capable of translating im
mediacy into highly complex images conforming to aesthetic
form, can accommodate the complexity of technology, and inte
grate technology into the realm of sensual fulfillment.
Thus, for Marcuse, the aesthetic dimension can assist in the
maintenance of an advanced society that need not sacrifice natu
ral inclinations to the demands of a “serious” technology. With
the help of the aesthetic dimension, unrepressed, albeit highly
sublimated, representations of Eros and Thanatos can make a
peaceful return to human existence. The promises of civilization
can be delivered, rather than ruined, by the incorporation of in
stinct and reason: “there is sublimation and, consequently, cul
ture; but this sublimation proceeds in a system of expanding and
enduring libidinal relations, which arc in themselves work
relations.”31 And the promise of this incorporation of instinct and
reason, according to Marcuse, is retained in the aesthetic dimen
sion (a point to be expanded in chapter 4).
Summary
In chapter 2, then, I have tried to show that Marcuse effectively

deals with the Freudian objection to the elimination of repres
sion, and that the philosophical demonstration of the need for
pacification is not irreconcilable to the practical societal arrange
ment necessary for pacification to occur. Nonrepressive culture is
not only consistent with the drive to transcend, but it is consis
tent with mere existence. Indeed, nonrepressive culture may be
at once the most attractive and the most feasible form of total
human existence. And again, the aesthetic practice is proposed
by Marcuse as a means to overcome this second (the pyschologi-
cal) barrier to liberation.
Notes
1. Marcuse writes: "The philosophy which epitomizes the antagonistic relation between
subject and object also retains the image of their reconciliation. The restless labor of
the transcending subject terminates in the ultimate unity of subject and object: the
idea of "bcing-in-and-for-itself,” existing in its own fulfillment. The Logos of gratifica
tion contradicts the Logos of alienation: the effort to harmonize the two animates the
inner history of Western metaphysics.’’ Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A
Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), p. 101.
2. Ibid., p. 105
3. Dehumanizing labor must be eliminated for all, and this is, for Marcuse, the potential
of modern technology: “For a free society is unimaginable without the progressive
automation of socially necessary but dehumanizing labour.” Herbert Marcuse,
Studies in Critical Philosophy, trans. Joris De Bres (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973),
p. 222.
4. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 125.
5. Ibid., p. 21 ff.
6. Ibid., p. 32-33.
7. Ibid., p. 28, citing Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1933), p. 106.
8. Ibid., p. 38, citing Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (New York: Live-
right Publishing Co., 1950), p. 57.
9. Ibid., p. 24, citing Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 76.
10. Ibid., p. 22, citing Freud, New Introductory Lectures, pp. 145-146.
11. Ibid., p. 69.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 59.
14. Ibid., p. 47.
15. Herbert Marcuse, Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Utopia, trans. Jeremy
J. Shapiro and Shicrry M. Weber (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), p. 8.
16. Ibid., p. 13.
18. Ibid., p. 48
19. Ibid., pp. 98-99.
20. Ibid., p. 27.
21. Ibid., p. 181.
22. Ibid., p. 215.
23. Ibid., p. 184.
24. Ibid., p. 182. According to Marcuse, surplus repression occurs when: “the specific
historical institutions of the reality principle and the specific interests of domination
introduce additional controls over and above those indispensable for civilized human
association.” Ibid., p. 34.
25. Marcuse, Five Lectures, p. 8.
26. Ibid.
28. Ibid., p. 194.
29. Actually, this is much less a coincidence than it is an indication of the correlation of
the philosophically demonstrated drive to pursue "ever greater unities of life.” The
similarity of these concepts is obvious, and thus the shared reliance on the aesthetic
implement is not at all surprising.
31. Ibid., pp. 193-94.
3
Historical and Social Determinism
Freedom from the one-dimensionality of technological rationality

and the destructive potential of Thanatos are not the only barriers
to liberation that occupy substantial portions of Marcuse’s discus
sions. Marcuse has shown a consistent concern in repelling
theories that embrace the idea of determinism. Marcuse refutes
two kinds of determinism in his writings, historical determinism
and, for lack of a better term, “social” determinism. Historical
determinism (the theory of historical inevitability) holds that pres
ent societal relations are mostly inevitable and unavoidable re
sults of past developments. As human beings are concerned, they
are portrayed as participants in a stimulus-response environment,
in which history is the dominating, independent force. What I call
social determinism, however, does not deny the independent
power of human consciousness and will, and the existence of
choice in society, but insists only that the individual, as opposed
to the social class, is unequipped to develop independently a sub
jective, autonomous consciousness. In his latest book Marcuse
emphasizes social determinism as a threat to liberation,1 and in
this chapter I shall discuss his refutation of social determinism.
Initially, however, I shall address Marcuse’s treatment of the
first and more familiar denomination of determinism, historical
determinism. My attempt in both discussions will be to elucidate
Marcuse’s rejection of the inevitability of any kind of “deter
mined” existence and thus exonerate the liberative goal, and the
implement, aesthetics, which will be seen as instrumental in
achieving the goal.
52
Historical and Social Determinism 53
Determinism I: Historical Determinism
Opposing the idea of human autonomy and efficacy in history is

the theory of historical determinism—a concept with which
Hegel often and Marx less often arc associated. (Whether or not
Marx or Hegel actually are historical detcrniinists is not a concern
of this work.) In any case, Marcuse is repulsed by those Marxists
and those Hegelians who subscribe to theories of historical inevi
tability, because of the ease with which they can then excuse indi
viduals from responsibility for their own actions by claiming that
the actions were “caused" by inescapable undulations of histori
cal necessity. According to Marcuse, the most heinous crimes con
tinue to be facilitated by the attribution of inevitability. (Or,
especially in the case of a popular interpretation of Hegel, they
are facilitated by the attitude of necessity2— “ Hitler was just a
necessary historical evolutionary experience.’’) It is likely that
Marcuse would agree with Joseph Cropsey’s comment on histor
ical determinism, that: “We have every right to conclude that
history is the opiate of the masses.”3
Marcuse rejects historical determinism in favor of what he calls
“determinate choice,” where, although history reveals the re
sources and possiblitics of humanity’s struggle with opposing
forces, the final decision as to which possibility will be acted upon
is a solely human one.4 Because history does not entirely shape
historical events, the kind of dialectical theory that posits the
automatic progression of history is insufficient; the intervention
of independent human practice is essential if the transcendent his
torical possibilities are to be realized:
T o b e s u r e , th e d ia le c tic a l c o n c e p t, in c o m p r e h e n d in g th e g iv en fa c ts,
tra n s c e n d s th e g iv e n fa c ts. T h is is th e v e ry to k e n o f its tru th . It d e fin e s
th e h is to ric a l p o s s ib litic s , e v e n n e c e s s itie s ; b u t th e ir re a liz a tio n ca n
o n ly b e in th e p ra c tic e w h ich r e s p o n d s to th e th e o r y , a n d , a t p r e s e n t,
th e p ra c tic e g iv es n o su c h r e s p o n s e .5
In its inability to single-handedly change the nature of society,

the dialectic has proved the need for ulterior dynamic forces; and
to Marcuse it is clear that human practice must provide the neces
sary impetus. Marcuse pleads for the abandonment of human
submission to history, and portrays the necessity of conscious de
liberation on the numerous options that history provides:
O n th e o r e tic a l as w ell a s e m p iric a l g r o u n d s , th e d ia le c tic a l c o n c e p t
p r o n o u n c e s its o w n h o p e le s s n e s s . T h e h u m a n r e a lity is its h is to ry a n d ,
in it, c o n tr a d ic tio n s d o n o t e x p lo d e b y th e m s e lv e s .6
Although in the past, history has made many aspects of exis

tence “necessary,” Marcuse argues that, at present, there are no
“ historical imperatives.”7 The seemingly insuperable status of
freedom in history as only a “partial, repressive, ideological
form”8 has been shattered by the new possibilities of post-scarcity
technology. However, the optimism inspired by the new possibili
ties must not generate a new imperative— the imperative of his
torical liberation. The weakening of history in directing progress
is an ambivalent blessing; for although liberation is now seen as a
possibility, it cannot be expected that history will automatically
provide such liberation. Only the purveyors of technological
rationality profit from an attitude that advanced technology will
automatically provide a liberated environment. The completion
of the liberative structure depends upon human persistence. Lib
eration may now be possibile, but it is not automatic; and an
attitude of automatism is the surest means of preventing such
liberation:
T h e r e is n o h is to ric a l “ law o f p r o g re s s ” w h ic h c o u ld e n f o rc e s u c h a
b re a k : it re m a in s th e u ltim a te im p e ra tiv e o f th e o r e tic a l a n d p r a c tic a l
r e a s o n , o f m a n as h is o w n la w g iv e r. A t th e a tta in e d s ta g e o f th e d e
v e lo p m e n t, th is a u to n o m y h a s b e c o m e a re a l p o s s ib ility o n a n u n p r e
c e d e n te d sc a le . Its r e a liz a tio n d e m a n d s th e e m e r g e n c e o f a ra d ic a l
p o litic a l c o n s c io u s n e s s , c a p a b le o f s h a tte r in g th e e q u a lly u n p r e
c e d e n te d re p re s s iv e m y stific a tio n o f fa c ts — it d e m a n d s th e p o litic a l
s y n th e s is o f e x p e r ie n c e as a c o n s titu tiv e a c t: to re c o g n iz e th e p o litic s
o f e x p lo ita tio n in th e b le ssin g s o f d o m in a tio n .9
In disarming the seeming omnipotence of historical determin

ism, Marcuse’s most compelling testimony is his examination of
modern technological society. The classical Marxian contradic
tions within capitalist society are, for Marcuse, stronger than ever
before. Yet the radical possibilities for change lack the essential
catalyst; and, for Marcuse, that catalyst is the suprahistorical
intervention of human praxis which, as the present situation
proves, must occur independently of even the most conducive his
torical environment. Marcuse’s commitment to substantially ahis-
torical human characteristics, such as the human (transhistorical)
propensity to supersede the given arrangement, remains powerful
in light of the apparent deficiencies of historical automatism.
Marcuse is never entirely certain that human autonomy and con
science can overcome “opiating” history, but he is relatively sure
of at least the possibility; and he is even more sure that without
human autonomy in history, liberation is impossible. Marcuse
further discusses the possibilities for such autonomy in his rejec
tion of “social” determinism.
Determinism II: Social Determinism
In rejecting historical determinism as an unavoidable barrier

that blocks human autonomy, Marcuse never accuses Marxism of
being a philosophy of historical inevitability, although he does
accuse a certain faction of Marxists of holding an incorrect deter-
minist interpretation of Marx. However, Marcuse does not ex
onerate Marxism from a brand of determinism that I have labeled
social determinism—a determinism that, although allowing hu
man independence from history in the form of social or class con
sciousness, denies individual, subjective autonomy of conscious
ness. Thus it is the human environment rather than the historical
environment that is seen to determine the course of the individual
in theories that are socially deterministic; and it is this kind of
determinism of which Marcuse accuses contemporary Marxists:
T h e d e te r m in is tic c o m p o n e n t o f M a rx ist th e o ry d o e s n o t lie in its

c o n c e p t o f th e r e la tio n s h ip b e tw e e n so cia l e x is te n c e a n d c o n s c io u s
n e s s , b u t in th e r e d u c tio n is tic c o n c e p t o f c o n s c io u s n e s s w h ich b r a c k
e ts th e p a r tic u la r c o n te n t o f in d iv id u a l c o n s c io u s n e s s a n d , w ith it, th e
s u b je c tiv e p o te n tia l fo r re v o lu tio n .
T h is d e v e lo p m e n t w a s f u r th e r e d b y th e in te r p r e ta tio n o f s u b je c tiv
ity a s a “ b o u r g e o is ” n o t i o n .10
In the Aesthetic Dimension, Marcuse launches into his most

scathing attack on Marxism as the total answer to the problem of
human liberation. He does not deny that “ free developing” indi
viduals can most easily exist in a society whose economic founda
tion is socialistic;Mthe nature of capitalist production necessitates
antagonistic relationships with nature, including other human
beings. However, to Marcuse, socialism is only a necessary, not a
sufficient, answer to the problem of liberation; for Marxism is
incomplete in its failure to ensure subjective individuality in the
envisioned society. And, according to Marcuse, it is a fatal error
to disregard the value of subjectivity in any proposed societal
alternative.
It would not be enough to place the power of forming a liber
ated society in the hands of a new group, even if the group is
“universal.” Voluntary preoccupation with the needs of the pro
letariat can become as restrictive as forced preoccupation with
the needs of the capitalist. Freedom (pacification), according to
Marcuse, demands independence from and transcendence of the
group (chapter 1); and freedom can be safely pursued only in an
atmosphere of “ reduced tension” (chapter 2). In its opposition to
exploitative human relations, socialism may be sufficient in satis
fying the latter criteria, but it does not guarantee the former.
Marxism provides the means for reduced tension (solidarity), but
at the expense of individual autonomy:
T h e m o v e m e n t o f th e six tie s te n d e d to w a rd a s w e e p in g tr a n s f o r m a
tio n o f s u b je c tiv ity a n d n a tu r e , o f s e n s ib ility , im a g in a tio n , a n d
re a s o n . It o p e n e d a n e w v ista o f th in g s , a n in g re s s io n o f th e s u p e r
s tr u c tu r e in to th e b a s e . T o d a y th e m o v e m e n t is e n c a p s u la te d , is o
la te d , a n d d e fe n s iv e , a n d a n e m b a r a s s e d le ftist b u r e a u c r a c y is q u ic k
to c o n d e m n th e m o v e m e n t as im p o te n t, in te lle c tu a l e litis m . I n d e e d ,
o n e p re fe rs th e sa fe re g re s s io n to th e c o lle c tiv e f a th e r fig u re o f a p r o
le ta r ia t w h ic h is ( u n d e rs ta n d a b ly ) n o t v e ry in te r e s te d in th e s e
p r o b le m s .12
Indeed, Marcuse not very subtly links Marxism to Fascism

through the shared trait of absorption of the individual. For Mar
cuse, solidarity means a congenial atmosphere in which indi
viduals may develop freely, not the elimination of individuality
for the sake of a solid “mass” :
T o d a y , th e r e je c tio n o f th e in d iv id u a l as a “ b o u r g e o is ” c o n c e p t r e
c alls a n d p r e s a g e s fascist u n d e r ta k in g s . S o lid a rity a n d c o m m u n ity d o
n o t m e a n a b s o rp tio n o f th e in d iv id u a l. T h e y r a t h e r o r ig in a te in
a u to n o m o u s in d iv id u a l d e c is io n ; th e y u n ite fre e ly a s s o c ia te d in d i
v id u a ls , n o t m a s s e s .13
In the discussion that follows, I discuss Marcuse’s assertion that

the persistence of individuality in even the most constricting
societies can be demonstrated through examination of works of
art that have only partial relationships to the historical or
“group” environment; 1 shall then discuss Marcuse’s claim that
Marxism’s failure to recognize such artistic autonomy is evidence
of its improper denial of subjectivity in the formula for human
liberation.
Aesthetics and Determinism
According to Marcuse, subjectivity, although now threatened

more than ever before, has never ceased from revealing itself.
This, of course, helps establish subjectivity as an “ontological”
characteristic. According to Marcuse, the Marxian error is in
always trying to find factors in the relations of production that
“explain” individual behavior.14 Because of this emphasis on
social, class-related interactions, subjectivity is submerged. Mar
cuse attempts to show that beneath the malaise of a class or of a
society exists a malaise of the individuals that form the larger
groups, and that any successful remedy of the human condition
must rectify the alienation of the individual.
How can Marcuse be sure that there are human concerns that
are strictly subjective and not formed by societal relations (social
determinism)? How does subjectivity continue to vent itself, and
thus refute social determinism? Or, for that matter, how can Mar
cuse be sure that there are human concerns that are not merely
historical determinants? Marcuse says that it is art, which has
through history been the vehicle of aesthetic expression, that
maintains a sanctuary for subjectivity and detachment from the
social and historical milieu. Following Lukacs, Marcuse opposes
the view of art as only superstructural reflection of the material
base; similarly, he opposes the view that there is always a definite
unmediated connection between art and the artist’s class position.
Nor does Marcuse believe that an artist has a duty to “express the
interests and needs of the ascending class,” 15 or that the artist’s
work is properly evaluated only by its ability to portray the
ascending class’s interests.
Prior to any class or historical interest is the ontological interest
to “universalize.” Liberation of the individual is a prior and more
5# The Flight into Inwardness
ubiquitous interest of human beings than liberation of class or
society. For reasons that will be shown later, this universal in
terest appears in artistic expression—even bourgeois art— and
can be appreciated by all individuals, despite opposing class in
terests:
L ib e ra tin g s u b je c tiv ity c o n s titu te s its e lf in th e in n e r h is to ry o f th e

in d iv id u a ls — th e ir o w n h is to ry , w h ic h is n o t id e n tic a l w ith th e ir so cia l
e x is te n c e . It is th e p a r tic u la r h is to ry o f th e ir e n c o u n te r s , th e p a s s io n s ,
jo y s , a n d s o rro w s — e x p e rie n c e s w h ic h a r e n o t n e c e s s a rily g r o u n d e d
in th e ir c la ss s itu a tio n , a n d w h ic h a r e n o t e v e n c o m p r e h e n s ib le fro m
th is p e r s p e c tiv e .16
Social and historical determinism are negated in the works of

Dostoevski and Hugo, whose characters suffer “the inhumanity
of all times,” and thus appeal to humanity as such rather than a
particular social class or historical epoch. Restrictions of onto
logical drives are experienced individually, and despite different
social or historical manifestations, the drive for subjective, un
hindered autonomy is common: “the aesthetic quality of the
Cornedie Humaine and its own truth is in the individualization
of the soical. In this transfiguration, the universal in the fate of
the individuals shines through their specific social condition.” 17
The Marxists’ dismissal of so called “bourgeois” artwork as
merely another form of ideological expression shows their lack of
appreciation of instinctual, individual needs that appear in all
great artworks, and that must be satisfied along with the social
needs if liberation is to be achieved. For Marcuse, the inability of
Marxists to recognize any amount of subjective purity in artistic
statements testifies to the Marxists’ allegiance to a kind of Per
formance Principle, whereby the gratification of the individual is
repressed through a submission to the more “productive” needs
of the social class. Art expresses the instinctual revulsion for
paternalism, and it celebrates the individual transcendence of
preformulated, regimented tasks, whether the regimentation is of
a capitalist or a socialist nature:
T h e r e a liz a tio n o f th e s e g o a ls is in c o m p a tib le n o t o n ly w ith a d r a s ti

cally re o rg a n iz e d c a p ita lis m , b u t a lso w ith a so c ia lis t s o c ie ty c o m p e t
in g w ith c a p ita lis m o n th e l a t t e r ’s te rm s . T h e p o s s ib ilitie s w h ic h r e
v e a l th e m s e lv e s to d a y a r e r a th e r th o s e o f a s o c ie ty o r g a n iz e d u n d e r a
n e w re a lity p rin c ip le : e x is te n c e w o u ld n o lo n g e r b e d e te r m in e d by th e
n e e d fo r life -lo n g a lie n a te d la b o r a n d le is u r e , h u m a n b e in g s w o u ld n o
lo n g e r b e s u b je c te d to th e in s tr u m e n ts o f th e ir la b o r , n o lo n g e r
d o m in a te d b y th e p e r fo r m a n c e s im p o s e d u p o n t i m e .18
Much as John Stuart Mill complicates his more confident

liberal-democratic predecessors, so does Marcuse complicate his
Marxist forebears; but for Marcuse, the tyranny of the majority
becomes the tyranny of the social class. For both Mill and Mar
cuse, the recognition and retention of individuality is the crucial
amendment. Marcuse exposes the social tyranny of Marxism by
discussing the Marxist hesitance to recognize subjectivity, and by
showing that such subjectivity occurs in art. The inability or un
willingness of Marxists to recognize the social autonomy of lasting
art (and the transcendence of class interest that such art repre
sents) indicates that the Marxists are unsympathetic to basic hu
man propensities. In ignoring these propensities, they cannot
possibly integrate into society practices that could provide for
solidarity without regimentation, for they fail to recognize a
major, “transhistorical” source of alienation,19 and thus cannot
be trusted to eliminate it. Marxism surrenders to the false prima
cy of social determinism.
Theories that succumb to historical or social primacy surrender
prematurely. There is now, and has been, room for individual
activity throughout history; and, again, Marcuse demonstrates
the imminent, but delicate, possibilities for the realization of a
pacified existence in modem technological society.
Conclusion to Part I
In this section (comprised of chapters 1 through 3) I have out

lined some important aspects of Marcuse’s theory of liberation. I
have used Marcuse’s term, the pacified existence, to describe the
Iiberative goal. In chapter 1, I described the constrictiveness of
technological rationality—the enforced proliferation of the idea
that the challenges of existence are over and that all needs are
being cared for. I then discussed Marcuse’s treatment of univer
s a l as his attempt to show that any society that deprives indi
viduals of the opportunity to consider and pursue alternatives is
obstructing an essential and undeniable aspect of what it is to be
human.
Thus a pacified existence demands an environment in which
individuals are free to think on their own, not carelessly accepting
the instrumental directives of the surrounding society. But this
does not mean that free individuals can escape their inborn pro
clivities. In chapter 2 I discussed Marcuse’s argument, against
Freud, that individuals freed from unnatural, external restraints
would not submit to destructive instinctual dispositions. Destruc
tiveness appears as an aspect of human instinct only in environ
ments, like the technologically rational one, where a more benign
expression is prohibited.
Freedom from the one-dimensional, static existence demanded
by technological rationality and the debilitating, antisocial
aspects of human instinct are not all that is required if individuals
are to choose their lives’ directions freely and peacefully. They
must be allowed some autonomy under the deterministic pres
sures of history and social class. In chapter 3 I discussed Mar
cuse’s argument that individual human beings do retain this
autonomy, albeit imperfectly, and can respond as individuals to
the predicaments of existence.
In demonstrating the surmountability of technological rational
ity, the destructive potential of Thanatos, and the debilitating res
ignation to determinism, Marcuse fortifies our faith in the possi
bility of “pacification.” And in surmounting each of these three
obstacles to liberation (the discussions of which account for a sig
nificant amount of Marcuse’s attention), the aesthetic dimension
is called upon to assist in the confrontation. The aesthetic imag
ination, it is argued, protects and nurtures the human interest
in always pursuing “something better”— the interest in experi
mentation with novel perspectives of reality. And aesthetics
appears again as the vehicle through which instincts need not be
repressed, but can be made compatible with modern, highly
technological society. And finally, it is the human venture in the
aesthetic dimension that proves and enhances the persistence of
individual autonomy, despite the exertions of history and class.
Exactly what kind of aesthetic practice is most liberative, and
precisely how the aesthetic practice is liberative, are problems
that have yet to be discussed. Part II will begin to address these
problems.
H istorical and Social Determ inism 61
Notes
1. Marcuse states that "even in its rebellious form it (Marxism| was surrendered to a
collective consciousness.” Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Cri
tique o f Marxist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), p. 4.
2. According to Marcuse, some writers (including many fascists) pervert Hegelianism
into a kind of opiating positivism. Thus it is only one interpretation of Hegel that is
being discussed— an interpretation that is taken more seriously by others than by
Marcuse.
3. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds.. History o f Political Philosophy, 2d ed. (Chica
go: Rand McNally, 1972), p. 780. And from Marcuse: "What does matter is that such
historical determination would (in spite of all subtle ethics and psychology) absolve
the crimes against humanity which civilization continues to commit and thus facilitate
this continuation.” Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology
o f Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press. 1964), p. 221.
4. Marcuse writes: "I suggest the phrase ‘determinate choice’ in order to emphasize the
ingression of liberty into historical necessity; the phrase docs no more than condense
the proposition that men make their own history but make it under given conditions.”
One-Dimensional Man, p. 221.
5. Ibid., p.253.
6. Ibid.
7. See Herbert Marcuse, Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Utopia, trans.
Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shierry M. Weber (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 2-3.
8. Herbert Marcuse, Studies in Critical Philosophy, trans. Joris Dc Brcs (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1973), p. 213.
9. Ibid , p.223.
11. Ibid., p. 38.
12. Ibid., p. 33.
13. Ibid., pp. 38-39.
14. Marcuse writes: “Marxist aesthetics assumes that all art is somehow conditioned by
the relations of production, class position, and so on. Its first task (but only its first) is
the specific analysis of this ‘somehow,’ that is to say, of the limits and modes of this
conditioning. The question as to whether there are qualities of art which transcend
specific social conditions and how these qualities are related to the particular social
conditions remains open.” Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, pp. 14-15.
15. Ibid., p. 2
16. Ibid., p. 5.
17. Ibid., p. 25.
18. Ibid., pp. 28-29.
19. Marcuse writes: “By virtue of its transhistorical, universal truths, art appeals to a
consciousness which is not only that of a particular class, but that of human beings as
‘species beings,’ developing all their life-enhancing faculties.” Ibid., p. 29.
Part II
The Kantian Foundation of

Marcuse’s Aesthetics
4
The Kantian Origins of Marcuse’s Aesthetics
In Part I the feasibility of a concept of “ liberation” was discussed.

Marcuse’s discussion of universal, his pacification of Thanatos,
and the overcoming of historical and social determinism all seem
to make the concept of “liberation” more plausible. Yet discus
sing these three preconditions was also informative as to how
such liberation is to be achieved; for the faculty of the aesthetic
imagination appeared repeatedly as a possible means to over
come preoccupation with the given (which characterizes one
dimensional society) and pursue universals (chapter I), or to
break the constricting “genitality” of Performance Principle Eros
(chapter 2), or to subvert the submission to opiating determinism
(chapter 3). This chapter will begin a more schematic presenta
tion of Marcuse’s concept of aesthetics, and will document more
specifically how Marcuse believes aesthetics contributes to human
liberation.
Marcuse acknowledges his debt to Kant in regard to his discus
sions of the aesthetic imagination. Of Kant’s aesthetic discussions
Marcuse says: “ his conception still furnishes the best guidance
for understanding the full scope of the aesthetic dimension.” 1
However, though Marcuse depends on Kant extensively to pro
vide philosophical fuel for his theory of liberative aesthetics, he
remains dissatisfied with the power that Kant grants the aesthetic
imagination; for after attributing to Kant the “ best guidance” in
aesthetic matters Marcuse accuses him, in a later work, of philo
sophical meekness. In his Essay on Liberation, Marcuse, speak
ing of Kant’s analytic, states that there
n o w a p p e a r s th e p r o s p e c t fo r a n e w r e la tio n s h ip b e tw e e n s e n sib ility

a n d r e a s o n , n a m e ly , th e h a rm o n y b e tw e e n s e n sib ility a n d a ra d ic a l
65
c o n s c io u sn e s s . . . [a n d th u s] th e g r e a t c o n c e p tio n w h ic h a n im a te s
K a n t’s c ritic a l p h ilo s o p h y s h a tte r s th e p h ilo s o p h ic a l f ra m e w o r k in
w h ich h e k e p t i t .2
If Marcuse is consistent in his two works Essay on Liberation and

Eros and Civilization, as I think he is, then the question arises:
how can one assert at once that Kant’s aesthetic conception is
the most valuable one, while at the same time argue that it is out
moded by its own framework?
The answer is that while Marcuse lauds the emphasis that Kant
places on aesthetics as a mediator between humanity and nature,
he is frustrated by Kant’s failure to complete the mediation. In
deed, Marcuse represents Kant’s three critiques as an incomplete
evolution toward the proper reconciliation (pacification) of “man
and nature, freedom and necessity, universal and particular.”3 It
is Marcuse’s contention that Kant discovers the contribution that
the aesthetic imagination can make to the pacification of exis
tence. However, according to Marcuse, Kant stops short of rec
ognizing all the capabilities of the aesthetic imagination, and
Marcuse offers his aesthetic theory as the proper extension of the
Kantian foundation. Marcuse claims to extend the incomplete
evolution of Kant’s three critiques to its logical conclusion, shat
tering the constricting bounds in which Kant’s theory is held. So
if, as Marcuse claims, his liberative aesthetics is a culmination of
the Kantian evolution, then it might be interesting to examine the
evolution, as Marcuse describes it, to see how it contributes to a
better understanding of his theory of liberatory aesthetics.
The First Critique
According to Marcuse, it is in the first of his three critiques, the

Critique o f Pure Reason, that Kant is the least satisfactory in re
lating what people can know about nature as it “really is,” and
from such knowledge, how people can act in a responsible, let
alone free or pacified fashion. Liberation can at most be only
cerebral:
In the First Critique, the freedom of the subject is present only in

the epistemological synthesis of the sense data; freedom is relegated
The Kantian Origins o f Marcuse’s Aesthetics 67
to th e tr a n s c e n d e n ta l E g o ’s p u r e s y n th e s e s : it is th e p o w e r o f th e a
p r io r i b y v irtu e o f w h ic h th e tra n s c e n d e n ta l s u b je c t c o n s titu te s th e
o b je c tiv e w o rld o f e x p e r ie n c e : th e o r e tic a l k n o w le d g e .4
What Marcuse says here about Kant’s position in the first critique
is that the only trustworthy knowledge humans can have about
occurrences in nature is the knowledge they have of the way in
which they think about things. They can never know about the
“things-in-themselves.” Kant asserts that although humanity is
free from the determination of nature’s “particulars,” and can
display a modicum of autonomy, such “freedom” is only in the
mind’s ability to combine images of natural phenomena in pat
terns that are independent of the phenomena themselves:
th e o b je c tiv e re a lity o f o u r E m p iric a l k n o w le d g e , re sts o n th e tr a n

s c e n d e n ta l la w , th a t all a p p e a r a n c e s , in so fa r a s th ro u g h th e m o b je c ts
a r e to b e g iv e n to u s , m u st s ta n d u n d e r th o s e a priori ru le s o f s y n
th e tic a l u n ity w h e re b y th e in te r r e la tin g o f th e s e a p p e a r a n c e s in
e m p iric a l in tu itio n is a lo n e p o s s ib le .5
Unfortunately, the things in nature that individuals think about

cannot be so clearly understood. For while he believes it neces
sary to hold that things have a concrete, independent existence of
their own,6 Kant steadfastly maintains that human sensibility im
poses spatial and temporal criteria on “intuitions” (received
sense data) that make it impossible for any person to possess any
“pure,” theoretical knowledge about objects in nature; all such
knowledge is tainted by human modes of perception and cogni
tion. Indeed, the Critique o f Pure Reason has among its themes
the demonstration of the limitations of speculative metaphysics in
the understanding of nature. Kant reasons that no thought about
nature is initiated independently in pure cognition; rather, it must
be stimulated (albeit sometimes indirectly) by objects of intuition
(sense). And since all sense data are altered by the prism of hu
man perception, any information contained in the realm of cogni
tion (Understanding) cannot be completely trustworthy in terms
of accuracy as to the “nature” of the object. According to Mar
cuse, the first critique stifles “pacification” because the universal
are denied even partial accuracy in describing particulars.
If we can be secure only in the knowledge of “how we know,”
then there is little cause for security in the realm of praxis; for in
the Critique o f Pure Reason, we learn that knowledge of empiri
cal objects is always altered by human modes of perception. Thus
the first critique is not very helpful in assisting individuals in their
dealings with objects in nature.
The Second Critique
According to Marcuse (who obviously caricatures the distinc

tiveness of the three critiques for rhetorical purposes), it is only in
the second critique, the Critique o f Practical Reason, that one’s
movement in nature can be seen as something more than wholly
externally determined. It is in the second critique that Kant
allows individuals to lend reason to nature in the realm of praxis,
but for Marcuse the price is too dear:
In th e Second Critique , th e re a lm o f praxis is r e a c h e d w ith th e s tip
u la tio n o f th e a u to n o m y o f th e m o ra l p e r s o n : h is p o w e r to originate
c a u s a tio n w ith o u t b r e a k in g th e u n iv e rs a l c a u s a tio n w h ic h g o v e rn s n a
tu re : n e c e s sity . T h e p ric e : s u b je c tio n o f th e s e n s ib ility to th e c a te g o r
ical im p e ra tiv e o f re a s o n . T h e r e la tio n b e tw e e n h u m a n f r e e d o m a n d
n a tu r a l n e c e s sity re m a in s o b s c u r e .7
In the Critique o f Practical Reason, Kant opposes the world of

unknowable natural causation to a simultaneous world of human
manipulation of nature. He attempts to show that while nature
cannot be known theoretically, it can be managed practically.
Despite their inability to plumb the pure truth of nature, Kant
argues that individuals develop laws that they believe (assert) to
be binding on nature. They impose, without total understanding,
a system on nature that is believed to be binding upon all indi
viduals. This is the moral law, and, according to Kant, to be hu
man is to have a concept of morality. Theoretically, of course, the
real nature or validity of the moral law cannot be demon
strated; rather,
th e m o ra l law is g iv e n , as a n a p o d ic tic a lly c e r ta in f a c t, a s it w e r e , o f

p u r e r e a s o n , a fact o f w h ic h w e a r e a p r io r i c o n s c io u s , e v e n if it b e
g r a n te d th a t n o e x a m p le c o u ld b e fo u n d in w h ic h it h a s b e e n fo llo w e d
e x a c tly .8
However, the mere fact that individuals are inclined to manu-

facture an understanding of nature that they impose on sensible
objects allows them to transcend the prisms of time and space.
The moral law, although one can never be assured of its validity,
is held as timeless and unconditional (and unconditioned). Thus,
when a moral being acts in accordance with the moral law, that
individual is systematizing particulars of nature (Kant describes
this as the function of Reason9—a faculty that, as seen, is frus
trated in the pure, theoretical realm) in a way that is independent
of intervening modes of perception or cognition. Thus the purity
of reason, which is denied in the theoretical sphere, may be resur
rected in the moral, practical realm.
Kant’s philosophy thus seems to support two worlds, or
“ natures,” in “dialectical opposition.” 10 He attempts to show
that, simultaneously, there can be causality through moral forti
tude, and causality through imperturbable, unfathomable natural
forces. If what the intuition received were unmediated correlates
of objective reality, then the laws of causality that the Under
standing derived from that world could be wholly trusted. But, as
mentioned earlier, Understanding is affected by human modes of
intuition, and cannot be trusted to provide an accurate picture of
nature as it really is. So because of the potential inaccuracy of the
Understanding, individuals contemplate the possibility of a na
ture contrary to that which the senses indicate, and recognize the
need to act on incomplete information. Choice and “freedom”
are thus introduced into Kant’s scheme.
So, depending on the form of human interaction with nature,
natural objects can be viewed in one of two ways. One may
approach a natural object as having infinite causes, most of which
can never be discovered; or, because we are not totally convinced
of our Understanding, we arc allowed another perspective:
B u t th e s a m e s u b je c t, w h ic h , o n th e o th e r h a n d , is c o n s c io u s a lso o f
h is o w n e x is te n c e a s a th in g -in -its e lf, a ls o v iew s h is e x is te n c e so fa r as
it d o e s n o t s ta n d u n d e r te m p o ra l c o n d itio n s , a n d to h im s e lf a s d e t e r
m in a b le o n ly by law s w h ich h e g iv e s to h im s e lf th ro u g h r e a s o n . In th is
e x is te n c e n o th in g is a n te c e d e n t to th e d e te r m in a tio n o f his w ill; e v e ry
a c tio n a n d , in g e n e r a l, e v e ry c h a n g in g d e te r m in a tio n o f his e x iste n c e
a c c o rd in g to th e in n e r s e n s e , e v e n th e e n tir e h is to ry o f his e x is te n c e
a s a s e n s u o u s b e in g , is s e e n in th e c o n s c io u s n e s s o f h is in te llig ib le
e x is te n c e a s o n ly a c o n s e q u e n c e , n o t a s a d e te r m in in g g r o u n d o f his
c a u s a lity a s a n o u m e n o n .11
The unsureness as to the determinants of natural occurrences
allows for the “determination of the will”—human responsibility
for the way in which things occur. Because the Understanding
cannot positively isolate determinants of human behavior, the
moral law assumes the responsibility. Morality succeeds because
practical (as opposed to theoretical) reason imposes a determina
tion (law) on human behavior that has no spatial or temporal
restraints. The moral law applies for all times, in all places.
However, for morality to assume its status of absolute deter
mination, the moral agent must acknowledge the dictates of the
will as universal rules. If the will is related only to particular ob
jects, or particular times, then it encroaches on the realm of intui
tion, and perceptual mediation. Therefore the moral agent must
believe that moral dictates are universal, and apply to all persons
in all times.
It would be difficult, then, for a moral being to support the prac
tice of murder, because it would be hard to imagine universal
acceptance of the practice. In order that a moral position might
be universally applied (to transcend time and space), the moral
agent must ensure that his or her moral commitment would not
potentially conflict with the moral commitment of another. Here,
of course, one encounters Kant’s famous Categorical Imperative,
which holds that moral beings must treat other beings as ends in
themselves, and not merely as means to an end—if the moral law
is to maintain its claim of absolute determination. Morality can
never be considered only a temporary or conditional commit
ment.
We may now return to Marcuse’s original comment on the
second critique. His disappointment derives from the fact that in
order to gain autonomy in nature, the individual must sacrifice
“sensibility,” for the moral person cannot allow particularity to
affect praxis, lest perceptual alteration severely limit individual
autonomy. So, in order to deal effectively within nature, the indi
vidual must “transcend” the particulars of sense experience in
favor of the more permanent moral position. Knowledge about
the way things are depends upon the extent to which the moral
being can ignore the things’ particularity, which is received sen
sually, and impose a morality that is the product of practical
reason. In order to be free, autonomous, and not wholly “deter
mined” by nature, one must demonstrate the “mastery of nature”
through moral fortitude. Pacification is impossible because the
universal is forced to deny, rather than represent, the particular.
For Kant, morality demands the subordination of sensibility:
T h a t h e [m a n ] h a s re a s o n d o e s n o t in th e le a st ra ise h im in w o rth
a b o v e m e r e a n im a lity if re a s o n o n ly s e rv e s th e p u rp o s e s w h ic h ,
a m o n g a n im a ls , a r e ta k e n c a re o f b y in s tin c t; if th is w e re s o , re a s o n
w o u ld b e o n ly a sp ecific w ay n a tu r e h a d m a d e u se o f to e q u ip m a n fo r
th e s a m e p u r p o s e s fo r w h ic h a n im a ls a r e q u a lifie d , w ith o u t fittin g him
f o r a n y h ig h e r p u r p o s e .12
Marcuse does not concur with the need for mastering nature,
and with the required denial of sensibility to achieve autonomy;
nor does he think that Kant religiously maintains this position.
Marcuse discusses the third critique as a corrective to Kant’s ear
lier position:
In th e Third Critique, m a n a n d n a tu r e a re jo in e d in th e a e s th e tic

d im e n s io n , th e rig id “ o th e r n e s s ” o f n a tu r e is r e d u c e d , a n d B e a u ty
a p p e a r s a s “ sy m b o l o f m o r a lity .” T h e u n io n o f th e re a lm o f fre e d o m
a n d th a t o f n e c e s s ity is h e r e c o n c e iv e d n o t a s th e m a s te ry o f n a tu r e ,
n o t as b e n d in g n a tu r e to th e p u r p o s e s o f m a n , b u t as a ttrib u tin g to
n a tu r e a n id e a l p u r p o s iv e n e s s “ o f its o w n : a p u rp o s iv e n e s s w ith o u t
p u r p o s e .” 13
Marcuse’s preference for the third critique over the previous

two is due, I think, to alterations Kant makes regarding the role
of imagination in human interaction with nature. In the third cri
tique Kant expands the functions of imagination, and isolates aes
thetics as the most “imaginative” of human pursuits. Marcuse
ratifies these changes; understanding the changes and Marcuse’s
attraction to them is a good way to approach Marcuse’s own aes
thetic theory. I hope to show that it is Kant’s expansion of the
imagination that promotes Marcuse to a reveling in the possibility
of “ man and nature joined in the aesthetic dimension,” rather
than separated by the moral imperative.
The Imagination
The imagination plays a relatively unimportant role in the Cri

tique o f Pure Reason. Imagination is portrayed as little more than
a gatekeeper, which directs images of intuition to the appropriate
“categories” of the Understanding. Imagination is responsible for
“synthesis” :
S y n th e sis in g e n e r a l, a s w e sh a ll h e r e a f te r s e e , is th e m e re re s u lt o f
th e p o w e r o f im a g in a tio n , a b lin d b u t in d is p e n s a b le fu n c tio n o f th e
s o u l, w ith o u t w h ich w e s h o u ld h a v e n o k n o w le d g e w h a ts o e v e r , b u t o f
w h ich w e a r e sc a rc e ly e v e r c o n s c io u s . T o b rin g th is s y n th e s is to con
cepts is a fu n c tio n w h ich b e lo n g s to th e u n d e r s ta n d in g , a n d it is
th ro u g h th is fu n c tio n o f th e u n d e r s ta n d in g th a t w e first o b ta in k n o w l
e d g e p r o p e rly so c a lle d .14
Images of intuition (manifolds) are perceived totally without

systematization; imagination directs objects of intuition to proper
“rules” or “categories” in Understanding. How this occurs is not
immediately obvious because of certain restrictions on the Under
standing. As already mentioned, Kant, in the Critique o f Pure
Reason, demonstrates the dependence of the Understanding on
sense perception, and thus deprives the Understanding of any in
dependent “curiosity.” Understanding must be initially stimu
lated by the senses in order to function: “Our understanding can
only think, and for intuition must look to the senses.” 15
Without an independent interest in sense data, it becomes
problematic as to how the cognitive faculty is ever to have any
thing to think about, much less systematize. What is needed is a
faculty that is attached to intuition, yet has an interest in system.
For Kant, the faculty is the Judgment, and the systems of judg
ment, called schema, are sensuous correlates of the pure catego
ries of Understanding. It is the Judgment, with its constitutive
resource, imagination, that imposes order on the manifolds.
However, in the first critique, this order is not determined by the
imagination or judgment; rather, the imagination derives the
order completely from the concepts of the Understanding:
its s y n th e s is o f in tu itio n s , c o n fo rm in g a s it d o e s to categories, m u s t b e

th e tra n s c e n d e n ta l s y n th e s is o f imagination. T h is s y n th e s is is a n
a c tio n o f th e u n d e r s ta n d in g o n th e s e n s ib ility ; a n d is its first
a p p lic a tio n — a n d th e r e b y th e g r o u n d o f all its o t h e r a p p lic a tio n s — to
th e o b je c ts o f o u r p o s sib le in tu itio n . A s f ig u ra tiv e , it is d is tin
g u is h e d fro m th e in te lle c tu a l s y n th e s is , w h ic h is c a r rie d o u t b y th e
u n d e r s ta n d in g a lo n e , w ith o u t th e a id o f th e im a g in a tio n .16
The Kantian Origins o f Marcuse's Aesthetics 73
For the present discussion it is important to remember that in the
first two critiques judgment and imagination always conform to
the given categories of the Understanding.
The Third Critique
In the third critique Kant corrects the overly static role

assigned to the imagination in his earlier writings, and I think it is
this correction, and its ramifications, that really draw Marcuse to
Kant’s aesthetics. Kant becomes dissatisfied with the notion that
imagination needs prior categories of the Understanding as an aid
to classifying sense data. The categories of the Understanding are
too general and too few to accommodate all experience. Thus
Kant enhances the innovative possibilities of the imagination by
allowing imagination to roam free of the specific concepts of the
Understanding, and Marcuse seconds the correction.
Kant rectifies his earlier position on the imagination by intro
ducing a bifurcated classification of the Judgment, in which judg
ments are viewed as either “determinant” or “reflective.” Kant’s
earlier conception of imagination, which allows only the relating
of objects of intuition with alrcady-prescnt “universal concepts,”
is retained in the new classification as determinate judgment.
T h e [d e te rm in a n t] ju d g m e n t d e te r m in e s u n d e r u n iv e rsa l tr a n s c e n
d e n ta l law s fu rn is h e d b y u n d e r s ta n d in g a n d is s u b s u m p tiv e o n ly ; th e
law is m a r k e d o u t fo r it a priori, a n d it h a s n o n e e d to d e v ise a law fo r
its o w n g u id a n c e to e n a b le it to s u b o rd in a te th e p a r tic u la r in n a tu r e to
th e u n iv e r s a l.17
Thus Kant’s original view of judgment and the imagination re

mains, only it no longer provides the complete picture. Kant ex
pands the arena of imagination by introducing a second category
of judgment, which has no corresponding treatment in the earlier
critiques. This is the reflective judgment, which is described as
having no intact universal concepts to which it may refer in reg
ulating sense data.
S u c h a tr a n s c e n d e n ta l p rin c ip le , th e r e f o r e , th e re fle c tiv e ju d g e m e n t

c a n o n ly g iv e as a law fro m a n d to itse lf. It c a n n o t d e riv e it fro m a n y
o t h e r q u a r te r (a s it w o u ld th e n b e a [ d e te rm in a te ] j u d g e m e n t ) .18
Kant, with the concept of reflective judgment, expands the hu
man abilities to amass “empirical so-called laws,” 19 by granting to
imagination the ability to categorize sense data into invented,
rather than given, modes of unification. Reflective judgment is
an innovative faculty, in which individuals are motivated, for
reasons yet to be discussed, to invent specific empirical contexts
(as opposed to general laws of Understanding— the realm of de
terminate judgment) in which to examine sensed reality. Kant,
dissatisfied with the overly general a priori concepts of the Under
standing, now recognizes that conceptualization takes place
synthetically; individuals can invent their own more specific,
“empirical” concepts for dealing more extensively with sense
data, and this is the process of reflective judgment.
Thus, instead of finding particulars that fall under a known
principle, the reflective imagination empowers the individual to
invent a principle or concept under which particulars may be rep
resented. The reflective imagination is still an intermediary
between intuition and Understanding because the invented
concepts are modeled after the process of “unification” that
characterizes Understanding; but the reflective judgment, al
though using Understanding as a model, does not consult it as to
specific concepts. It must invent concepts of its own. Thus there
now seems to be a more dynamic, progressive aspect to imagina
tion by which continuing efforts to find more satisfying unities of
sense data can occur. We may now examine the nature of this
“satisfaction.”
In the third critique Kant elevates the Judgment to the emi
nence of Understanding and Reason20 by granting the Judgment
a priori principles of its own. In demonstrating the Judgment’s a
priori principles, Kant clears up the problem raised earlier, and
never satisfactorily treated in the earlier critiques, as to why sense
data is ever transferred to the apparently indifferent Understand
ing. Kant answers the question by linking the feeling of pleasure
to the ability of individuals to succeed at reflective judgment,
and to harmonize sense data within ever-expanding unities or
“genera.” Furthermore, Kant links pain with those things which
are perceived as chaotic. The concurrence of pleasure with a
harmonious view of nature occurs because nature, when held to
be systematic by the imagination, is consistent with the cognitive
system of laws in the Understanding. “This is the principle of
nature’s formal finality for our cognitive faculties in its particular
(empirical) laws—a principle without which understanding could
not feel itself at home in nature.”21 Judgment allows humans to
feel at home in the empirical world, albeit it is a feeling that can
never be wholly substantiated. Judgment assists movement in na
ture by arranging it in ways that correspond to the arrangment of
the human cognitive faculty; there can be no assurance that na
ture is really so arranged (at least, according to Kant).
Individuals receive pleasure out of discovering or asserting con
sistencies within nature, and thereby assigning nature a purpose,
of which the individual is thought to be an integral part. This is
the a priori property of the Judgment; it distinguishes purposive
ness from chaos, and automatically so, since people automatically
derive pleasure from perceiving a harmonic, purposive rela
tionship with nature. Reflective judgment attempts to incorpo
rate sense data into broader, more “pleasurable” systems of pur
posiveness.
Kant is quick to point out that to establish broader systems of
purposiveness, judgment must not be clouded with instrumental
interests. For if the purposiveness derived from a field of sense
data reflects an already established interest, then the data will not
be rearranged in any more significant, beautiful, or lasting way.
At most, this kind of instrumental “pleasure”22 can please only
the senses. It is an immediate and brief pleasure, because it does
not significantly alter the way in which nature is perceived. For an
individual preoccupied with gems, the excitement about the ac
quisition of a new diamond wears off much more quickly than the
excitement upon realizing that gems are not the only enjoyable
part of existence.
Thus, in discussing that part of the Judgment called aesthetic
judgment, Kant introduces his perplexing notion of purposive
ness without purpose. What he seems to mean is that while judg
ment and imagination can provide pleasure when assigning pur
pose to sensed images, the assigned purpose should, as much as
possible, transcend given instrumental purposes. Pleasure is
stimulated by a feeling of a universally applicable expansion of
the interconnectedness of nature; and if judgment remains preoc
cupied with instrumental or temporal purposiveness, the expan
sion will be minimal.
It follows that there are certain activities that are better at
assigning purpose without encumbering it with instrumentality.
Pure science, in which the scientist’s imagination is allowed to
wander relatively unconstricted by considerations of application,
is mentioned by Kant as exemplary of the use of reflective judg
ment. But it is “fine art” that Kant isolates as the best, most un
constricted means to consider alternative unities of nature. Kant
argues that a fabricated object of sensibility can create a novel,
pleasurable image of natural harmony, but only if the art object is
appreciated not as a product of a single individual produced for
subjective, instrumental reasons, but as if the art object itself was
created by nature much the same as a beautiful waterfall—as
purposive or harmonious, but not instrumental (without pur
pose). Art is a means by which individuals may express or
appreciate a vision of an alternative systematization of nature,
without the constraint of instrumentality:
Hence the finality in the product of fine art, intentional though it

be, must not have the appearance of being intentional; i.e. fine art
must be clothed with the aspect of nature, although we recognize it to
be art. But the way in which a product of art seems like nature, is by
the presence of perfect exactness in the agreement with rules prescib-
ing how alone the product can be what it is intended to be, but with
an absence of laboured effect (without academic form betraying it
self), i.e. without a trace appearing of the artist having always had the
rule present to him and of its having fettered his mental powers.23
Of the many means to represent aesthetically a novel perspec

tive of nature, poetry seems to be one of the best. Kant explains
why:
It [poetry] expands the mind by giving freedom to the imagination

and by offering, from among the boundless multiplicity of possible
forms accordant with a given concept, to whose bounds it is re
stricted, that one which couples with the presentation of the concept
a wealth of thought to which no verbal expression is completely ad
equate, and thus rising aesthetically to ideas.24
Marcuse’s Ambivalent Appreciation of Kant
The reasons for Marcuse’s appreciation, albeit ambivalent

appreciation, of Kant’s aesthetics may now be addressed in a
more informed, detailed fashion. First, Marcuse believes that
Kant’s aesthetic theory provides for the preservation of essential
aspects of human nature, but at the expense of mistrusting the
senses and the ability of human beings to understand exterior na
ture. Second, Marcuse sees the progressiveness of the third cri
tique over the first two in that the sensuous and the cognitive
realms are mediated through the aesthetic imagination, rather
than pitted against each other in the opposition of morality to
nature; however, the new compatibility is only asserted, and Kant
denies the possibility of an incontrovertible realization of the
imposed compatibility. Marcuse’s greatest frustration regarding
Kant’s aesthetics, however, is that the aesthetic theory itself pro
vides the means to overcome the limitations that Kant imposes on
aesthetic activity. It is up to Marcuse to use Kant’s aesthetic in
sight in a way that “shatters the philosophical framework in which
he kept it.”25
Kant defines aesthetic judgment as “the faculty of thinking the
particular as contained under the universal,”26 which seems to be
a precise statement of the crucial aspect of Marcuse’s concept of
human nature discussed in chapter 1. However, for Kant, in
order for the insight to be truly aesthetic (Kant separates what is
aesthetic and what is merely agreeable), certain aspects of human
“nature”— the senses— must be subordinated to the more pris
tine, noninstrumental characteristics of the reflective imagina
tion. In order for the aesthetic judgment to take place, the selfish
and untrustworthy human senses must be moderated by the ap
plication of sensed data to aesthetic “form.” For Kant, the imag
ination, like practical reason, must deny aspects of sensibility in
order to make statements that are not merely personal and fleet
ing. Taste, like morality, demands “ intersubjcctive validity,” and
thus cannot completely trust the human senses. Thus Kant can
say that aesthetic beauty, which is generated by ever-greater rep
resentations of nature’s purposiveness, is a “symbol of morality” :
th e m in d b e c o m e s c o n s c io u s o f a c e r ta in e n n o b le m e n t a n d e le v a tio n
a b o v e m e r e s e n s ib ility to p le a s u re fro m im p re s s io n s o f s e n s e , a n d a lso
a p p ra is e s th e w o rth o f o th e r s o n th e s c o re o f a lik e m a x im o f th e ir
ju d g e m e n t.27
If Kant says that beauty is the symbol of morality, Marcuse says

that beauty is the symbol of the natural. He believes that there is
no inherent opposition between the senses and the imagination,
and that the progressive insights of the free, noninstrumental im
agination that mediates the realms of the senses and coginition,
coupled with an environment that is receptive to those insights,
lead to the realization that the sensed world and the world of
human cognition need not remain separate; nature can be under
stood. For Kant, the demands of sensuousness cannot be met,
and thus those demands must be moderated by the categorical
imperative and the aesthetic imagination. Marcuse, on the other
hand, believes that sensuousness and the categorical imperative
are not irrepressibly opposed, and that the aesthetic implement
reveals their compatibility. The opposition between nature and
humanity is eliminated; Marcuse projects a “ universe where the
sensuous, the playful, the calm, and the beautiful become forms
of existence and thereby the Form of the society itself.’’28 Thus
aesthetic form is not eliminated by the collusion of the imagina
tion and the senses; rather, the transcendent visions of aesthetic
form are allowed to inform and improve sensed reality (rather
than escape and repress reality).
It is Marcuse’s contention that, like Freud, Kant also (except
perhaps in his most “advanced concepts’’) mistakenly assumes
the necessity of domination, but in this context, not domination
of Eros, but domination (or at least suppression) of all of nature.
Marcuse utilizes a similar argument to discount both myopias—
that human development (technological and aesthetic) has
reached a stage whereby the formerly antagonistic factors may be
reconciled. Nature is released from capitalistic objectification by
an imagination that shuns instrumentality, and nature is recog
nized as an “existential being’’—as a counterpart rather than
adversary to humanity. Marcuse argues that the intimidating
aspects of nature arc growing increasingly fewer, and that sen
suality need no longer be submerged by the moral imperative or
detached aesthetic form in order for a workable relationship be
tween humanity and nature to be maintained. Domination sur
renders to liberation:
lib e ra tio n is th e p o s sib le p la n a n d in te n tio n o f h u m a n b e in g s , b ro u g h t
to b e a r u p o n n a tu r e . H o w e v e r , it d o e s s tip u la te th a t n a tu r e is s u s
c e p tib le to s u c h a n u n d e r ta k in g , a n d th a t th e r e a r e fo rc e s in n a tu r e
w h ic h h a v e b e e n d is to r te d a n d s u p p r e s s e d — fo rc e s w h ich c o u ld s u p
p o r t a n d e n h a n c e th e lib e ra tio n o f m a n .29
Nature can now be recognized in its proper status of subject-

object. Marcuse quotes from the Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts: “The sun is the object of the plant ... just as the
plant is an object for the sun__ ”30 Nature is taken from its tradi
tional context of object to be appropriated and placed in the con
text of an existential being that “suffers” from human domina
tion. Nature recognized as “subject-object” inspires a human
attitude of harmony and “pacification,” rather than dominance
and destruction.
It is now possible for Marcuse to argue that, relieved of its
responsibility for purifying reprehensible aspects of human na
ture and for altering intimidating aspects of exterior nature, the
aesthetic pursuit itself is a crucial aspect of human nature rather
than an instrument used to regulate nature. Kant’s asethetic imag
ination involves the contemplation of alternative systems of rec
onciling the universal and the particular by discovering mutual
“ purposiveness.” Now this goal is seen to have receptivity in na
ture, and thus the aesthetic assignment of purposiveness need not
be only a human invention imposed on nature; rather, Marcuse
asserts that the human drive to discover ever greater universals,
in light of the ever-decreasing intimidating aspects of nature, is
seen to have a direct correlate in nature, and Marcuse, expanding
upon one of Kant’s most striking statements in the Critique o f
Judgement, demonstrates the consistency of humanity and na
ture, of the senses and understanding:
T h e m o s t a d v a n c e d c o n c e p ts o f th e T h ir d C ritiq u e h a v e n o t y e t b e e n
e x p lo r e d in th e ir tru ly re v o lu tio n a r y sig n ific a n c e . T h e a e s th e tic fo rm
in a r t h a s th e a e s th e tic fo rm in n a tu r e (das Naturschone) a s its c o r r e
la te , o r r a th e r d e s id e r a tu m . If th e id e a o f b e a u ty p e r ta in s to n a tu r e as
w ell a s to a r t , th is is n o t m e re ly a n a n a lo g y , o r a h u m a n id e a im p o se d
o n n a t u r e .31
It is easy to see now that by demonstrating the “naturalness” of

Kant’s aesthetic, Marcuse is simultaneously demonstrating the
naturalness of the drive to transcend particularity. Clearly, Kant’s
aesthetic promotes that aspect of human nature (and Marcuse
believes it may now be unambiguously called nature) which is
most threatened by one-dimensional society. By showing that the
drive to create new, noninstrumental recombinations of particu
lars is not a way to “overcome” nature, but is itself natural, Mar
cuse not only “corrects” Kant’s aesthetics, but further solidifies
his commitment to the possibility of a pacified existence.
Marcuse asserts that the value of the aesthetic judgment is not
in its ability to invent means to transcend the crudeness of pure
sensuality by imposing determinateness on nature; rather judg
ment is the means by which sensuality can be released from its
crudeness, and participate properly in the natural expression of
the senses. For Kant, the transcendence that characterizes reflec
tive judgment is a denial of crucial aspects of human nature; for
Marcuse, the transcendence that characterizes reflective judg
ment discovers an environment in which the sensual aspects of
human nature need not be denied. The reflective imagination
shatters the separation of sensibility and imagination—a process
that was, according to Marcuse, reaching maturity in Kant’s third
critique:
W h e n K a n t, in h is th ird Critique , all b u t o b lite r a te d th e f ro n tie r s

b e tw e e n s e n sib ility a n d im a g in a tio n , h e re c o g n iz e d th e e x te n t to
w h ich th e s e n se s a r e “ p r o d u c tiv e ,” c r e a tiv e — th e e x te n t to w h ic h
th e y h a v e a s h a re in p r o d u c in g th e im a g e s o f f r e e d o m .32
If the reflective, aesthetic imagination can achieve a position

whereby nature seems to be completely receptive to its insights,
then the alien status of nature is eroded, and humanity need not
maintain fear or opposition to nature, including human nature.
Sensuousness, an undeniable aspect of human nature, has found
a place in the relationship of humanity and its surroundings; a
moral life, in which the needs of others are considered as crucial
as the needs of the individual, is possible within the expression,
rather than the denial, of human sensibility:
T h e r a tio n a l tra n s f o rm a tio n o f th e w o rld c o u ld th e n le a d to a re a lity

f o rm e d by th e a e s th e tic s e n s ib ility o f m a n . S u c h a w o rld c o u ld (in a
lite ra l s e n s e !) e m b o d y , in c o r p o r te , th e h u m a n fa c u ltie s a n d d e s ir e s to
su c h a n e x te n t th a t th e y a p p e a r a s p a r t o f th e o b je c tiv e d e te r m in is m
o f n a tu r e — c o in c id e n c e o f c a u s a lity th ro u g h n a tu r e a n d c a u sa lity
th r o u g h f r e e d o m .33
Here again it may be helpful to refer to Marcuse’s discussions

of Freud, for Marcuse bolsters his position as to the eventual
compatibility of humanity and nature, and thus attempts to mol
lify Kant’s resistance, by resorting to the discussions in Freud
where it is hypostatized that there has already been a time, in
human prehistory, where humanity and nature were consonant:
“The philosophical effort to mediate, in the aesthetic dimension,
between sensuousness and reason thus appears as an attempt to
reconcile the two spheres of the human existence which were torn
asunder by a repressive reality principle.”34
Thus, in the psychodynamic sense, Marcuse can moderate the
speculative status of his theory of pacification by representing the
consistency of individuals and nature not as an innovation, but as
a return (indeed, one reason for Marcuse’s insistence on the term
liberation is that it implies a release and a return to a prior state).
Certainly, it is a return mostly in a metaphoric sense, since the
liberative state Marcuse envisions is not one of primitive, im
mediate satisfaction but of satisfaction that is postponed and
refined to accommodate the complexity of the technical
surroundings—surroundings that have made the new consonance
possible. The nonrepressive sublimation that characterizes the
aesthetic practice is thus crucial to the liberated environment.
Summary
In summarizing Marcuse’s position on Kant’s aesthetics, I think

it can be said that Marcuse is attracted to Kant’s aesthetics be
cause in relating that which is constitutive of the aesthetic dimen
sion, Kant relates almost precisely the aspect of human nature—
pursuing ever greater, noninstrumental univcrsals from the given
particulars— that Marcuse believes most threatened by the one-
dimensionality of technological rationality. Purposiveness without
purpose not only best describes Kant’s aesthetics, but it is a
phrase that attaches pleasingly to Marcuse’s concept of “univer
salizing” as a means to deflect the constricting pressures of one
dimensional society. Thus Kant’s aesthetic concept appears as a
repository for what to Marcuse is a crucial and endangered aspect
of human nature.
Marcuse is disappointed, however, that Kant is unable to admit
that the aesthetic imagination is anything more than a device that
helps individuals to deal with an unfathomable natural environ
ment; indeed, for Kant certain natural inclinations must be sub
verted in order for aesthetics to work at all. Marcuse, on the
other hand, tries to show that the inclination to enagage in Kant’s
concept of aesthetics is totally natural, and that engaging in aes
thetics helps to reveal the naturalness of the pursuit. For in apply
ing the aesthetic insights, the aesthete finds, first, that the aesthet
ic drive need not necessarily oppose the sensual aspects of human
nature in order to achieve “intersubjective validity,” and second,
that the inclination to combine the particular in the universal that
characterizes Kant’s aesthetic practice need not be merely im
posed on nature to understand it better, but is actually reflective
of what happens in real nature. By investing in human beings an a
priori interest in transcendence, Kant assists in Marcuse’s quest
to overcome technological rationality; however, by insisting that
such transcendence must necessarily repel aspects of human sen
suousness, Kant denies Marcuse’s contention that all aspects of
human nature can be nurtured, and thus “pacified.” Marcuse,
“expanding” the possibilities of Kant’s reflective imagination,
shows that the senses (with the indispensable aid of the imagina
tion) can be allowed free development along with aesthetic
transcendence. For Kant the senses are untrustworthy and
instrumental. For Marcuse sensual instrumentality can be tran
scended through continued investment in the aesthetic dimen
sion.
A Brief Outline of Marcuse’s Position on Kant’s “ Evolution”
The First Critique: The pacification of nature is utterly impossi

ble because nature itself is so totally inscrutable. The only reliable
knowledge is in how particulars of nature are thought about. The
things-in-themselves are unknowable.
The Second Critique: Movement within nature is made possi
ble by the human imposition of morality upon externality. The
moral law allows human beings to act confidently in nature as
long as they abide by the categorical imperative. The overcoming
of the inscrutability of nature is accomplished by the moral “con
quering” of nature.
The Third Critique: Here nature is not conquered, but is
“appreciated” through the imaginative transformation of nature
into aesthetic form. Pacification still remains unattainable,
however, because the appreciation of the aesthetic form can be
achieved only at the expense of denying parts of human
sensuality—undeniable but “reprehensible” aspects of human
nature. Beauty remains a “symbol of morality,” and thus a sym
bol of human resistance to aspects of externality.
Marcuse’s expansion of the Third Critique: Form need not be a
denial of sensuality. Indeed, the aesthetic practice, in a techno
logically advanced society, can expand and transform previously
selfish and immediate sensual gratification into complex, altruis
tic, and productive drives. No aspects of nature, human or other
wise, require denial: thus, pacification becomes attainable.
Notes
3. Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), p. 73.
4. Ibid.
5. Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant’s Critique o f Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp
Smith (London: Macmillan and Co., 1953), pp. 137-38 (A 110).
6. Kant writes: "the concept of a noumcnon is necessary, to prevent sensible intuition
from being extended to things in themselves, and thus to limit the objective validity of
sensible knowledge." Ibid., pp. 271-72 (B 310).
7. Marcuse, Counterrevolution, p. 73.
8. Immanuel Kant, The Critique o f Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 157. In addition, Kant states: “If one asks,
however, what pure morality really is. by which, as the touchstone, the moral import
of each action must be tested, I must confess that only philosophers can put the deci
sion on this question in doubt. For by common sense it is long since decided, not by
abstract general formulas but rather by habitual use, like the difference between the
right and the left hand." Ibid., pp. 252-53.
9. Kant writes: “ If we consider in its whole range the knowledge obtained tor us by the
understanding, we find that what is peculiarly distinctive of reason in its attitude to
this body of knowledge, is that it prescribes and seeks to achieve its systematisation,
that is, to exhibit the connection of its parts in conformity with a single principle.”
Kant, Critique o f Pure Reason, p. 534 (A 645, B 673).
10. Ibid., p. 447 (A 504, B 532). Kant also writes that "we have to recognise two kinds of
causality with their rules, namely, nature and freedom." Ibid., p. 526 (A 632, B 660).
11. Kant, Critique o f Practical Reason, p. 203.
12. Ibid., p. 170.
14. Kant, Critique o f Pure Reason, p. 112 (A 78).
15. Ibid., p. 155 (B 135).
16. Ibid., p. 165 (B 152).
17. Immanuel Kant, The Critique o f Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1964), p. 18 (pt. 1, intro., sec. iv).
18. Ibid., p. 19 (pt. I, intro., sec. iv).
19. Ibid., p. 24, (pt. 1, intro., sec. v).
20. In the third critique, Kant proceeds to limit reason to only the practical realm, where
as in the earlier works reason could be either practical or theoretical. The following
chart, from The Critique o f Judgement, shows Kant’s system with Judgment in its new
position of eminence.
List o f Mental Faculties Cognitive Faculties

Cognitive faculties Understanding
Feeling of pleasure and displeasure Judgment
Faculty of desire Reason
A priori Principles Application
Conformity to law Nature
Finality Art
Final End Freedom
Ibid., p. 39 (pt, 1, intro., sec. ix).

21. Ibid., p. 35, (pt. 1, intro., sec. viii).
22. Here Kant makes the distinction between judgments about the beautiful and judg
ments about the pleasant, or agreeable. Ibid., pp. 44-45 (pt. 1, sec. 3).
23. Ibid., p. 167 (pt. 1, sec. 45).
24. Ibid., p. 191 (pt. 1, sec. 53).
26. Kant, Critique o f Judgement, p. 18 (pt. 1, intro., sec. ix).
27. Ibid., p. 224 (pt. 1, sec. 59).
28. Marcuse, Essay on Liberation, pp. 25-26.
30. Ibid., p. 65, n .t, citing Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts o f
1844, Dirk J. Struik, ed, (New York: International Publishers, 1964), p. 139.
31. Ibid., p. 67.
33. Ibid., p. 31.
Part III
Marcuse’s Aesthetic
Taxonomy
5
Scientific Art
What kind of aesthetic expressions best represent the purposive

ness without purpose that, following Kant, Marcuse sees as so
crucial to a valid aesthetic statement? Of course, to answer this
question the discussion must turn to forms of art that, until now,
have provided the most reliable repository for aesthetic insights.
With growing conviction, Marcuse recognizes that certain types
of artwork fulfill the promise of the aesthetic practice by tran
scending the given through aesthetic form:
F o r m is th e a c h ie v e m e n t o f th e a rtis tic p e r c e p tio n w h ich b r e a k s th e

u n c o n s c io u s a n d “ f a ls e ” “ a u to m a tis m ,” th e u n q u e s tio n e d fa m ilia rity
w h ic h o p e r a te s in e v e ry p r a c tic e , in c lu d in g th e re v o lu tio n a ry
p r a c tic e — a n a u to m a tis m o f im m e d ia te e x p e r ie n c e , b u t a so c ia lly e n
g in e e r e d e x p e r ie n c e w h ic h m ilita te s a g a in s t th e lib e ra tio n o f s e n s ib il
ity . T h e a rtis tic p e r c e p tio n is s u p p o s e d to s h a tte r th is im m e d ia c y
w h ic h , in tr u th , is a h is to ric a l p r o d u c t: th e m e d iu m o f e x p e rie n c e
im p o s e d by th e e s ta b lis h e d s o c ie ty b u t c o a g u la tin g in to a self-
su ffic ie n t, c lo s e d , “ a u to m a tic ” s y s te m .1
In order to isolate that kind of art (“liberative art” ) which best

fractures the “automatism of immediate experience,’’ I have
found it valuable to first weed out the lesser forms. Fortunately,
Marcuse assists in the task by developing a taxonomy in which
types of artistic expression are classified according to the degree
to which liberation is pursued. The taxonomy is far from rigor
ous, however, because (expccially in his earlier works) Marcuse’s
discussions on forms of art were often only peripheral to his pri
mary concerns; for instance, Marcuse discusses socialist realism (in
his book, Soviet Marxism) only as one of many aspects of his
expose of the Soviet brand of Marxism. So, in the next few chap-
87
ters, I would like to examine Marcuse’s aesthetic taxonomy, tak
ing the liberty of tightening the classifications and providing illus
trations of each, in an effort to articulate more precisely Mar
cuse’s ultimate aesthetic position. I must admit, however, that in
addition to its contributing to a better knowledge of Marcuse’s
liberative aesthetics, I think that discussing the classifications is
valuable and interesting in itself, and so Part III is as much com
plementary as it is crucial to my major purpose.
I think that the art of Marcuse’s discussions can be divided
most easily into five basic categories. The postrevolutionary
Soviet art called socialist realism and the “instrumental” art of
contemporary “technologically rational” societies share many
common attributes in Marcuse’s discussions, and thus I link them
in the first category, called scientific art (chapter 5). In discussing
these kinds of art as the least “aesthetic” in Marcuse’s treatment,
I hope to show that both are of the same species because both
attempt to render art an auxiliary to scientific “ progress”— hence
the term scientific art. The second category I discuss is that of
affirmative art (chapter 6), in which art retains its transcendental
characteristics, but only in the detached atmosphere of the
museum or gallery. The third category is anti-art (chapter 7),
which will be seen as the first step in synthesizing aesthetic tran
scendence and the objective world. Critical art, the fourth cate
gory (chapter 8), is the position of Marcuse’s earliest aesthetic
treatment. This position, more complicated and refined, is re
tained in the works of Theodor Adorno. I shall argue that Mar
cuse significantly diverges from Adorno’s position regarding the
role of art and aesthetics in social change, for Marcuse’s “libera
tive art,” the fifth category (chapter 9), differs from what I have
called critical art in that critical art maintains a serious opposition
to the given, while liberative art attempts to deny the given by
happily ignoring it. In chapter 9, I begin to discuss the prospects
of political potency for liberative art.
Scientific Art I: Socialist Realism
In his book Soviet Marxism, Marcuse focuses on the Soviet

tendency to revere Marx’s doctrine only selectively, liberally
adapting Marx’s teachings to “pragmatic” situations. Marcuse
Scientific Art 89
discusses Soviet aesthetic theories as exemplary of this selective
application of Marxist theory. Indeed, it was easy for the Soviet
Marxists to adjust Marxian aesthetics to their own interests, be
cause there was so little to adjust. Marx and Engels devote only
peripheral attention to problems of aesthetics, and even when
they do speak of art and literature, it is usually as a rhetorical
device to demonstrate more effectively an aspect of their social
theory not germane to aesthetics at all. Thus socialist realism is
one of a number of extrapolative treatments all claiming to be
authentic interpretations of Marx’s aesthetics.
According to Marcuse, however, the twentieth-century Soviet
extrapolation was of the most inferior variety. First promulgated
by Lenin and later systematized in the Stalinist period by Andrei
Zhdanov, socialist realism was a programmatic attempt to elimin
ate any doubt that the proper role for art in society is, in Lenin’s
words, merely “a small cog or a small screw” in the machinery of
the socialist state. According to Marcuse, this despicable form of
“art,” which does nothing but attempt to make the existing re
gime more acceptable, does not reflect the complexity of the ori
ginal Marxian treatments, scanty though these were.2 It is the
dogmatic attachment to instrumentality that is most perturbing to
Marcuse, and it is such instrumentality that makes socialist real
ism the most inferior kind of artistic expression, and least capable
of contributing to liberation.
According to Lenin, proper art is to be blatant Tendenzpoesie;
he demands the total partisanship of art.3 For Lenin, art’s role is
to interpret and popularize party dogma, and to dramatize here
tical activities. This position was indeed strengthened and sys
tematized under Stalin; in fact, during the time frame of Mar
cuse’s study of Soviet Marxism, the party developed a calculus to
determine the value of an artistic work. The calculus involves
three criteria, all of which need to be satisfied if the artwork is to
be designated worthy of popular consideration. The first is partii-
nost, or “partiness,” which is the degree to which the artwork
becomes a “part of organized, systematic, united Social Demo
cratic party work.”4 The second criterion is ideinost, or “ideolog
ical focus,” which is the degree to which the artwork supplies
“genuine ideological armament, spiritual nourishment that will
aid in fulfilling the plans for great socialist construction.”5 And
the third criterion for evaluating the socialist artwork is narod-
nost, or “appeal to the people,” which is the degree to which the
artwork is popularly understood. “Art belongs to the people. It
must penetrate with its deepest roots into the very midst of the
laboring masses. It must be intelligible to those masses and loved
by them.”6
Under this system of party scrutiny and direction, artistic free
dom comes to mean strict adherence to the three criteria.
Appearing to resurrect Rousseau’s paradox of enforced freedom,
the party argues that artistic freedom means “ freedom from” the
suffocation of bourgeois culture; and this freedom can only be
realized under a strict system of vigilance and direction. Thus a
Soviet “aesthetics” develops that attempts to link art directly to
socialist political evolution. The socialist realists argue that all art
is partisan, and thus hold that socialist art should properly guide
the unavoidable partisanship of art in the direction of socialism.
In 1934 the First Central Congress of Soviet Writers adopted the
following as part of their statutes:
S o c ia list re a lism is th e fu n d a m e n ta l m e th o d o f S o v ie t b e lle s - le ttr e s

a n d c ritic is m . It d e m a n d s o f th e a r tis t a tr u th f u l, h is to ric a lly fa c tu a l
d e s c rip tio n o f re a lity in its re v o lu tio n a r y d e v e lo p m e n t. T h e tr u th f u l
n ess a n d th e h is to ric a l a c c u ra c y o f th e a rtis tic r e p r e s e n ta tio n o f re a lity
m u st b e in a c c o rd w ith th e ta s k o f a n id e a lis tic r e c o n s tr u c tio n a n d a
re e d u c a tio n o f th e w o r k e rs in th e s p irit o f s o c ia lis m .7
That art is seen as only one more manifestation of the scientific

apparatus is, to Marcuse, the most disconcerting aspect of social
ist realism, for it represents a premature confidence that the con
sideration of radical alternatives is no longer necessary, and that
all societal problems can be solved technically. Art, in its scien
tific mode, is seen as only a means to concisely, simply, and
pleasingly articulate, or at most broaden, the established patterns
of the state.
Marcuse does not claim that the Soviet socialists were the first
to discover the power of art in politics; he rightly points out that
art has been used throughout history to implement state policies.
However, according to Marcuse, the Soviet system is unique
in that it accepts the established social reality “ as the final
framework for the artistic content, transcending it neither in style
nor in substance.”8 If art is allowed a critical function, it is critical
of alternative ends, or of means to the accepted ends, but never
Scientific Art 91
of the accepted ends themselves. Art is the servant of the ideal
society, and to the promulgators of socialist realism in the Soviet
Union, the form of that society, if not fully implemented, has
already been determined. “ In other words, once the reality itself
embodies the ideal (though not yet in its pure form), art must
necessarily reflect the reality, that is, if it is to retain its essential
function, it must be ‘realism.” ’9 To put it in terms already intro
duced, this kind of art rejects or diverts the human tendency to
“universalize,” and thus deflects liberative practices.
A Work of Socialist Realism
Marcuse’s antipathy for socialist realism and scientific art may be

better demonstrated through an examination of a representative
work of socialist realism. Archetypical of this kind of art is Niko
lai Ostrovsky’s novel How the Steel was Tempered; not only is the
novel itself an exercise in uncritical support for the Soviet indus
trialization program, but it also contains, in encapsulated form,
the evolution of a “realistic” artwork. The protagonist of
Ostrovsky’s novel, Pavel Korchagin, in response to mounting
mental depression because of his physical inability to maintain a
materially productive life, proceeds to write his own novel as a
means to continue contributing to Soviet society. He considers his
written work as merely an alternative to physical labor; both con
tribute to the construction and maintenance of the socialist state.
And both are open to the scrutiny and direction of the state.
Pavel gladly turns his novel over to the party for approval to pub
lish, for it is the party that can best determine the level of “pro
ductivity” of his project. Pavel totally accepts, indeed soundly
condones, the role of art as handmaiden to the established sys
tem. Ostrovsky’s novel closes with the acceptance of Pavel’s
novel:
It w a s a te le g r a m fro m th e R e g io n a l C o m m itte e . A te rs e m e ss a g e o n
a te le g r a p h fo rm : N o v e l h e a rtily a p p r o v e d . T u r n e d o v e r to p u b
lis h e rs . C o n g r a tu la tio n s o n y o u r v ic to ry .
H is h e a r t b e a t fa st. H is e le ris h e d d r e a m w as re a liz e d ! T h e s te e l b o n d s
h a v e b e e n b u r s t, a n d n o w , a r m e d w ith a n e w w e a p o n , h e h a d r e
tu r n e d to th e fig h tin g ra n k s a n d to lif e .10
This is without doubt art as “partisan science,” as a “small cog
or a small screw” (as opposed to a wrench, perhaps) in the estab
lished machinery. It is art in unquestioning service to a society
that has convinced the artist that there remain no more significant
antagonistic hurdles between humanity and a pacified, utopian
existence.
Nature Conquered
Perhaps the most ominous hurdle in any society’s evolution is

its confrontation with the vicissitudes of nature. Socialist realism
is preoccupied with describing a new superiority over nature—
nature that can no longer intimidate the manmade, and the man
made that is as awesome as anything in nature. Traditionally, art
has resorted to the grandeur of nature to stimulate feelings of
insignificance or dissatisfaction, and thus to provoke thoughts
about a higher quality of life; yet even the most sophisticated and
complex literature of socialist realism envisions a human domi
nance of nature. Art portrays the most difficult hurdle as having
been crossed, and art need no longer stimulate dissatisfaction.
Valentine Kataev’s Time, Forward! displays the dominance of
industry over nature:
It (O ld R u s sia ) w as b e a te n b e c a u s e o f m ilita ry b a c k w a r d n e s s , in d u s
tria l b a c k w a rd n e s s , a g ric u ltu ra l b a c k w a rd n e s s . It w a s b e a te n b e c a u s e
it w as p ro fita b le to d o s o , a n d b e c a u s e th e b e a tin g w e n t u n p u n is h e d .
T h a t is w h y w e c a n n o t b e b a c k w a rd a n y m o r e .
W e c a n n o t! W e c a n n o t! W e c a n n o t!
A ra ilr o a d s h a c k o r a “ tr a n s f o r m e r b o x .” B la c k a n d r e d . It c lu n g to
th e tra c k lik e a n in g o t o f o x id ise d iro n . A b o v e it— th e s le n d e r f e a th
e r e d a rro w s o f U ra l f i r . "
In subordinating the Ural fir to implements of Soviet industry,

Kataev abandons a most powerful aesthetic means to stimulate
the consideration of radical alternatives. Kataev’s art portrays an
envelopment of the natural by the manufactured, and thus be
comes supportive rather than critical of the productive directions
of society.
In subordinating art to the accepted views on societal develop
ment, socialist realism attempts to subvert “the last still noncon
Scientific Art 93
formist dimension of the human existence,” 12 by eradicating the
boundary between art and science. The flicker of independence
given to art by Engels is lost, and to Marcuse the incorporation of
the artistic into the scientific is extremely premature. In fact, the
only instance where such equivalence might have even a thread of
justification is when there really is a lack of reality worthy of
transcendence. Marcuse mentions Hegel’s concept that the
obsolescence of art can be an indication of progress: “As the de
velopment of Reason conquers transcendence (‘takes it back’ into
reality) art turns into its own negation.” 13
The Soviet system retains a semblance of art because reality
has yet to culminate in the materialization of the ideal. Yet Soviet
Marxists arc sure that their vision of that ideal is complete. To
Marcuse this presumptuousness is dangerous in its proclivity to
oppress; in predicting with total certainty the success of a plan yet
to be successful, and in neutralizing the mechanism that might
best stimulate alternative plans, socialist realism seems designed
more for dominating than for liberating. To Marcuse, Soviet real
ism is a type of art that represents a social system that is signif
icantly inadequate, yet attempts to repress the inadequacies by
linking the present with a utopia that is “just around the corner.”
Art remains because the synthesis is unattained, but art is trivial
ized because there is “only a little way to go.” Thus “it [the
U.S.S.R.] wants art that is not art, and it gets what it asks for.” 14
Scientific Art II: That of the “ Technologically Rational” Society
After examining Soviet Marxism in the 1950s, Marcuse is rel

atively sure that the Soviet efforts to vanquish nonconformist,
transcendental art could not ultimately succeed. Hence he depicts
socialist realism (indeed, all forms of “realism”) as a temporary
ploy utilized in an atmosphere of political uncertainty and
paranoia, and predicts that this unsatisfactory form of art will
necessarily wane as the unavoidable transition is made from
“terroristic to normal modes of societal regimentation.” 15 Like
Machiavelli, Marcuse believes that such drastic authoritarian
measures can succeed only temporarily, and must soon be accom
panied by more palatable reforms.
If Marcuse had little faith in 1955 that the Soviet system would
succeed in arresting societal development, he has much more dis
tressing expectation in 1964 that the societies of the modern in
dustrial world can do so. He discovers the ominous power of
“technological rationality”—a much more subtle and powerful
means to render contentious issues only technical difficulties.
There is a kind of art that corresponds to the technologically
rational society: “Domination has its own aesthetics— Artistic
alienation succumbs, together with other modes of negation, to
the process of technological rationality.” 16 And because, like
socialist realism, this kind of art limits consideration of radical
alternatives (thwarts “artistic alienation”), I have chosen to dis
cuss it as a correlate to socialist realism. Before I treat this second
faction of “scientific” art, however, a discussion of the broader
concept of technological rationality might be helpful.
Although Marcuse usually speaks of it in its “democratic” man
ifestations, technological rationality is not reserved to any par
ticular political structure;17 rather, it is a consequence, albeit not
necessarily an automatic consequence (Marcuse is hopeful that
Third World development might circumvent technological
rationality),18 of modern industrialization and the accompanying
explosion of technology. Technology, at first undertaken as a
means to alleviate material scarcity and pursue higher societal
ambitions, becomes an end in itself as individuals are subordin
ated more and more to the strict organization of the productive
machinery. “ What is at stake is the compatibility of technical
progress with the very institutions in which industrialization
developed.” 19 No longer is the scientist asked to determine the
feasibility of technological improvements requested by the great
er society; rather, the scientist assumes, and society comes to
ratify, that the scientist is not only best equipped to evaluate and
execute societal values, but also to dictate them.
Yet the dictatorship goes unrecognized. The power of tech
nological rationality is so thorough (surpassing socialist realism)
that all individuals under its influence—scientists and laymen
alike—may come to think that there is “no other way” than the
rigidly empirical. Stalinist Russia claimed to have discovered all
the answers; the modern Western technologically rational society
claims to consider all the questions, or at least all the feasible
questions. The “experts” alone are qualified to consider options,
and only they ought to do so because only they can efficiently rule
Scientific Art 95
out the “infeasible.” Unfortunately, the assimilation of potential
ly abrasive alternatives is historically premature; “it establishes
cultural equality while preserving domination.”20
Just as socialist realism assists in the sedation of the Soviet
population by repressing alternatives, so does the “instrumental”
art of technological rationality assume a supportive rather than
antagonistic or transcendental posture. However, there is no long
er a need for censors and propaganda ministers, for while socialist
realism was fed by its opposition to reactionary alternatives, in
strumental art recognizes no alternatives. The art of this society
loses its ability to disquiet its constituency, because disquieting
natural forces are tamed by scientific production. That is not to
say that socialist realism did not foresee a victory over nature—
the consonance of the railroad and the Ural fir. However, in
modern technological societies the very distinction between the
forest and the scientific implement is lost, and the awesomencss
of pristeen nature loses all effectiveness as an artistic tool.
This is the great irony that Marcuse recognizes, and it is a con
stant theme in his writing. The irony is that technology has
reached the stage where nature and humanity need not be antag
onistic. Nature is no longer an oppressive force. But the oppres
siveness of nature has been replaced by the oppressiveness of the
instrument that overcame the oppressiveness of nature, technol
ogy. And because art can no longer invoke the awesomeness of
nature to stimulate discomfort, the task of stimulating critical and
alternative thinking to overcome the new forces of domination is
extremely important, and difficult. But this will be discussed
later.
In technologically rational society, art is prematurely assimi
lated into the status quo, or established technical reality. Indeed,
the stunning advances in technology can provide seductive temp
tations to wallow in manufactured “satisfaction.” How can
alienation continue to be a powerful force when it is “apparent”
that the species has so thoroughly won the battle for existence?
How can the individual maintain a propensity to transcend the
given arrangement when it is so easy to believe that the universal
good has been achieved? The lake and the forest no longer auto
matically arouse the consideration of alternatives, the feeling of
“ incompleteness,” or fiir-sich: “ When motor-boats race over the
lakes and planes cut through the skies—then these areas lose
their character as qualitatively different reality, as areas of
contradiction.”21
The powerboat owner exudes a kind of blind cockiness; he no
longer fears the lake, but he no longer appreciates it. He is only
listening for pistons misfiring or watching the speedometer. Tech
nological, “instrumental” art reflects this cockiness, and this
tunnel-blindness. It succumbs to the efficiency and functionality
with which science performs to near-perfection, and in so doing
becomes one-dimensional:
U n q u e s tio n a b ly th e n e w a r c h ite c tu re is b e tte r , i .e . , m o re b e a u tifu l

a n d m o re p ra c tic a l th a n th e m o n s tro s itie s o f th e V ic to ria n e r a . B u t it
is a lso m o re “ in te g r a te d ” — th e c u ltu ra l c e n te r is b e c o m in g a fittin g
p a r t o f th e s h o p p in g c e n te r , o r m u n ic ip a l c e n te r , o r g o v e r n m e n t
c e n t e r .22
A Technologically Rational Work of Art
Archetypical of integrated artistry might be the kind sponsored

by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Adminis
tration (N.A.S.A.). Many renowned American artists are com
missioned by N.A.S.A. to record artistically their impressions of
various facets of the space program. The artists are ensured total
artistic “freedom.”
N A S A is c o m m iss io n in g y o u r im a g in a tio n , a n d w e w a n t r e c o rd s o f
fle e tin g im p re s s io n s a n d p o e tic b y -p ro d u c ts o f th o u g h t a s m u c h as
p re c is e d o c u m e n ts o f o p tic a l e x p e r ie n c e . W h a t is im p o r ta n t is th a t th e
a r tis t g iv es u s h is p e rs o n a l a n d s in c e re in t e r p r e t a t i o n .23
Indeed, the ability of technology to integrate the formerly tran

scendental into the realm of technological feasibility is no better
demonstrated than by the reaction of one of the artists to the
landing of a spacecraft. Technology has made a god out of a man,
and therefore brought heaven to earth:
M itc h e ll J a m ie s o n s a id w h e n G o r d o n C o o p e r s te p p e d o u t o f his
s c o rc h e d a n d fra g ile M e rc u ry s p a c e c ra ft, h a v in g b e e n in s p a c e fo r
m o re th a n tw e n ty -tw o o r b its , a n d w a lk e d o n to th e d e c k o f th e a ir c ra f t
c a r r ie r , h e s u d d e n ly s e e m e d to b e m u c h la r g e r th a n life . H e s e e m e d
to r e p r e s e n t n o t N A S A o r th e U n ite d S ta te s , b u t all o f m a n k in d ,
Scientific Art 97
w h ic h w a s o p e n in g th e d o o r to a n e w d im e n s io n a n d a n ew fu tu r e . H e
s e e m e d lik e o n e o f th e g o d s o f O ly m p u s , w h o d c c e n d s to e a r th a n d
m in g le s w ith m o rta ls , b u t w h o s e re a l h o m e is in th e s k y .24
Socialist realism, according to Marcuse, owed its existence to

the fact that the synthesis of the real and the ideal had not yet
been made. Thus art still clung to an atrophied ability to speak of
what as yet did not exist. Although socialist realism had total faith
in the Soviet plan (thus abandoning “artistic alienation”), it still
could arouse emotion by speaking of the enemy that had not yet
been conquered. The instrumental art of technologically rational
society is convinced that the enemy, nature (or object), has been
altogether tamed. The victor in both cases is science, and in both
cases art is rendered a secondary and supportive role to scientific
“ progress”— a kind of progress that, left unchecked, leads to
domination, not liberation.
Notes

2. Marx himself had written: "certain periods of highest development of art stand in no
direct connection with the general development of society, nor with the material basis
and the skeleton structure of its organization.” Cited without reference in Herbert
Marcuse, Counter-Revolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), p. 79.
However, it is Engels who more extensively discusses the possibility that socialist art,
specifically literature, docs not have to be consciously programmatic, and Marcuse
exonerates Marx and Engels from any association with socialist realism by discussing
Engels’s aesthetic thought. For indeed, Engels comes close to admitting, if not that art
is transcendental, that at least it is a distinctive feature of art that it remains uncom
mitted. For instance, in a letter to Minna Kautsky, Engels relates: "I am not at all an
opponent of tendentious (Tcndcnz) poetry as such—
But I think that the bias should flow by itself from the situation and action, without
particular indications, and that the writer is not obliged to obtrude on the reader the
future historical solutions of the social conflicts pictured." Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels, Literature and Art: Selections from Their Writings (New York: International
Publishers, 1947), p. 45.
3. "Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, a ’cog and a
screw’ of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism— " V. I. Lenin, "Party
Organization and Party Literature,” in Maynard Solomon, Marxism and Art (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), p. 180.
4. Harold Swayzc, Political Control o f Literature in the U.S.S.R., 1946-1959 (Cam
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 15.
5. Ibid., p. 19.
6. Ibid., p. 10, citing M. Lifshits, cd., Lenin o kulture i iskusslve (Moscow, 1958), p. 299.
7. Johannes Holthuscn, Twentieth Century Russian Literature: A Critical Study, trans.
Theodore Huebener (New York: Frederick Unger Publishing Co., 1972), p. 157.
8. Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism (New York: Random House, 1961), p. 129.
9. Ibid., p. 131.
10. Nikolai Ostrovsky, How the Steel was Tempered (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
19M), p. 383.
11. Valentine Kataev, Time, Forward! (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press,
1976), p. 334.
12. Marcuse, Soviet Marxism, p. 133.
13. Ibid., p. 131.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 135.
16. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology o f Advanced Indus
trial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 65.
17. See ibid., pp. 40-44.
18. Ibid., p. 45.
19. Ibid., p. 29.
20. Ibid., p. 64.
21. Ibid., p. 66.
22. Ibid., p. 65.
23. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Eyewitness to Space (New York:
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1971), p. 11.
24. Ibid., in the description accompanying Plate #65.
6
Affirmative Art
Having simultaneously more liberativc and oppressive potential

than the previously discussed “ aesthetics,” the next classification
of art in Marcuse’s taxonomy (more precisely, my conception of
Marcuse’s taxonomy) is affirmative art. Affirmative art is more
potentially liberating because it retains the transcendental qual
ities of art, and yet more potentially oppressive, too, because it
creates an atmosphere whereby interaction with the transcen
dental can occur without any significant opposition to the real
ity being transcended. According to Marcuse, vulgar socialist
realism is so restrictive that it can only be short-lived, and even
technologically rational art cannot silence the hopeless; but
affirmative art can in many instances handle the universals that
“continue to persist,” without upsetting the status quo, and it
is this capability that causes Marcuse to fear the repressive
power of affirmative art as much as he lauds its transcendental
characteristics.
Affirmative art is the artistic representative of affirmative
culture:
B y a ffirm a tiv e c u ltu re is m e a n t th a t c u ltu re o f th e b o u rg e o is e p o c h

w h ic h led in th e c o u rs e o f its o w n d e v e lo p m e n t to th e s e g re g a tio n
fro m c iv iliz a tio n o f th e m e n ta l a n d s p iritu a l w o rld a s a n in d e p e n d e n t
re a lm o f v a lu e th a t is a ls o c o n s id e re d s u p e r io r to c iv iliz a tio n . . . a
w o rld e s s e n tia lly d iffe re n t fro m th e fa c tu a l w o rld o f th e d a ily s tru g g le
fo r e x is te n c e , y e t re a liz a b le by e v e ry in d iv id u a l fo r h im se lf “ fro m
w ith in .” 1
It might be of interest to trace the development of affirmative

culture and its peculiar variety of art. To do so, according to Mar
cuse, demands a retreat to classical philosophy. For it is in the
99
works of Aristotle (and in the later works of Plato) that one can
discover the idea, crucial to affirmative culture, that existential
satisfaction can never be achieved in the “factual world.”
The Separation of Form and Fact
If there is any doubt that Plato’s Republic demands the sacrifice

of the intellectual capabilities of those who occupy the lower
echelons of the metallurgic taxonomy for the sake of philosophy,2
that doubt is quelled in the Meno. Whereas in the Republic one
can make the argument that the masses do not suffer frustration
of the rational faculties because they have no rational faculties,
the Meno demonstrates that philosophy (and the privilege to
“ universalize”) comes only at the expense of the many, and that
they must truly sacrifice their potential for the happiness of con
templation for a few philosophers. Marcuse points out3 that the
slave boy in the Meno is quite capable of intellection of at least
the geometrical type described more fully by Plato in his discus
sion of the divided line in the Republic.4 Unfortunately, however,
the boy remains in the slave class because he is needed to support
the philosophers. Intellect must be sacrificed for the cultivation of
intellect.
Thus, because factual reality demands the subjugation of poten
tially happy beings for the sake of the intellectual subsistence of
others, factual reality can never provide the environment for the
materialization of the universal—beauty, truth, reason, and so
on:
W h a t m a n is to find in th e p h ilo s o p h ic a l k n o w le d g e o f th e t r u e , th e
g o o d , a n d th e b e a u tifu l is u ltim a te p le a s u r e , w h ic h h a s all th e o p p o
s ite c h a ra c te ris tic s o f m a te ria l fa c tic ity : p e r m a n e n c e in c h a n g e ,
p u rity a m id s t im p u rity , fre e d o m a m id s t u n f r e e d o m .5
Recognizing the insufficiency of the factual world, Aristotle,

who inherits Plato’s recognition (in the Meno) of the necessity of
suppressing many with intellectual talents, abandons it. The phi
losopher can never be satisfied with the factual world because the
philosopher knowingly requires the subjugation of potential phi
losophers to sustain his own philosophical quest. So, to avoid this
A f f ir m a tiv e A r t 101
permanent imperfection of the factual world, Aristotle leaves it
behind. Whereas Plato’s forms had imperfect material correlates
for which the forms could be normative templates,6 Aristotle’s
Organon breaks the relationship of form and fact altogether. In
the Aristotelian Organon the syllogistic term (horos) is “so void
of substantial meaning that a letter of the alphabet is a fully
equivalent substitute.”7 There are “the state of appetite, and the
state of pure thought,”8 two completely detached universes, and
only those who could afford contemplation could indulge in the
latter. Unfortunately, “ ‘there’s no leisure for slaves,’ as the
proverb goes,”0 and thus the greatest portion of society is denied
the most satisfying rewards.
The Promise of Equality
With the arrival of the bourgeois epoch, this open acceptance

of blatant stratification could not be tolerated:
F r e e c o m p e titio n p la c e s in d iv id u a ls in th e r e la tio n o f b u y e rs a n d s e ll

e r s o f la b o r p o w e r. T h e p u r e a b s tr a c tn e s s to w h ic h m e n a r e re d u c e d
in th e ir so c ia l re la tio n s e x te n d s as w ell to in te rc o u rs e w ith id e a s . It is
n o lo n g e r s u p p o s e d to b e th e c a se th a t s o m e m e n a r e b o rn to a n d
s u ite d to la b o r a n d o th e r s to le is u re , s o m e to n e c e s sity a n d o th e r s to
b e a u t y . 10
In order for bourgeois ideology and economics to succeed, there

was need for incentives to gain mass support for the bourgeois
movement, and a vision of continued mass subjugation would
never suffice. The bourgeois movement attracted mass support
with the promise of equality; but it could only be a promise, for
real equality in the economic sphere is the last thing the monied
class wanted. What they needed was a means to maintain the
material inequality of bourgeois rule within a guise of equality of
opportunity:
I n d e e d , s to p p in g a t th e s ta g e o f a b s tr a c t fre e d o m b e lo n g e d to th e
c o n d itio n s o f b o u r g e o is ru le , w h ich w o u ld h a v e b e e n e n d a n g e r e d b y a
tr a n s itio n fro m a b s tr a c t to c o n c r e te u n iv e rs a lity . O n th e o t h e r h a n d ,
th e b o u r g e o is ie c o u ld n o t g ive u p th e g e n e r a l c h a r a c te r o f its d e m a n d
( th a t e q u a lity b e e x te n d e d to all m e n ) w ith o u t d e n o u n c in g its e lf a n d
o p e n ly p ro c la im in g to th e r u le d s tr a ta t h a t, f o r th e m a jo r ity , e v e r y
th in g w as still th e s a m e w ith re g a rd to th e im p ro v e m e n t o f th e c o n d i
tio n s o f l i f e ."
This was the task of affirmative culture, and affirmative art, and
in order to succeed, bourgeois culture invested much faith and
energy in the concept of the soul. To Marcuse, preoccupation
with the soul is the most distinctive and important aspect of
affirmative culture. For the soul is a means to elevate spiritual
needs over appetitive, sensual ones. Marcuse notes that this
elevation can take two forms: either sensuality is released guilt
lessly because of its attachment to what is seen as the irrelevant
portion of life, or sensuality is repressed in order that the spiritual
might fully blossom. According to Marcuse, affirmative culture
chooses the latter course, for reasons that he sees as obvious:
R e le a s e o f s e n s u a lity w o u ld b e re le a s e o f e n jo y m e n t, w h ic h p r e s u p
p o s e s th e a b s e n c e o f g u ilty c o n s c ie n c e a n d th e re a l p o s sib ility o f g r a t
ific a tio n . In b o u rg e o is s o c ie ty , su c h a tr e n d is in c re a s in g ly o p p o s e d b y
th e n e c e ssity o f d isc ip lin in g d is c o n te n te d m a ss e s . T h e in te r n a liz a tio n
o f e n jo y m e n t th ro u g h s p iritu a liz a tio n th e r e f o r e b e c o m e s o n e o f th e
d e c isiv e ta s k s o f c u ltu ra l e d u c a tio n . B y b e in g in c o r p o r a te d in to s p ir
itu a l life , s e n s u a lity is to b e h a r n e s s e d a n d tr a n s f ig u r e d .12
This transfiguration of material, sensual satisfaction to spiritual

satisfaction of the soul is performed best by art. “Spiritual joys
are deeper than bodily ones,” it is asserted, and the bourgeois
stimulation of spiritual desires, especially in art, causes the indi
vidual to suffer, almost gleefully, to prove the strength and com
mitment of spiritual over corporeal fulfillment. In art, in much
the same way that Feuerbach earlier describes Christianity,
bourgeois culture can represent the spiritual ideal, because art is
a realm that can prosper without any kind of obligation. Affirma
tive art is the arena that maintains the promise of equality while
not demanding its materialization. It is a haven for the soul,
where the soul can partake and remember the spiritual beauty
that is never to occur outside the strict confines of the artwork:
“even beauty has been affirmed with good conscience only in the
ideal of art, for it contains a dangerous violence that threatens the
given form of existence.” 13 Affirmative art promotes the accep
tance of an unbearable life by offering a metaphyiscal vision of a
Affirmative Art 103
more bearable life. Affirmative art is the illusion of beauty. It
has the compelling quality of maintaining an image of the un
achieved, combined with the repugnant quality of remaining
satisfied that the achievement will never ensue.
Notes
1. Herbert Marcuse, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. Jeremy Shapiro (Bos
ton: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 95.
2. For an exchange on this question sec Dale Hall, “The Republic and the ‘Limits of
Politics,’” and Allan Bloom, “ Response to Hall,” in Political Theory 5, no. 3 (August
1977): 293-330.
3. Herbert Marcuse. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology o f Advanced Indus
trial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), pp. 127-43.
4. Plato, Meno, in Benjamin Jowett, ed., The Dailogues o f Plato (New York: Random
House, 1937), 1 :361ff.
5. Marcuse, Negations, p. 96.
6. “Platonic philosophy still contended with the social order of commercial Athens.
Plato’s idealism is interlaced with motifs of social criticism.” Ibid., p. 91.
7. Ibid., p. 136.
8. Aristotle, Politics, trans. Ernest Barker (London: Oxford University Press, 1958),
p. 323.
9. Ibid., p. 321.
10. Marcuse, Negations, pp. 93-94.
11. Ibid., p. 97.
12. Ibid., p. 110.
13. Ibid., p. 115.
7
Anti-Art
If the inclination of human beings to “ universalize” overcomes

the alleged constriction of scientific art, then the maturity of
technology overcomes the spiritual-factual duality of affirmative
culture, and the kind of art that perpetuates such a duality.
Opposition to the release of transcendental, nonconformist,
“universalizing” thought in the realm of facticity may at one
time have been justified, and therefore the repressive sublimation
of imaginative alternatives into the strict confines of the soul and
the museum may also have been warranted. Such justification
wanes, however, when the technological barriers to the release of
imagination disappear. Marcuse says in Eros and Civilization that
“the very achievements of progressive civilization seem to create
the preconditions for the gradual abolition of repression.” 1
Defiance, heretofore detrimental to the creation of a materially
satisfactory existence, now becomes crucial to releasing humanity
from the preoccupation with technology. Beauty was deferred
until the prerequisites for its realization were constructed, and
now that the prerequisites exist, it strikes some (the anti-artists)
as absurd that beauty continues to be deferred or isolated, and
that technological rationality prevails when it need not. Thus
there are those who refuse to accept the homogeneity of tech
nological rationality when polymorphous heterogeneity is an im
minent possibility. Their refusal is the Great Refusal, and its
appearance in the aesthetic realm begins as “anti-art.”
Dadaism
Anti-art is a rejection of the detachment of beauty from reality.

To an anti-artist, the very concept of art implies a unique domain,
104
A n ti-A r t 105
and the term anti-art reflects the desire of the anti-artist to eradi
cate the distinction between what is and what is not “artistic.”
Anti-art militates against what is described as unforgivable
hypocrisy— the contemporaneous maintenance of the most banal
social and political systems on the one hand, and the most pris
tine, pastoral art forms on the other hand. It is little wonder that
anti-art matured just after World War 1, when these contradic
tions were often quite blatant.
Anti-art’s most famous and most representative advocates are
the Dadaists. The Dadaists consist of a myriad of individuals for
tuitously associated through a common asylum, Zurich, where
they found they could best express their distaste for the First
World War. Tristan Tzara, who coined the term Dada in its pres
ent meaning by randomly selecting a word from the dictionary,
was joined by Hugo Ball, Hans Arp, and Richard Hulsenbeck
(and Marcel Duchamp in the United States) in an attack on
bourgeois hypocrisy, and on the concept of art itself, which as has
been noted, was seen to support that hypocrisy.
Of major importance was their ability to mock. The awesome
ness of the bourgeois art form was destroyed by composing
nonsense poems whose verses were chosen from a hat; or simul
taneous poetry, which involves a group of poets all chanting or
yelling in different languages simultaneously; or sound poems, in
which the author attempts to avoid any sounds that even approxi
mate words.2 Duchamp, an “ unofficial” Dadaist, depicts bour
geois individuals as machines in many of his works, dramatizing
the mechanistic nature of what was thought to be matters of
“spiritual” autonomy—especially love, sexuality, and creativity.
The bachelors, for example, in “The Bride Stripped Bare by her
Bachelors, Even,” are represented by a paddlewheel, a grinder,
and an assortment of metallic funnels.3
Marcuse believes that “beauty will find a new embodiment
when it no longer is represented as real illusion but, instead, ex
presses reality and joy in reality.”4 Anti-art is the first step in this
direction. It is only a first step because it is far from joyful; but it
is to be applauded because it is the first embodiment of the
realization that art and beauty need not be confined to souls and
museums— to highly structured and restricted mausoleums that
maintain beauty at a distance from real life. “These efforts are to
serve the larger long-range aim: to undo the separation of the
intellectual from the material culture, a separation which is said
to express the class character of bourgeois culture.”5.
The Deficiencies of Anti-Art
Marcuse isolates black activists in the United States as inheri

tors of Dadaist anti-art. Exhibiting nonconformity in more diver
sified, “mundane” modes, blacks are eroding the pristine detach
ment of affirmative culture and art. Blacks have taken over the
most sublimated concepts of affirmative culture, including the
soul itself, and desublimated them. “The soul,” is replaced by
“Soul,” and the distinction between the body and the soul is re
placed by “ that body has Soul.” Soul is not sterile and pristine,
but black and orgiastic. The soul still represents beauty, but
Black is Beautiful, and thus beauty is no longer inaccessible.
Yet anti-movements of the type displayed by blacks and
Dadaists are necessarily limited because of their totally negative
approach. Hulsenbeck stated in a history of the Dadaist Move
ment published in 1920 that, although firm in their opposition to
“art,” in a positive sense the Dadaists “actually had no idea what
they wanted.”6 For Marcuse, although perhaps an admirable be
ginning, this is not enough, for in its negativity anti-art rejects not
only the duality of affirmative art, but also the transcendental ten
dencies of affirmative art—tendencies that, although misdirected
and confined in the bourgeois art form, retain progressive capa
bilities. Anti-art is the shadow image of scientific art. Scientific
art offers no alternatives because it is convinced of the positive
nature of existence. Anti-art offers no alternatives because it is
preoccupied with the negative. It fragments the traditional forms,
but offers no alternative synthesis:
it e la b o r a te s a n ti-fo rm s w h ich a r e c o n s titu te d b y th e m e r e a to m iz a

tio n a n d f ra g m e n ta tio n o f tr a d itio n a l fo rm s: p o e m s w h ic h a r e sim p ly
o r d in a r y p ro s e c u t u p in v e rse lin e s , p a in tin g s w h ic h s u b s titu te a
m e re ly te c h n ic a l a r r a n g e m e n t o f p a r ts a n d p ie c e s fo r a n y m e a n in g
ful w h o le , m u sic w h ic h re p la c e s th e h ig h ly “ in te lle c tu a l,” “ o t h e r
w o r ld ly ,” c lassical h a rm o n y b y a h ig h ly s p o n ta n e o u s , o p e n p o ly
p h o n y . B u t th e a n ti-fo rm s a r e in c a p a b le o f b rid g in g th e g a p b e tw e e n
“ re a l-life ” a n d a r t . 7
Anti-Art 107
To Marcuse, anti-art is not only incomplete but dangerous in its
precariousness, for because anti-art directs all its energies (albeit
antagonistic energies) against bourgeois affirmative art, without
presenting radical alternatives (or even a hope that there are
alternatives), affirmative art can “understand” anti-art. By only
opposing affimativc art, anti-art speaks the same language.
Granted, it is obscene language; from the Dadaists to Black
Panthers, shouting obscenities in hallowed places has been a key
tactic. Yet Marcuse warns of the ease with which the obscene is
co-opted and rendered harmless:
It is still th e s im p le , e le m e n ta r y n e g a tio n , th e a n tith e s is : p o s itio n o f

th e im m e d ia te d e n ia l. T h is d e s u b lim a tio n le a v e s th e tra d itio n a l c u l
tu r e , th e illu sio n ist a r t b e h in d u n m a s te r e d : th e ir tr u th a n d th e ir
c la im s r e m a in v a lid — n e x t to a n d to g e th e r w ith th e r e b e llio n , w ith in
th e s a m e g iv e n so c ie ty . T h e re b e llio u s m u sic , lite r a tu r e , a r t a re th u s
e a s ily a b s o r b e d a n d s h a p e d by th e m a r k e t— r e n d e r e d h a r m le s s .8.
Kurt Schwitters’s “ Merzbilder” are sought after in bourgeois art

circles as highly beautiful artworks, and Marcel Duchamp is
studied as an established leader in twentieth-century art. Like
wise, white office workers dance to Stevie Wonder’s songs about
the ghetto,9 and television commercials dilute the rebellious lan
guage of the “counterculture” by boasting “hassle-free” service
with no “rip-offs.” Anti-art is too familiar because it is preoccu
pied with the existing language of oppression. In Marcusean
terms, it is at best revolutionary and never liberating. It is nega
tive without being negating, for it exists only because affirmative
art and culture exists. Anti-art “terminates in the frustrated out
cry for its abrogation.” 10
At best, anti-art stirs up affirmative culture enough that an ave
nue remains open that could be occupied by a new kind of culture
and aesthetics— an aesthetics that combines the transcendence of
Balzac with the artistic integration of the living theater. This kind
of art has yet to be discussed in depth; anti-art is only a transition
al phase that anticipates the more meaningful art forms:
in its n e g a tiv ity , th e d e s u b lim a tin g a r t a n d a n ti-a rt o f to d a y “ a n tic i

p a t e ” a s ta g e w h e re s o c ie ty ’s c a p a c ity to p r o d u c e m a y b e a k in to th e
c r e a tiv e c a p a c ity o f a r t , a n d th e c o n s tru c tio n o f th e w o rld o f a r t a k in
to th e r e c o n s tru c tio n o f th e re a l w o rld — u n io n o f lib e ra tin g a r t a n d
lib e ra tin g te c h n o lo g y . B y v irtu e o f th is a n tic ip a tio n , th e d is o r d e r ly ,
u n c iv il, fa rc ic a l, a rtis tic d e s u b lim a tio n o f c u ltu re c o n s titu te s a n e s s e n
tia l e le m e n t o f ra d ic a l p o litic s: o f th e s u b v e rtin g fo rc e s in tr a n s i t i o n .11
Notes
2. Sam Hunter, American Art o f the Twentieth Century (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
1972), p. 161.
3. Ibid., Plate #123.
4. Herbert Marcuse, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. Jeremy Shapiro (Bos
ton: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 131.
5. Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972),
p. 86.
6. Herbert Read, The Form o f Things Unknown (Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishers,
1963), p. 154.
7. Marcuse, Counterrevolution, pp. 93-94.
10. Ibid., p. 102.
8
Critical Art
In this chapter I would like to describe Marcuse’s seemingly

growing dissatisfaction with the aesthetic theory of his Frankfurt
colleague, Theodor Adorno. To argue that Marcuse breaks away
from his longtime associate regarding aesthetics involves, I think,
a discussion that is interesting and important in itself. However, I
include this discussion also as a means of further clarifying Mar
cuse’s position on the optimum role for aesthetics, and as such, I
am not so concerned with the subtleties of Adorno’s aesthetic
treatment as a more thorough examination would warrant.
Before I distinguish Marcuse’s liberative aesthetics from Ador
no’s critical aesthetics, however, it should be stressed that the
differences between their aesthetic views are on balance less im
portant than their overall similarities. For although Marcuse and
Adorno seem to drift apart regarding the question of how art is to
contribute to societal growth, there is never a debate about the
goals to which art is to contribute, or about the potential extent of
that contribution. Marcuse retains the Frankfurt position that
present industrial society is to a high degree irrational and,
perhaps more important, that a more rational society could be
developed with the available societal resources. War, poverty,
and oppression presently have no need to exist, and although the
Frankfurt School, including Marcuse, can never be sure of the
extent of the irrationality of these occurrences (until they arc
eliminated), they are sure that as long as they are externally
forced upon humanity by political, economic, or other vested in
terests, rationality can never prevail. Adorno and Marcuse agree
that among the greatest threats to a rational existence is accep
tance of externally imposed “happiness.” As was stated earlier,
reason demands truth, and truth for humanity is a need for
109
transcendence—internally, not externally motivated. Like Mar
cuse, Adorno bristles when confronted with the “manipulated
and, at the same time, self-satisfied needs of the bourgeois
public.” 1
The Schism
For Nietzsche, art (Apollinian and Dionysian) renders

(Schopenhauer’s) irrational, purposeless existence palatable and
acceptable. For Adorno and Marcuse, art assists in the destruc
tion of the irrational universe, and its replacement with a ration
al, pacified one. It is this shared ambition toward the material
realization of an alternative that separates the critical and liber-
ative forms from the rest. Anti-art, the art of the Dadaists and
much of the living theater, is described by Marcuse as “art in
transition.”2 Now we can isolate the end of the transition. For
anti-art does not offer a rational alternative; it only goes halfway
by exposing irrational society by being itself irrational. Anti-art is
not interested in alternatives, while Marcuse and Adorno are.
How art is to contribute to this generation of rational alterna
tives is the point on which critical and liberative art diverge. The
difference reflects a broader debate on the nature of artistic rep
resentation. Aesthetician Harold Osborne, although arguing that
the question tends “rather to lead away from than into the heart
of aesthetic concerns,”3 and represents a distinction that is blurry
at best, admits that there has been an ongoing discussion as to
whether poetic truth consists of revelatory insights as to how
things are, or whether poetry embodies an imaginative meaning
that transcends given reality and adds something to the sum total
of external reality. I think it can be said that Adorno’s critical
aesthetics favors an emphasis on the former, and Marcuse’s
liberative aesthetics favors an emphasis on the latter perspective
of the proper role of art.
The two perspectives may even have a common origin; the fol
lowing statement is from Hegel’s Phenomenology: “ Pure insight,
however, is in the first instance without any content; it is rather
the sheer disappearance of content; but by its negative attitude
towards what it excludes, it will make itself real and give itself
content.”4 Marcuse and Adorno would probably both ratify this
Critical Art 111
statement, but for different reasons; for depending on what por
tions of the statement arc emphasized (thus showing that the dis
tinction is, as Osborne states, one of emphasis rather than any
thing more qualitative), it can be interpreted as supporting either
the critical or the liberativc position. The critical aesthete would
focus on the second half of the statement—the more negative
part; for the critical aesthete is to approach reality with an abra
sive mien, ready to dismantle and abandon all the falseness of
examined reality. And, as will be seen, Adorno praises the music
of Arnold Schonberg for just such qualities, for while Schon-
berg’s atonal music offers an alternative system or structure, its
content (at least according to Adorno) is intended to reveal the
hypocrisy of the dualism of affirmative culture. Its primary task is
to dissect prejudices and pierce soporific illusions.5
The liberativc aesthete, however, takes heart in the first half of
Hegel’s statement, focusing on the pristine, transcendental qual
ities of insight and imagination—unscattered and unblemished by
instrumental considerations. And this is the position of Marcuse’s
latest aesthetic treatments:
th e w o rld o f a w o rk o f a r t is “ u n r e a l” in th e o r d in a ry s e n se o f th is
w o rd : it is a fic titio u s re a lity . B u t it is “ u n r e a l” n o t b e c a u s e it is less,
b u t b e c a u s e it is m o re a s w ell a s q u a lita tiv e ly “ o t h e r ” th a n th e e s ta b
lish e d re a lity . A s fic titio u s w o rld , a s illu sio n ( Schein) , it c o n ta in s
m o re tr u th th a n d o e s e v e ry d a y re a lity .6
For Marcuse, the truth of art is more the transcendence of reality;

for Adorno, it is more the dissection of reality.
Schonberg’s Critical Art
Let us return, however, to a closer examination of critical art

before moving on to discuss Marcuse’s own position, which I have
called liberativc art. In his book Philosophy o f Modern Music,
Theodor Adorno links art directly to the societal environment
from which it emanates (without the dogmatic assignment of base
and superstructure):7 ‘‘Every interruption in the creative
process— every forgetfulness, every new beginning—designates a
type of reaction to society.”8 The value of art depends on the
nature of this reaction. Some art, and this is the fault of Stravins
ky, resurrects media of the past in search of lost harmony. But the
search is fruitless, because the forms of the past belong only to
the past:
T h e s e a rc h fo r tim e s p a s t d o e s n o t sim p ly b rin g th e m h o m e , b u t d e

p riv e s th e m , r a th e r , o f e v e ry c o n s is te n c y . A r b itr a r y p r e s e r v a tio n o f
th e a n tiq u a te d e n d a n g e r s th a t w h ich it w ish e s to m a in ta in , a n d w ith a
b a d c o n s c ie n c e , o p p o s e s e v e ry th in g n e w .9
Art, in order that it might speak truthfully (thus rationally),

must speak to the particular social configurations with which it is
confronted. For instance, Adorno, in praising Schonberg’s atonal
dissonances and thematic rigidity (the twelve-tone technique),
which Adorno aptly describes as “organized vacuity,’’10 does not
commend this style unreservedly. Nor is he opposed per se to
Viennese classical harmony or to the maudlin tendencies of
romanticism. What he does mourn, rather, is that artistic genres,
developed out of crisis, suffering, and excitement, can be stripped
of their relevance and deprived of their ability to stimulate
alternative perspectives:
T h e m u sic in d u s try , w h ich f u r th e r d e g r a d e s th is m u sic a l s u p p ly b y

g a lv a n iz in g it in to a s h rin e , m e re ly c o n firm s th e s ta te o f c o n s c io u s n e s s
o f th e lis te n e r , fo r w h o m th e h a r m o n y o f th e V ie n n e s e c la s sic ism —
a tta in e d th ro u g h b itte r s a c rific e — a n d th e b u rs tin g lo n g in g o f R o m a n
ticism h a v e b o th b e e n p la c e d u p o n th e m a r k e t a s h o u s e h o ld
o r n a m e n ts .” 11
Adorno denigrates Stravinsky’s use of the dance medium, which

represents communality and consonance, not because of inherent
deficiencies in that medium, but because unity is not a rational
position when the unification coagulates in a society of manufac
tured desires and needs. There may be times when communal
forms are constructive; yet when the communal entity becomes so
constricting that it prevents any autonomous activity, the only art
that can be considered constructive is that which opposes conso
nance and rejects communality, which is highly personal and
detached.12 Consonance and dance in their original presentations
aroused alternative thinking: rejection of the growing atomiza
tion caused by budding capitalism. Now, harmony and dance only
Critical Art 113
assist in making consistent and unified what may be irrational and
destructive: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric/’13 For
Adorno, art in contemporary society can cither assist in stimulat
ing a premature satisfaction, or stimulate dissatisfaction by pro
viding a detached alternative to which the contemporary might be
compared.
Adorno is ready to defend the loudest criticisms of Schdnbcrg,
and thus of critical art—and that is that it is cold, unemotional,
and highly intellectual. First, he rightly points out that “Schon-
berg and Berg surpassed the orgies of the impressionists in lush
harmonic color whenever it was demanded, as in the chamber
ensemble Pierrot Lunair (op. 21), and in the orchestration of
Lulu: ‘how absurd that the ever-popular Tchaikovsky, who por
trays despondency with hit tunes, should be considered an ex
pression of emotion superior to the seismograph of Schonberg’s
Erwartung (op. 17).’“ ,4 The branding of Schonberg’s music as
intellectual and difficult to “understand” masks the fact that it is
all too well understood. “There is a temptation to regard the most
educated listeners as the worst: those who react to Schonberg
with ‘I do not Understand’—an utterance whose modesty masks
anger as expertise.” 15 Thus, Schonberg is guilty of intellectualism
to the extent that he dislodges cultural prejudices and predisposi
tions. He is “unemotional” only because he docs not inspire
the particular emotions that complement “business world
rationality” 16—emotions that promote calm acceptance of pre
sent social logic (or illogic), through the opiating simplicity and
bombarding repetition of “hit tunes.”
So instead of reconciling unresolved societal dissonance by re
treating into a world of only musical harmony, Schonberg turns to
atonality, a musical genre that does not allow any form of prema
ture reconciliation. Indeed, the insistence on avoiding tonality
and consistency precludes arbitrariness, in that it becomes consis
tent in inconsistency, consonant in disssonance. The twelve-tone
row, invented by Schdnbcrg, prohibits the repetition of any one
note until all eleven others have been played. By avoiding prema
ture “conciliation,” Schonberg’s music reveals the dissonances of
the present system, but within an opposing system; thus the
twelve-tone technique does what dadaism (along with all anti-art
and Surrealism)17 does not; it mocks the irrationality of the given
in a structured, organized, ‘Tational”• manner. So while anti-art
can only oppose irrationality with more of the same, Schonberg’s
music dramatizes the vacuity of modern society, but in a highly
organized manner:
A d v a n c e d m u sic h a s n o re c o u rs e b u t to in sist u p o n its o w n o ssific a

tio n w ith o u t c o n c e s sio n to th a t w o u ld -b e h u m a n ita ria n is m w h ic h it
s e e s th r o u g h , in all its a ttra c tiv e a n d a llu rin g g u ise s , a s th e m a s k o f
in h u m a n ity . Its tr u th a p p e a r s g u a r a n te e d m o re b y its d e n ia l o f a n y
m e a n in g in o rg a n iz e d s o c ie ty , o f w h ich it w ill h a v e n o p a r t —
a c c o m p lis h e d b y its o w n o rg a n iz e d v a c u ity — th a n b y a n y c a p a b ility o f
p o sitiv e m e a n in g w ith in its e lf .18
Art, then, in order to be a “catalyst for change,” 19 does two

things. First, it reveals a contradiction (in the case of Schonberg,
the contradiction between bourgeois utility and rationality), and
thus breaks down the absolute posture of the contradiction by
demonstrating its contingency. Schonberg’s “organization” (the
twelve-tone technique) of the revealed vacuity is his recognition
of the possibility of alternatives, and this is the second function of
catalytic art:
It is o n ly in m e a s u rin g th is c o n tr a d ic tio n a c c o rd in g to th e p o s sib ility

o f its a r b itr a tio n th a t th e c o n tr a d ic tio n is a c tu a lly p e rc e iv e d a n d n o t
m e re ly re g is te re d . In th e c o g n itiv e a c t p e r f o r m e d b y a r t , th e a rtis tic
r e p r e s e n ts a c ritic ism o f th e c o n tr a d ic tio n b y in d ic a tin g th e p o s sib ility
o f re c o n c ilia tio n a n d th e r e b y e m p h a s iz in g th e n o t-a b s o lu te a s p e c t o f
th e c o n tr a d ic tio n — its c o n tin g e n c y a n d th e fa c t th a t it c a n b e
o v e r c o m e .20
Thus, what distinguishes critical art (and liberative art, for that
matter) from anti-art is the presentation of an alternative, in the
belief that an alternative (a rational alternative) is possible.
As the next chapter will show, the distinction between critical
art and liberative art is the procedure by which the alternatives
are generated. Adorno says that great art is to be autonomous,
but he continues to argue that autonomy is needed as a way of
opposing the business world rationality, which demands a pur
pose for everything.21 Art is autonomous but the autonomy itself
has a purpose, and Adorno never hesitates to distinguish between
autonomous statements that do and do not contribute to the dis
ruption of the stupefied society. Although Schonberg created
music that was “absolutely new,” and thus autonomous in the
Critical Art 115
innovative sense, his penchant for “exact fantasy”22 remained
tendentious in that the fantasty had particular relevance to the
audience that was to receive it. After Auschwitz, poetry was not
even to be considered as a means of expressing aesthetic auton
omy. For Marcuse even this much attention to instrumentality—
this much “seriousness’—came to be seen as a debilitating hin
drance to the aesthetic imagination.
Notes
1. Theodor Adorno, The Philosophy o f Modern Music (New York: Scahury Press,
1973), p. 8.
2. Adorno compares expressionism, which is an expression of the irrationality of the
subjective relationship with reality, to surrealism, which is the subjective “surrender"
to irrational exteriority. Surrealism to Adorno and anti-art to Marcuse arc obviously
similar categories, and both will offer what they think are superior alternatives. Sur
realism and anti-art arc too accepting. Ibid., p. 51.
3. Harold Osborne, Aesthetics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 2.
4. G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology o f Mind, trans. Sir James Baillic (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1964), p. 561.
5. It may be worth noting that Adorno’s appreciation of the twelve-tone system could
not withstand the system’s routinization in the works of Schdnberg’s successors. When
atonal music came to be a formal system unto itself, Adorno became dissatisfied. Sec
Adorno, Philosophy o f Modern Music, pp. 68-69.
7. “At this point a relationship which was that of form to background, of point to field,
gives place to the superposition of two fields, two scries, two continua; the language of
causality gives way to that of analogy, of homology, of parallelism." Frederic Jame
son, Marxism and Form (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 29.
See also Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History o f the Frankfurt School
and the Institute o f Social Research, 1923-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
1973), p. 181.
8. Adorno, Philosophy o f Modern Music, p. 132.
9. Ibid., p. 7.
10. Ibid., p. 20.
11. Ibid., p. 9.
12. Adorno praises the later works of Beethoven, especially his Missa Solemnis, for re
jecting “the illusory appearance of the unity of subjective and objective” (p. 123). Sec
Theodor W. Adorno, "Alienated Masterpiece: The Missa Solemnis (1959),” trans.
Duncan Smith, Telos 28 (Summer 1976): 113-24.
13. Theodor Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society," in Prisms, trans. Samuel and
Shierry Weber (London: Spearman, 1967), p. 34. Cf. Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic
Dimension, p. 55. “Art draws away from this reality, because it cannot represent this
suffering without subjecting it to aesthetic form, to enjoyment. Art is inexorably in
fested with this guilt. Yet this docs not release art from the necessity of recalling again
and again that which can survive even Auschwitz and perhaps one day make it im
possible."
14. Adorno, Philosophy o f Modern Music, pp. 11-12.
15. Ibid., p. 11.
16. Ibid.
17. Like Marcuse, Adorno originally expressed support of works that might be consid
ered anti-art. See, for instance, Adorno’s comments on Brecht’s Mahogonny in Mo
ments Musicaux: Neugedruckte Aufsiitze, 1928 his 1962 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhr-
kamp Vcrlag, 1964), pp. 131-40. However, with Marcuse, Adorno came to demand a
reintegration of the aesthetic “dream elements” into society. In a later analysis of
surrealism, Adorno was highly critical of the incompleteness of the surrealistic
artworks; for although Breton could effectively disrupt the oppressive connections of
bourgeois existence, he did not reconnect the detached images in a more “sane”
arrangement. See Theodor Adorno, “ Riickblickend auf den Surrcalismus,” in Noten
zur Literatur, 4 vols. (Berlin and Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1958), 1:
153-60.
18. Adorno, Philosophy o f Modern Music, p. 20.
19. Ibid., p. 25.
20. Ibid.,p. 125.
21. Theodor W. Adorno, Asthetischc Thcoric (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Vcrlag,
1970), pp. 179-93.
22. Theodor W. Adorno, “ Dcr dialectische Komponist,” in Impromptus: Zweite Folge
neu gedruckter musikalischer Aufsiitze (Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969),
pp. 39-45. Cited in Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin o f Negative Dialectics: Theodor
Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute (New York: Free Press, 1977),
p. 129.
9
Liberative Art
Marcuse, although mostly consistent in his belief about the

value of the aesthetic dimension, was quite hesitant to embrace
any form of art as a means to portray the promise of the aesthetic
dimension. His early treatments of art forms were mostly cri
tiques, although in Eros and Civilization he was able to manage a
brief, albeit ambivalent, defense of surrealism as a proper way to
repel the soporific qualities of the bourgeois culture.
In fact, if Eros and Civilization was Marcuse’s final word on
art, there would be little reason to distinguish his position from
Adorno’s, for in Eros and Civilization, Marcuse registers a thor
ough distaste for that kind of art which subscribes to the pleasur
able harmony of popular aesthetic “ form.” “The very commit
ment of art to form vitiates the negation of unfreedom in art.” 1
Thus, Marcuse searches for a type of art that rejects the accepted,
anticipated forms of aesthetic expression, and in Eros and Civi
lization he finds the most promise in surrealism and atonality.
Even footnoting his statement with Adorno’s work on modern
music, Marcuse states that
a r t s u rv iv e s o n ly w h e re it c a n c e ls itse lf, w h e re it sa v e s its s u b s ta n c e b y

d e n y in g its tra d itio n a l fo rm a n d th e r e b y d e n y in g re c o n c ilia tio n :
w h e re it b e c o m e s s u rre a lis tic a n d a to n a l.2
At first opposed to the autonomy of bourgeois art, Marcuse was

interested in those art forms which descended from their realm of
opiating detachment and consciously addressed and refuted the
given society. Marcuse lauded that time when “art allied itself
with the revolution.”3 However, as Marcuse’s discussions of aes
thetics and art matured in Essay on Liberation, Counterrevoluton
and Revolt, and The Aesthetic Dimension, Marcuse shows a
117
growing appreciation of the complete automony of aesthetic
form, and a growing dissatisfaction with blatantly political, and
even remotely political, art. The detachment of affirmative art,
and its commitment to “unreal” recombinations of historical par
ticulars into the harmony of aesthetic form, are now seen by Mar
cuse as an extremely valuable, potentially liberating, pursuit.
In fact, I believe that there are no significant inherent differ
ences between affirmative art and liberative art; rather, I think
that the two art forms are separated by the social environment in
which they occur. In a world where transcendental imaginings are
thought to be infeasible, soulful musings, authentic art4 appears
as affirmative; but where it is perceived that there is an environ
ment receptive to aesthetic inspiration, authentic affirmative art
becomes authentic liberative art. Liberative art, as I hope to
show, is nothing more than affirmative art occurring in a more
receptive environment.
Demonstrating his new appreciation of the autonomy of
affirmative art, Marcuse turns to Georg Lukacs; expanding upon
Lukacs, who argues that authentic art is not the aloof, descrip
tive, “false objectivity”5 of Flaubert or Zola, but the more extem
poraneous, “imperfect,” subjectivity of writers (albeit bourgeois)
like Balzac and Walter Scott,6 Marcuse asserts that the most cru
cial component of authentic literature is its ability not only to
interest the participant in a particular historical epoch, but also to
stimulate consideration of how the characters deal with predica
ments, and promote recognition that the attempt of individuals to
overcome predicaments is actually an ahistorical fact:
Without this revelation of important human traits, without this inter

relation between the individual and the happenings of the outer
world, things, natural forces, social institutions, etc., the adventurous
incidents are empty and insubstantial.7
“Authentic” art goes beyond historicity to stimulate a quality that
endures despite any historical context: “the aesthetic form has
‘absorbed’ and transformed the social dynamic and made it the
story of particular individuals— Lucien de Rubempre, Nucingen,
Vautrin.”8
With Lukacs, Marcuse recognizes the superiority of Balzac
over Zola and Flaubert. Marcuse argues that works of art, in
order to retain lasting significance, must elicit the direct involve
L ib e r a t i v e A r t 119
ment of the participant; the confrontation of the individual with
externality is seen as the most powerful means to maintain rele
vance and empathy. Balzac, sacrificing meticulous description for
character development, centralizes the confrontation of the indi
vidual with the outside world. Balzac uses the bourgeois environ
ment primarily as an effective instrument to depict the interaction
of his characters. Zola and Flaubert, on the other hand, introduce
their characters only to describe more precisely the bourgeois
environment. They make the unfortunate sacrifice of aesthetic
authenticity for empirical exactness.
Marcuse’s emphasis on the confrontation of the individual and
society (subjective and objective) in great art is obviously reflec
tive of his position on universals—the human, “ontological”
propensity to surpass the given. “Authentic” art stimulates iden
tification with this process. It is not so important that the inci
dents occur within a bourgeois environment, or a proletarian en
vironment, as it is that the incidents involve the artwork’s patron
in a courageous effort to oppose, escape, and transcend the en
vironment, whatever its characteristics.
Marcuse says that until now “ authenticity” has been best repre
sented by affirmative art. It is affirmative art that best transmits
and fosters the ontological need to “universalize” ; for although
the estrangement of affirmative art is maintained in the soul or
the museum, affirmative art is still “estranging,” and at least re
tains the potential of actual confrontation with the given. Those,
including Adorno (and most Marxists), who focus exclusively on
the cathartic, affirmative characteristics of “bourgeois” art, do
not recognize that the alternative vision on which the catharsis
depends is itself a denial and (incomplete) transcendence of ex
isting society. “The interplay between the affirmation and the in
dictment of that which is, between ideology and truth, pertains to
the very structure of art. But in the authentic works, the affirma
tion does not cancel the indictment.”9 Thus, not just Brecht,
Grass, and Rimbaud are capable of representing the most valuable
characteristics in art, but classical drama, Goethe, and Blake10
(and Stravinsky?) do the same. They nurture the human tendency
to disassociate with the given—to satisfy the unending propensity
to repel exterior imposition and pursue universals—which,
according to Marcuse, is an essential, undeniable (albeit severely
threatened) human characteristic.
So, in opposition to Adorno, Marcuse supports affirmative art
for its lack of seriousness—for its complete autonomy. “In this
sense there may be more subversive potential in the poetry of
Baudelaire and Rimbaud than in the didactic plays of Brecht.’’11
Stravinsky’s disinterest in isolating contemporary contradictions
allows him more freedom and subversive potential than Schon-
berg’s more “ topical” approach. Marcuse sees political hope in a
form of art that Adorno chastises as opiating. Marcuse believes
that when the receptivity of the sensible world to the aesthetic
insight is recognized, then authentic art can no longer remain
affirmative, and that the aesthetic images will demand materi
alization in the sensible world. This is the basis for the political,
revolutionary capability of authentic art— a capability that I shall
question in the remainder of this work.
Marcuse reasons that despite the strict confinement and appar
ent irrelevance of the affirmative aesthetic statement, the mere
fact that such art presents a vision of an unencumbered expansion
of reality stimulates interest in the process by which such expan
sion may occur. Without ever mentioning, indeed even avoiding,
the logistics of revolution, affirmative art is capable of stimulating
its consideration by providing a radical, attractive political goal.
Marcuse defines the “ revolutionary” artwork:
A w o rk o f a r t c a n b e c a lle d r e v o lu tio n a r y if, b y v irtu e o f th e tr a n s

fo rm a tio n , it r e p r e s e n ts , in th e e x e m p la ry fa te o f in d iv id u a ls , th e p r e
v a ilin g u n f re e d o m a n d th e re b e llin g fo rc e s , th u s b r e a k in g th r o u g h th e
m y stified (a n d p e r trifie d ) so cia l r e a lity , a n d o p e n in g th e h o r iz o n o f
c h a n g e ( li b e r a tio n ) .12
Revolutionary art must not proselytize; its revolutionary con

tribution rests in its presentation of an alternative that presup
poses the revolutionary event: “This does not mean that the rev
olution becomes thematic; on the contrary, in the aesthetically
most perfect works, it does not. It seems that in these works the
necessity of revolution is presupposed, as the a priori of art.” 13
The Promise of Affirmative Art
If affirmative art is so potentially volatile (because of its power

to stimulate alternatives that are so different and compelling that
Liberative Art 121
they can excite the thought of the social transformations neces
sary for the alternative’s realization), then why is affirmative art,
even according to Marcuse, so unvolatile? Logically there must
exist, in affirmative culture, formidable forces that restrict the
potential volatility, and whose removal would release the true
revolutionary power of authentic art.
This seems to be Marcuse’s response to those who might ask
why aesthetically instigated revolution has not occurred in the
affirmative period. Marcuse argues that the ability of affirmative
art to present an ideal must be accompanied by an environment
receptive to the realization of the ideal. Authentic art, because of
its transcendent qualities, can never be directly responsible for
the environment in which it occurs. “ Its relation to praxis is inex
orably indirect, mediated, and frustrating. The more immediately
political the work of art, the more it reduces the power of
estrangement and the radical, transcendent goals of change.” 15
So, because of this mediated connection between art and politics,
the revolutionary potential of affirmative art has been frustrated
not due as much to its own deficiencies, as to the deficiencies of its
surrounding “social structure” : “The obvious difference in the
representation of the subversive potential is due to differences
in social structure with which these works are confronted.” 16
Affirmative art’s deficiency is not the lack of detached alterna
tives; rather, it is the relegation of those alternatives to the realms
that have no connection to the “real world.”
Thus Marcuse admits that “ revolutionary art” is not automat
ically revolutionary; however, he continues to maintain that,
given the proper atmosphere, the potential will be realized. And,
according to Marcuse, the construction of that atmosphere is easi
ly within the capabilities of modern technology. Technological
advances continually erode the argument that there is a “need” to
repress impulse and imagination, and Marcuse is hopeful that the
popular recognition of technological capabilities will make it im
possible for the keepers of the status quo to maintain the impo
tent detachment of aesthetic insight.
If we recall the discussion in chapter 6 on affirmative art and
culture, it would appear that a significant restraining force to the
expansion of aesthetic insight of authentic affirmative art into the
realm of praxis would be the “ Performance Principle,” which
places “reasonable” restrictions on subjectivity in order that hu
man existence and sociability may be maintained. And, of course,
Marcuse would say that Kant’s support for a concept of aesthetic
form that denies crucial aspects of sensibility indicates that Kant,
too, succumbed to the pressure of the Performance Principle.
As discussed earlier, the soul has become the safe repository
for unfulfilled, “infeasible” human goals and ideals. It is the soul,
maintained by the Performance Principle, that serves as the ob
struction to the practical application of the teleological insights
that the affirmative aesthetic practice stimulates. Practical reality
is viewed as incapable of satisfying the aesthetically conjured
ideals, and so the Performance Principle sublimates and represses
the drive to satisfy these ideals by transforming the ideals into
socially “productive” substitutes. And, furthermore, the soul
serves as a kind of escape valve in which the remaining subjec
tive, transcendental thoughts can be harmlessly cloistered.
However, the lesson of Eros and Civilization tells us that the
soul and the Performance Principle are most powerful when they
repress revelations that cannot be feasibly implemented. In a
manner reminiscent of Eros and Civilization, Marcuse, in The
Aesthetic Dimension, hypothesizes that the explosive insights of
aesthetic vision can no longer be arrested or transformed within
emasculating compartments, because the belief as to the infeasi
bility of the revelations is quickly diminishing. Marcuse remains
convinced that, in the present age, “history projects the image of
a new world of liberation. Advanced capitalism has revealed real
possibilities of liberation which surpass traditional concepts.” 17 In
the modern technological environment, affirmative art is recog
nized for its liberative potential; the aesthetic imagination be
comes “practical” in a world where imaginative impulse need no
longer be restrained. “The images (Schein) of the Beautiful and
of fulfillment would vanish when they arc no longer denied by the
society. In a free society the images become aspects of the
real.” 18 For Marcuse, all that is needed is the removal of the ex
terior barriers (maintained in the present society by the “serious
ones” who profit from the status quo) that prevent the carrying
out of the aesthetic insights. But the crucial point here is that
Marcuse believes that the pressure of authentic art (affirmative
art pressing to become liberative) will eventually emerge as a
political force in the demand for and creation of a liberated
environment.
Liberative Art 123
In his recently published treatment of Marcuse, Morton
Schoolman claims that after The Aesthetic Dimension, “critical
theory is without practice.” ,y What Schoolman does not seem to
recognize is that Marcuse does attempt to retain practice in his
aesthetic theory, but it is a practice that is alien to critical theory.
Schoolman laments that “bourgeois art can appeal to no one,”
and then only parenthetically adds, “save a socially anonymous
subject.” Schoolman is sure that truth will slip “silently and invis
ibly into the past.”20
Schoolman equates a “socially anonymous subject” to a social
ly nonexistent subject, when for Marcuse the socially anonymous
subject, the subject who carelessly forsakes one-dimensional soci
ety for the realm of aesthetic pleasure, is seen as the only hope for
the avoidance of eternal silence. The “socially relevant subject”
of Adorno gives up too much for the sake of relevance. The new
praxis is the avoidance of praxis. Revolution is presupposed in
authentic aesthetic activity, and it is only in the (Kantian) aesthet
ic pursuits of pleasure and transcendence that pacification retains
a chance. Advising individuals against dancing after Auschwitz is
not the only way to use the aesthetic practice as an opposing
force. Indeed, being able to dance after Auschwitz, being able to
retain anonymity in a society that seems so intent upon making
everything and everyone relevant, seems to Marcuse to be the
only true remaining form of opposition.
A Causal Sequence
Expanding, yet still relying on the aesthetic theories of Kant,

Marcuse constructs a causal sequence whereby the aesthetic prac
tice eventually becomes a political force in the restructuring of
the human environment. I will attempt to recount the causal
sequence in a step-by-step synopsis.
Stage 1: The level of sensation
The particulars of the human environment are received as sense
data.
Stage 2: Imaginative combining of sensed stimuli
The reflective judgment works to recombine sensed stimuli into
systems that portray “purposiveness,” and are thus pleasing to
the Understanding (the order of human cognition).
Stage 3: Ambivalent delight
There is delight at the recognition that distracting elements of
reality can be made pleasurable through aesthetic form: “Aesthe
tic sublimation makes for the affirmative reconciling component
of art.”21 However, acompanying the delight is a growing displea
sure that aspects of reality need be altered in order that they
might seem to be pleasurable. This displeasure is exacerbated by
the growing recognition that the subjective order is not merely
subjective: “the discovery of nature as an ally in the struggle
against the exploitative societies in which the violation of nature
aggravates the violation of man.”22 Finally, in this stage is born
the idea that the hope that is represented by the affirmative aes
thetic form “ought not to remain mere ideal.”23
Stage 4: The second alienation (or “counterconsciousness”24)
Rejection of, rather than resignation to, the given state of affairs.
Marcuse calls this a second alienation; it is a state of alienation
from the given state of alienation: “the oppressive familiarity
with the given object world is broken—broken in a second aliena
tion: that from the alienated society.”25 Here occurs erosion of
the division between the senses, the imagination, and the Under
standing, which was kept alive by the obsolete Kantian concept of
the necessity of the duality of natural causation and human causa
tion. Erosion of the Performance Principle and erosion of the
perception of nature as an antagonist to humanity: affirmative art
becomes liberative art.
Stage 5: Aesthetics as a political weapon
Seeing no reasons why the alternative images of society could not
be practically pursued, the aesthetes can no longer accept the
cloistering of their insights: “the new sensibility is the medium in
which social change becomes an individual need” ;26 “The de
velopment of a radical, nonconformist sensibility assumes vital
political importance in view of the unprecedented extent of social
control perfected by advanced capitalism.”27 This is the stage at
which Marcuse predicts the “end of the segregation of the aesthe
tic from the real.”28
Marcuse believes that the elimination of the alien aspects of

nature will promote a feeling that there is no cause for human
reason to oppose sensibility, and that out of this realization will
come the political drive to create a material atmosphere in which
Liberative Art 125
pacification (the harmony of humanity and nature) is a reality. By
reducing the “rigid otherness” of nature, Marcuse shows that
identification with a purposive nature can be real. An objective
rather than merely subjective link with nature is discovered:
“ man and nature are joined in the aesthetic dimension.”29 The
idealistic We of Kant and Hegel becomes additionally materialis
tic; the We is grounded in, and now includes, all of nature. Mar
cuse discovers the “ union of the realm of freedom and necessity
in the aesthetic form”—the realization (not just dream) of the
pacified existence in aesthetic activity.
A Paradoxical Relationship
The integration of politics and aesthetics is complicated,

however, by the fact that the transcendent nature of liberative
aesthetics makes it impossible for the aesthetic practice to be
come instrumental or programmatic. Thus, as soon as Marcuse
homogenizes politics and aesthetics (revolution and liberation),
he finds it necessary to distinguish them:
A r t c a n d o n o th in g to p r e v e n t th e a s c e n t o f b a r b a r is m — it c a n n o t by
its e lf k e e p o p e n its o w n d o m a in in a n d a g a in s t so c ie ty . F o r its o w n
p r e s e r v a tio n a n d d e v e lo p m e n t, a r t d e p e n d s o n th e stru g g le fo r th e
a b o litio n o f th e so c ia l s y ste m w h ich g e n e r a te d b a rb a ris m a s its o w n
p o te n tia l s ta g e : p o te n tia l fo rm o f its p ro g re s s . T h e fa te o f a r t re m a in s
lin k e d to th a t o f th e r e v o lu tio n . In th is s e n s e , it is in d e e d a n in te rn a l
e x ig e n c y o f a r t w h ic h d riv e s th e a rtis t to th e s tr e e ts — to fight fo r th e
re v o lu tio n o f 1918, fo r th e C h in e s e a n d C u b a n r e v o lu tio n s , fo r all
r e v o lu tio n s w h ich h a v e th e h is to ric a l c h a n c e o f lib e r a tio n .30
In order to maintain the essential quality of aesthetic auton

omy, Marcuse distinguishes aesthetics from revolutionary poli
tics; but he finds himself in the paradoxical position of saying that
although art itself can do nothing to prevent barbarism, there is
nevertheless an “ internal exigency” of art that drives the artist to
the streets. Marcuse attempts to retain a practical concern for the
aesthetic practice, albeit an “indirect” concern; in order to pro
tect aesthetic autonomy, he asserts that the aesthete recognizes
the necessity for revolution as a protector of the aesthetic exis
tence, and is driven to the streets, not to exercise the artistic
avocation, but to protect it. In The Aesthetic Dimension, Marcuse
speaks of the “presupposition” of revolution in liberative aes
thetic activity:
T h e a u to n o m y o f a r t c o n ta in s th e c a te g o ric a l im p e ra tiv e : “ th in g s
m u st c h a n g e .” If th e lib e ra tio n o f h u m a n b e in g s a n d n a tu r e is to b e
p o s sib le a t a ll, th e n th e so c ia l n e x u s o f d e s tr u c tio n a n d s u b m is s io n
m u st b e b r o k e n . T h is d o e s n o t m e a n th a t th e r e v o lu tio n b e c o m e s
th e m a tic ; o n th e c o n tr a ry , in th e a e s th e tic a lly m o s t p e r fe c t w o rk s , it
d o e s n o t. It s e e m s th a t in th e s e w o rk s th e n e c e s sity o f re v o lu tio n is
p r e s u p p o s e d , as th e a priori o f a r t . 31
But, of course, it is difficult to see the “internal exigency” or

“presupposition of revolution” in a faculty that Marcuse himself
believes to be so autonomous, pristine, and transcendental. Mar
cuse seems to be caught in a quandary.32 He recognizes that only
the most transcendental of pursuits can ever create alternatives
that are different enough from the given to really assist modern
technological society out of its one-dimensional existence; but,
unfortunately, this transcendental pursuit, liberative aesthetics, is
so detached from the given (and must be so to remain liberative),
that it has no interest in the material reality, or in the need to
change it. Marcuse tries to avoid the quandary by suggesting an
“internal exigency” of art. But he cannot have it both ways. He
cannot assign a purpose, however indirect, to a faculty that he in
sists must remain noninstrumental (purposive without purpose).
Marcuse is not convincing that praxis is an inevitable, or even
probable, correlate of aesthetic activity; I want to continue to
show in Part IV that, although it may be true that “art depends on
the struggle for the abolition of the social system which generates
barbarism,” it does not necessarily follow that the aesthete recog
nizes this fact, or, more important, reacts to it. What remains
unproved are the last stages of the causal sequence: that aliena
tion is aesthetically “recognized,” and even more crucial, that
such recognition in the faculty of aesthetic judgment necessarily
asserts its revelations in the real, physical surroundings—even if
the judgment faculty is recognized as universally “true.” I suggest
that the promotion of the feeling of a natural receptiveness to
sensibility will erode the political drive prematurely, and will not
assist in the material construction of a “pacified” environment.
By “beautifying” nature, Marcuse is eroding the political forti-
Liberative A r t 127
tude required to construct a material surrounding that is really
beautiful.
Marcuse’s Aesthetic Taxonomy Diagrammed*
A u t h e n t ic A rt U n a u t iie n t ic A rt
R ationality of
N ature Critical A rt
Liberative A rt
freedom
A nti-A rt
necessity
Affirmative A rt
R ationality of Scientific A rt
T echnology 1. Socialist Realism
2. Technologically
R ational A rt
•A u th en tic art can take one of two form s, depending on the nature of the
society in which it is received. A ffirm ative a rt, although displaying the radical
transcendence required of all “ au th en tic” art, rem ains in the environm ent of
technological rationality, and thus finds its transcendent visions relegated to the
soul or the m useum . L iberative art, on the o th er hand, occurs in an environm ent
w here im agination and sensuality need not be sacrificed to “ necessity,” and thus
can becom e practical in the realization of a natural o r “ pacified” existence. The
“ u n au th en tic" form s of art are less helpful because (in varying degrees) all can
succum b to the constriction o f the given arrangem ent.
Notes
2. Ibid., p. 132.
3. Ibid., p. 135.
4. Marcuse introduces the term authentic art in his book The Aesthetic Dimension. As my
discussion of liberative art continues, the meaning of the term will become clearer.
For the present discussion it suffices that authenticity be associated with the aesthetic
qualities described in the section on affirmative art, of autonomy and transcendence.
The difference between authentic art and affirmative art, however, is that authentic
art can be cither affirmative or liberative. A major theme of the ensuing discussion is
how authentic affirmative art can be transformed into authentic liberative art. See
diagram on preceding page.
5. See Georg Lukdcs, “ Idea and Form in Literature,” in Marxism and Human Libera
tion: Essays on History, Culture and Revolution, cd. E. San Juan, Jr. (New York: Dell
Publishing Co., 1973), pp. 109-31.
6. Georg Lukdcs, "Walter Scott and the Historical Novel,” ibid., pp. 132-78.
7. Lukacs. "Idea and Form in Literature,” p. 119.
8. Herbert Marcuse. The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique o f Marxist Aesthetics
9. Ibid., p. 10.
10. Ibid., p. xi.
11. Ibid., p. xiii.
12. Ibid., p. xi.
13. Ibid., pp. 13-14.
14. "The ideal enters this struggle only as end, telos; it transcends the given praxis." Ibid.,
p. 58.
15. Ibid., pp. xii-xiii.
16. Ibid., p. xi.
17. Ibid., p. 27.
18. Ibid., p. 28.
19. Morton Schoolman, The Imaginary' Witness, The Critical Theory o f Herbert Marcuse
(New York: Free Press, 1980). p. 346.
20. Ibid., p. 347.
24. Ibid., p. 9.
26. Ibid., p. 59.
27. Ibid., pp. 62-63.
30. Ibid., pp. 121-22.
31. Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, pp. 13-14.
32. Schoolman does not seem to recognize the quandary, even though he describes Mar
cuse as a proponent of art that is simultaneously “critical, transcendent, and revolu
tionary.” ("Marcuse's Aesthetics and the Displacement of Critical Theory,” New
German Critique [Spring 1976], p. 56.)
Pari IV
A Critique of Marcuse’s
Liberative Aesthetics
10
The Politics of Motley
What distinguishes critical art from liberative (and thus affirma

tive) art is its preoccupation with seriousness. For Adorno, con
structive aesthetic activity (for artist as well as audience) is not a
playful matter. Rather, “advanced” art is a serious affair, Adorno
himself (although later admitting that he was guilty of the tenden
cy he so vehemently opposed), often warned against succumbing
to jargonism in philosophical writing, just as he warned against
the hypnotic “jargon” of Jazz music—wherein what is claimed to
be extemporaneousness is nothing more than simple and limited
variations of an accepted pattern. Philosophic jargon and jazz are
each in their way too “easy,” and represent a trap into which the
undisciplined might fall, and relinquish all criticalness. Stravins
ky’s music is seen by Adorno as such a trap.
S tra v in s k y is c le v e r w ith re g a rd to a e s th e tic s e rio u s n e s s . H is c o n

s c io u s n e s s o f th e tra n s f o r m a tio n o f all a r t in to c o n s u m e r g o o d s is t o
d a y o f r e le v a n c e fo r th e o rg a n iz a tio n o f th e e le m e n ts o f h is s ty le . T h e
o b je c tiv is tic e m p h a s is o f p la y a s p la y m e a n s — a n d th is is tru e a b o v e
a n d b e y o n d h is a e s th e tic p r o g ra m a s w e ll— th a t th e e n tire m a tte r is
n o t to b e ta k e n to o s e rio u s ly ; to d o s o w o u ld b e a w k w a rd , p r e te n tio u s
in a c h a r a c te r is tic a lly G e r m a n m a n n e r — to a c e r ta in d e g re e it w o u ld
e v e n b e a lie n to a r t b e c a u s e o f th e c o n ta m in a tio n o f a r t b y re a lity .
T a s te h a d a lw a y s b e e n s u p p o r te d by a c e r ta in lack o f s e rio u s n e s s ; at
th is p o in t it s e e m s — w ith in th e d e v e lo p m e n t o f a lo n g tr a d itio n — th a t
s e rio u s n e s s its e lf h a s b e c o m e ta s te le s s .1
It is over the question of aesthetic seriousness that Marcuse

clearly breaks away from Adorno. Admittedly, Marcuse’s refer
ences to Schiller decrease in his most recent writings, but simplic
ity, diversion, and play remain crucial aspects of his aesthetics.
In the Aesthetic Dimension, he pits Theodor Adorno against
131
another “para-Marxist,”2 French aesthetician Lucien Goldmann.
Marcuse sides with Goldmann: “ Against Adorno, Goldmann in
sists on the concreteness immanent in the work which makes it
into an (aesthetic) totality in its own right: ‘The work of art is a
universe of colors, sounds and words, and concrete characters.
| There is no death, there is only Phaedra dying.” ’3 Marcuse’s con-
I cern is that the serious “criticalness’’ of Adorno’s aesthetics limits
aesthetic autonomy, and thus, like anti-art, remains in the par
ameter of the given.
Marcuse, selecting quotes from Jurgen Habermas’s Legitima
tion Crisis,4 demonstrates his distrust of critical aesthetics. As to
the abolition of aesthetic autonomy, Habermas says, “it can just
as easily signify the degeneration of art into commercialized mass
culture as, on the other hand, transform itself into a subversive
counterculture.’’5 Marcuse, however, is convinced of only the
first half of Habermas’s statement; for according to Marcuse
th is la tte r a lte r n a tiv e s e e m s q u e s tio n a b le . A s u b v e rs iv e c o u n te r c u l

tu re to d a y is c o n c e iv a b le o n ly in c o n tr a d ic tio n to th e p re v a ilin g a r t
in d u s try a n d its h e te r o n o m o u s a r t. T h a t is to s a y , a re a l c o u n te r c u l
tu re w o u ld h a v e to in sist o n th e a u to n o m y o f a r t , o n its own a u t o n
o m o u s a r t ___
T h e w o rk o f a r t c a n a tta in p o litic a l re le v a n c e o n ly as a u to n o m o u s
w o r k .6
It is concerning this concept of aesthetic autonomy that Mar

cuse’s liberative aesthetics is distinguished from Adorno’s “criti
cal’’ aesthetics.
For Marcuse, seriousness should be abandoned not for reasons
of taste, but to provide the best chance for human liberation. Had
Marcuse had more interest or expertise in the sociology of music,
he undoubtedly would have been kinder to Stravinsky (and more
critical of Schonberg) than Adorno. And so Marcuse is more
sympathetic toward “affirmative art’’— that kind of art which
promotes “ the segregation from civilization of the mental and
spiritual world as an independent realm of value that is also con
sidered superior to civilization.’’7 Although Marcuse laments the
fact that the “segregation” is only mental and spiritual, it is,
nevertheless, segregation—and in the face of one-dimensional
society, that is what is most important. Marcuse believes that
Adorno’s more critical, dissecting aesthetic (like anti-art) runs
The Politics o f Motley 133
the risk of co-optation: “When art abandons this autonomy and
with it the* aesthetic form in which the autonomy is expressed, art
succumbs to that reality which it seeks to grasp and indict.”8
Certainly, Adorno does speak of the ability of authentic aes
thetic activity to stimulate the consideration of radical alterna
tives: the vacuity of the twelve-tone technique is maintained with
in a structure, and Adorno’s support of Schonberg is sustained
precisely because Schonberg’s depiction of present society does
not give up on the possibility of rational reorganization. For Mar
cuse, however, Adorno’s recommendation that the expression of
the alternative be attached to works that stimulate a “serious”
dissection of the given society detracts too much from the
artwork’s ability to transcend the given, and thus assume its role
as telos. In Kantian terminology, Adorno’s critical art is too
“purposive.” Adorno believes that relevance is a large part of
art’s attractiveness and power; pining for a lost Spring can only be
opiating. For Marcuse, however, play, harmony, and communal-
ity are not improper aesthetic themes, even in contemporary
technological society. In fact, for Marcuse, the power of aesthet
ics is its ability to consider the most irrelevant things, and any
attempt to subordinate that ability to this or that “proper” con
text only impedes the aesthetic contribution to liberation.
The Fool
Near the conclusion of his Essay on Liberation Marcuse makes

an interesting statement: “The rebels revive the desperate laugh
ter and the cynical defiance of the fool as means for demasking
the deeds of the serious ones who govern the whole.”9 When
Marcuse chose to characterize the individual of rebellious tenden
cies as a fool, I believe he chose a term that accurately “em
bodies” the characteristics of his liberative aesthetics, and I think
that examining the actions of the fool is a good way to determine
the extent to which the liberative aesthete really can contribute to
the realization of the liberative goal. In order to substantiate this
statement, however, and positively establish that Marcuse’s use
of the term fool was not just accidental or loosely metaphorical,
one must initially determine just what it means to be a fool, for
only after such a determination can one be secure in labeling the
liberative aesthete a fool.
Desidcrius Erasmus, writing during the beginning of the North
ern European Renaissance, is perhaps the most informative
source as to the unique characteristics of the fool. Erasmus is one
of the first to employ the character of the fool as a warrior in the
battle to “preserve the sanity of a mad and crumbling world,” 10
and to defend “the creative vital instincts of humanity against the
encroachment of the analytic reason.” 11 Erasmus cautions his
peers against submitting wholly to the “ froggy” stoicism of con
ventional wisdom, and suggests that a fanciful dabbling in folly
can correct the tunnel-blindness of intellectualism. In Praise o f
Folly, Erasmus’s own “essay on liberation,” he writes:
F o r th e tw o m a in o b s ta c le s to le a rn in g b y e x p e r ie n c e a r e a s e n s e o f
propriety w h ich c lo u d s th e ju d g e m e n t a n d fear w h ich a d v is e s a g a in s t
a n u n d e r ta k in g o n c e d a n g e r is a p p a r e n t. F o lly o ffe rs a s p le n d id lib
e r a tio n fro m b o th o f t h e m .12
It is the fool who best overcomes, or avoids, propriety and fear—

qualities that, for Marcuse as well as for Erasmus, are substantial
barriers to the achievement of a complete, “natural” existence.
(“The defect is multiplied when anyone tries to lay on a veneer of
virtue and deflect a character from its natural bent.” )13
“ Propriety,” which is to be avoided because of its constricting
artificiality,14 is combated by the fool, who has little or no interest
in the relative acceptability of a particular act. Erasmus, again
anticipating Marcuse, is interested in that “mental aberration
which frees the soul from its anxious cares and at the same time
restores it by the addition of manifold delights.” 15 And, indeed, it
is the fool who defies convention and ignores humiliation; and it
is the fool who is most able to transcend the constricting bounds
of what is considered proper, and is thus more able to live a freer,
less “cosmetic” existence. Folly brags that “ I’ve no use for
cosmetics, my face doesn’t pretend to be anything different from
my innermost feelings.” 16 Adapted slightly to Marcuse’s terms,
Folly does not give in to the masochistic security of any kind of
Performance Principle, in which “deviant” tendencies are sub
merged by a religious attachment to noble activities; rather, the
fool makes fun of, among others, “ the theologian who has
combed through his bookcases in order to master the whole of
divinity and nibbles at a dry bean and carries on a non-stop war
with bugs and lice.” 17
Like Marcuse, Erasmus considers fear to be in large part re
sponsible for the pitiful surrender of individuals to given forms of
legitimacy.18 One is much more secure in embellishing a subject
that is already within the parameter of acceptability than in con
templating a wholly new subject. But because the fool has no
appreciation of convention, he is not apt to be afraid of it; thus
the fool is fearless when it comes to the consideration of radical
alternatives. The fool does not care about how his suggestions
might be received, and this “freedom from care” 19 sounds a good
deal like the kind of imaginative autonomy Marcuse asks for in
his liberative aesthete.
Defiance of convention and fearlessness both contribute to a
more truthful, “pacified” existence, for both qualities allow the
fool to consider and exercise alternatives that would otherwise be
considered boorish or dangerous. The fool has no qualms about
belittling the respected and the powerful. The open honesty of
the fool is so refreshing that even to kings, fools “can speak the
truth and even open insults and be heard with positive
pleasure.”20 And, indeed, when the conventions of the king and
his eager followers are anti-liberative, nothing seems more hope
ful than the existence of one who is not automatically impressed
by convention, and is not afraid to voice dissatisfaction.
Thus Marcuse and Erasmus seem to agree that a more truthful
existence is led by one who discards “propriety” and refuses to
submit to exterior standards of behavior. And both seem to favor
similar methods to repel the submission to conventionality, and
thus most nearly approach truthfulness. And those methods seem
most fully at the disposal of the fool:
A n d le t m e te ll y o u , fo o ls h a v e a n o th e r g ift w h ich is n o t to b e d e
s p is e d . T h e y ’re th e o n ly o n e s w h o s p e a k fra n k ly a n d te ll th e tr u th ,
a n d w h a t is m o re p r a is e w o rth y th a n t r u t h ? . . . W h a te v e r th e fo o l h as
in h is m in d s h o w s in h is fa c e a n d c o m e s o u t in h is s p e e c h , b u t th e w ise
m a n h a s tw o to n g u e s , as E u r ip id e s a lso s a y s, o n e to s p e a k th e tru th
w ith , th e o t h e r fo r sa y in g w h a t h e th in k s fits th e o c c a s io n . H e m a k e s a
h a b it o f c h a n g in g b la c k in to w h ite a n d b lo w in g h o t a n d c o ld in th e
s a m e b r e a th , a n d t h e r e ’s all th e d iffe re n c e b e tw e e n th e th o u g h ts h e
k e e p s to h im s e lf a n d w h a t h e p u ts in to w o r d s .21
Because the fool is not bound by ulterior considerations, he is
able to apply his imagination and wit more intensely. Indeed, the
autonomy, playfulness, and insight displayed by Erasmus’s fool
seem to qualify him as Marcuse’s liberative aesthete par excel
lence:; and Marcuse’s decision to label liberative rebels as fools
appears now as an extremely appropriate one.
The Liberative Success of the Fool
Now that it has been established that Marcuse’s use of the term
fool to describe the liberative rebel was not accidental, it may be
appropriate to examine just how potent (or impotent) the fool
can be in the struggle for human liberation; for if the fool is the
embodiment of the liberating characteristics spoken of by Mar
cuse, then one may get a better idea about the feasibility of Mar
cuse’s suggestions about liberation by examining the liberative
potential of the fool.
I have chosen to analyze the fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear,
for clearly that fool most fully represents all the qualities of
autonomy, playfulness, and sagacity to which Marcuse (and Eras
mus) are attracted. Shakespeare’s fools in general have been de
scribed as “the consummation of clownage.’’22 And Lear’s fool,
in particular, has been described as the character in which
“Shakespeare makes the fullest possible use of the accepted con
vention that it is the fool who speaks the truth.’’23 Lear’s tragic
fool is the most compelling, ironical, and paradoxical representa
tive of folly—a character who most effectively asks: “the world
being what it is, do I necessarily insult a man by investing him
with motley?’’24 For Shakespeare, as for Marcuse, the fool is not
just the funny simpleton of less sophisticated applications, but
one who is best able, through play and autonomy, to counterpose
a vision of a wholly new reality to the accepted, “prescribed’’
one. So, if there is a liberative potential in the imagination of the
fool, Lear’s fool seems to be the best candidate for examination.
Before Lear’s fool physically appears in the play, we learn of
him through Goneril, Lear’s oldest daughter, who interrogates
her steward, Oswald, as to whether Lear had struck him “for
chiding of his Foole.”25 And indeed the king had beaten Oswald;
thus, one learns immediately that Lear’s fool is not responsible
for his own physical protection. It seems that only Lear is willing
to retaliate in the fool’s defense; the fool does nothing to protect
himself from the seemingly innumerable physical abuses from
which he is constantly suffering. “ I maruell what kin thou and thy
daughters are, they’l haue me whipt for speaking true, thou’lt
haue me whipt for lying: and sometimes I am whipt for holding
my peace.”26 Apparently, the fool has either no ability or no de
sire to defend himself in the physical, active world. He seems
dependent, at least for his physical well-being, upon one who has
the authority and inclination to protect him, and so one’s initial
contact with Lear’s fool stimulates consideration of what the
fool’s fate might have been had he not an individual of Lear’s
stature to support him.
The fool seems to compensate for his physical inadequacies,
however, through his superior wit and insight. Indeed, the fool’s
original tardiness in appearing in court is apparently due to the
solitary anguish he suffers upon hearing of Lear’s banishment of
his youngest daughter, Cordelia.27 The fool could see something
that Lear could not—the advantage of an honest, sincere, and
loyal daughter over two who paid only lip-service to the King.
The fool, shirking “propriety,” is much less impressed than Lear
by the saccharine sycophancy of Lear’s eldest daughters, and thus
the fool is more receptive to the unaffected truth of Cordelia’s
love.
Yet the insights of the fool did not obviously alter Lear’s polit
ical activities; the ironic fate of the fool is that he is subject to
derision rather than deference. Lear, while still clinging tenuous
ly to his sanity, assigns no value to the fool’s babbling.
K e n t: T h is is n o th in g F o o le .
F o o le : T h e n ’tis lik e th e b r e a th o f a n v n fe e d L a w y e r y o u g a u e m e
n o th in g f o r ’t, c a n y o u m a k e n o vse o f n o th in g N u n c le ?
L e a r: W h y n o B o y , n o th in g c a n b e m a d e o u t o f n o th in g .28
Of course, this does not mean the fool’s antics did not have a
more subtle effect on Lear. Certainly, the constant bombardment
of cutting insights contributed at least partially to Lear’s evolu
tion to madness, and his desire for rapprochement with his
banished daughter.
Nevertheless, Lear’s conversion to the perspective of the fool
was completed only when Lear himself abandoned his preoccupa
tion with his physical surroundings, and entered the playful,
transcendent world of his imagination. Only then could he fully
admit that his elder daughters’ facade of “propriety” veneered
very improper intentions; for only after Lear’s admission to
madness—only after Lear becomes his own fool—does he con
vene the mock court that eventually condemns his daughters’ in
fidelity. And it is only after the mock trial that the fool fades
away—precisely because Lear has become his own fool. Lear
does just what Marcuse asks of him: he revives the “desperate
laughter and the cynical defiance of the fool as means for demask-
ing the deeds of the serious ones who govern the whole.”
Yet what are the political consequences of Lear’s new de
meanor? In distinction to his fool, Lear becomes the fool without
political protection, without a sane powerful Lear to defend him.
And without such protection, his imaginary “liberation” leads to
his physical death. Lear, much like his fool, becomes totally disin
terested in the given, physical surroundings; he is content to five
out his fife in prison (total physical restraint), as long as he can
revel in the reconciliation of his relationship with Cordelia:
N o , n o , n o , n o ,: c o m e le t’s a w a y to p ris o n
W e tw o a lo n e w ill sin g lik e B ird s i’t h ’ C a g e :
W h e n th o u d o s t a s k e m e b le ssin g lie k n e e le d o w n e
A n e a s k e o f th e e fo rg iu e n e s s c .29
Yet Lear is deprived even of that consolation, for Cordelia is

killed, and Lear’s reconciliation with his daughter is also forced
into the realm of the imagination. Carrying her body in his arms,
he continually fantasizes that she shows symptoms of fife.
Thus Lear’s imagination allows him to die joyfully, for his imag
ination maintains his daughter’s animation. Lear’s imagination,
apparently substantiating Marcuse’s hypothesis, seems to over
come deficient reality. Indeed, Lear seems to “presuppose” a
radical alteration of reality; the fact that reality really does not
allow a peaceful reconciliation with Cordelia does not stop Lear
from experiencing it. However, the reconciliation is a brief one,
for Lear’s joyful words are also his last; his imagination is re
sponsible for his physical death, and thus also for the death of his
imagination. With his death, Lear demonstrates that imaginative
autonomy may not be a proper means to repel an oppressive real
ity, for the “ retreat into inwardness” (without external protec
tion) may be only a precarious denial of that reality. Denying and
transcending existential dangers may not lead to the ultimate alle
viation of those dangers.
The great irony of the fool, then, is that the qualities of detach
ment and playfulness that make possible the fool’s superior in
sights, are the same qualities that make the fool’s existence such a
precarious one. When Lear still clung to his kingly capabilities he
could not understand the fool, because his fanciful and absurd
language had no apparent use and was thus labeled as “ nothing.”
And when Lear finally did understand his fool, he became “mis
understood” himself; he was no longer taken seriously. And this
evolution to impotence was Lear’s final, and perhaps greatest
tragedy. Lear’s fool, of course, was the best witness to the
tragedy, and he expresses his sorrow upon seeing Lear’s entrance
into the world of fools, and his concurrent exit from the world of
kings. Lear as fool becomes not the respected father, but the sim
ple child of his daughters:
F o o l: I h a u e v se d it N u n c le , e r e sin c e th o u m a d ’st th y
D a u g h te r s th y M o th e r s , fo r w h e n th o u g a u ’st th e m th e
r o d , a n d p u t ’st d o w n e th in e o w n e b re e c h e s ,
T h e n th e y fo r s o d a in e ioy d id w e e p e ,
A n d I fo r s o rro w s u n g ,
T h a t su c h a K in g s h o u ld p la y b o - p c e p e ,
A n d g o e th e F o o le s a m o n g .30
In the case of Lear’s fool and Lear as fool, the lack of serious
preoccupation with convention that distinguished them as fools
also means an inability or unwillingness to function effectively in
the physical world; neither the fool nor the mad king retains a
self-protective capacity. Lear’s foolishness creates not only impo
tence, but also what may be even more dangerous—an illusion of
potency— an illusion that, at least in the case of Lear, proves to
be his end.
A Dangerous Proposition
Marcuse believes that the autonomy of art contains the cate

gorical imperative: “Things must change.”31 However, this does
not mean that revolution should become “thematic” in the rebel
lious art forms; on the contrary, “ in these works the necessity of
revolution is presupposed as the a priori of art.”32 Real, liberative
art stimulates a “liberating laughter,”33 which is evidence that the
aesthetic rebels have transcended the repugnance of reality, and
are reveling in the aftermath of a “presupposed” revolution. De
spite the fact that the revolution really has not occurred, Marcuse
believes its “presupposition” can be a powerful stimulating force,
while still allowing the aesthetic participants their needed dis
tance from the constricting effects of mundane politics.
Certainly, the “liberating laughter” is the laughter of the fool;
or at least Marcuse hopes that the fool’s laughter (if it can be
agreed that the fool is the archetype of the liberative aesthete) is
of this liberative variety that “presupposes” revolution. Unfortu
nately, however, the words and actions of Lear as fool lead one to
consider the possibility that the laughter and defiance of the fool
do not presuppose any radical alteration of reality. In fact, if any
thing, Lear’s potential for any liberative contribution (direct or
indirect) was severely reduced when he “came the fools among,”
for his “ foolishness” was a kind of resignation (or “ integration”).
As a fool, Lear presupposed the immutability of the present state
of affairs, not any fundamental change; and as a fool, Lear sur
rendered what little audacity and aggressiveness he had retained
to a more patient acceptance of the indefeasibility of evil and
sadness.
L e a r: If th o u w ilt w c c p e m y F o r tu n e s , ta k e m y e y e s .
I k n o w th e e w ell e n o u g h , th y n a m e is G lo u s te r :
T h o u m u st b e p a tie n t; w e c a m e c ry in g h ith e r:
T h o u k n o w ’s t, th e first tim e th a t w e sm e ll th e A y re
W e w a w le , a n d c r y .34
Foolishness may just as easily (more easily) be a patient res

ignation to the given as it is a form of transcendental opposition.
And for those who agree that patience is the only way to function
in a world of moral relativism and unresolvable value conflicts,
the fool may suffice as a type of liberator. But for Marcuse, who
The Politics o f Motley HI
claims to retain an unambiguous vision of liberation, the fool may
be an improper transitional model. Edgar, speaking to his father,
says: “ What in ill thoughts againe? Men must endure their going
hence, even as their coming hither, Ripeness is all, come on.”35
And Gloucester, who “stumbled when he saw,”36 but now more
insightful since blinded from earthly stimuli, replies: “ And that’s
true too.”37 For Marcuse, the abandonment of mundane con
cerns through the practice of folly (Gloucester’s blindness has
often been equated with Lear’s madness) must yield more than
resignation and longevity. So one must conclude that investing
liberativc faith in the fool is indeed a dangerous proposition.
“ Under the dissolvent influence of his personality the iron net
work of physical, social and moral law, which enmeshes us from
the cradle to the grave, seems— for the moment—negligible as a
web of gossamer.”38
As attractive as the web of gossamer might be, it is of little
protection, as can be seen in the case of Lear, against those cov
ered rather with armor. By asking one to oppose undesirable
reality by retreating into the world of the fool, Marcuse unknow
ingly erodes what seem already to be precarious modes of
physical protection. Even if the liberativc aesthete becomes con
vinced that a real harmony of humanity and nature is possible,
the example of Lear causes concern as to whether “demasking”
the serious ones will really make much difference regarding their
political strength. The great pent-up revolutionary potential of
the authentic aesthetic imagination is questioned. Lear’s “presup
position” of an alternative arrangement never seemed to need
“revolutionary” concrctization—and his imaginative autonomy
made it that much easier for the serious ones to maintain political
control.
Thus the only time that the fool is ever really safe from the
“serious ones” may be after the revolution has taken place, when
there arc no powerful “serious ones” who can take advantage of
the aesthete’s vulnerability. Marcuse, in attempting to stimulate
the “defiance of the fool” in an atmosphere fraught with “serious
ones” only makes their position of dominance more secure. In
the case of Lear’s fool and Lear as fool, there is never a sign (nor
do we ever anticipate a sign) of frustration that the aesthetic
transcendence is only cerebrally realized. The kind of “foolish,”
transcendent aesthetic perspective of which Marcuse speaks
seems now, more than before, capable of inspiring resignation
(“ integration” ) in the material world without the help of exterior
forces that supposedly stifle the revolutionary capabilities of the
aesthetic imagination.
Notes
1. Theodor Adorno, The Philosophy o f Modern Music (New York: Seabury Press,
1973). p. 214.
2. The term is that of Michel Crouzet. See Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A
History o f the Frankfurt School and the Institute o f Social Research, 1923-1950 (Bos
ton: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), p. 173.
4. Marcuse’s hcsitance to confront Adorno directly is intriguing. Marcuse’s most sub
stantial critiques of Adorno in The Aesthetic Dimension are made through proxies.
First, Marcuse indirectly opposes Adorno's position on the possibility of aesthetic
autonomy through Lucicn Goldmann, and then, when Marcuse docs choose to per
sonally oppose the efficacy of serious, critical aesthetics, he substitutes Habermas for
Adorno. In his “Acknowledgments,” Marcuse speaks of the debt he owes to Adorno;
perhaps his courtesy is partial repayment.
5. Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, p. 52, citing Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Cri
sis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975) pp. 85-86.
6. Marcuse. The Aesthetic Dimension, pp. 52-53.
7. Herbert Marcuse, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro,
10. Enid Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter
Smith, 1966), p. 243.
11. Ibid., p. 240.
12. Desidcrius Erasmus, Praise o f Folly (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books,
1971), p. 103. (Emphasis added.)
13. Ibid., p. 88.
14. “Nature hates counterfeit, and everything turns out to be happier when it’s unspoilt
by artifice.” Ibid., p. 114.
15. Ibid., p. 121.
16. Ibid., p. 67.
17. Ibid., p. 114.
18. See text, quotation accompanying n. 12 of this chapter, for Erasmus’s statement on
the subject; as for Marcuse, he says in One-Dimensional Man: “the insistence of
familiar concreteness and protective security of common and scientific sense still re
veal something of that primordial anxiety which guided the recorded origins of philo
sophic thought in its evolution from religion to mythology, and from mythology to
logic; defense and security still are large items in the intellectual as well as national
budget.” Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology o f A d
vanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 211.
19. Welsford, The Fool, p. 221
20. Erasmus, Praise o f Folly, p. 119.
21. Ibid., p. 118.
22. Olive Busby, Studies in the Development o f the Fool in the Elizabethan Drama (Fol-
croft. Pa.: The Folcroft Press, 1923), p. 7.
23. NVelsford, The Fool, p. 269.
24. Ibid., p.259.
25. George Ian Duthic. cd., Shakespeare's King Lear (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1949),
Act I, sc. iii, p. 223.
26. Ibid., Act I, sc. iv, p. 231.
27. "Since my young Ladies going into France Sir, the Foole hath much pined away.”
Ibid., Act I, sc. iv, p. 227.
28. Duthic, King Lear, Act I, sc. iv, p. 229. It is interesting that Lear makes a similar
statement earlier in the play, when he says, in response to Cordelia's admission that
she has nothing to add to her sisters' recital of praise, “Nothing will come of nothing,
speake again." (Act I, sc. i, p. 206.) On both occasions, Lear is unable to see that
“nothing" may indeed be the best contribution one can make to an environment of
hypocrisy and superficiality. Cordelia’s love and the fool’s insights are perceived as
worthless in a world sorely lacking in both qualities.
29. Ibid., Act V, sc. iii, p. 338.
30. Ibid., Act I, sc. iv, p. 231.
32. Ibid., pp. 13-14.
33. Ibid., p. 14.
34. Duthic, King Lear, Act IV, sc. vi, p. 322.
35. Ibid., Act V, sc. ii, p. 337.
36. Ibid., Act IV, sc. i, p. 301.
37. Ibid., Act V, sc. ii, p. 337.
38. Wclsford, The Fool, p. 321.
11
An Empirical Diversion
Having abandoned his ambivalence toward the revolutionary

possibilities of art as evidenced in Eros and Civilization, Marcuse
begins to focus ever more on the volatility of the autonomous
artwork. In An Essay on Liberation he talks about the “ repres
sion” of art’s liberative potential. He believes that autonomous
art’s irreverence for instrumentality presents a constant danger to
the status quo, and that such art must be maintained, with no
little effort, in venues of innocuousness:
It [the imagination] had its controlled play in the sciences, pure and
applied, and its autonomous play in poetry, fiction, the arts. Between
the dictates of instrumentalist reason on the one hand and a sense ex
perience mutilated by the realizations of this reason on the other,
the power of the imagination was repressed; it was free to become
practical, i.e., to transform reality only within the general frame
work of repression; beyond these limits, the practice of the imagina
tion was violation of taboos of social morality, was perversion and
subversion.1
To bolster his position as to the omnipresent political volatility

of authentic art, Marcuse casually dons the mantle of the cultural
anthropologist, claiming that when the restraints on imagination
are temporarily loosened “during times of revolutionary upheav
al,” the imagination demonstrates its efficacy in the political are
na: “In the great historical revolutions, the imagination was, for a
short period, released and free to enter into the projects of a new
social morality and of new institutions of freedom; then it was
sacrificed to the requirements of effective reason.”2
This, of course, conforms to the folklore of warfare, which con
soles us with tales of humane achievement during the most in-
144
An Empirical Diversion 145
humane times. Certainly, new surgery techniques are inspired by
battlefield conditions, but it is less certain, despite the claims of
revolutionary prowess from "radical” artistic communities, that
revolutionary art lives up to its advertisements. Marcuse’s facile
empiricism must be explored because of the important ramifica
tions it has for his position on liberativc art; for by asserting the
contemporaneousness of great art and political upheaval, Mar
cuse is solidifying his position as to the potential explosiveness of
the artistic work.
In this chapter I want to examine the relationship of great art
and political stress. My aim is not too ambitious; I am not so
interested in making new, sweeping generalizations about when
great, "authentic” art appears as I am in questioning (and thus
disrupting) an established generalization—that, historically,
there is some “causal” relationship between great art and politi
cal disturbance. I want, as in the last chapter, to show that the
aesthetic project cannot be trusted to elicit a political response,
and that it is improper for Marcuse to entrust aesthetics with a
political mission (however “indirect”). I will try to show that
although political disturbance and artistic efflorescence may be
proximate, it is often the case that artistic ascendancy immediate
ly follows the disturbance; and I will try to show that in these
times of recovery, when the political establishment is weakened
to the point where one might, with Marcuse, expect artistic intru
sions in the political arena, the artworks still seem to be more
analgesic than antagonistic.
Artistic Efflorescence and Political Disturbance
To be truthful, it is not just folklore that supports Marcuse’s

statement about great art’s accompanying political stress. The
credibility of such a position owes a good deal to Pitirim Sorokin,
one of the few scholars3 (not surprising, given the monumental
nature of the task) who have attempted to isolate patterns of
cultural ascendancy and decline. And, indeed, in examining
Sorokin’s findings on ancient Greece, for instance, one finds cor
roboration of Marcuse’s claim:
On the basis of these data one is entitled to conclude that in the his-
to ry o f G r e e c e th e m o st tu r b u le n t c e n tu r ie s a n d p e r io d s w e r e , lik e
th o s e p e rio d s o f th e m a x im u m o f w a r a c tiv itie s , n o t th e p e r io d s o f
d e c lin e b u t o f r e s p le n d e n c e , w h e n th e G r e e k c u ltu r e r e a c h e d its
p e a k — th e fifth a n d f o u rth c e n tu r ie s .4
It is clear, however, that in asserting the proximity of cultural

efflorescence and political disturbance, Sorokin is attempting to
dissipate the oppressive legacy of the Roman Empire, which
would have one believe that political disturbance is the result of
cultural depravity. The precise relationship of cultural ascendan
cy and political upheaval is not crucial to such a refutation; mere
proximity of the two elements is enough to dispel the Roman
stereotype. Sorokin’s intent is revealed when, again referring to
the Greek example, he says: “ Here, then, we have a refutation of
the claims that disturbances occur always in the period of decline.
We shall see that some of them do occur in such periods, but not
always, not even as a general rule.”5
The issue at hand, however, is not whether political disturb
ances come at times of cultural decline, but whether the disturb
ance and the efflorescence are precisely contemporaneous— thus
allowing Marcuse to make claims about the causal contribution of
artworks to revolution. Recently, Sorokin’s data have been sub
jected to a more precise application, revealing that: “ when a
more exact historical analysis is possible, it suggests that artistic
creativity is maximized not during, but immediately after, the
periods of most intensive political action.”6 This new interpreta
tion, presented by Vytautas Kavolis in his book History on A rt’s
Side, raises doubts about the volatility of even the most transcen
dental artistic statement, because it demonstrates that artistic
efflorescences tend to occur after the period of political stress, not
during or preceding it.
In his book Kavolis applies the “phase-cycle” approach to
Sorokin’s data, as reported in his Social and Cultural Dynamics.
The phase-cycle approach, developed by Robert Bales in his re
search on small groups and later applied by Parsons and Bales7 in
describing the development of social systems, involves assigning
various societal configurations to particular classifications, or
“phases,” and posits that these phases occur in a cyclical pattern
(cycles). The phase cycles are
c o n c e iv e d a s te m p o r a r y tre n d s w h ich h a v e a c e r ta in p ro c e s s u a l logic
o f th e ir o w n o n c e th e y s ta r t, by w h ic h th e y a r c in itia te d , a c c e le r a te d ,
o r s lo w e d d o w n a n d p o ssib ly te r m in a te d b y sp ecific u n p r e d ic ta b le h is
to ric a l e v e n ts , a n d w h ich a r e a ffe c te d , to a c o n s id e ra b le e x te n t, by
v o lu n ta ry d e c is io n s .8
Kavolis outlines four major phases that he applies to various

social and psychohistorical cycles. The first phase is the “disturb
ance,” which elicits a “goal-oriented action” on the part of a ma
jor societal group. The second phase is a radical “mobilization of
resources,” which may result in “radical changes in the organiza
tion of the social system and its functioning or in the personality
structures of those involved in it or both.”9 The third phase, the
“integrative,” occurs after the period of intense action, when
“old emotions and new behavior patterns, or vice versa, have
to be mutually reintegrated.” 10 And finally, when appropriate
societal actors perceive a satisfactory restoration, the cycle ter
minates in a stage of “tension reduction,” whereby intensive
efforts at solving problems (even though some major problems
may remain observable to an outsider) cease. The system, await
ing the next disturbance, becomes quiescent—out of either satia
tion or resignation. (Of course, Kavolis mentions the possibility
of any phase’s being interrupted by a new disturbance and return
ing to its beginnings prematurely.)
The Phase-Cycle Theory Applied

The interesting aspect of all this, at least for the present pur
pose, is that Kavolis, in carefully applying Sorokin’s data to his
phase cycles, finds that artistic efflorescences tend not to occur
immediately prior to or during the phase of mobilized resources
(phase two), as Marcuse would have it, but during the following
phase of integration (phase three). It is not accurate to say that
societies involved in war or internal political disturbance produce
inordinate amounts of great art; rather, it is usually societies that
have reached the phase just after the subsiding of wartime, or just
after the establishment of domestic peace, that are most artistical
ly productive. Clearly, this is a time when the society has the
“ luxury” to engage in extensive aesthetic pursuits, but it is also a
time, if Kavolis is correct, when pragmatic, instrumental energy
begins to decline, and where individuals seek a haven from their
disrupted lives. Having the luxury to create great art may be a
necessary ingredient, but it is not sufficient. Kavolis points out
that there have been many rich, quiescent societies that have
been artistically barren. It seems that a prior climate of political
disruption is also contributory.
An examination of fifth- and fourth-century Athens, which for
Sorokin (among others) contains the “culmination point” of art
“for all time,” 11 tends to corroborate Kavolis’s hypothesis. Soro
kin is certainly on stable ground when he personifies the high
point of Greek art in Phidias, the great sculptor and architect who
was commissioned by Pericles to construct the Parthenon. When
we look at Sorokin’s own statistics on “ total measures of war,” 12
and “geometric averages of internal disturbances,” 13 it is clear
that the blossoming of art in ancient Greece, represented by Phi
dias (Polygnotus in painting, Sophocles in drama) occurred in a
general “era” of war and political disturbance; but it becomes
just as clear, upon a more careful examination, that the effloresc
ence occurred in a time segment of relative calm, just after the
storm of the Persian Wars.
The Parthenon, for instance, was commissioned at the initia
tion of the Thirty Years’ Peace, in 445. Polygnotus, the master
painter, designed the murals for the structure, and in 441 Sopho
cles was elected general of his tribe, the same year that Antigone
was first produced. Sorokin’s figures reveal that the quarter-
century between 450 and 426 was the most peaceful of any time
between 500 and 200 b . c . The following is a compilation of Soro
kin’s figures on casualties of war, by quarter-century:
Q u a r te r - C e n tu r y W a r C a s u a ltie s 14
500-476 25.000
475-451 42,600
450-426 3,200
425-401 17,860
400-376 47,850
375-351 36.000
350-326 34,900
325-301 25,300
The data are similar for internal disturbances. After settling the
insurrection of Sicily’s natives (which began in 460 and dwindled
until the death of Ducetius in 440),15 the Greeks, according to
Sorokin’s data, experienced a sharp decline in the incidence of
internal disturbance (none at all from 440 to 428, which repre
sents the longest period of internal peace for the period of 561 to
251 b . c . ) . 16
That the Thirty Years’ Peace, and the accompanying efflores
cence, was interrupted by the Peloponnesian Wars may confuse
the situation (although Kavolis does admit that the cycles can
be interrupted by such an intrusion), it nevertheless does not
controvert the evidence that it was in a period of calm that the
Golden Age of Athens was initiated; and that the period was one
of internal peace seems to discount any theory that would argue
for the subversive potential of great art. In fact, a more fitting
explanation might be that the efflorescence was in part a substi
tute for the stunning military victories of earlier decades. The
peace with Persia was less than wholly advantageous to the Athe
nians, and it is clear that Pericles was much more successful in the
cultural than on the military front.17 At least in the case of what is
probably Western Civilization’s greatest era of aesthetic produc
tivity, then, Marcuse’s contention as to the coincidence of great
art and disruptive politics does not seem to pertain. For the
Greek example (a more modern case study is yet to come in this
chapter) there seems to be more empirical evidence supporting
the integrative effect of great art than there is supporting the sub
versive effect.
The Conservative Possibilities of Liberative Art
1 chose to examine fifth-century Athens because of the consen

sus that exists as to the greatness of its artworks—not because of
a paucity of other examples. Kavolis, for instance, takes as his
“paradigmatic case” 18 the seventeenth-century efflorescence of
art in Holland. Citing Barnouw’s history of the Netherlands,
Kavolis points out that although most of the great Dutch artists of
the century were born during the war with Spain, the “peak of
creativity followed the conclusion of the truce of 1609, by which
the Netherlands achieved recognition of national independ
ence.” 19 Kavolis also discusses the antecedent relationships
of political disturbances to efflorescences in Assyria, Egypt, and
Renaissance Italy.20 Kroeber, too, speaks of efflorescences fol
lowing (rather than accompanying or preceding) political upheav
al. After designating 1050 as the pinnacle of “politico-military
success” in medieval France, he goes on to include the years 1075
to 1325 as those of artistic florescence.21 Kroeber also discusses
the artistic culminations of 1800 to 1880, which occurred just after
the Revolution and the Napoleonic consolidation.22 As for Spain,
Kroeber states that “expansive nationalistic forces were most
effective in the three-quarter century 1500-1575, aesthetic ones
1575-1650.”23 And even Donald Drew Egbert, who attempts to
discuss linkages between social radicalism and the arts, confesses
that “the successful conclusion of all three revolutions [French,
English, and American] in each case did bring a sudden flowering
of intellectual and cultural life that stimulated the arts.”24
Before we draw any conclusions, however, it should be initially
established that Marcuse and Kavolis (and the other analysts)
have similar ideas about what qualifies as artistic creativity. For if
the art that Kavolis describes as integrative does not qualify as
“authentic” and thus potentially revolutionary (“every authentic
work of art would be revolutionary” )25 in Marcuse’s taxonomy,
then Kavolis’s findings would do little to qualify Marcuse’s
hypothesis. However, both are willing, and for good reason,26 to
accept the given standards of artistic excellence as their own.
With Kavolis, Marcuse submits to the historical consensus when
assigning adjectives like authentic, great, and creative. From the
Aesthetic Dimension:
I te rm th o s e w o rk s “ a u th e n tic ” o r “ g r e a t” w h ic h fulfill a e s th e tic

c r ite ria p re v io u sly d e fin e d a s c o n s titu tiv e o f “ a u th e n tic ” o r “ g r e a t ”
a r t. In d e f e n s e , I w o u ld sa y th a t th r o u g h o u t th e lo n g h is to ry o f a r t,
a n d in s p ite o f c h a n g e s in ta s te , th e r e is a s ta n d a r d w h ic h re m a in s
c o n s ta n t.27
And from History on Art's Side:
T h e ju d g e m e n ts o f o n e a g e a b o u t th e a rtis tic c re a tiv ity o f a n o th e r

m a y b e m o d ifie d b y p o s te rity . B u t g iv e n a su ffic ie n tly lo n g tim e p e r
s p e c tiv e , a r t h is to ria n s s e e m , in m o s t c a s e s , a b le to a r riv e a t a fa irly
g e n e r a l c o n s e n s u s as to w h ic h p e r io d s h a v e r e a c h e d h ig h le v e ls o f
a rtis tic a tta in m e n t.28
So when Kavolis argues that creativity in art tends to occur during

integrative phases, one can now be certain that he is talking about
the same kind of art that Marcuse believes to have revolutionary
potential. What is less certain now is that the “period of great
revolution” is coincident with the period of “great artistic im
agination.” There is little evidence that great, authentic art (in
the precise sense in which Marcuse uses the term) is a significant,
consistent contributor to political change.
Marcuse argues that “authentic,” potentially liberating, art is
prevented from informing political praxis only because it is re
strained from doing so by external forces—social, political, and
economic forces that are threatened by the possibility that aes
thetic insights will be taken “seriously.” Marcuse also expresses
hope that, in the present age, these forces (as in the times of
“great historical revolution”) are beginning to lose their ability to
restrict aesthetic transcendence from the “ real” world—and not
just in times of political weakness—because there is less and less
need to deflect alternative thinking into areas where it will do “no
harm.” The restrictive forces no longer have the feasibility argu
ment on their side; there is a growing realization that there really
is no need for the repression of radical, alternative thinking.
Thus, with the weakening of these exterior, repressive forces,
Marcuse says that we may expect the release of aesthetics from its
constriction in art.
Yet there have been times when the prevailing social forces
experienced weakness, and when one examines the social environ
ment in which most “authentic” art occurs (and we have estab
lished a common ground as to what kind of art is “authentic”),
there is evidence that it tends to occur in periods where prevailing
political and social energies are fatigued—during times that, if
authentic art really is agitative, would seem ripe for aesthetic in
sight to inform political opposition. Rather than demanding the
mobilization of political or other resources to thwart its revolu
tionary potential, though, authentic art seems more capable of
acclimating people to changes that have already taken place.
A More Modern Example
We need not focus only on prior centuries for examples; the

more recent experiences of Bertolt Brecht provide ample demon
stration of the integrative tendencies of art. Brecht’s case is an
attractive one for two reasons. First, his art was a real attempt to
stimulate political rebellion—his whole concept of “epic theater”
revolved around the political arousal of what he considered to be
a theretofore passive audience.29 And second, the time at which
his artistic qualities blossomed was a time of a very weak political
establishment, seemingly ripe for the migration of art from in
nocuousness to political relevance. It there ever was a chance for
art to be revolutionary, Brecht’s exertions in Weimar should have
proven fruitful.
Brecht’s art never fulfilled its intent, though, to the dismay and
frustration of the author. For it was the bourgeois class, tired
from the war, and apprehensive about the future, who flocked to
productions like The Threepenny Opera.30 They left the theater
not inspired to revolt, but a bit less confused, having seen them
selves in a humorous light.31 In fact, if one is to believe a recent
biographer, there might be some ironic demonstration of the dis-
tractive power of art in the life of Marcuse himself:
T h e Kunstlerroman th e s is , e s p e c ia lly w h e re it h a d to u c h e d o n
G o e th e ’s Wilhelm Meister, h a d a lso h in te d a t th e th e a tr e a s o ffe rin g
a n im a g e o f lib e r a tio n , a n d liv in g in B e rlin in th e tw e n tie s M a rc u s e
h a d a lm o st u n im a g in a b le o p p o r tu n itie s to te s t th is c o n je c tu r e . H e
w a s, in fa c t, m o re a c tiv e ly e n g a g e d in th e lu m in o u s c u ltu ra l life o f th e
W e im a r R e p u b lic th a n in its d a r k e r p o litic a l c o u r s e , b e c o m in g a habi
tue o f a n a v a n t- g a rd e th e a tr e d o m in a te d b y th e p e r s o n a litie s o f M a x
R e in h a r d t, E rw in P is c a to r a n d B r e c h t, a n d a lth o u g h h e h a d n e ith e r
in s tru c tio n n o r ta le n t, h e f u r th e r p u r s u e d th e a e s th e tic d im e n s io n in to
th e n o w -le g e n d a ry o p e r a h o u s e s a n d c o n c e rt h a lls o f th e c ity .32
Frustrated that his audience didn’t leave the theater discuss

ing the inherent gangsterism of capitalism as exemplified in the
character of Macheath, Brecht decided later, in his blatantly
“didactic” phase, to communicate his insights more straightfor
wardly. He went to court in an effort to change the movie script
and, failing that, he wrote the Threepenny Novel 33 in which
Macheath trades his dashing underworld characteristics for the
mundane existence of a mercantilist. And Polly, deprived of her
romantic attachment, marries Macheath only to relieve herself of
the stigma of unwed motherhood.
In writing the novel, Brecht left the realm of authentic aesthet
ics, and although his political message might have been clearer in
the sequel,34 it was not nearly so enduring nor so popular. In his
frustration, Brecht sacrificed the autonomy of his work for didac
ticism; but in so doing, he sacrificed the characteristics that, at
least for Marcuse, qualify a work as artistic, and thus liberativc.
(“There may be more subversive potential in the poetry of
Baudelaire and Rimbaud than in the didactic plays of Brecht. ”)35
Indeed, it is not surprising that in his later musical collaborations,
Brecht abandoned Kurt Weil, and then Paul Hindemith, both of
whom were wary of Brecht’s migration toward Tendenz-
literatur,36 in favor of Hanns Eislcr, conductor of the Vienna
Workers Symphony and composer of the Comintern song of 1928.
(Eisler, interestingly, was a student of Schonberg.)
It may be interesting to note the extent to which even Brecht’s
contemporaries in the dadaist movement, despite the relative in
feriority of their work (in Marcuse’s taxonomy), still retained a
sense of the need for autonomy. Georg Grosz, who worked for a
time on behalf of the Spartacist group of the left-wing commu
nists in the early 1920s, was certainly one of the more tendentious
adherents of the dada movement, yet after visiting the Soviet Un
ion in 1922, even he reacted to the political control of art, saying:
“the Russians would have much preferred to import a dozen
American commerical artists to illustrate their slogans usefully
and attractively.’’37 And, of course, in maintaining even a sem
blance of autonomy, dadaism could attract some surprisingly
nonradical members, not to mention the catholic audience that
admired the dadaists' works. For instance, the movement openly
accepted “a real bourgeois’’ in Kurt Schwitters, who was known
to peddle his collages at any opportunity for twenty marks each.38
The point is this: even the most “radical” artistic movement, as
long as it maintains the crucial characteristic of at least some
“autonomy,” does not seem able to insure the ways in which its
artworks are appreciated. Marcuse is wrong when he speaks of
the inherent “subversivencss” of autonomous art. That an indi
vidual like Kurt Schwitters could aspire to be a dadaist, and that
the movement would admit him, is some demonstration of the
difficulty in maintaining a particular political perspective in an
artistic movement. Brecht recognized this difficulty, and because
of it he created art that was more and more like the “scientific
art” spoken of in an earlier chapter. Unfortunately, the meta
morphosis was at the expense of the aesthetic quality of his work.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have attempted to provide some “empirical”

evidence to support my mistrust of aesthetic liberation. If Mar
cuse is correct in his views on authentic art, one would expect that
after periods of extensive artistic creativity either there would be
extensive repressive measures to fend off the implementation of
the aesthetically derived alternatives, or the aesthetic visions
might transgress their inhibitions and really provoke at least some
revolutionary political and social activity. Yet the empirical ev
idence seems to show neither of these occurrences. In fact, polit
ical and social change tends to precede the artistic efflorescences,
not the other way around. Kavolis concludes that “artistic
creativity is a mechanism for the transmutation of social and
motivational... disturbances into cultural products; the ability to
create art is derived, in significant measure, from such
disturbances.”39 Authentic art, then, seems inherently to be more
a conservative rather than a liberative force; the ancient Greek
example, and the more recent case of Bertolt Brecht seem to bear
this out. So when Marcuse makes facile statements about revolu
tion and artistic efflorescence, one may doubt their empirical
validity. Now the task is to discuss precisely why they might be
invalid.
Without really describing it, I have been discussing a distinc
tion between art and politics, and I have been implying that the
distinction has something to do with political efficacy. With Mar
cuse, I believe that great art is “autonomous.” I do not believe it
is inherently liberative. In the next chapter, I hope to define more
precisely the distinction of art and politics, and I hope to clarify
just why autonomous art has the qualities described in this
chapter.
Notes
1. Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Deacon Press, 1969), p. 29.

2. Ibid., pp. 29-30.
3. With Sorokin would be included R. Nlukerjee, The Social Function o f Art (Bombay:
Hind Kitabs, 1948); A. L. Krocber, Configurations o f Culture Growth (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1944); Donald Drew Egbert, Social Radicalism and the
Arts, Western Europe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970); Hugh Dalziel Duncan,
Culture ami Democracy: The Struggle for Form in Society and Architecture in Chicago
and the Middle West during the Life and Times o f Louis H. Sullivan (Totowa, N. J.:
Uedminstcr Press, 1965); and James A. Leith, The Idea o f Art as Propaganda in
France, I750-I7W (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965).
4. Pitirim A. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, vol. 3: Fluctuation o f Social Rela
tionships, War, and Revolution (New York: American Book Company, 1937), pp.
412-413.
5. Ibid., p. 413. Sorokin reveals a casualness about the precise relationship between art
and political upheaval in another work, saying: “correlation between the war periods
and the extraordinary number of the great men of genius born in such a period, or
immediately after it, seems to exist." Contemporary Sociological Theories (New
York: Harper and Brothers, 1928), p. 351.
6. Vytautas Kavolis, History on Art's Side (London: Cornell University Press, 1972), pp.
40-41.
7. Talcott Parsons and Robert F. Bales, “The Dimensions of Action Space," in Talcott
Parsons, Robert F. Bales, and Edward A. Shils, eds.. Working Papers in the Theory
o f Action (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1953), pp. 63-109.
8. Kavolis, History on Art's Side, p. 12.
9. Ibid., p. 13.
10. Ibid.
11. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, vol. I: Fluctuation o f Forms o f Art, p. 290.
12. Ibid., 3: 289-380.
13. Ibid., pp. 409-506.
14. Ibid., p.293.
15. See George Grotc, History o f Greece, 12 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers,
1857), 7: 118-243.
16. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, 3: 410.
17. See Evelyn Abbott, A History o f Greece (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1900), pp.
1-48.
18. Vytautas Kavolis, “Political Dynamics and Artistic Creativity," Sociology and Social
Research 49, no. 4 (July 1965): 414.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Krocber, Configurations o f Culture Growth, p. 700.
22. Ibid., pp. 702-3
23. Ibid., p. 709.
24. Egbert, Social Radicalism and the Arts, p. 20.
25. Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward A Critique o f Marxist Aesthetics
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), p. xi.
26. As Kavolis points out, many studies have shown that "contemporaries from cultures
as diverse as those of the Fiji Islands, Greece, Japan, the United States and the Bak-
welc have shown considerable agreement in ranking individual works of art according
to merit." Kavolis, History on Art's Side, p. I.
27. Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, p. x.
28. Kavolis, History on A rt’s Side, p. 1.
29. Bertolt Brecht. "Klcincs Organon fur das Theater," in Schriftcn Zum Theater
(Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp Vcrlag, 1964), 7: 7-67.
30. Die Dreigroschen Oper, or The Threepenny Opera, in Bertolt Brecht, Collected Plays,
trans. Ralph Manhcim and John Willct (New York: Random House, 1977) pp.
145-226.
31. Worthy of much more than a footnote is the very interesting work of Hugh Dalzicl
Duncan, who has made the argument that even the most biting humor carries integra
tive qualities. In his chapter on “Comedy and Social Integration,” he says: “We laugh
at immigrants so long as we are secure in the glory of our principles of social order—
There is hostility in our laughter, but it is not the hostility of derisive laughter which
ends in alienation and hate___Such joking is really a form of instruction, a kind of
social control, directed at those we intend to accept once they learn to behave
properly— that is, like us.” Communication and Social Order (New York: The Bed-
minster Press, 1962), p. 389.
32. Barry Katz, Herbert Marcuse and the Art o f Liberation (London: Verso, 1982), p. 54.
33. Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Novel, trans. Desmond L. Vesey and Christopher
Isherwood (New York: Grove Press, 1956).
34. Walter Benjamin, for one, was quite pleased with Brecht’s migration to tendentious
ness. See Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, trans. Anna Bostock (London:
New Left Books), 75-84.
35. Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, p. xiii.
36. See Egbert, Social Radicalism and the Arts, p. 641.
37. See ibid., pp. 635-36.
38. See Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1965),
p. 143.
39. Kavolis, History on A rt’s Side, p. 156.
12
Conclusion
For Marcuse, a liberated environment is one in which there is a

coincidence of advanced technology and complex imagination.
The technology is needed in order that the imagination need not
be imprisoned in mere cognition. The complex imagination is
needed to render potentially deadly instincts peaceable, and to
prevent the purveyors of technology from having us believe that
we cannot improve upon the way it is now. The imagination
allows us to think in terms of how it might be different— how we
might “recombine” particularity. For Marcuse, this tendency to
“recombine” is natural; it is part of human nature and external
nature. Prevented from the transcendental pursuit of recombined
particularity, we lose touch with ourselves and our environment.
Marcuse believes that a particular type of aesthetic practice
represents and stimulates this essential transcendence; and he be
lieves that in the right technological environment this type of aes
thetic practice informs those involved in it that they had better
make physical, material, and political efforts to control the pur
veyors of technology, lest their aesthetic transcendence become
the last victim to one-dimensionality. The aesthetes revolt not
only in the knowledge that the imagination should not be re
pressed, but also in the knowledge that the fruits of the imag
ination may now be realized in the material world. It is finally
possible to construct a physical environment in which the novel
recombinations of the imagination can be “tried out” in the
physical environment— releasing the frustration that has hereto
fore always accompanied the aesthetic pursuit.
Certainly, Marcuse’s vision as to the arrangement of the lib
erated society is an attractive vision. Without an opportunity to
manipulate freely the possibilities of technology, the oppressive
157
ness of mere subsistence is replaced by the oppressiveness of
machines. The aesthetic imagination, rejecting this oppression,
becomes a crucial aspect of liberated society, and Marcuse pre
sents a powerful argument that in order for there to be any
chance for a liberated environment, the essential aesthetic prac
tice, to truly be so, must retain a posture of radical transcen
dence.
Yet does this mean that the aesthetic imagination can be
trusted to aid in the realization of such a society? Does the aes
thete feel compelled to create a political environment in which
aesthetic musings may be protected and stimulated? Of course, it
is at this point— regarding the political efficacy of the aesthetic
practice—where my concurrence with Marcuse disappears. It is
Marcuse’s position that authentic, autonomous art retains a polit
ical, revolutionary potential that has been repressed by outside
forces. My position, supported by the prior two chapters, is that
there is no reliable revolutionary or political potential in the art
that Marcuse calls authentic; rather, it is the characteristics of the
aesthetic practice itself that cause its practical inefficacy. In chap
ter 9, I defined liberative art as “affirmative art in a more recep
tive environment.” Of course, it is Marcuse’s contention that the
more receptive environment will release the explosiveness of the
aesthetic imagination. However, returning to Kantian terminolo
gy, I think it more probable that as the harmony of humanity and
nature is prematurely asserted (presupposed) through aesthetic
beautification (in order that the true, physical harmony might be
then demanded and realized), the result is not a demand for
physical beauty, but a new inability or unwillingness to recognize
ugliness. I believe that there is a great danger that the ease with
which the imagination can render extraneous factors benign
would overshadow the inclination to create a physical environ
ment in which the extraneous factors are removed.
Duty
By beautifying nature through the aesthetic practice in order

that revolution might be “presupposed” and thus demanded, I
think that Marcuse erodes the qualities of “obligation” and
“duty”—qualities that may be crucial to the revolutionary prac-
Conclusion 159
tice. For Kant, duty stems from the self-imposed stricture to
observe morality, despite the seductiveness of immediate, but
highly temporal and untrustworthy, sensual gratification. Duty
accompanies a recognition that not all aspects of externality are
“pacified,” and that human fortitude is required in order that the
“despotically imposed laws” of external nature may be surpassed.
Those who have no concept of morality or duty
m a k e a g r e a t s h o w o f u n d e r s ta n d in g “ m e n ” (w h ic h is c e rta in ly s o m e
th in g to b e e x p e c te d o f th e m , s in c e th e y h a v e to d e a l w ith so m a n y )
w ith o u t u n d e r s ta n d in g m a n a n d w h a t c a n b e m a d e o f h im , fo r th e y
la c k th e h ig h e r p o in t o f view o f a n th ro p o lo g ic a l o b s e rv a tio n w h ich is
n e e d e d fo r th is. If w ith th e s e id e a s th e y g o in to civil a n d in te rn a tio n a l
la w , a s r e a s o n p r e s c rib e s it, th e y ta k e th is s te p in a s p irit o f c h ic a n e ry ,
fo r th e y still fo llo w th e ir a c c u s to m e d m e c h n ic a l r o u tin e o f d e s p o tic a l
ly im p o s e d c o e rc iv e law s in a field w h e re o n ly c o n c e p ts o f re a s o n c a n
e s ta b lis h a le g a l c o m p u ls io n a c c o rd in g to th e p rin c ip le s o f fre e d o m ,
a n d w h e re fo r th e first tim e a ju s tly d u r a b le c o n s titu tio n is p o s s ib le .1
Although "unholy” humanity is humbled before the moral law,

humanity is at the same time elevated in that this humiliation
comes from the recognition that there is something more noble.
Acting in accordance with moral dictates allows individuals to
participate, albeit imperfectly, in this nobility:
e v e n freedom from affection ( apatheia, phlegma in significant bono) in

a m in d th a t s tr e n u o u s ly fo llo w s its u n s w e rv in g p rin c ip le s is s u b lim e ,
a n d th a t , to o , in a m a n n e r v a stly s u p e r io r , b e c a u s e it h a s a t th e s a m e
tim e th e d e lig h t o f p u r e r e a s o n o n its sid e . S u ch a s ta m p o f m in d is
a lo n e c a lle d n o b le .2
For Kant, then, duty is the result of a consciousness of a not

wholly benevolent or understandable nature, for the joy of a mor
al act occurs when human action is inserted into natural deter
mination: “The moral law, however, is a sufficient and original
source of determination within us: so it docs not for a moment
permit us to cast about for a ground of determination external to
itself.”3 Without this delight in asserting a determinantness on at
least a partially inscrutable or malevolent nature, commitment is
lost to the meek, malleable “lawyer mentality” ; and commitment
to any revolutionary goals seems out of the question. Without the
sense of obligation, there is a lack of commitment to any political
program. This is the kind of politics Kant ascribes to “ lawyers”
(as opposed to “legislators”):
T h e ir ta s k is n o t to re a s o n to o n ic e ly a b o u t th e le g is la tio n b u t to e x
e c u te th e m o m e n ta ry c o m m a n d s o n th e s ta tu te b o o k s ; c o n s e q u e n tly ,
th e leg al c o n s titu tio n in fo rc e a t a n y tim e is to th e m th e b e s t, b u t
w h e n it is a m e n d e d fro m a b o v e , th is a m e n d m e n t a lw a y s s e e m s b e s t
t o o .4
The Sublime
What happens to duty or “determination” when nature is ren

dered wholly “purposive” by the reflective imagination? In the
prior two chapters I have argued that resignation and integration
are more likely resultants than revolution and political fortitude.
In comparing his concept of the beautiful to that of the sublime,
Kant, too, seems to be informative as to the result of a “beau
tification of nature.” Kant discusses the sublime, a category of
aesthetic stimuli that, despite intimidating awesomeness, is pleas
ing because we can bask in the accomplishments of subjectivity
and morality:
B u t in th is c a p a c ity it is a m ig h t e n a b lin g u s to a s s e r t o u r in d e p e n
d e n c e as a g a in s t th e in flu e n c e o f n a tu r e , to d e g r a d e w h a t is g r e a t in
re s p e c t o f th e la tte r to th e le v e l o f w h a t is little , a n d th u s to lo c a te th e
a b s o lu te ly g re a t o n ly in th e p r o p e r e s ta te o f th e S u b je c t.5
Of course, Marcuse does not retain Kant’s aesthetic category of

the sublime, for clearly, Marcuse’s “ improvement” of Kant rests
on his assertion that all nature has inherent, rather than asserted
purposivencss, and that individuals have no reason to maintain
their fear of any aspect of nature. To Marcuse, nature is “beauti
ful,” not intimidating; in fact, nature’s beauty has become so ubiq
uitous that aesthetic form need no longer alter or repel sensual
input in order that nature seem to the perceiver to be orderly,
harmonious, and receptive to human existence. This beautifica
tion of nature, called sensual beauty by Kant, is compared to the
sublime in terms of its effect on cognitive activity:
E v e ry a ffe c tio n o f th e strenuous type (s u c h , th a t is, a s e x c ite s th e

c o n s c io u s n e s s o f o u r p o w e r o f o v e rc o m in g e v e ry r e s is ta n c e (animus
Conclusion 161
strenuus) is aesthetically sublime, e.g. anger, even desperation (the
rage o f forlorn hope but not faint-hearted despair). O n the other hand,
affection of the languid type (which converts the very effort of resis
tance into an object of displeasure (animus languidus) has nothing
noble about it, though it may take its rank as possessing beauty of the
sensuous order.6
Of course, this all points in yet another way to the possibility

that restful contemplation, rather than determined obligation, is
a by-product of Marcuse’s liberative aesthetics. If duty is to be
retained in the aesthetic practice, it seems a much more likely
by-product of the sublime rather than the beautiful. It may be, as
Kant would have it, that the beautiful puts the mind at ease; in
contrast to the sublime, the beautiful does not inspire any kind of
cerebral agitation, or pride in a particular moral position.
According to Kant, “the feeling of the sublime involves as its
characteristic feature a mental movement combined with the esti
mate of the object, whereas taste in respect of the beautiful pre
supposes that the mind is in restful contemplation.’’7 The beauti
ful is already adapted to the perceptual patterns of the subject,
while only the sublime stimulates the subject to repel the pain and
fear of inscrutable nature. Only the sublime, in Kant’s concep
tion, seems even remotely connected with material alteration, for
only the sublime can inspire mental opposition to externality. The
beautiful seems much more apt to inspire resignation. Marcuse’s
“beautification” of Kantian aesthetics, which follows necessarily
from his “shattering” the Kantian duality of subject and object,
seems to decrease, rather than enhance the possibility of the
materialization of aesthetic insights.
The issue at hand, then, is whether the collapse of Kant’s philo
sophical categories will lead to the addition of duty to the aesthet
ic realm, or to the encroachment of aesthetic “restful contem
plation” on the realm of duty and obligation. Marcuse believes
that the “restfulness” of the imagination is due to its segregation
from reality, and that when it is popularly recognized that the
aesthetic vision can be as practical within nature as it is transcen
dent of the given surroundings, then an environment that allows
the materialization of the aesthetic visions will be demanded. It is
not inherent qualities of the aesthetic practice that encourage
restfulness, but “the ‘spirit of capitalism’ [which] rejects or ridi
cules the idea of liberated nature ... [and] relegates this idea to
the poetic imagination.”8 And as the aesthetic imagination con
tinues to reveal the feasibility of a pacified existence, sensual
fulfillment need not be deflected in aesthetic form: Emancipa
tion o f the senses' implies that the senses become ‘practical’ in the
reconstruction of society.”9 And because this condition of separa
tion is seen as obsolete: “the protest against these conditions
must become a political weapon.” 10 And thus: “the necessity of
revolution is presupposed, as the a priori of art.” 11 In Kantian
terminology, Marcuse’s argument seems to be that obligation and
duty will become aspects of the aesthetic insights because reason
and sensibility are perceived as no longer separate.
The Premature Abandonment of Politics
What I have tried to show, however, is that even though there

might presently be a technological atmosphere capable of sup
porting an “integrated” aesthetics, the political atmosphere is not
yet safe enough for the integration to occur. Thus, unlike Mar
cuse, I think that the unification of aesthetics and politics should
be resisted rather than welcomed—not because aesthetics is an
unimportant aspect of liberated society, but because the aesthetic
practice cannot be trusted to contribute to the realization of a
liberated environment.
Thus I think that the flight into inwardness erodes, rather than
enhances, political efficacy. Politics is concerned with “projecting
and defining the objective (material) conditions” ;12 and I think
that this concern is maintained precisely because politics remains
detached from aesthetics—because the beautification of nature is
far from real. Until the authentic aesthetic practice can be pur
sued in total safety, there is need for an external, political protec
tive force. Politics (as a serious, dutiful preoccupation with
“material conditions”) must remain until those who continue to
profit from an adversary relationship with nature are deposed; for
they are the “serious ones” who could easily take advantage of
individuals committed to aesthetic transcendence. The aesthetic
perspective may be crucial to the liberated society; however, it
cannot be expected in any way to be responsible for the creation
of such a society. I hope that this and the prior two chapters have
provided enough evidence to at least question the premature in
Conclusion 163
tegration of the political and the aesthetic.
Does this mean that we are caught in the dilemma of needing a
liberative implement that is so radical that it cannot address the
given state of affairs— a dilemma in which any practical, political
alternatives are to be rejected because they are not different
enough from the status quo to make any real difference? I do not
think the paradox is an unavoidable one, because I think that
Marcuse does not completely appreciate the capabilities of Lear
as king (Lear before he entered the realm of fools); for although
Lear as king certainly could not see the value of Cordelia so clear
ly as his fool, he nevertheless was aware that his fool had a novel
perspective on things, and Lear as king was willing to protect his
fool’s right to that perspective. So, rather than enticing Lear into
the fool’s domain, it might be more appropriate (in a world still
supporting those of daughter Regan’s mien) to encourage and
foster “politicians” like Lear as king, who while still treating aes
thetics as a diversion (affirmative art), would still be dissatisfied
with existence without such a diversion. The aesthetic character
istics necessary in the liberated environment need protection in
an environment that does not appreciate their “dimension” ;
politicians like Lear, who may not totally understand, but who do
appreciate the aesthetic dimension, are crucial because of their
ability to protect the aesthete, and thus keep alive the hope for a
liberated humanity.
We must conclude that affirmative art, art as diversion rather
than avocation, must remain until a safer environment is created
for the “aestheticization of politics”: and in an era where there
seem to be more aesthetes than there are Lears who could defend
them against the “serious ones,” it seems even more dangerous
that Marcuse supports the premature “flight into inwardness.”
Individuals and societies interested in radical social changes must
maintain their practical political concerns, even at the expense of
sacrificing some imaginative autonomy. Marcuse, because of the
present technology’s growing capability of “shattering” Kant’s
categories by “pacifying” nature (including human senses and in
stincts), is eager to abandon the sacrifice. The abandonment is
still premature, however; the example of Lear demonstrates the
high price one must pay when, in an atmosphere of serious ones,
“authentic” imaginative activity changes from a diversion to an
avocation.
Affirmative art must (in the present state of affairs) remain
affirmative, despite the fact that there is a possibility that it need
not be so. This is because the visions of authentic art cannot be
trusted to assist in the realization of its materialization; the recog
nition of the possibility does not fundamentally alter the ease with
which authentic aesthetic activity adapts to a posture of pure
reflection. It is not true that “the domain of the arts ... persists in
its own universe and in its own right.’’13 On the contrary, the
persistence of the domain of the arts is ultimately dependent
upon its material, political surroundings; and art itself has been
shown to be lacking in the facilities to maintain a physical en
vironment that is conducive to its fruition.
Thus it is undoubtedly beneficial, for the cause of liberation
and art, for Marcuse to criticize political philosophies for their
lack of appreciation of the subjectivity and transcendence of au
thentic art. His recent critique of Marxism is, I think, a good way
to try and ensure the retention and appreciation of authentic,
transcendent imaginative activity. Marcuse is certainly persuasive
in his claim that any political philosophy that aims at liberating
human beings from unnecessary oppression must protect the
autonomous imagination; yet when Marcuse goes beyond sug
gestions for altering political goals to altering politics altogether
(in a way that distracts political individuals from the “objective
conditions”), I think his advice becomes much less salutary.
Asking the politician to retreat inwardly is a dangerous and
unnecessary request. Affirmative art, although threatened, is not
yet endangered; Marcuse scoffs at those who try to explain the
meaning of art by isolating transient, social “causal factors.”
They are “contradicted clearly enough by the permanence of cer
tain qualities of art through all changes of style and historical
periods (transcendence, estrangement, aesthetic order, man
ifestations of the beautiful).” 14 So it is not transcendence that is
most in need of rejuvenation; rather, what seems more needed is
the physical, political implements that could be called upon to
protect the transcendent imagination from the “serious ones” in
case they see fit to further limit imaginative acitivity. Political
protection must remain as long as the serious ones remain. The
only way to maintain the growing expectation that affirmative art
can be more than a diversion is to bolster the political factions
that appreciate the diversion that affirmative art provides; for
Conclusion 165
only they can be expected to oppose physically those who might
threaten and divert authentic art.
The Division Retained
Of course, dividing politics and aesthetics is more feasible

theoretically than practically. However, a theoretical distinction
is all that really matters. It is not so important whether Guernica
is considered a work of art or a political statement (or even both
at once), as long as the idea is retained that there is a difference
between what is essentially political and what is essentially aes
thetic. John Stuart Mill, attacked for the apparently arbitrary
distinction he made between self- and other-regarding acitivity,
was more interested that individuals retain the idea of a distinc
tion than whether a particular activity was or was not self-
regarding. Similarly, what is important in the present context is
that individuals should repel the premature integration of politics
and aesthetics. I would suggest that although an environment in
which the instrumental, dutiful chores of politics are transformed
into playful, transcendent aspects of an aesthetic existence is a
compelling and valuable dream, it is a mistake to allow the dream
to capture pragmatic relevance. If the integration of politics and
aesthetics, humanity and nature, sensibility and reason, is ever to
take place, it will owe its chance to “politicians”—those who re
sisted the premature “flight into inwardness,” and retained an
obligation to instrumental interests.
More than fifteen years after writing The Birth o f Tragedy,

Friedrich Nietzsche reflected on his early work in “An Attempt at
a Self-Criticism.” He retreated from his youthful suggestion that
a certain kind of art might be able to “overleap” the disenchant
ment with an empty, terrifying existence. It would seem that
Nietzsche anticipates Marcuse who, with the young Nietzsche,
was anxious to draw the “ fairest form” into existence by tran
scending the present “terrifying” one:
would it not be necessary fo r th e tra g ic m a n o f su c h a c u ltu r e , in view

o f h is s e lf-e d u c a tio n fo r s e rio u s n e s s a n d t e r r o r , to d e s ire a n e w a r t,
th e art o f metaphysical comfort , to d e s ir e tra g e d y as h is o w n p r o p e r
H e le n , a n d to e x c la im w ith F a u s t:
Should not my longing overleap the distance
And draw the fairest form into existence?
“ W o u ld it n o t b e necessary? ” — N o , th ric e n o ! O y o u y o u n g r o m a n
tics: it w o u ld not b e n e c e s sa ry ! B u t it is h ig h ly p r o b a b le th a t it w ill end
th a t w a y , th a t you e n d th a t w a y — n a m e ly , “ c o m f o r te d ,” a s it is w r itte n ,
in s p ite o f all s e lf-e d u c a tio n fo r s e rio u s n e s s a n d t e r r o r , “ c o m f o rte d
m e ta p h y s ic a lly ” — in s u m , as ro m a n tic s e n d , a s Christians.
N o ! Y o u o u g h t to le a rn th e a r t o f this-worldly c o m f o rt f ir s t.15
May I offer this work as a second to Nietzsche’s advice? My hope

is that it has contributed to a greater appreciation of that advice.
Notes
1. Immanuel Kant, The Critique o f Practical Reason, trans., Lewis White Beck (Chica
go: University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 334. (Appendix I of "On the Opposition
Between Morality and Politics with Respect to Perpetual Peace".)
2. Immanuel Kant, The Critique o f Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 124-25 (pt. 1, sec. 29).
3. Ibid., p. 128 (pt. 1, sec. 29).
4. Kant, Critique o f Practical Reason, p. 334.
5. Kant, Critique o f Judgement, p. 121 (pt. 1, sec. 29).
6. Ibid., p. 125 (pt. 1, sec. 29).
7. Ibid., p. 94 (pt. 1, sec. 24).
9. Ibid., p. 64.
10. Ibid., p. 130.
14. Marcuse, Aesthetic Dimension, pp. 15-16.
15. Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings o f Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New
York: Modern Library, 1968), p. 26.
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Index
Adorno, Theodor, 117, 120; alterna Capitalism, 58

tive thinking, 110; on Ludwig van Categorical Imperative, 70, 78
Beethoven, 115 n; and bourgeois Christianity, 102, 166
art, 119; critical art, 13,23, 88, 109- Cooper, Gordon, 96
15 (seealso Marcuse, Herbert: cri Critical art. See Marcuse, Herbert:
tical art); on expressionism, 115 n; critical art
compared to Lucien Goldmann, Cropsey, Joseph, 53
132; on Jazz, 131; Philosophy o f
Modern Music, 111; on the purpose Dadaism, 13,104-8,110,113,153
of art, 114-15; on Arnold Schon- Determinate judgment, 73-75
berg, 111-14,115 n, 133; on the Determinism, historical. See Marcuse,
seriousness of art, 23, 111, 115,120, Herbert: determinism, historical
131; on socially relevant subjects, Determinism, social. See Marcuse,
123; on Igor Stravinsky, 112, 131; Herbert: determinism, social
on surrealism, 115 n, 116 n Dialectical materialism, 36
Affirmative art. See Marcuse, Disturbance phase. See Kavolis,
Herbert: anti-art Vytautus: disturbance phase
American Revolution, art of, 150 Dostoevski, Fyodor, 58
Anti-art. See Marcuse, Herbert: Ducetius, 149
anti-art Duchamp, Marcel, 105
Aristotle, 99; organon, 105; and the Duty, 158-60. See also Kant,
pacified existence, 39; separation of Immanuel
metaphysics and substance, 101
Arp, Hans, 105 Egbert, Donald Drew, 150
Assyria, art of, 149 Egypt, art of, 149
Auschwitz, 113,115,123 Eislcr, Hanns, 153
Authentic art. See Marcuse, Herbert: Engels, Friedrich, 89,93,97 n
authentic art English Revolution, art of, 150
Equality of opportunity, 101-2
Bales, Robert, 146 Erasmus, Desidcrius, 134-36
Ball, Hugo, 105 Eros. See Freud, Sigmund: Eros
Balzac, Honord de, 107, 119 Euripides, 135
Barnouw, C., 149 Expressionism, U 5n
Baudelaire, Charles, 120, 153
Berg, Alban, 113 Fascism, 56, 61 n
Black Panthers, 107 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 102
Blake, William, 119 First Central Congress of Soviet
Brecht, Bertolt, 119,151,154; didac Writers (1934), 90
tic plays of, 120; Threepenny Novel, Flaubert, Gustave, 118-19
152-53; Threepenny Opera, 152 France, art of medieval, 150
175
176 Index
Frankfurt School, 12, 17,109 75; categorical im perative, 70, 78;
Free Speech M ovem ent, 9 deficiencies of, according to M ar
French R evolution, art of, 150 cuse, 2 0 - 2 1 ,2 5 ,6 6 ,7 0 - 7 1 ,7 7 - 8 3 ,
Freud, Sigm und: ego, 4 1 ,4 5 ; Eros, 125, 163; d eterm in ate ju d g m en t,
4 1 -4 9 ,6 5 ,7 8 ; guilt, 43; id, 4 1 ,4 5 ; 7 3 -75; d u ty , 158-60; fine a rt, 76;
instinct theory, 41; libido, 4 1 ,4 5 ; form , 77; freedom , 69; gen era, 74;
N irvana Principle, 4 1 -4 3 ,4 5 ; im agination, 65, 7 2 ,7 7 ; intersub-
Perform ance Principle, 3 9 ,4 5 -4 8 , jective validity, 7 7 ,8 2 ; Ju d g m en t,
5 8 ,6 5 ,1 2 1 -2 2 , 124, 134; Pleasure 7 2 - 76, 84 n; law yers, 159-60;
Principle, 11; prehistory, 81; M arcuse’sd e b t to , 1 9 -2 0 ,6 5 -6 6 ,7 7 ,
R eality Principle, 1 8 ,3 9 ,4 1 , 123; m oral law, 6 8 -7 0 ; Perform ance
4 3 -4 4 ,6 5 ; need for repression, Principle, succum bing to , 122; p lea
1 8 -1 9 ,3 9 -4 0 ,7 8 ; T hanatos, 40-44 , sure, 75; p o etry , 76; pure science,
4 9 ,5 2 , 60, 65; w ork, 43 76; purposiveness w ithout purpose,
7 5 ,7 9 ,8 1 ,8 7 ; reflective ju d g m en t,
G o eth e, Johann W olfgang von, 119, 7 3 - 7 6 ,8 0 ,8 2 ; sensibility, 6 5 -6 6 , 70;
152 sublim e, 160-62; art as sym bol of
G oldm ann, Lucien, 132 m orality, 7 7 -7 8 ; synthesis, 72;
G rass, G u n ter, 119 U nderstanding, 69, 7 2 -7 4 . W orks:
G reece, art o f ancient, 145-46, Critique of Judgment, 7 1 -8 3 ;
148-49,154 Critique of Practical Reason,
G rosz, G eorg, 153 6 8 -7 1 ; Critique of Pure Reason,
Guernica, 165 6 6 -6 8 ,8 2
K ataev, V alentin, 92 -9 3
H aberm as, Jurgen, 132 K atz, B arry, 9
H egel, G eorg W ilhelm Friedrich: Kavolis, V ytautus: on au th en tic art,
aesthetic transcendence, 110-11; 150; disturbance phase, 147-49;
Encyclopaedia, 39; enjoym ent of History on Art's Side, 146; in teg ra
n atu re, 39; historical determ inism , tive phase, 1 4 7 -4 9 ,1 5 1 -5 2 ; m obi
53, 61 n; idealism , 125; on the obso lization o f resources p h ase, 147;
lescence o f a rt, 93; Phenomenology phase-cycles, 146-49; tension re
of Mind, 110 duction phase, 147
H indem ith, Paul, 153 King Lear, 24, 136-42, 163
Historical determ inism . See M arcuse, K roeber, A .L ., 149—50
H erbert: determ inism , historical
H itler, A dolf, 53 Lenin, V .I., 89
H offm an, A bbie, 10 L iberative art. See M arcuse, H erb ert:
H olland, art in seventeenth-century, liberative art
149 Luktfcs, G eo rg , 57, 118
H orkheim er, M ax, 37 n
H ugo, V ictor, 58 M achiavelli, N iccolb, 93
H ulsenbeck, R ichard, 105-6 M arcuse, H erb ert: on T h e o d o r A d o r
no, 109-15,117, 119,131-33 (see
Ideinost, 89 also A d o rn o , T h e o d o r); aesthetic
Integrative phase. See Kavolis, sublim ation, 49; “ aesth eticizatio n ”
V ytautus: integrative phase of politics, 10,163; aesthetics, d ef
Italy, art of renaissance, 149 inition of, 10-12; aesthetics and
determ inism , 5 7 -5 9 ; aesthetics and
Jam ieson, M itchell, 96 politics, 1 5 ,23, 88, 1 2 0 -2 7 ,1 4 1 -4 2 ,
Jazz, 131 1 4 4 -4 5 ,1 5 3 -5 4 , 162-66; aesthetics
as symbol o f the n atu ral, 7 8 -7 9 ;
K ant, Im m anuel: aesthetic judgm ent, affirmative a rt, 22, 8 8 ,9 9 -1 0 3 ,1 0 6 ,
Index 177
117-24,127,131-32,158,163-64; Eros and Civilization, 12-13,
and analytic philosophy, 32—33; 18-19,22,40-50,66,104, 117,
anti-art, 22,88, 109-15,127, 132 122, 144; Essay on Liberation,
(see also Dadaism); on Aristotle, 24. 35,65,66,117,133,144; One
39-40, 101; art, definition of, 10- Dimensional Man, 17, 31,40;
12, 36; authentic art, 23,118-19, Soviet Marxism, 87,89
121,127,144-45,154, 158, 164-65; Marx, Karl: aesthetics of, 89,97 n;
authentic art defined, 150-51; beau Economic and Philosophic Manu
tification of nature, 160-62; scripts, 79; and historical determin
critical art, 32,88, 109-15, 127, ism, 55; and social determinism,
131-33; determinism, historical, 55-57
19,53-55, 58,60; determinism, Mill, John Stuart, 59, 165
social, 19,55-60; on Fascism. 56, Mobilization of resources phase. See
61 n; and the fool, 24,133-42, 163; Kavolis, Vytautus: mobilization of
and form, 11-12,87, 117; and Sig resources phase
mund F re u d ,18-19,39-50,81; on
Lucien Goldmann, 132; the Great Narodnost, 89-90
Refusal, 104; on Jurgen Habermas, National Aeronautics and Space
132; on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Administration, 96
Hegel, 20,39,53,93,110,125; New Lanark, 9
human nature, 49, 80-83; humanist Nietzsche, Friedrich, 110,165-66
rationality, 31; on Immanuel Kant,
15, 19-20,25,65-83,87,122-25, Osborne, Harold, 110-111
133,158, 160-63; liberative art, 25, Ostrovsky, Nikolai, 91-92
87-88,114,117-27,131,140,144, Owen, Robert, 9
158; on Georg Lukacs, 57,188; on
Karl Marx, 53, 55,56, 58-59,79,
87,97 n, 119, 164; nonrepressive Pacification of existence. See Marcuse,
sublimation, 46-47; pacification of Herbert: pacification of existence
existence, 14, 18, 31, 35-37, 39-40, Parsons, Talcott, 146
49-50 ,5 6 ,5 9 ,60, 66,81,83,92, Parthenon, 148
125, 135, 162; on Plato, 100-101; Partiinost, 89
politics defined, 162; polymorphous Peloponnesian Wars, 149
perversity, 47; reason, 48-49; “rela Performance Principle. See Freud,
tive absolutes,” 34-36; revolution Sigmund: Performance Principle
ary art, 121,141-42; scientific art, Pericles, 148
21-22,87-97,106, 127, 153; social Phidias, 148
ist realism, 21-22,87-95,97,127; Piscator, Erwin, 152
and William Shakespeare, 136-42; Plato, 99, 101; Meno, 100; Republic,
taxonomy of art, 21-23, 87-127; 100
taxonomy of art diagrammed, 127; Pleasure Principle, 11
technological rationality, 17,22, Polygnotus, 148
3 1-3 7 ,5 2 ,5 4 ,5 9 -6 0 ,8 8 ,9 4 -9 6 , Purposiveness without purpose, 75,
104; technologically rational art, 79,81,87
21-22, 88,93-97,127; universals,
1 7 -1 8 ,2 0 -2 1 ,32-37,40,48,57.59, Reality Principle. See Freud,
65,91, 100, 104,119; on Alfred Sigmund: Reality Principle
North Whitehead, 34. Works: The Reflective judgment, 73-76, 80,82
Aesthetic Dimension, 12-13,17,19, Reinhardt, Max, 152
52,55,117,122-23, 126, 131; Rimbaud, Arthur, 119-20, 153
Counter-revolution and Revolt, 117; Roman Empire, 146
Der deutsche Kunstlerroman, 14 n; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 90
178 Index
Savio, M ario, 9 sym pathy tow ard, 132; twelve-
Schiller, Johann C hristoph Friedrich tone technique, 112
v o n ,131 Sublim e, th e, 160-62
Schonberg, A rnold: atonality, 23; as a Surrealism , 12,22, 115 n, 116n, 117
catalyst for change, 114; critical
ness, 111, 113; Manns E isler’s Tchaikovsky, P. I., 113
instructor, 153; intcllcctualism , Technological rationality. See
113; M arcuse’s apprehensions M arcuse, H erb ert: technological
about, 132; topical approach, 120 rationality
Schoolm an, M orton, 123 Tendenzpoesie, 89
S chopenhauer, A rth u r, 110 T ension reduction phase. See Kavolis,
Schw itters, K urt, 107, 153 V ytautus: tension reduction phase
Scientific art. See M arcuse, H erbert: T h an ato s. See F reu d , Sigm und:
scientific art T hanatos
Scott, W alter, 118 T hirty Y ears’ Peace, 148-49
“ Serious o n e s,” 141,163 T zara, T ristan , 23, 105
Shakespeare, W illiam , 24, 136-42
Sicily, insurrection in (460 B .C .), 148— U niversals. See M arcuse, H erb ert:
49 u n iv e rs a l
Slavery, 100-101
Social determ inism . See M arcuse, W eil, K urt, 153
H erbert: determ inism , social W eim ar R epublic, 152
Sophocles, 148 W hitehead, A lfred N o rth , 34
Sorokin, Pitirim , 145-46, W onder, Stevie, 107
148-49 W oodstock, 10
Spain, art of, 150 W orld W ar I, 105
Stalin, Joseph, 89
Stravinsky, Igor: A d o rn o ’s criticism Z hdanov, A n d rei, 89
of, 112-14,131; dance, 112; Z ola, Em ile, 118-19
liberative value in, 119; M arcuse’s

Lukes, Timothy J. (1985) - The Flight Into Inwardness. An Exposition and Critique of Herbert Marcuse's Theory of Liberative Aesthetics

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Lukes, Timothy J. (1985) - The Flight Into Inwardness. An Exposition and Critique of Herbert Marcuse's Theory of Liberative Aesthetics

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The Flight into Inwardness

Associated University Presses

Associated University Presses

Associated University Presses

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Lukes, Timothy J., 1950—

An earlier version of chapter 10 appeared as “Marcuse and Lear:

Printed in the United States of America

“The ‘flight into inwardness’ and the insistence on a private

Aesthetics and Art

Marcuse himself often uses the preface as a forum in which to

Style, rhythm, meter introduce an aesthetic order which is itself

In Eros and Civilization, then, art that is “enjoyed” is seen as

In contrast to his brief statements in Eros and Civilization, Mar­

In his more recent treatments, Essay on Liberation, Counter­

Another term that appears throughout the present work is

1. Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique o f Marxist Aesthetics

An argument might be made that it is only desperation that

Yet to argue that Marcuse’s growing interest in aesthetics stems

In chapter 1 I examine Marcuse’s discussion of the opiating

In the discussion of the nature of Marcuse’s concept of lib­

In his recent work The Aesthetic Dimension, Marcuse seems to

Part II continues the discussion of how and why Marcuse be­

Part III Outlined

Perhaps the overriding purpose of Parts I and II is to articulate

Before arriving at the characteristics of the form of art that best

The second level of the aesthetic taxonomy, discussed in chap­

The third aesthetic level, discussed in chapter 7, is that kind of

The fourth level of my version of Marcuse’s aesthetic taxonomy

In his later treatments, Marcuse objects to the seriousness of

Following the provision of information about Marcuse’s posi­

Chapter 10 revolves around a statement, made by Marcuse in

In chapter 111 refer to recent empirical research in the sociolo­

Chapter 12 concludes the work. It clarifies my position: that

The Obstacles to Liberation

Undoubtedly, Marcuse’s best-known discussions are those which

The Logic of Marcuse’s Support of Universals

Marcuse is aware of the danger of proposing the universal

Today we no longer call it natural law, but I believe that if we say

Of course, given the prior definition of one-dimensional, tech­

W h ile e v e ry in te r p r e ta tio n o r tra n s la tio n m a y d e s c rib e a d e q u a te ly a

If metaphysical universals so blatantly persist, why then do

Yet giving in to one-dimensionality does not divert the persis­

Universals and “ Human Nature”

Because of the objective nature of “universals” or “universal­

The Role of (he Aesthetic Dimension

One may begin to see now why aesthetics, as representative of

It b e a rs w itn e ss to th e in h e r e n t lim its o f fre e d o m a n d fu lfillm e n t, to

Yet it is only the freedom to recognize this disparity and to envi­

T h e in s titu tio n s o f a so c ia list s o c ie ty , e v e n in th e ir m o st d e m o c r a tic

In this statement one begins to see the relationship between the

In this chapter 1 have discussed technological rationality and its

Marcuse summons some impressive collaborators for his theory

Marcuse’s Interpretation of Freud

Marcuse attempts to loosen our confidence in Freud’s instinct

The Pacification of Thanatos

Certainly, it is at first puzzling why humanity is still in existence

This feeling of guilt and its mobilization of Thanatos allows indi­

th is d e s tru c tiv e e n e rg y is d iv e r te d fro m th e o rg a n is m its e lf a n d

The Constant Threat of Thanatos

This release of Thanatos in the service of Eros remains danger­

T h e m o re c iv iliz a tio n p ro g re s s e s , th e m o re p o w e rfu l its a p p a r a tu s fo r

T h e r a tio n a lity o f d o m in a tio n h a s p r o g re s s e d to th e p o in t w h e re it

In contrast to his brief statements in Eros and Civilization, Mar

In his more recent treatments, Essay on Liberation, Counter

In the discussion of the nature of Marcuse’s concept of lib

Part II continues the discussion of how and why Marcuse be

The second level of the aesthetic taxonomy, discussed in chap

Following the provision of information about Marcuse’s posi

In chapter 111 refer to recent empirical research in the sociolo

Of course, given the prior definition of one-dimensional, tech

Yet giving in to one-dimensionality does not divert the persis

Because of the objective nature of “universals” or “universal

Yet it is only the freedom to recognize this disparity and to envi

This feeling of guilt and its mobilization of Thanatos allows indi

This release of Thanatos in the service of Eros remains danger

The ego, which “ reasons” as to the inappropriateness of in

Of course, one may now become concerned that the destruc

Although in the past, history has made many aspects of exis

In disarming the seeming omnipotence of historical determin

T h e r e a liz a tio n o f th e s e g o a ls is in c o m p a tib le n o t o n ly w ith a d r a s ti

In this section (comprised of chapters 1 through 3) I have out

th e o b je c tiv e re a lity o f o u r E m p iric a l k n o w le d g e , re sts o n th e tr a n

According to Marcuse (who obviously caricatures the distinc

The imagination plays a relatively unimportant role in the Cri

Thus Kant’s original view of judgment and the imagination re

Of the many means to represent aesthetically a novel perspec