Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse (19 July 1898 – 29 July 1979) was a German-born Jewish philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School.
Contents
Life
Born in Germany, he emigrated to the United States along with other Jews such as Wilhelm Reich and Theodor Adorno, after the NSDAP had seized power. Perhaps his best known works are Eros and Civilization, One-Dimensional Man and The Aesthetic Dimension.
Marcuse was a father of Cultural Marxism and Critical Theory. Critical Theory was essentially destructive criticism of the main elements of Western culture, including Christianity, capitalism, authority, the family, patriarchy, hierarchy, morality, tradition, sexual restraint, loyalty, patriotism, nationalism, heredity, ethnocentrism, convention and conservatism.[1]
During World War II, Marcuse worked in United States Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency, including on propaganda projects. Wikipedia claims that he became "the leading analyst on Germany". In 1945, Marcuse was employed by the US Department of State as head of the Central European section, becoming an intelligence analyst of "Nazism".
His influential 1955 book Eros and Civilization was influenced by Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.
See also
- Allied psychological warfare
- Psychoanalysis - An influence
- Saul Alinsky
External links
- Review of Thomas Wheatland’s The Frankfurt School in Exile, Part III: John Dewey, Sidney Hook, and Herbert Marcuse
- The Sexual is Political (And Profitable)
- “Modify the standards of the in-group”: On Jews and Mass Communications
