Negations: Essays in Critical Theory

Book Description:

Herbert Marcuse’s Negations is both a radical critique of capitalist modernity and a model of materialist dialectical thinking. In a series of essays, originally written in the period stretching from the 1930s to 1960s, Marcuse takes up the presupposed categories that have, and continue to, ground thought and action in our administered society: liberalism, industrialism, individualism, hedonism, aggression. This book is both a testament to a great thinker and a still vital strand of thought in the comprehension and critique of the modern organized world. It is essential reading for younger scholars and a radical reminder for those steeped in the tradition of a critical theory of society. With a brilliance of conception combined with an insistence on the material conditions of thought and action, this book speaks both to the particular contents engaged and to the fundamental grounds of any critique of organized modernity.

Contents 

Contents vii 

Acknowledgements ix 

Translator’s Note xi 

Foreword to the 2009 Edition 

Steffen Böhm and Campbell Jones xiii 

Foreword xvii 

1 The struggle against liberalism in the totalitarian view of the state 1 

2 The concept of essence 31 

3 The affirmative character of culture 65 

4 Philosophy and critical theory 99 

5 On hedonism 119 

6 Industrialization and capitalism in the work of Max Weber 151 

7 Love mystified: A critique of Norman O. Brown 171 

8 Aggressiveness in advanced industrial societies 187 

Notes 203