Lucien Goldmann
UNDERSTANDING MARCUSE
It
is
not easy to connect in just a few pages with one of
the most complex figures of contemporary thought. And it is even
harder when one tries to account for the resounding echo struck by
Marcuse's ideas in the thinking of students allover the world–
particularly since the relation of the young to Marcuse is based on
a misunderstanding.
But let us begin by sketching, if only roughly, Marcuse's place
in contemporary philosophy. A disciple of Martin Heidegger, Mar–
cuse's first work,
Hegels Ontologie und die Grundlegung einer
Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit,
in which he traced Heidegger's Hegel–
ian origins, quickly won him an academic reputation. Later he
moved toward a Marxism which was at the same time Hegelian
and Heideggerian, and published a series of philosophical papers in
Die Gessellschaft,
the theoretical organ of German Social Democ–
racy. His position brought him quite close philosophically to Lukacs
and Karl Korsch, both of whom were, however, more committed
politically and more radical. (Lukacs was a communist, and Korsch,
at first a communist, later joined the leftist opposition.) Marcuse
became the third leading figure in what was called at that time
"European Marxism."
Here we must pause for a moment. Heidegger, Hegel, Marx–
the juxtaposition of these names seems strange in the light of the
philosophical history in the last forty years. It is much less so if one
returns to the original texts and to the intellectual climate of the
years
1928-32.
In fact, existential philosophy had its intellectual
origins in LuHcs's book
Soul and Forms,
which appeared in
1911;
