Herbert Marcuse: biography of this German philosopher

This philosopher gave rise to the Critical Theory, which questioned the established social order.

The human being has always been a gregarious being and tends to collectivity, and throughout history we have seen how as the number of human beings grows we tend to generate increasingly complex structures and societies. And this development does not occur in a linear and unitary manner, but rather different environments and cultures have generated their own systems of organization and management.

The way in which societies have developed has been the subject of debate and research over the centuries, with authors such as Marx being some of the best known. Another of the most relevant, this one from the last century, is Herbert Marcuse. And it is about this author that we are going to talk about in this article; we will see a brief biography of Herbert Marcuse in order to better understand his thinking.

Herbert Marcuse's biography

Herbert Hermann Marcuse was born on July 19, 1998 in the city of Berlin. He was the first born and first of three brothers of the marriage formed by the merchant Carl Marcuse and Gertrud Kreslawskyun, who was the granddaughter of a factory owner.

The family, of Jewish origins, had a prosperous and well-off socio-economic position, something that would allow their children to have a good education.

Education and World War I

With the advent of World War I, and with only sixteen years, Marcuse enlisted in the army. He first worked in the care and maintenance of horses in Berlin itself. In addition to this, he served as a soldier at the front, and became a member of both the soldiers' council of the city of Berlin and the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

After the war, Herbert Marcuse became interested in academic life and decided to study economics, philosophy and German studies at the University of Berlin.. After that he enrolled at the University of Freiburg, where he studied literature. He would get his doctorate in the same discipline in 1922, with a thesis dedicated to the study of the foundations of Germanic literature. He also left the Social Democratic Party after the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg.

After finishing his doctorate he returned to Berlin, where he worked in a bookstore. In 1924 he married Sophie Wertheim in that city. Eventually, in 1928, the author decided to return to the University of Freiburg to study philosophy with authors such as Heidegger, whom he admired and who would prove highly influential in his existentialist thought.

During this period he became interested in the field of sociology, being influenced by and reading the theories of Marx and Weber.

He tried to qualify himself and enter the University as a lecturer alongside Heideggerbut the growing rise of Nazism and the latter's initial stance on the matter prevented the author from doing so. He realized one of his first works, a monograph titled "Ontology of Hegel and the theory of historicity", and also published and even directed magazines like Die Gesellschaft.

Institute for Social Research and World War II

In 1933 Marcuse came into contact through Kurt Riezler with the Institut für Sozialforschung or Institute for Social Research, directed at that time by Max Horkheimer.

The author moved to Frankfurt and became part of what would end up being called the Frankfurt School, where together with Horkheimer and other researchers he would analyze social elements such as the role of families, social movements and the revision of Marxist theories. He also criticized the orthodoxy and positivism that underpinned capitalism and communism..

He would begin to integrate and make the Critical Theory his own, as well as to work on the search for an integrative perspective of praxis and the theory of Hegel and Marxism. Already at this stage the author began to make a name for himself, elaborating different investigations.

The arrival of Hitler and Nazism to power made Marcuse, of Jewish origin, take the decision to leave Germany.. He went to Paris and Geneva, where he became the director of the Institute's branch, but eventually emigrated to the United States.

Professional life in the United States

There he worked and continued his research at Columbia University, where a branch of the Institute was opened. In addition, he collaborated until the end of World War II with the United States Secret Service Office to overthrow the Nazi and other fascist regimes. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1940.

Subsequently he began to work as a lecturer in political philosophy. He first worked at Columbia University itself, and then at Harvard (where he also worked with the Institute for Research on Russia, although he was dismissed in 1958 for divergences regarding his research and the approach given to it).

In 1954 he also began teaching at Brandeis University. During this vital stage and after having been interested in Sigmund Freud's theory, he theorized about repression in society even within the democratic and unconscious level, whether it is capitalist or communist.

He wrote Eros and Civilization (published in 1955) and The Unrest of Cultureand in them it can be seen how the author proposes that even immersed in oppression and repression both consciously and unconsciously, we tend to seek freedom and development.

He wrote one of his best known works, The One-Dimensional Manin 1964. In this work he developed the idea that even in democratic societies we can find oppression and a tendency to force homogeneity. and one-dimensionality, something that hinders development to the point that practically only the most marginal elements of society are capable of generating change.

Final years, death and legacy

During the 1960s and 1970s the author began working at the University of Berkley, at the time when large student movements and revolts began to emerge. The author supported the student movement, becoming a critical a figure critical of the establishment and liberalism, and a strong influence and a strong influence on the social movements of the time.

The author sought to generate a society that did not exercise repression and the elimination of the alignment and domination of consumer societies. He also had great interest in art, especially in the final stretch of his life, as an instrument to lead us to a freer society.

In 1979 Herbert Marcuse traveled to Germany in order to make some speeches. However, during his stay in the city of Starnberg the author suffered a stroke that finally ended his life on July 26, 1979.

Herbert Marcuse was an intellectual of great prestige and renown, whose philosophy has served as an inspiration especially for sociopolitical movements and to analyze from a critical perspective and with purposes of change the functioning of different types of societies and their way of acting on the population.

Bibliographical references:

• Kellner, D. (1984). Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism. London: Macmillan.
• Mattick, P. (1972) Critique of Marcuse: One-dimensional man in class society Merlin Press.