Schiller on Play

"Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly Man when he is playing."

Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man: A Series of Letters, trans. R. Snell (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1965), p. 80.

Marcuse on the Practical Element of Philosophy

"Only when [concrete philosophy] influences existence in the public sphere, in its daily being, in the sphere where it really exists, can it hasten the movement of this existence in the direction of truth... At the end of every concrete philosophy stands the public act."

Herbert Marcuse, "Über die konkrete Philosophie," Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 62 (1929): 124, 127.

Marcuse on Marx's Rejection of the 'bios theoretikos'

"... historical necessity is realized through men's activities. Men can bypass this activity - recent history is full of such bungled revolutionary situations - and can degrade themselves from subject to objects of history. The task of theory is to free praxis in light of the knowledge of necessity."

Herbert Marcuse, "Contributions to a Phenomenology of Historical Materialism," Telos 4 (Fall 1969): 6.

Marcuse on the Problem of Reification/Alienation and Inauthenticity

"Everything is an endless sum of activities, one after the other, yet all are inextricably interconnected and determined. All these activities are divorced from the agent who is not part of them, but only deals with them, minds his own business, or - the ultimate absurdity - must undertake activities in order to live. It is 'the metamorphosis of personal into material powers,' which has left behind 'abstract individuals, deprived of all true vitality,' so that man's own activity confronts him as an alien power. This penetrates to the very foundation of capitalist society. It goes beneath the economic and ideological forms of the 'reality of an inhuman existence.' On the other hand, it confronts this with the reality of human existence demanding radical action."

Herbert Marcuse, "Contributions to a Phenomenology of Historical Materialism," Telos 4 (Fall 1969): 6.

Marcuse on a Revolution of Affects

"[T]he existing society is reproduced not only in the mind, the consciousness of men, but also in their senses; and no persuasion, no theory, no reasoning can break this prison, unless the fixed, petrified sensibility of the individuals is 'dissolved,' opened to a new dimension on history, until the oppressive familiarity with the given object world is broken - broken in a second alienation: that from the alienated society."

Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), pp. 16-17.

MLK on the Relationship Between Science and Religion

"Softmindedness often invades religion. This is why religion has sometimes rejected new truth with a dogmatic passion. Through edicts and bulls, inquisitions and excommunications, the church has attempted to prorogue truth and place an impenetrable stone wall in the path of the truth-seeker. The historical-philological criticism of the Bible is considered by the softminded as blasphemous, and reason is often looked upon as the exercise of a corrupt faculty. Softminded persons have revised the Beatitudes to read, 'Blessed are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God.'"

"This has also led to a widespread belief that there is a conflict between science and religion. But this is not true. There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion. Their respective worlds are different and their methods dissimilar. Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the march of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism."

Martin Luther King, Jr. "A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart," The Strength to Love.

Marcuse on the Weakness in the Chain of Exploitation

"However, the exemplary force, the ideological power of the external revolution, can come to fruition only if the internal structure and cohesion of the capitalist system begin to disintegrate. The chain of exploitation must break at its strongest link."

Herbert Marcuse, “Solidarity” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 82

Marcuse on the Sovreign's Enforcement of Language

"The existing society defines the transcending action on its, society's, own terms - a self-validating procedure, entirely legitimate, even necessary for this society: one of the most effective right of the Sovereign is the right to establish enforceable definitions of words."

"The language of the prevailing Law and Order, validated by the courts and by the police, is not only the voice but also the deed of suppression."

"the established vocabulary discriminates a priori against the opposition - it protects the establishment."

Herbert Marcuse, “Subverting Forces - in Transition” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), pp.73-77.

Marcuse on the Agression of the Oppressed

"This is the aggressiveness of those with the mutilated experience, with the false consciousness and the false needs, the victims of repression who, for their living, depend on the repressive society and repress the alternative. Their violence is that of the Establishment and takes as targets figures which, rightly or wrongly, seem to be different, and to represent an alternative."

Herbert Marcuse, “Subverting Forces - in Transition” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 51.

Marcuse on Appropriation, Liberation, and the Intrinsic relation of Autonomy and Beauty

"No matter what sensibility art may wish to develop, no matter what Form it may wish to give to things, to life, no matter what vision it may wish to communicate - a radical change of experience is within the technical reaches of powers whose terrible imagination organizes the world in their own image and perpetuates, ever bigger and better, the mutilated experience."

"However, the productive forces, chained in the infrastructure of these societies, counteract this negativity in progress."

"Released from the bondage to exploitation, the imagination, sustained by the achievements of science, could turn its productive power to the radical reconstruction of experience and the universe of experience. In this reconstruction, the historical topos of the aesthetic would change: it would find expression in the transformation of the Lebenswelt - society as a work of art. This 'utopian' goal depends (as every stage in the development of freedom did) on a revolution at the obtainable level of liberation."

"In other words: the transformation is conceivable only as the way in which free men (or rather men in the practice of freeing themselves) shape their life in solidarity, and build an environment in which the struggle for existence loses its ugly and aggressive features. The Form of freedom is not merely self-determination and self-realization, but rather the determination and realization of goals which enhance, protect, and unite life on earth. And this autonomy would find expression not only in the mode of production and production relations but also in the individual relations among men, in their language and in their silence, in their gestures and their looks, in their sensitivity, in their love and hate. The beautiful would be an essential quality of their freedom."

Herbert Marcuse, “The New Sensibility” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 45-46.

Marcuse on Art's Capacity to Seemingly Transform Reality through Sublimation

"Form is the negation, the mastery of disorder, violence, suffering, even when it presents disorder, violence, suffering. This triumph of art is achieved by subjecting the content to the aesthetic order, which is autonomous in its exigencies. [...] The content is thereby transformed: it obtains a meaning (sense) which transcends the elements of the content, and this transcending order is the appearance of the beautiful as the truth of art."

Example - the tragedy of Oedipus, wherein evil is subordinated to poetic justice.

"With this restoration of order, the Form indeed achieves a catharsis - the terror and the pleasure of reality are purified. But the achievement is illusionary, false, fictitious: it remains within the dimension of art, a work of art; in reality, fear and frustration go on unabated (as they do, after the brief catharsis, in the psyche). This is perhaps the most telling expression of the contradiction, the self-defeat, built into art: the pacifying conquest of matter, the transfiguration of the object remain unreal - just as the revolution in perception remains unreal."

Herbert Marcuse, “The New Sensibility” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 43-44.

Marcuse on the Violence of Artistic Reconstruction

"The radical character, the "violence" of this reconstruction in contemporary art seems to indicate that it does not rebel against one style or another but against 'style' itself, against the art-form of art, against the traditional 'meaning' of art. [...] And yet, this entire de-formation is Form: anti-art has remained art, supplied, purchased, and contemplated as art. [...] Transforming the intent of art is self-defeating - a self-defeat built into the very structure of art."

"The very Form of art contradicts the effort to do away with the segregation of art to a 'second reality,' to translate the truth of the productive imagination into the first reality."

Herbert Marcuse, “The New Sensibility” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 40-42.

Marcuse on the Function of Art

"It is precisely the Form by virtue of which art transcends the given reality, works in the established reality against the established reality; and this transcendent element is inherent in art, in the artistic dimension. Art alters experience by reconstructing the objects of experience - reconstructing them in word, tone, image. Why? Evidently, the 'language' of art must communicate a truth, an objectivity which is not accessible to ordinary language and ordinary experience. This exigency explodes in the situation of contemporary art."

Herbert Marcuse, “The New Sensibility” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 40.

Marcuse on Perception and Revolution

"the revolution must be at the same time a revolution in perception which will accompany the material and intellectual reconstruction of society, creating the new aesthetic environment."

Herbert Marcuse, “The New Sensibility” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 37.

Marcuse on Political Protests

"The political protest, assuming a total character, reaches into a dimension which, as aesthetic dimension, has been essentially apolitical. And the political protest activates in this dimension precisely the foundational, organic elements: the human sensibility which rebels against the dictates of repressive reason, and, in doing so, invokes the sensuous power of the imagination."

Herbert Marcuse, “The New Sensibility” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 30.

Maruse on Sensibility and the Imagination

"The order and organization of class society, which have shaped the sensibility and the reason of man, have also shaped the freedom of the imagination."

Herbert Marcuse, "The New Sensibility” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 29.

Marcuse - Aesthetics as a Social Force

"the aesthetic dimension can serve as a sort of gauge for a free society. [...] For the aesthetic needs have their own social content: they are the claims of the human organism, mind and body, for a dimension of fulfillment which can be created only in the struggle against the institutions which, by their very functioning, deny and violate these claims."

Herbert Marcuse, “The New Sensibility” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 27.

Marcuse on a Truly Free Democracy

"We would have to conclude that liberation would mean subversion against the will and against the prevailing interests of the great majority of the people. In the false identification of social and individual needs, in the deep-rooted, 'organic' adaptation of the people to a terrible but profitably functioning society, lie the limits of democratic persuasion and evolution. On the overcoming of these limits depends the establishment of democracy."

Herbert Marcuse, “A Biological Foundation for Socialism” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 17.

Marcuse on the Evolving Nature of Capitalism

"Capitalism reproduces itself by transforming itself, and this transformation is mainly in the improvement of exploitation. Do exploitation and domination cease to be what they are and what they do to man if they are no longer suffered, if they are 'compensated' by previously unknown comforts?"

Herbert Marcuse, “A Biological Foundation for Socialism” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 13.

Marcuse on the Tie Between Economics and Second Nature

"The so-called consumer economy and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling, and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one's own destruction, has become a 'biological' need in the sense just defined. The second nature of man thus militates against any change that would disrupt and perhaps even abolish this dependence of man on a market ever more densely filled with merchandise - abolish his existence as a consumer consuming himself in buying and selling. The needs generated by this system are thus eminently stabilizing, conservative needs: the counterrevolution anchored in the instinctual structure."

Herbert Marcuse, “A Biological Foundation for Socialism” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 11.

Marcuse on the Second Nature and the Possibility of Social Change

"a society constantly re-creates, this side of consciousness and ideology, patterns of behavior and aspiration as part of the 'nature' of its people, and unless the revolt reaches into this 'second' nature, into these ingrown patterns, social change will remain 'incomplete,' even self-defeating."

Herbert Marcuse, “A Biological Foundation for Socialism” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 11.

Marcuse on the Relationship Between Political and Moral Radicalism

"Political radicalism thus implies moral radicalism: the emergence of a morality which might precondition man for freedom."

Herbert Marcuse, “A Biological Foundation for Socialism” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 10.

Marcuse – The Seduction of Exploitation

“The qualitative difference between the existing societies and a free society affects all needs and satisfactions beyond the animal level, that is to say, all those which are essential to the human species, man as a rational animal. All these needs and satisfactions are permeated with the exigencies of profit and exploitation. The entire realm of competitive performances and standardized fun, all the symbols of status, prestige, power, of advertised virility and charm, of commercialized beauty – this entire realm kills in its citizens the very disposition, the organs, for the alternative: freedom without exploitation.”

Herbert Marcuse, “A Biological Foundation for Socialism” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 17.

Marcuse – Impoverishment, Imagination, and the Soil of Revolution

“It is not simply the higher standard of living, the illusionary bridging of the consumer gap between the rulers and the ruled, which has obscured the distinction between the real and the immediate interest of the ruled. Marxian theory soon recognized that impoverishment does not necessarily provide the soil for revolution, that a highly developed consciousness and imagination may generate a vital need for radical change in advanced material conditions.”

“The power of corporate capitalism has stifled the emergence of such a consciousness and imagination; its mass media have adjusted the rational and emotional faculties to its market and its policies and steered them to defense of its dominion. The narrowing of the consumption gap has rendered possible the mental and instinctual coordination of the laboring classes: the majority of organized labor shares the stabilizing, counterrevolutionary needs of the middle classes, as evidenced by their behavior as consumers of the material and cultural merchandise, by their emotional revulsion against the nonconformist intelligentsia. Conversely, where the consumer gap is still wide, where capitalistic culture has not yet reached into every house or hut, the system of stabilizing need has its limits; the glaring contrast between the privileged class and the exploited leads to a radicalization of the underprivileged. This is the case of the ghetto population and the unemployed in the United States; this is also the case of the laboring classes in the more backward capitalistic countries.”

Herbert Marcuse, “A Biological Foundation for Socialism” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 15-16.

Marcuse – an Apology for Utopia

“The dynamic of their productivity deprives ‘utopia’ of its traditional unreal content: what is denounced as ‘utopian’ is no longer that which has ‘no place’ and cannot have any place in the historical universe, but rather that which is blocked from coming about by the power of the established societies. Utopian possibilities are inherent in the technical and technological forces of advanced capitalism and socialism: the rational utilization of these forces on a global scale would terminate poverty and scarcity within a very foreseeable future.”

Herbert Marcuse, “Introduction” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 3-4.

Marcuse on the 1968 Student Revolution in France

“They have again raised the specter (and this time a specter which haunts not only the bourgeoisie but all exploitative bureaucracies): the specter of a revolution which subordinates the development of productive forces and higher standards of living to the requirements of creating solidarity for the human species, for abolishing poverty and misery beyond all national frontiers and spheres of interest, for the attainment of peace. In one word: they have taken the idea of revolution out of the continuum of repression and placed it into its authentic dimension – that of liberation.”

Herbert Marcuse, "Preface” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. ix-x.

Marcuse – A Strange Statement

“But the perversion of the capabilities of technological reality reveals itself in the fact that the function of politics is joined with that of the entertainment and beauty parlor industry – a fatally premature juncture. When a candidate for the highest political office appears on the television show of a popular comedian, he re-enacts the satyr-play after the ancient tragedy. Finis tragoediae – but it is not so much the hero as the people who would make the ritual sacrifice.”

Herbert Marcuse, "Language and Technological Society" (Boston, MA: Beacon Press), p. 74.

Marcuse – Thesis on Language, Institutions, and Control

“This language controls by reducing the linguistic forms and symbols of reflection, abstraction, development, contradiction: it denies or absorbs the transcendent vocabulary which evokes a qualitatively different dimension of thought and qualitatively different possibilities of action.”

Herbert Marcuse, "Language and Technological Society" (Boston, MA: Beacon Press), p. 73.

Marcuse - Functional Language and History

“Functional language is an unhistorical language: the tendency to identify things with their function destroys the meta-physical grammar which had linked noun-subject-substance-essence, linked in such a manner that the essence was the permanent First Principle. Ground, and Reason of the entire structure. […] It may not be altogether fantastic to associate the repression of development in the functionalized universe of discourse with social repression.”

Herbert Marcuse, "Language and Technological Society" (Boston, MA: Beacon Press), pp. 72-73.

Marcuse on an Alternative to Functionalized Language

“Compared with these constructions, the non-functional substantive, the noun-subject, and the demonstrative and narrative predication are rather abstract forms; they express the transcending universality of the concept, the ‘excess’ of its intent over the term (word) in current usage: thus they retain the tension between the particular and the genus, which is greatly attenuated in the functional construction. […] The grammatical form thus retains the dialectical distinction between the subject and its functions; the proposition contains the negation of the given fact: it links that which is happening to the conditions which made it happen, and allows the reader or listener to follow and reconstruct the development.”

Herbert Marcuse, "Language and Technological Society" (Boston, MA: Beacon Press), p. 72.

The Correlation Between Sexual Liberation and Political Repression

"Thus we are faced with the contradiction that the liberalization of sexuality provides an instinctual basis for the repressive and aggressive power of the affluent society. This contradiction can be resolved if we understand that the liberalization of the Establishment's own morality takes place within the framework of effective controls; kept within this framework, the liberalization strengthens the cohesion of the whole. The relaxation of taboos alleviates the sense of guilt and binds (though with considerable ambivalence) the 'free' individuals libidinally to the institutionalized fathers. [...] On the other hand, if the violation of taboos transcends the sexual sphere and leads to refusal and rebellion, the sense of guilt is not alleviated and repressed but rather transferred: not we, but the fathers, are guilty [...] Instinctual revolt turns into political rebellion, and against this union, the Establishment mobilizes its full force."

Herbert Marcuse, "A Biological Foundation for Socialism?" An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 9.

Marcuse on Morality as a Political Weapon

"Morality is not necessarily and not primarily ideological. In the face of an amoral society, it becomes a political weapon, an effective force which drives people to burn their draft cards, to ridicule national leaders, to demonstrate in the streets, and to unfold signs saying, 'Thou shalt not kill,' in the nation's churches."

Herbert Marcuse, "A Biological Foundation for Socialism?" An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 8.

Marcuse on Linguistic Therapy and the Transformation of Moral Standards

"Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the Establishment [...] obscene is not the ritual of the Hippies but the declaration of a high dignitary of the Church that war is necessary for peace. Linguistic therapy - that is, the effort to free words (and thereby concepts) from the all but total distortion of their meanings by the Establishment - demands the transfer of moral standards (and of their validation) from the Establishment to the revolt against it. Similarly, the sociological and political vocabulary must be radically reshaped: it must be stripped of its false neutrality; it must be methodologically and provocatively 'moralized' in terms of the Refusal."

Herbert Marcuse, "A Biological Foundation for Socialism?" An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 8.

Marcuse on the Biological Foundation of Rebellion

"What is now at stake are the needs themselves. At this stage, the question is no longer: how can the individual satisfy his own needs without hurting others, but rather how can he satisfy his needs without hurting himself, without reproducing, through his aspirations and satisfactions, his dependence on an exploitative apparatus which, in satisfying his needs, perpetuates his servitude? The advent of a free society would be characterized by the fact that the growth of well-being turns into an essentially new quality of life. This qualitative change must occur in the needs, in the infrastructure of man (itself a dimension of the infrastructure of society): the new direction, the new institutions and relationships of production, must express the ascent needs and satisfactions very different from and even antagonistic to those prevalent in the exploitative societies. Such a change would constitute the instinctual basis for freedom which the long history of class society has blocked. Freedom would become the environment of an organism which is no longer capable of adapting to the competitive performances required for well-being under domination, no longer capable of tolerating the aggressiveness, brutality, and ugliness of the established way of life. The rebellion would then have taken root in the very nature, the 'biology' of the individual..."

Herbert Marcuse, "Introduction" An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 4-5.