[FRA:] Marcuse On Science and Phenomenology

[Ralph Dumain]

Now on my web site:

On Science and Phenomenology by Herbert Marcuse
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/marcuse7.html

Comment on the Paper by H. Marcuse by Aron Gurwitsch
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/marcuse8.html

I've not seen this essay from 1964 collected in any books, nor have I seen 
it referred to save in Harold Marcuse's online bibliography.  Curiously, 
this piece and Gurwitsch's response are in volume 2 of the noted series 
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science.  Also curiously, this volume 
seems to have dropped off the map.  The current publisher that owns the 
series does not even list it as part of the series, let alone offer it in 
print.  I don't know how many times BSPS switched publishers (Or got 
swallowed up through mergers), but none of the Dutch or German publishers 
were involved at this point, so it's not obvious to me even who owns the 
copyright.  Anyway, this Marcuse essay is hereby rescued from oblivion.

I am not well-informed as to either Marcuse's early development nor 
Heidegger's, but given Marcuse's account of Husserl's critique of the 
modern scientific mind as technological and reified, is it possible that he 
reads Husserl through the lenses of Marcuse's teacher Heidegger?  I note 
that Gurwitsch objects to the technological claim, insisting that Husserl 
is really on about formalization and algorithmization, not the 
technological attitude underlying modern science.  Not knowing about 
Heidegger's relation to Husserl's thought, I wonder: Marcuse's account of 
Husserl reminds me of Heidegger's line on the forgetting of Being.  Did 
Heidegger transmute Husserl's schema to concoct this spin on things?  If 
so, I'd say Heidegger is an inferior thinker to Husserl, and the 
transformation of the latter's ideas takes on an ominous coloration.