[FRA:] Marcuse, A Critical Reader

[Ralph Dumain]

I have not seen this book, but the table of contents are available:

http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip042/2003007403.html

While I cannot be certain of the content, I must say I am puzzled by the 
distribution of the subject matters covered.

The most striking feature of this reader is that it is organized 
thematically and chronologically by Marcuse's impact on others.  I find 
this rather peculiar, as I'm not familiar with this way of doing things.

Discounting this principle, and conceptually reorganizing the contents, 
here's what I see happening:

(1) Marcuse's reception:

Marcuse's Legacies
        Angela Davis ....................................68
The American Experience of the Critical Theorists
        Detlev Claussen  ..............................80
Diatribes and Distortions: Marcuse's Academic Reception
        W. Mark Cobb .................................265
Herbert Marcuse's Identity
        Peter Marcuse ...............................395
Encountering Marcuse
        Carl Schorske ................................401

(2) Technology:

Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of Technology
        Andrew Feenberg ...............104
Marcuse, Habermas and the Critique of Technology
        Samir Gandesha  ...............309

(3) Ecology:
Part III: Marcuse and Contemporary Ecological Theory:
       Marcuse's Deep-Social Ecology and the Future of Utopian Environmentalism
               Andrew Light ..........366
       Marcuse's Ecological Critique and the American Environmental Movement
               Tim Luke ............379
Marcuse and the "New Science"
               Steven Vogel .........................385

(4) Marcuse's utopian aspirations, etc.:

Marcuse and the Quest for Radical Subjectivity
        Douglas Kellner ...............................................132
Marcuse's Maternal Ethic
        John O'Neill  ..................................................163
Marcuse's Negative Dialectics of Imagination
        Gérard Raulet  ................................................187
The Theoretical Place of Utopia: Some Remarks on Marcuse's Dual Anthropology
        Stephan Bundschuh .... 249
The Fate of Emancipated Subjectivity
        Michael Werz ...............................................343

There is something I find very irritating about this, but what is it?

First, I have zero interest in ecology as an _ethical_ topic.  I do want to 
read Vogel's essay on Marcuse's 'new science', after having read Vogel's 
AGAINST NATURE.  Not because I respect Marcuse's nonsense, but because I am 
interested in the topic.  Otherwise, I don't care.

Secondly, I'm highly suspicious of Marcuse's attitude toward technology and 
the Heideggerian influence.

Thirdly, on Marcuse reception: while I'm interested, I'm not impressed as 
I'm supposed to be by the impact of Marcuse on '60s activists, and in fact 
I have a certain amount of skepticism about it.  I far prefer Adorno and 
even the early Horkheimer as philosophers.  But more on this later, perhaps.

That leaves grouping 4, which includes a bundle of philosophical themes. 
Here is where I presume I'll find what interests me about Marcuse, though I 
can't be certain from the essay titles.  I suppose that Raulet's essay 
covers Marcuse's conception of the aesthetic dimension.  I don't know which 
author discussed Marcuse's work on Marx's 1844 mss, Hegel, the historical 
role of Reason in philosophy--those aspects of Marcuse I find of most 
interest.  My guess is that the root of Marcuse's popularity and what one 
will find here is a fusion of key themes: Freud, Marx, one-dimensionality, 
the philosophy of liberation in the postwar boom (roughly 1945-1970) . . . 
. While I can see the appeal of this package, I am more inclined to take it 
apart and critically inspect its components, not all of which thrill me.  I 
suspect that this impact of Marcuse on the '60s generation accounts for the 
organization of this reader, and that perspective doesn't turn me on.