Herbert Marcuse: Biography Of This German Philosopher
Human beings have always been a gregarious being that tends towards 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 organization and management systems.
The way 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 their thinking.
Herbert Hermann Marcuse was born on July 19, 1998 in the city of Berlin. He was the eldest son and first of three siblings born to 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.
Formation and World War I
With the arrival of the First World War, and at only sixteen years old, Marcuse joined the army He first worked in the care and maintenance of horses, in Berlin itself. In addition to this, he would serve as a soldier on the front, and would become part of both the soldiers’ council of the city of Berlin and the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
The war ends, Herbert Marcuse He 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 obtain a doctorate in the same discipline in 1922, with a thesis dedicated to the study of the foundations of German literature. He also left the Social Democratic Party after the murder of Rosa Luxemburg.
After finishing his doctorate he would return to Berlin, where he worked in a bookstore. In 1924 he married Sophie Wertheim in that city. Over time, specifically in 1928, the author decided to return to the University of Freiburg to study Philosophy alongside authors such as Heidegger, whom he admired and who would prove highly influential in his existentialist thinking.
During this time he began to be interested in the field of sociology, receiving influences and reading the theories of Marx and Weber.
He tried to qualify and enter the University as a teacher alongside Heidegger , but the growing rise of Nazism and the latter’s initial position on the matter prevented the author from doing so. He produced one of his first works, a monograph titled “Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity,” and also published and even edited magazines such as 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 joined what would eventually be 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. Also criticized the orthodoxy and positivism that underpin capitalism and communism
He would begin to integrate and make Critical Theory his own, as well as to work on the search for an integrative perspective of the praxis and theory of Hegel and Marxism. Already at this stage the author began to have a reputation, carrying out different investigations.
The arrival of Hitler and Nazism to power made Marcuse, of Jewish origin, make the decision to leave Germany He passed through Paris and Geneva, where he would become the director of the Institute’s branch, but would end up emigrating to the United States.
Professional life in the United States
There he would work and continue his research at Columbia University, where a headquarters of the Institute was opened. In addition to this, he collaborated until the end of World War II with the United States Secret Service Office to overthrow the Nazi regime and the rest of the fascist regimes. He became naturalized as an American in 1940.
Later he would begin to act as a teacher in political philosophy. First he worked at Columbia University itself, and then did the same at Harvard (where he also worked with the Russian Research Institute, although he would be fired in 1958 due to differences regarding his research and the approach given to them. gave).
In 1954 he also began teaching at Brandeis University. During this life stage and after being 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.
Wrote Eros and civilization (published in 1955) and The malaise 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 journey that Even in democratic societies we can find oppression and a tendency to force homogeneity and to 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 sixties and seventies the author began working at the University of Berkeley, at the time when large student movements and revolts began to emerge. The author supported the student body, becoming a figure critical of the establishment and liberalism 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 that allows us 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 He was an intellectual of great prestige and renown, whose philosophy has served as 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.
