1937–1969
Ideas and books
Culture and the possibility of change
In his essay on affirmative culture [8], Marcuse examined how art and culture could offer fulfillment within a person’s inner life while material conditions remained unchanged. That promise could help people accommodate themselves to the world they lived in.[8]
He also saw art preserving desires for happiness that existing society did not satisfy. Culture could provide relief within existing conditions and keep alive hopes for a different life.[8]
The essay’s publication history dates its original German appearance to 1937. The inspected English text is Jeremy J. Shapiro’s translation, reprinted in Art and Liberation in 2007.[8]
A larger body of writing
The dossier also connects Marcuse to Eros and Civilization [9] (1955), One-Dimensional Man [10] (1964), Repressive Tolerance [11] (1965), and An Essay on Liberation [12] (1969). These works provide separate points of entry into his thought. Their authorship and publication chronology belong here; a full account of each argument belongs in its own developing section.
Follow the use of an idea
The culture argument has a documented continuation in Paul Buhle’s 1968 writing .[6] Open the culture chapter below to follow how Buhle used it in his account of American radicalism.
Follow this pathway
Marcuse and Buhle: why culture mattered