A Criticism on Marcuse’s Aesthetics

In this article, Douglas Kellner, a prominent researcher of Marcuse refers to notable points in the relation of the philosopher with aesthetics. Indeed, many of Marcuse’s major works contain reflections on art and liberation and he produced a unique combination of critical social theory, radical aesthetics, psychoanalytic theory, and a philosophy of liberation and revolution during his long and distinguished career. In his dialectical vision, critical theory was to delineate both forms of domination and oppression and possibilities of hope and liberation. For Marcuse, culture and art played an important role in shaping forces of domination, as well as generating possibilities of liberation. Hence, at key junctures in his work, art, the aesthetic dimension, and the relation between culture and politics, became a central focus of his writings. Therefore, aesthetics is not the key, primary, or central element in his thought. Marcuse posits art more modestly as the helpmate of revolution, although concern with art and aesthetic theory is an important part of Marcuse’s project that has not yet been properly appraised and situated within his work as a whole. Marcuse never satisfactorily developed his aesthetic theory into a comprehensive volume such as is found in the works of Adorno, Lukács, and in more fragmentary forms in Sartre, Goldman, and Benjamin. Furthermore, his final book The Aesthetic Dimension is thus quite slim and terse.