Herbert Marcuse

Philosophical speculation seldom attracts banner headlines let alone threats of death. Yet such was the fate that overtook Herbert Marcuse in the late 1960s when he was catapulted into international controversy as a prophet of the revolutionary student movement. Barry Katz shows that this startling change of fortune was consistent with the whole pattern of the philosophers life and work.. Katz follows Marcuse from his comfortable childhood in Berlins Jewish bourgeoisie through war revolution depression and Nazism to the USA. He describes the young soldiers role in the German revolution; documents the exiled scholars wartime activities in US intelligence; and evokes the very different political struggles that preoccupied the philosopher int he 1960s. Simultaneously Katz gives a compelling interpretation of Marcuses intellectual development including his relationships with Benjamin and Lukacs Husserl and Heidegger and the Frankfurt School. Marcuses writings are carefully analysed - not only the famous works such as Eros and Civilisation and One-Dimensional Man but also the early studies of the artist-novel and of Hegel and a crucial unpublished essay on the poetry of the French Resistance.