ABSTRACT
Herbert Marcuse became the third leading figure in what was called at that time “European Marxism.” Marcuse’s articles had a curious and ultimately significant characteristic: They were written on a conceptual and philosophical level, beyond concrete historical analysis—on the plane where any philosophy of the concept, from Plato, to Descartes, to Kant, is situated. The important phase in Marcuse’s evolution is his membership in the Frankfurt School to which, basically, he belongs. At most, one can say that Marcuse ties that negative criticism which will become more and more a characteristic of the Frankfurt School to a demand for radical change, at the risk–which seems to him to be the price of continuing the true philosophic tradition—of placing himself at least partially in the domain of utopian thought. For Marcuse, the concrete form of the reality principle in contemporary society is the principle of productivity.
