ABSTRACT
My assessment of Marcuse’s philosophy overall contends that his perspective includes a double line of interpretation shifting between two paradigms for theories of art and alienation, each with distinctive criteria for critical insight. The ontological/hermeneutic framework is subjectively self-contained and considers meaning in self-referential (i.e. human) terms. That is, in terms of the internal turmoil and distress supposedly inherent in the depth dimension of the human condition (with Eros and Thanatos as the core sensual forces). I contend that Marcuse also utilizes an historical materialist paradigm to gain greater explanatory power and retain a malleability and freedom from apriori categorization due to its ecological, natural, and external orientation. Because this second paradigm continually implicates art and knowledge in a structural and historical analysis of social life, it possesses a capacity to construct and engage that context. It can also raise the problems and prospects of intervention against the material structure of oppression in ways surpassing the ontological/hermeneutical approach.
