ABSTRACT
Herbert Marcuse seldom accounts for the method adopted with regard to his research on a given author or ideas. It would be a mistake to deduce from this that he regards methodological questions as unimportant. Alongside the centrality of labour in human existence, there will be far greater attention in Marcuse’s thinking to the material and biological dimension of life. Much of the later Freudian interpretation bears the mark of this second and decisive encounter with Marx. Marcuse develops anew theory of human liberation, but this time virtually all its elements derive from a distinctive reading of Marx in which previous philosophical concerns play much diminished role. Human essence remains to be seen how Marcuse was to sketch a new conception of human liberation on the basis of these ideas. Knowledge, which played such a determining role in previous writings, retains essential place in this conception but it is now firmly reinserted into the broader Marxist framework.
