ABSTRACT
This never-before published lecture of Herbert Marcuse speaks to an issue that is interwoven throughout his entire oeuvre: the role of philosophy in social transformation. This is perhaps a surprisingly thorny issue, with many practitioners of philosophy smoothly gliding into the situation he describes in One-Dimensional Man, of plain-language (read: banal) word games. 1 Marcuse repeatedly reminds us of Marx’s insight that the job of philosophy is to change the world; the question for Marcuse is what are the prospects for how that might happen. This question is not only practical, but in a one-dimensional society with its lack of opposition, also a question of what is possible. These two prongs are related, since the possible is only so when predicated on what is practical. This lecture is an attempt to address that real-world question of the role of philosophy by offering a two-part appraisal: a method of critical philosophy and a justification of that philosophy. This introduction serves as a guide through Marcuse’s line of argument.
