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A review by noahregained
Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Freud by Herbert Marcuse
4.0
there's a 2018 review on here that's perfectly right about the nature of this -- a thesis [a rather uncritical regurgitation of Freudian theory through the usual points], a turn to the presentation of an irreconcilable antithesis [Aristotle's nous theos, Nietzsche's notions of slave morality, Hegel's end of history], and then .. uhh .. free play
the Freudian stuff is what it is: everything that's rude to me is my dad, everything that's posited as against dad-society is mom-society from which brother-society will emerge victorious, people are building houses as an alternative to having sex with their mom, people are killing people in a release of tension explicable only in this mommy-daddy theatre and this killing takes on ever-more-explosive forms as the tension mounts from our inhibited goal of having sex with our mothers, etc.
the regurgitation of Hegel I can't really speak to, I haven't read my Hegel. the regurgitation of Nietzsche is ... like .. not a very interesting read of Nietzsche, but it's much less important than the Hegel.
the free play is weird.
there's 'Phantasy and Utopia,' where he fits the trend (that Adorno complains about in Aesthetic Theory) of psychoanalytical aesthetic writings about fantasy as an artistic style meant to evince phantasy, the nostalgia of memory for The True Past Which Never Was.
The Images of Orpheus and Narcissus is, I think, one of the real accomplishments of the book. here Marcuse imagines the mythical images of Orpheus and Narcissus as modes of pleasureful action which are without the genital territorialization (and its accompanying abuse) and outright violence (in the rather tradition usage) that characterize Freud's images of the human Eros and Thanatos. to be irresponsibly brief, the Orphic individual experiences life-as-totality in creation while the Narcissistic individual experiences life-as-totality in becoming and the oceanic feeling of being. in key ways these myths replicate the nirvanic impulse - as Freud deems it -, that willingness to end one's suffering in becoming together with the rest of being or to end one's being altogether (and, so, in either case ending the ego and its fundamental anxiety toward death).
there's The Aesthetic Dimension where he explains the historical incoherence of the term 'aesthetics' in German (and evidently in English!) and the writings of Friedrich Schiller on aesthetics in the Kantian sense. I didn't understand very well the formulation of Marcuse's Kant in The Aesthetic Dimension, it mimics Freud's structuring of the id-ego-superego structure of the individual in that this Kantian structure finds the aesthetic dimension at the meeting and reconciliation of pleasure-and-freedom OR instinct-and-morality. what's the matter in this discussion of The Aesthetic Dimension is the idea Schiller arrives at of 'play' as a mode of action distinct from work. I just don't know that it's so distinct or distinct altogether, I think the Deleuzian concept of de-/re-/territoralization does a vastly better job of understanding how play and work differ. I think that Marcuse understands Adorno's notion of artistic autonomy [which is a tragic loss to Adorno, but in my mind more of a limit state] poorly if he understands it, at the beginning of the chapter he remarks the realm of aesthetics "has retained its freedom from the reality principle at the price of being ineffective in the reality. Aesthetic values may function in life for cultural adornment and elevation or as private hobbies, but to live with these values is the privilege of geniuses or the mark of decadent Bohemians." perhaps this is a definitional problem and Marcuse simply believes that the aesthetic is the unreachable, the unknowable, something that everybody experiences a cheapened version of when they experience viewing the painting, hearing the symphony, and so forth; but even Schopenhauer believed that most people have experienced the aesthetic experience in their lives.
The Transformation of Sexuality into Eros finds suggestions, in psychoanalysis and the concept of alienated labor, that things could be better if we lived on communes and grew our own vegetables. this chapter contains one of the book's most beautiful and staying moments where Marcuse presents an ethnographic writing: "To the Arapesh, the world is a garden that must be tilled, not for one' s self, not in pride and boasting, not for hoarding and usury, but that the yams and the dogs and the pigs and most of all the children may grow. From this whole attitude flow many of the other Arapesh traits, the lack of conflict between the old and young, the lack of any expectation of jealousy or envy, the emphasis upon co-operation."
Eros and Thanatos contains a horribly brief gracing over discussions of rationality and death. the critique of the former is, in my experience, more important than the paranoiac infinite guilt which Marcuse has to offer as to the latter. but this is typical of readings from the Frankfurt School, the final statement of the book is an elaboration of the nature of the guilt which civilization should feel, and perhaps we should because the civilization Marcuse describes has in most ways proceeded from this description in the same ways that they were described. I only wish that he had spent more time imagining otherwise.
the Freudian stuff is what it is: everything that's rude to me is my dad, everything that's posited as against dad-society is mom-society from which brother-society will emerge victorious, people are building houses as an alternative to having sex with their mom, people are killing people in a release of tension explicable only in this mommy-daddy theatre and this killing takes on ever-more-explosive forms as the tension mounts from our inhibited goal of having sex with our mothers, etc.
the regurgitation of Hegel I can't really speak to, I haven't read my Hegel. the regurgitation of Nietzsche is ... like .. not a very interesting read of Nietzsche, but it's much less important than the Hegel.
the free play is weird.
there's 'Phantasy and Utopia,' where he fits the trend (that Adorno complains about in Aesthetic Theory) of psychoanalytical aesthetic writings about fantasy as an artistic style meant to evince phantasy, the nostalgia of memory for The True Past Which Never Was.
The Images of Orpheus and Narcissus is, I think, one of the real accomplishments of the book. here Marcuse imagines the mythical images of Orpheus and Narcissus as modes of pleasureful action which are without the genital territorialization (and its accompanying abuse) and outright violence (in the rather tradition usage) that characterize Freud's images of the human Eros and Thanatos. to be irresponsibly brief, the Orphic individual experiences life-as-totality in creation while the Narcissistic individual experiences life-as-totality in becoming and the oceanic feeling of being. in key ways these myths replicate the nirvanic impulse - as Freud deems it -, that willingness to end one's suffering in becoming together with the rest of being or to end one's being altogether (and, so, in either case ending the ego and its fundamental anxiety toward death).
there's The Aesthetic Dimension where he explains the historical incoherence of the term 'aesthetics' in German (and evidently in English!) and the writings of Friedrich Schiller on aesthetics in the Kantian sense. I didn't understand very well the formulation of Marcuse's Kant in The Aesthetic Dimension, it mimics Freud's structuring of the id-ego-superego structure of the individual in that this Kantian structure finds the aesthetic dimension at the meeting and reconciliation of pleasure-and-freedom OR instinct-and-morality. what's the matter in this discussion of The Aesthetic Dimension is the idea Schiller arrives at of 'play' as a mode of action distinct from work. I just don't know that it's so distinct or distinct altogether, I think the Deleuzian concept of de-/re-/territoralization does a vastly better job of understanding how play and work differ. I think that Marcuse understands Adorno's notion of artistic autonomy [which is a tragic loss to Adorno, but in my mind more of a limit state] poorly if he understands it, at the beginning of the chapter he remarks the realm of aesthetics "has retained its freedom from the reality principle at the price of being ineffective in the reality. Aesthetic values may function in life for cultural adornment and elevation or as private hobbies, but to live with these values is the privilege of geniuses or the mark of decadent Bohemians." perhaps this is a definitional problem and Marcuse simply believes that the aesthetic is the unreachable, the unknowable, something that everybody experiences a cheapened version of when they experience viewing the painting, hearing the symphony, and so forth; but even Schopenhauer believed that most people have experienced the aesthetic experience in their lives.
The Transformation of Sexuality into Eros finds suggestions, in psychoanalysis and the concept of alienated labor, that things could be better if we lived on communes and grew our own vegetables. this chapter contains one of the book's most beautiful and staying moments where Marcuse presents an ethnographic writing: "To the Arapesh, the world is a garden that must be tilled, not for one' s self, not in pride and boasting, not for hoarding and usury, but that the yams and the dogs and the pigs and most of all the children may grow. From this whole attitude flow many of the other Arapesh traits, the lack of conflict between the old and young, the lack of any expectation of jealousy or envy, the emphasis upon co-operation."
Eros and Thanatos contains a horribly brief gracing over discussions of rationality and death. the critique of the former is, in my experience, more important than the paranoiac infinite guilt which Marcuse has to offer as to the latter. but this is typical of readings from the Frankfurt School, the final statement of the book is an elaboration of the nature of the guilt which civilization should feel, and perhaps we should because the civilization Marcuse describes has in most ways proceeded from this description in the same ways that they were described. I only wish that he had spent more time imagining otherwise.