The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing

A student and friend of Herbert Marcuse in the late 1960s, Andrew Fenberg gives in this new book an outstanding contribution not only to the knowledge of his philosophy, but also to the "ruthless criticism" of advanced capitalism. Feenberg shows, with great insight, how Marcuse's Marxism, rooted in Phenomenology, Hegelian dialectics, and Freudian Eros, was able to combine rationality and imagination, producing a radical version of Critical Theory which won the hearts and souls of the rebellious youth of the 1960's. And which is still very much relevant in our times, because, as Feenberg concludes, climate change validates his revolutionary call for a new society, based on life-affirmative values. -- Michael Löwy, author of On Changing the Word: Essays in Political Philosophy, from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin (Haymarket Books).
For a half century, Andrew Feenberg has tirelessly explicated, interrogated and applied the lessons of his controversial mentor, Herbert Marcuse. The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing is the culmination of these efforts, building on the strengths of Marcuse's thought, while candidly confronting its weaknesses, in the hope of convincing a new generation of readers of its abiding relevance. -- Martin Jay
Andrew Feenberg's new book is a tour de force. With detailed yet crystal-clear analyses of Marcuse's major writings in their historical context, it reconstructs the implicit ontology of meaning that sustains Marcuse's unique version of critical theory. Arguing that Marcuse's embrace of phenomenology far outlived his break with Heidegger, Feenberg demonstrates its importance in chapters devoted to Marcuse's reading of Marx, Hegel, and Freud, engaging unflinchingly, yet constructively, with the more controversial aspects of those readings and the famous debates they provoked. Two final chapters - on techno-science and on the environmental crisis - concretize the potential contained in Marcuse's idea of "libidinous reason" for tackling the ideological and structural impasses of our own desperate times. -- Steven Crowell (Rice University)
The title of Feenberg's book is to be taken literally: the ruthless critique of everything existing is today needed more than ever, and this critique has to denounce ruthlessly also the limitations of today's forms of Leftist critiques of the establishment which de facto help the establishment to reproduce itself. Is Political Correctness the right way to undermine sexism and racism? Is the elevation of nature into Mother Earth the right way to prevent the destruction of our environment? In short, what we need is to repeat today what Marcuse, in his critique of traditional Marxism, did in the 1960s, and Feenberg does this at the highest possible level. -- Slavoj Zizek
The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing is as exceptional presentation of Herbert Marcuse's thought and its significance for social critique today -- Giannis Perperidis * Marx & Philosophy Review of Books *