MARCUSE’S ONE DIMENSIONAL THOUGHT

A Term Paper

Presented to

Faculty of Arts and Letters

University of Santo Tomas

Españ a, Manila

In Partial of Fulfilment

Of the Requirements in

PHL210

American Philosophy

Gonzales, Timothy Joseph C.

4PHL1

December 14, 2017

 One of the major problems of Marcuse begins with the question of “what is in” the

society that makes and integrates the people who are inside of it completely dependent upon

the goods and services being fed to them by this pre-established society, and he aims to resolve

this problem in his book One-Dimensional Man. Marcuse expects the readers of the One-

dimensional Man to be open-minded and abstract one’s dispositions, ideas and standpoints in

order to fully grasp his formulated thoughts and ideas against the contemporary technological

society that we have as of today, thus Marcuse from the very start is already promoting the use

of reason in a critical and dialectical way, in which in this different mode of thinking will allow

us to properly criticize the current society as of today into its core, the problems and difficulties

that it imposes upon the people, the restrictions on freedom and liberation and most of all, on

how it is continuously trying to subdue the people into its demands through manipulation,

exploitation, and domination.

Marcuse traced the current difficulties that we are experiencing today back from the

period of Enlightenment, he mentioned in some parts of his book that the problems that we are

encountering as of today is deeply rooted when the Enlightenment thinkers specifically Kant

proposed and promoted the use of reason in solving the mysteries of the world, debunking the

dogmatic teachings of the Church, and to release people from the enslavement of using their

own reason to create variable truths for themselves. These are the primary goals and objectives

of the Enlightenment thinkers, however, for Marcuse, the problem that they are trying to solve

and demystify was not in fact solved instead these problems are embedded in the changes that

they brought along with the intellectual revolution that they have started.
 For Marcuse, this intellectual revolution has not in fact changed the broken system of

rationality that was prevailing during the time of Kant but rather it opened up another system

that would promote a brand new wave of dogmatic teachings and a lot of problems and

mysteries that would cloud again the knowledge of mankind. This can be manifested very well

today, since now we have established a larger and complex system of sciences that requires

you to put of all your resources, time and effort in studying a particular field such as biology,

chemistry or even philosophy, and in this kind of practice, man’s capacity to understand the

core of the particular field that he had chosen would not be enough even if he spends his whole

lifetime studying and researching on it, therefore Marcuse is trying to imply that the problems

that are hovering now in our society are caused by the same events in our history such as the

French Revolution and most importantly, the Industrial Revolution in which all of these events

imply and promote an overall change and reformation in our society which includes political,

social, cultural and economic practices.

In his book One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse tried to look what are possible causes why a

man that is being placed and have been integrated into a society continues and seems to be

always in align with the orders and the system that is pre-established by our society, one

reason that he had find out was that people lack the capability of “negative thinking” which

"negates" existing forms of thought and reality from the perspective of higher possibilities 1. For

Marcuse, people more are to have the kind of rationality which he calls “uncritical thinking” in

which it derives its beliefs, norms, and values from existing thought and social practices. 2 These

2 kinds of rational thinking are what he sees in the society where a man can be categorized into
1
Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. New York: Beacon Press, 1991 : XV.
2
Ibid.
a critical thinker or just a passive individual who gracefully accepts all the information that are

being fed to him by either the mass media, his social peers, or even his own family, and as Jeffry

Ocay have stated also in his work Technology, Technological Domination, and the Great

Refusal: Marcuse’s Critique of the Advanced Industrial Society , Marcuse saw the existing society

as pathological and therefore it needs to be diagnosed and remedied, 3 but to be clear, Marcuse

was not really pointing out that the primordial problem in a technological society that we have

as of today is only the individual himself but rather he does not blame the individual of lacking

the capability to create truths for himself or even criticize the society he is living in, because in

the first place, at the moment an individual is born in this society, his rights to goods and

services and even his freedom are already pre-determined by the state and the society which

he is living in, therefore, it implies that every man living in this pre-established society are

already have been organized and categorized in various positions and conditions in which the

fate of the individual is not merely in his hands but rather is always conditioned and anchored

to what the government, school and society says and as Jeffry Ocay again have also stated in his

another journal entitled Heidegger, Hegel, Marx: Marcuse and the Theory of Historicity, that the

modern society is a pathological society whose rules, most often but not necessarily, imply

control and domination.4

We have now both perceived that there are two problems prevailing in our

contemporary society today, the problem of uncritical thinking of the individual and the

problem of organization, pacification and repression that is being imposed upon to the

3
Ocay, Jeffry. "Technology, Technological Domination,and the Great Refusal:Marcuse’s Critique of the
Advanced Industrial Society." Kritike, 2010: 54-78 : 1.
4
Ocay, Jeffry. "Heidegger, Hegel, Marx:Marcuse and the Theory of Historicity." Kritike, 2008: 46-64 : 1.
Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man, XV.
individuals through several and various ways such as the control of information through mass

media, the conditioned and controlled distribution of resources such as good and serves that is

embedded within the economic system of Capitalism, the bureaucracy within the several

institutions which is characterized as a form of system that is complex and restricts the people

from achieving its rightful share to the commodities that are being produced in the society and

most of all, and as again as stated by Jeffrey Ocay in his another work, Eroticizing Marx,

Revolutionizing Freud: Marcuse’s Psychoanalytic Turn ,Marcuse saw that the capitalist society

had developed a technique that effectively dissolves “opposition” in the society and reduces

the individuals into acquiescence or even complicity. 5

Freedom, Happiness and Liberation can be still achieved according to Marcuse,

“Transcendence beyond the established conditions (of thought and action) presupposes

transcendence within these conditions”.6 Therefore, it implies that the only way we can liberate

ourselves from the established conditions in our society is for us to free ourselves from the

prevailing norms, practices and social conditions that we would like always to apprehend as

something we cannot live without or which Marcuse calls the “False needs”, 7 Liberating

ourselves from these false needs would surely ensure the survival of the legitimate rational use

of reason and not its contrary, which is the irrational use of reason.

5
Ocay, Jeffry. "Eroticizing Marx, Revolutionizing Freud: Marcuse’s Psychoanalytic Turn." Kritike, 2009: 10-
23: 2.
6
Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man ,227.
7
Ibid., 7.
 In the early parts of the movie God’s Not Dead 2, we can already see the very same

concepts of Marcuse in One-Dimensional Man which includes irrational organization, force

integration and extensive pacification being imposed upon the characters. Grace who was a

school teacher and also at the same time a hardcore believer of Christian faith was being forced

to submit to the demands of the school board to refrain and refute her statement regarding her

answer to one of her students namely, Brooke, and apologize for her actions and alleged

misconduct by violating the federal law. This in fact the very exact thing which Marcuse is

largely pointing out in the contemporary society today, which he characterizes as something

both oppressive and promotes repression upon the ideas and beliefs of its people.

The first step of forceful integration began when the school tries to initiate a talk with Grace

and is trying to convince her to go away with her beliefs and never again talk about anything

about Jesus, this kind of act by the school board implies that it does not care about the general

welfare of its people and even its students especially Brooke whom we have also seen later in

the movie where she was also called upon in a meeting with the principal and commanded her

also to take no actions and just remain quiet about the incident. This implies the justice system

is flawed and that it entails to protect and serve only the rights of the majority especially the

rich, the powerful and the influential and we can already say here that the justice system being

shown into the movie is how American constitution is full of complexities that ordinary persons

with no legalistic background does not stand a chance in any part of the institutions that we

have today in our society.

The second point in which I would like to raise where we can see the ideas of Marcuse being

reflected upon in the movie is when Grace was purely indefensible, clueless, confused and does

not have a single idea what kind of law she violated because in her part, she only have done her

duty as a teacher and that is to teach her students with the knowledge that they are supposed

to know and have also answered the question of Brooke with accordance and support not only

with the basis of the Scriptures itself but also with the historical basis that of Gandhi and

Luther. The moment when the school board summoned her and asks her if she think she did

anything wrong, she instantaneously replied that she has no knowledge or any idea that her

actions regarding on answering the student is already a violation of the federal law. This is the

situation where it manifests the same thing about how Marcuse is trying the contemporary

technological society that we have today as a society that is perplex, complex and possesses the

quality of being a bureaucratic society.

The bureaucracy which is very highlighted in the movie, tells us that people will be

defenceless and vulnerable that may or may not harm their rights as part of the state or even as

human being, and we can see that when Grace having no formal educational background on

matters of the state law and federal law was already in the state of anxiety and being afraid of

what might happen to her. What is more surprisingly sad is that, when one of the meetings with

the school board, after she already got herself a lawyer that would represent was that, the

lawyer himself is also encouraging Grace to denounce her faith on God and forced her to just

accept the demands of the school board so she can come back again to her normal life and

teach again.
This is for me talks about how Marcuse is trying to criticize the “normal life” that each people in

a society, when the word “normal” acts only as an image or glass set up to cover the problems,

the oppressions, the silencing of the truths that each person has to say, the replacement of

beliefs and ideas of every individuals with the social norms, pre-established truths and ideas

created by the society, the pre-conditioning of the minds of the individuals and most of all, the

dissolution of the freedom and the absence of the right to criticize the society and the whole

manner of how we live as of today.

I would also like to point out in the very first scene of the movie where Brooke is trying to catch

the attention of her parents and asked them to bring her to school then suddenly her parents

replied that they cannot take her to school because they have to go to their respective

appointments and meetings.

This is the scene where we can lay off the kind of environment we have today, an environment

in which people are now being always preoccupied with their work and the high demands of

their work such as time, resources and energy put the relationships of the people in jeopardy,

we can see here specifically where Brooke is already lacking the attention, love and care of her

parents especially the time when she needs it most after her brother had just passed away.

This situation which was very highlighted in the movie acts as a warning and the perfect

representation of how Marcuse views the “technological society”, that this “technological

society” is comprised of individuals who are forced to work endlessly and exhaustively in order

to sustain their daily needs such as enough food, basic clothing and a simple house to live on.

This society today that we are living in, is a kind of society where individuals are made to
believe that working for companies, being professionals such as lawyers, doctors, and even

teachers can help you maintain your “normal life” but as a matter of fact this offer being made

to us by the different institutions in our society is full of futility and illusion, as we can see in the

movie, the lifestyle of Brooke and his family is seemingly wealthy but the parents of Brooke are

still preoccupied with the notion that they should still earn more and increase the amount of

money inside their coffers, this attitude being shown by Brooke’s parents basically constitutes

the so-called “false needs” of Marcuse, wherein people are drive to pursue things that are not

anymore necessary but rather is already in a form of waste and excess and the basic examples

of these are when we see Brooke’s parents having two cars in a family wherein there is only 3

of them since his brother died, this kind of luxurious living being shown in the movie is the

overall representation of how every individual in our society is acting, wherein all of us are not

aspiring for what is necessary but we are desiring for what is above necessary.

The movie however does not just represent negative aspects of what Marcuse have just

mentioned, but in the later parts of the movie we can see already what kind of liberation,

freedom and happiness Marcuse wanted for every individual living in a society, and that is

when Grace stood up for what she think is right and defended her belief despite of all the

contradictions, oppositions and criticism that she is hearing and taking, this is the kind of

adherence to the truth that Marcuse desires for all individuals to follow wherein we will be able

to transcend all the social categories imposed to us and create our own variable truths.
Bibliography:

Primary Source:

Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. New York: Beacon Press, 1991.

Secondary Sources:

Ocay, Jeffry. "Eroticizing Marx, Revolutionizing Freud: Marcuse’s Psychoanalytic Turn."

Kritike, 2009: 10-23.
Ocay, Jeffry. "Heidegger, Hegel, Marx:Marcuse and the Theory of Historicity." Kritike, 2008:
46-64.
Ocay, Jeffry. "Technology, Technological Domination,and the Great Refusal:Marcuse’s
Critique of the Advanced Industrial Society." Kritike, 2010: 54-78.