A Study Of Marcuse’s Thought Of Individual Liberation

Human liberation is the theme of Marcuse’s thought.He takes care of man’s fate and existence by criticizing modernity.He explains human liberation from individual angle in order to find another liberation path.The main purpose of his thought is to reveal that how modern civilization leads to new predicament,and to solve the problem of "how can authentic existence and freedom be possible".In Marcuse’s theory of liberation,individual is neither isolated,nor Marx’s "realistic individual",but a historical subject who is universal,independent and radical.And he tried to design Eros liberation and aesthetic one from man’s internality,through reforming man’s instinct,consciousness and ideas.Marcuse’s thought of liberation initiated in the critical encounter between phenomenology and Marxism.In his early experience,Marcuse tried to save the crisis of Marxism with other theories.He was influenced by Lukacs’ theory and discarded it since Lukacs’ dialectics lacks historical dimensions,and turn to phenomenology.By synthesizing phenomenology and Marxism,Marcuse was bound to search radical historical individual and emancipatory factors from Heidegger’s Dasein and Hegel’s"self-consciousness".When Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 was published,Marcuse turn to study Marx’s early thought deeply.He analyzed the root of individual repression and the path of liberation by discussing radically Marx’s thought of alienated labour and private properties and their sublation.Marcuse’s theory of Eros liberation results from modifying Freud’s theory,which marks the establishment of Marcuse’s thought of individual liberation.Freud holds pessimistically that human civilization should pay the price for instinctive repression.Having a penetrating insight into the negativity of Freud’s dialectics of civilization,Marcuse changed it into a dialectics of liberation.Marcuse traced back to the origin of civilization and the model of individual existence by analyzing the sense of guilt and the images of Orpheus and Narcissus,and tried to transform modern civilization with Schiller’s aesthetics,and attempted to achieve political liberation by eliminating surplus repression and the conflicts between civilization and instincts.In addition,Marcuse linked Freud’s instinct theory and Marx’s thought of labour liberation,in order to transform both sexuality and labour into eros,to eliminate instincts’ internal antagonism,to release libido and to realize instinct liberation.By reshaping Freud’s theory of personality,Marcuse proposed that Eros liberation can be realized beyond the performance principle,and tried to re-construct non-repressive individual both from the aspects of social reality and individual consciousness to seek respectively the material preconditions and foundation of non-repressive civilization.Marcuse’s emancipatory theory was put into practice to criticize modemity.By criticizing the reality principles of Soviet Union,Marcuse pointed out that its dogmatic theory had deviated from Marxism and the bureaucratic powers in it had deprived individual rights,blocking human liberation.In the critique of American ideology,Marcuse proposed a one-dimensional theory to reveal the new forms of social control in capitalism and the trap of modernity by criticizing its technological rationality.In the course of meeting false needs,technology manipulates both the material and mental demands of individuals,deconstructing their lifestyles.After sharing the "benefits" of the system,man was assimilated into it,losing his dimensions of negativity,critique and transcendence in the way of one-dimensional thinking.Therefore,the precondition of liberation is to save the negative idea,and most importantly to establish a critical rationality and to cultivate a new type of man beyond one dimension and to build new technologies and a new society as well with the act of "Great Refusal".After the act failed,Marcuse maintained that it was essential to re-examine the subjective and objective conditions of liberation now that people had been completely alienated,their thought and the society had become one-dimensional,and turn from Eros liberation to artistic redemption.The society can hardly provide the material premise to motivate Eros liberation,only art forms which involve aesthetic reduction in the true existence can win the foundation of consciousness of liberation.In this case,Marcuse proposed the new sensibility,the autonomous art and aesthetic liberation,to rebuild the revolutionary dimension of art to overcome alienation by art revolution of aesthetic dimension,and that of realizing liberation by shaping new psychological-structure to achieve harmony between reason and sensibility.The main merits and demerits of Marcuse’s thought of individual liberation lies in the following:The theory not only expands the horizon of Marx’s theory,but also promotes man’s subjectivity,developing dialectics,is dialectical imagination.Moreover,its salient features of modernity rebellion and deconstruction includes philosophical discourses of deconstructionism,initiating the turn of post-modernism.Similarly,its perspective and criticism of modern civilization will have been inspiring the construction of modernization in our country,and the ways of life contrary to human nature such as false needs and alienated consumption discussed in it,will provide for contemporary people the solutions to difficulties.However,Marcuse over-emphasizes subjectivity,relying on internal factors like consciousness,instinct and aesthetic,ignoring objective ones such as economics,social interactions and cultural traditions.In this case,his theory of individual liberation alienates the reality of the individual and human perceptual activities,lacking the depth into history and the height of historicalmaterialism in principle.