Paradox
8th July 2005, 01:19
*I didn't get a response in the Learning Forum, so I decided to post my thread here, in hopes that someone would know about Marcuse and tell me about him. Plus, I'd like your opinions of him.*
A friend gave me a book which is a collection of essays and excerpts titled Critical Sociology. It was printed back in 1976 and it has some excerpts from Marx and Hegel, but the main focus is on pieces by people from the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Anyway, one of writers is Herbert Marcuse, and it includes an excerpt titled "Repressive Tolerance." I've heard the name Marcuse, and the title "Repressive Tolerance" before, but never read about him or his work. After reading a couple of pages from the excerpt I am interested in knowing who he was, what he did, and your opinions of him. From what I've read so far, his work seems very interesting and relevent. For example, take this quote:
Tolerance toward that which is radically evil now appears as good because it serves the cohesion of the whole on the road to affluence or more affluence. The toleration of the systematic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda, the release of destructiveness in aggressive driving, the recruitment for and training of special forces, the impotent and benevolent tolerance toward outright deception in merchandizing, waste, and planned obsolescence are not distortions and aberrations, they are the essence of a system which fosters tolerance as a means for perpetuating the struggle for existence and suppressing the alternatives. The authorities in education, morals, and psychology are vociferous against the increase in juvenile delinquency; they are less vociferous against the proud presentation, in word and deed and pictures, of ever more powerful missiles, rockets, bombs - the mature delinquency of a whole civilization.
According to a dialectical proposition it is the whole which determines the truth - not in the sense that the whole is prior or superior to its parts, but in the sense that its structure and function determine every particular condition and relation. Thus, within a repressive society, even progressive movements threaten to turn into their opposite to the degree to which they accept the rules of the game. To take a most controversial case: the exercise of political rights (such as voting, letter-writing to the press, to Senators, etc., protest-demonstrations with a priori renunciation of counter-violence) in a society of total administration serves to strengthen this administration by testifying to the existence of democratic liberties which, in reality, have changed their content and lost their effectiveness. In such a case, freedom (of opinion, of assembly, of speech) becomes an instrument for absolving servitude.
Your thoughts?
A friend gave me a book which is a collection of essays and excerpts titled Critical Sociology. It was printed back in 1976 and it has some excerpts from Marx and Hegel, but the main focus is on pieces by people from the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Anyway, one of writers is Herbert Marcuse, and it includes an excerpt titled "Repressive Tolerance." I've heard the name Marcuse, and the title "Repressive Tolerance" before, but never read about him or his work. After reading a couple of pages from the excerpt I am interested in knowing who he was, what he did, and your opinions of him. From what I've read so far, his work seems very interesting and relevent. For example, take this quote:
Tolerance toward that which is radically evil now appears as good because it serves the cohesion of the whole on the road to affluence or more affluence. The toleration of the systematic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda, the release of destructiveness in aggressive driving, the recruitment for and training of special forces, the impotent and benevolent tolerance toward outright deception in merchandizing, waste, and planned obsolescence are not distortions and aberrations, they are the essence of a system which fosters tolerance as a means for perpetuating the struggle for existence and suppressing the alternatives. The authorities in education, morals, and psychology are vociferous against the increase in juvenile delinquency; they are less vociferous against the proud presentation, in word and deed and pictures, of ever more powerful missiles, rockets, bombs - the mature delinquency of a whole civilization.
According to a dialectical proposition it is the whole which determines the truth - not in the sense that the whole is prior or superior to its parts, but in the sense that its structure and function determine every particular condition and relation. Thus, within a repressive society, even progressive movements threaten to turn into their opposite to the degree to which they accept the rules of the game. To take a most controversial case: the exercise of political rights (such as voting, letter-writing to the press, to Senators, etc., protest-demonstrations with a priori renunciation of counter-violence) in a society of total administration serves to strengthen this administration by testifying to the existence of democratic liberties which, in reality, have changed their content and lost their effectiveness. In such a case, freedom (of opinion, of assembly, of speech) becomes an instrument for absolving servitude.
Your thoughts?