Liberation and Alternative Vision
The important feature of human life is its fundamentally dialogical character. Generally, we become fully human agents, capable of understanding ourselves and therefore defining our identity through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression. Resisting our own habitual modes of perception is to stop taking a stand on whether things are good, bad or indifferent and to recognize our irrevocable intimacy with all things. According to Marcuse, the privileges and autonomy which were important in the beginning and earlier stages of industrial society translates to a higher stage of the society today (1). In reference to Marcuse, Roszak and Horkheimer, this paper hopes to offer their contributions on liberation and alternative vision. Focusing on a few of their key ideas, the paper will integrate the authors in a discussion of how they develop an understanding of ourselves and our relation to the society that is liberating.
From the early formulation of critical theory, there emanates a notion of rationality that is rooted in social processes while illuminating the perception of cultural knowledge and communication as viewed by Marcuse, Horkheimer and Roszak. Their original contests have been expanded and radicalized by the postmodern critique with respect to the manipulative character of media-produced culture. In agreement, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Roszak argue that the enlightenment promise of reason and freedom that had been a hallmark of modernity has become transformed into unreason and domination throughout modern mass societies whether capitalist or socialist (Marcuse 55; Horkheimer 3). On Liberation, the three also argue that both inner and outer natures are suppressed and divided by crisis-prone modern capitalist social system. On his part, Herbert Marcuse selects themes and ideas from Freud and Marx to develop his ideals (Marcuse 4).
On the alternative reason, Marcuse notes the prominence of what he describes as instrumental reason which provides an efficient means to reach social goals that are themselves not subject to critical examination of their long-term consequences. He further notes the tendency to reduce the environment and humans to factors of production in the economic system and the linkage of science with specific economic and political interests (Marcuse 44). In this case, technology and science are applied not to serve their historic promise of liberating humans from the limitations of a short, nasty and brutish condition, but serve the imperatives of an ever-expanding economy. Instead of providing the material condition through which human beings could freely and self-consciously (democratically) construct their own science, history and technology, technology and science are increasingly instrumentalities for achieving the purpose of the economic system.
In contrast, the social analysis of contemporary times demands recognition of what was referred to as the dialectic of enlightenment by Horkheimer and Roszak (Horkheimer 22). Marcuse’s critiques focus on the political, social, psychological and epistemological consequences of advanced industrial societies. Nevertheless, having noted that aesthetic form preserves the higher truth and alternative vision, Marcuse champions form as essential to art’s revolutionary powers. He insists that art must remain alienated from the established society while attaching anti-art as capitulating to the words, sounds and sights of the very reality it wishes to overthrow. For Marcuse, sexual freedom and love are the routes to social transformation. He further argues that the traditional conceptions of human freedom have been rendered obsolete by the new development and liberation (Marcuse 94).
Unlike Marcuse, Roszak and Horkheimer focus on the problems for the male child in state capitalist families. In general, women are the mysterious representation of helplessness and irresistibility (Roszak 275). The mother provides a refuge from the father’s authority and her unconditional love is a source of emotional sustenance that provides the child with a vision of an alternative. Marcuse on the other hand believes that the feminine principle based on the promise of joy of the end of violence is the foundation for emancipation of both men and women.
For a long period, Marcuse tries to defend anew the classical high culture that the artistic revolutions of the twentieth century sought to break with. To some extent, Marcuse’s analysis falls behind the powerful sociological-aesthetic analysis of modern art by Roszak. Roszak argues that modernist, avant-garde art responds to the transformations in art and the aesthetic tendencies in the culture industry by divesting itself of traditional aura, coherent narrative structures and unitary and harmonious art (Roszak 288). Roszak further provides a sociological explanation of modernist revolts in terms of the dynamics of advanced capitalism while valorizing modern art simply because it refuses to be integrated in the contemporary society.
In relation to Roszak, and Horkheimer, Marcuse lacks historical specificity in his claim that authentic art is emancipatory because of its aesthetic form. Avoiding sociological analysis, Marcuse is seen to engage in ontological analysis and is preoccupied with the universal features and permanence of art. Despite his emphasis on alternative political visions, Marcuse has little to say about new forms of intimacy, cultural association and international relationships. Considering that he focuses more on the overcoming of sexual repression, his vision of liberation is rather questionable (Marcuse 25). In his view of social transformation, a mechanistic conception of the repressed unconscious and not people is critical. In this case, human agency is reduced to domination, while the repressed unconscious is linked to emancipation.
While Horkheimer embraces the Marxian vision, loses faith and finds it wanting, Marcuse embraces the alternative vision, finds it wanting and hopes to reconstruct it (Marcuse 10). Whereas Marcuse’s writings offer a new conception of radical politics, an enduring allegiance to the notion of a revolutionary subject inhibits his ability to develop fully the implications of his work.
According to Roszak and Horkheimer, instead of offering a path to human liberation, reason has been transformed into an irresistible force for new forms of domination (Horkheimer, Max 72). Always considered in the widest sense as the advance of thought, enlightenment has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. For his case, Marcuse emphasizes the distinction between technological rationality and individualistic rationality. He argues that social relations and humanity’s relationship to nature are understood as problems to be efficiently solved (Marcus 12). While this form of reason has led to unprecedented material gains, individuals are stripped of their individuality by the very rationality under which they live and not necessarily by external compulsion. In order for human beings to be free from domination, they have to be socially, politically and economically responsible. Choosing to be uninvolved or reactive will only further legitimize domination.
Horkheimer shares the view of Herbert Marcuse regarding the centrality of human practice in the composition and assessment of knowledge as well as the importance of adopting interdisciplinary approaches in order to understand society as a whole. In contrast, Marcuse argues that imagination has a considerable degree of independence from the given, hence surpassing what is present through the anticipation of a possible future (Marcuse 55). He further sets out to investigate why intensified progress seems to be bound up with intensified bondage by addressing the question of why revolutionary consciousness continuously fails to develop. In comparison to Roszak and Horkheimer, Marcuse explores the option of a free society in greater detail.
In a contemporary society, Marcuse maintains that freedom has become the freedom to repress the need for the liberation of human beings, a freedom manifest in the union of destruction and productivity (Marcuse 5). Arguably, Marcuse’s arguments weaken our efforts to appreciate ourselves and free ourselves from social oppression. On the other hand, Marcuse, Horkheimer and Roszak realized that transformation is objectively necessary but the need for it is not present among precisely those social strata that are defined as agents of transformation.
Unlike Marcuse and Horkheimer, Theodore Roszak has produced a follow-up to his making of a counter-culture. He explains why youthful dissent was less a reaction to unsavory politics than to the technocracy and the limitations of a civilization which is largely based on the idea of scientific, objective truth. He further argues that although the substance and range of those opportunities are socially determined, theoretically, the reduction of unrewarding human toil can result in the opportunity for more creative and satisfying human activities (Roszak 280). In this case, if automation is developed within the framework of a capitalist technological rationality, it may deepen the potential contradiction between automation and liberation.
In summary, Horkheimer, Roszak and Marcuse provide forms of historical and sociological analysis that point to the promise as well as to the limitations of the existing dominant rationality as it developed in the twentieth century. To a larger extent, the works of the three authors are directed at large-scale and long-term historical trends rather than micro or middle-range analyses. Their theoretical scaling makes it difficult to apply their ideas directly to meaningful empirical work or to ideal-typical constructions.
Works Cited
Horkheimer, Max. “Art and Mass Culture”: Critical Theory. New York: Continuum, 1992
Marcuse, Herbert. An- Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon-Press, 1973. Print.
Marcuse, Herbert. Eros & Civilization. Boston: Beacon-Press, 1966. Print.
Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial
Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 2012. Print.
Roszak, Theodore. Where the Wasteland Ends. New York, Anchor Books, 1973. Print.
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