Herbert Marcuse owes his notoriety primarily to the loud echoes evoked by his words among American and European student militants; he is in danger of becoming their first victim as is the wont of fashionable men and ideas.
But the real interest of his intellectual approach lies elsewhere, in his unceasing and relentless efforts to criticize advanced industrial societies which he judges to be repressive; to explain the mechanisms through which this repression is internalized, thus blocking any perspective allowing for radical change; and to found a new type of industrial society, compatible with, and favourable to, the “liberation” of man.
This paper retraces the main lines of this intellectual development, stressing particularly its philosophical foundations and its innovations with respect to the sources from which it is derived.