Andrew Feenberg, The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing

In his new book, The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Nature and Revolution in Marcuse’s Philosophy of Praxis (2023), Andrew Feenberg offers a critical reconstruction of the latter’s oeuvre that brings into focus the topicality and poignancy of his thinking. To this end, he examines significant aspects of Marcuse’s writings in an effort to determine the philosophical foundations and pioneering perspectives of his thought. He contends that Marcuse’s philosophy is now more relevant than ever because it profoundly critiques science and technology and urgently advocates the protection of nature from their destructive consequences. It calls into question the operationality and efficiency of control and monitoring, which are becoming more and more prevalent today. In this regard, as Feenberg argues, Marcuse’s approach is largely predicated on a rehabilitation of the everyday experience inspired by phenomenology, on the principle of potentiality highlighted by Aristotle and Hegel, and on Freud’s conceptions of Eros and the death drive, as well as his theory of the imagination. Marcuse endeavored to ascertain more precisely how existence is historically and socially situated and how a transformative practice may emerge.

rejection of its structure of domination, remains highly relevant in the present, a time characterized by multiple crises and wars.This is because it advocates searching for profound solutions that overcome existing problems and make it possible to imagine a society not marked by domination and the destruction of the natural environment.
In his new book, The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Nature and Revolution in Marcuse's Philosophy of Praxis (2023), Andrew Feenberg, a student of Marcuse's at the University of California in San Diego in the 1960s who has devoted himself to the close study of Marcuse's work over the years, offers a critical reconstruction of the latter's oeuvre that brings into focus the topicality and poignancy of his thinking.To this end, he examines significant aspects of Marcuse's writings in an effort to determine the philosophical foundations and pioneering perspectives of his thought.His intention is not to present an overall account, as provided by Kellner (1984) in Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism, but rather to discuss the central features of Marcuse's critical theory.Feenberg is a formidable authority on the tradition of Western Marxism that began with Lukács and Gramsci, and through his numerous books, including his critical engagement with Marcuse, he has developed, elaborated and systematized a critical philosophy of technology and the technosystem (cf.Feenberg, 2017).
Feenberg contends that Marcuse's philosophy is now more relevant than ever because it profoundly critiques science and technology and urgently advocates the protection of nature from their destructive consequences.It calls into question the operationality and efficiency of control and monitoring, which are becoming more and more prevalent today.In this regard, as Feenberg argues, Marcuse's approach is largely predicated on a rehabilitation of the everyday experience inspired by phenomenology, on the principle of potentiality highlighted by Aristotle and Hegel, and on Freud's conceptions of Eros and the death drive, as well as his theory of the imagination (pp.xiiff.).Marcuse endeavored to ascertain more precisely how existence is historically and socially situated and how a transformative practice may emerge.Marx, whom he always held in high regard, never developed a complex understanding of human subjectivity.
In the first chapter, Feenberg reminisces about Marcuse as his philosophical teacher, as a diagnostician of the present, and as a political activist with whom he spent May '68 in Paris (pp.1ff.).Marcuse interpreted the students' revolt as a radical challenge to and rejection of advanced capitalism, in which the repressive technological infrastructure has produced a one-dimensional society.However, in his eyes, the existential protests held traces of negativity and the prefiguration of a non-repressive future (p.10).Unlike Max Horkheimer or Theodor W. Adorno, he never abandoned the hope he had for revolutionary change.Feenberg (p. 14) concludes: 'The obstinate refusal of intellectual compromise characterizes his whole life and work, despite so many unfavorable circumstances.' In the second chapter, he goes on to analyze Marcuse's relationship to Marx in greater detail.His close study of Husserl's phenomenology and Heidegger's Daseinsanalysis led Marcuse to develop an existentialist interpretation of Marx, which defines history as a transforming practice.Marcuse ontologizes materialist thought and materializes phenomenology.Before Feenberg, this point had already been made by Alfred Schmidt (Marcuse and Schmidt, 1973).For example, Marcuse uses the notions of lifeworld and worldhood to refresh and extend Marxian thought (pp.27ff.).Accordingly, the lifeworld holds 'unpurged, unmutilated experience' (Marcuse,according to Feenberg,p. 30), which invariably contains potentialities that transcend what is given.However, as Feenberg posits, modern science, centered as it is on Galileo, is built on idealizations of concrete experiences in the lifeworld, as Husserl has demonstrated.Its naturalism embodies a restricted mode of experience.
Arguing against the idealism of Husserl, Marcuse, in his reading of Marx's economicphilosophical manuscripts, asserts that human labor represents the constitutive subjectivity of capitalist society (p.37).'Meanings' are found not only in the mind, but in human practices and their objects.Feenberg shows that Heidegger's concept of experience helps Marcuse to bring forth the idea that the world does not consist of isolated facts but is structured and arranged by enacted meaning (pp.50f.).It is life, according to Marcuse, that gives rise to a world understood as the unity of organism and environment (p.53).The individual needs to grasp his or her unique position in relation to the environment, his or her fundamental situation, and embrace the challenges associated with it.Feenberg (pp.73ff.)notes that Marcuse's phenomenological approach makes a compelling case for the argument that the meanings held by nature have emerged in practices, both historically and socially.In capitalism, nature is either a resource or a threat.Yet this, Marcuse argues, is not the limit of its potentiality.
In the third chapter, Feenberg (pp. 76ff.)shows that Hegel's philosophy allowed Marcuse to determine potentialities as real possibilities anchored in the tensions and contradictions of the lifeworld of practical subjects.'Potentiality is real even in its unrealized condition' (p.85).It is in the concrete, sensual doing that immanent, unrealized potentialities of history and society can be realized.
When this potential is recognized, social transformation is achievable.For example, according to Marcuse, the New Left was characterized by a fresh sensibility anchored in the aesthetic imagination.'An "aesthetic Lebenswelt" shapes a "new sensibility".Under this horizon, the senses anticipate liberating possibilities' (p.93).Marcuse contends that a rational society would encourage the subject to unleash his or her potentialities in order to discover and harness the potentialities of the existing state of the world (p.99).This, he argues, is the expression of reason as human essence.What Marcuse also sees at work here is the affirmative life force that Freud labeled Eros.In Marcuse's view, it is a source of rationality (cp.Münster, 2022: 68ff.).It is not superior arguments or unrestricted communication that produce rationality but only the erotic dimension of human nature, implying solidarity, that leads to rational exchange in democracy, where arguments can subsequently generate a communicative force (p.106).
In the fourth chapter, Feenberg (pp.109ff.)takes a closer look at the politics of Eros in Marcuse's oeuvre.The latter highlights not only the life drive, striving to create larger units out of fragments, but also the death drive invoked by Freud, which seeks a return to inorganic matter.Marcuse is able to transcend the naturalism of Freudian drive theory because he proceeds from Marx's historical perspective.At the same time, he manages to move beyond the rationalist conception of the proletariat put forward by Marx, arguing that people are determined not only by knowledge and insight but primarily by their desire.'Historicizing Freud's reality principle is therefore the key to Marcuse's synthesis ' (p. 114).He demonstrates that instincts are shaped historically and socially.Capitalism molds them to suit its needs.Feenberg establishes that Marcuse does not only see Eros and Thanatos at work in the psyche but that they also structure the lifeworld, permeating it both affectively and emotionally.
While beauty appeals to the life drive, technology unleashes a destructive force in a society built on competition and contest, because it results in control and the potential self-destruction of humanity.Instrumental reason is closely tied to the death drive.Feenberg (p. 125) observes that Marcuse strives for 'a more harmonious technical relation to the potentialities of nature that favor human life'.Towards the end of his life, Marcuse perceived a resurgence of the life drive at work in the emerging environmental movement (p.127).
Next, in the fifth chapter, Feenberg (pp. 131ff.)establishes that science and technology are not neutral for Marcuse but are embedded in the capitalist economy.They contribute to social domination and legitimize the prevailing society.Technological rationality replaces normative rationality because every form of injustice is transformed into a problem to be solved (p.141).In this way, science links the domination over nature to the domination over man (p.148).It views the world not as consisting of elements of new potentialities that can be developed, but as a reservoir of resources appropriated by the industrial system in order to turn a profit (p.149).'The capitalist project is prediction and control, the reduction of the real to fungible stuff available for exploitation and commodification' (p.158).
Feenberg illustrates that Marcuse adheres closely to Husserl and Heidegger in his critique of the technical system of capitalism as well.This is most evident in his diagnosis of the one-dimensional society in which everything is quantified and manipulated by technological means.In his view, Marcuse assumes that a non-capitalist society is capable of devising a new form of technology provided that a different relationship to nature is lived within it.Clearly, Marcuse envisioned a conception of reason that can discern and develop potentialities.
Feenberg expands on this discussion in the sixth chapter (pp.166ff.).Marcuse demanded that nature should be regarded as an independent subject (p.169).In the everyday perception of nature, for instance, we perceive its aesthetic qualities, but these are negated by science.However, these potentialities are articulated in art and philosophy (p.171).Thus, it is suggested, sensual-erotic worlds emerge that defy the logic of domination (p.175).A new science and technology would not regard nature as raw material to be manipulated but would instead cultivate its potentialities.The project of domination would be replaced by one that served erotic, life-affirming values (p.177).
In Marcuse's view, the New Left embodied an aesthetic relationship to nature that set the stage for a new science and technology.In a technological society, technological change would imply fundamental social change.Feenberg believes that Marcuse provides the normative basis for a critique of the capitalist system that remains fundamental to this day (p.214).For this reason, his approach is of great relevance for the manifold struggles in the present against today's form of surveillance capitalism and against the climate catastrophe.
In the closing chapter of the book, Feenberg presents a résumé of his argument (pp.216ff.).According to the author, Marcuse has created a phenomenologically oriented Marxism that prioritizes life-world experience.The latter gains an 'ontological status' (p.216).Only by recognizing the implicit ontology in his work is it possible, so says Feenberg, to do justice to his philosophy and to grasp its relevance for the present.It contains a radical critique of existing society as well as the hope of overcoming it.
Andrew Feenberg has written a systematizing, multi-layered, and highly illuminating book on the oeuvre produced by Herbert Marcuse, impressively demonstrating its currency and relevance to the problems and struggles of the present.He works out that Marcuse not only stood in the tradition of Marx and Freud, but also engaged in a continuous dialogue with Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger.This allowed him to renew, expand, and reinterpret Marx's ideas and social critique.Feenberg successfully demonstrates the continuity and originality that can be encountered in Marcuse's thinking.On reading Feenberg, readers also come to appreciate what is lost when this radical critique of the existing is substituted by normative idealism and communicative formalism, as is often the case with Habermas and some of his students.The acceptance of liberal capitalism defuses critique and frequently blunts it.
In his account, Feenberg has rightfully chosen particular points of focus.The aesthetic dimension and the central role of the imagination for Marcuse might have been examined in greater depth by elaborating on the significance of Friedrich Schiller for Marcuse's work.Rancière (2010) also ties in with Schiller in his aesthetics of dissensus.He determines the aesthetic form as dissensual to everyday experiences and develops the position of the emancipated spectator.Though Rancière is reluctant to admit his affinity to Marcuse, he likewise implicitly reveals the importance and relevance of Marcuse's conception of aesthetics today.
Moreover, Marcuse's reception of Freud's drive theory might have been discussed in the context of the advancements in psychoanalysis made by Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan (cp.Allen, 2021).Both uphold the death drive, while expressing a far more pessimistic view than Marcuse regarding the development of a free, just, and peaceful society.