Heidegger and Marcuse

First published in 2005. Herbert Marcuse was Martin Heidegger’s most famous student. He claimed to have left existentialism behind in 1933 when Heidegger was declared first Nazi rector of Freiburg University and Marcuse fled into exile.The contentious relations between these two thinkers reflected the split in twentieth-century continental philosophy between exist- entialism and Marxism. But Andrew Feenberg’s careful study of Heidegger’s early lectures, as well as of previously unpublished work by Marcuse, suggests that the famous student remained closer than he cared to admit to the even more famous teacher. Heidegger and Marcuse examines for the first time Marcuse’s remarkable attemptsin his early and late work to bridge the gap between existentialism and Marxism in a radical critical theory.

'This is a book of many virtues. It undertakes the conversation that the later Heidegger was too haughty and the mature Marcuse too disappointed to initiate. In light of this conversation, both Heidegger and Marcuse scholars will be provoked to take a deeper and more fruitful approach to these two giants of twentieth century philosophy. More important still, the book's brilliant readings of Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger, and Marcuse give new resonance to Feenberg's own work and open up new avenues for his extraordinarily circumspect and incisive social philosophy.' – Albert Borgmann, University of Montana, USA 'Feenberg's fine-grained and masterly intellectual historiography will be indispensible in further dicussions of Marcuse.' – Topia, 'This is a book of many virtues. It undertakes the conversation that the later Heidegger was too haughty and the mature Marcuse too disappointed to initiate. In light of this conversation, both Heidegger and Marcuse scholars will be provoked to take a deeper and more fruitful approach to these two giants of twentieth century philosophy. More important still, the book's brilliant readings of Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger, and Marcuse give new resonance to Feenberg's own work and open up new avenues for his extraordinarily circumspect and incisive social philosophy.' – Albert Borgmann, University of Montana, USA'Feenberg's fine-grained and masterly intellectual historiography will be indispensible in further dicussions of Marcuse.' – Topia

Andrew Feenberg is the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University.