WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.640 I want to start this deep dive with a kind of 00:00:03.640 --> 00:00:06.480 ghost story. Oh. Yeah, not the kind with, you 00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:09.220 know, chains rattling in an attic, but a ghost 00:00:09.220 --> 00:00:12.539 that haunts the way we live right now, this very 00:00:12.539 --> 00:00:15.259 second. Okay, I'm intrigued. It's a quote from 00:00:15.259 --> 00:00:19.140 the 1960s, but honestly, it feels like it could 00:00:19.140 --> 00:00:22.379 have been written five minutes ago about me scrolling 00:00:22.379 --> 00:00:24.780 through my phone. I have a feeling I know exactly 00:00:24.780 --> 00:00:26.579 which line you're thinking of. It is the one 00:00:26.579 --> 00:00:28.710 about the soul, isn't it? That's the one. The 00:00:28.710 --> 00:00:30.629 people recognize themselves in their commodities. 00:00:30.789 --> 00:00:33.429 They find their soul in their automobile, hi 00:00:33.429 --> 00:00:36.570 -fi set, split -level home, kitchen equipment. 00:00:36.810 --> 00:00:39.689 It is a devastating diagnosis. It's so concise. 00:00:39.770 --> 00:00:42.530 It implies that we don't just own objects. We 00:00:42.530 --> 00:00:44.969 become extensions of them. Our identity is outsourced 00:00:44.969 --> 00:00:48.310 to our possessions. It's brutal. And today, we're 00:00:48.310 --> 00:00:51.009 doing a deep dive into the man who wrote those 00:00:51.009 --> 00:00:54.759 words. A man who is, I mean, he's a walking contradiction. 00:00:55.159 --> 00:00:57.579 We are talking about Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse 00:00:57.579 --> 00:00:59.399 is certainly one of the most complex and I'd 00:00:59.399 --> 00:01:01.439 argue one of the most prescient figures of the 00:01:01.439 --> 00:01:03.840 20th century. He sits at the intersection of 00:01:03.840 --> 00:01:07.180 so many conflicting currents. Seriously. The 00:01:07.180 --> 00:01:08.859 more I looked into the source material, the more 00:01:08.859 --> 00:01:11.909 my head spun. We are talking about a German philosopher, 00:01:12.150 --> 00:01:14.349 a Jewish intellectual who had to flee the Nazis, 00:01:14.489 --> 00:01:16.609 right? Correct. He's part of that tragic intellectual 00:01:16.609 --> 00:01:19.890 exodus from Germany in the 1930s. But then, and 00:01:19.890 --> 00:01:21.450 this is the part that just sounds like fiction, 00:01:21.670 --> 00:01:24.170 he ends up working for the U .S. government's 00:01:24.170 --> 00:01:27.290 intelligence agency, the OSS, the precursor to 00:01:27.290 --> 00:01:30.250 the CIA. That's right. Analyzing the Third Reich. 00:01:30.409 --> 00:01:32.969 So you have a dedicated Marxist philosopher, 00:01:33.290 --> 00:01:36.090 a revolutionary thinker, on the payroll of the 00:01:36.090 --> 00:01:38.530 U .S. spy apparatus. It doesn't make any sense 00:01:38.530 --> 00:01:40.819 on the surface. That is just the first contradiction 00:01:40.819 --> 00:01:43.739 and, you know, perhaps the most ironic one. And 00:01:43.739 --> 00:01:46.680 then act three of his life, he's this classically 00:01:46.680 --> 00:01:49.659 trained elderly academic writing about, you know, 00:01:49.659 --> 00:01:53.719 heavy German philosophy. Hegel, Freud, Marx. 00:01:53.939 --> 00:01:56.760 The big three. And he somehow becomes the grandfather 00:01:56.760 --> 00:01:59.870 of the hippie counterculture. the hero of the 00:01:59.870 --> 00:02:02.849 student revolts of the 1960s. He's the guy bridging 00:02:02.849 --> 00:02:06.510 the gap between old European theory and American 00:02:06.510 --> 00:02:09.650 rock and roll rebellion. He really was the conduit. 00:02:09.650 --> 00:02:12.849 But while the biography is fascinating, the mission 00:02:12.849 --> 00:02:16.389 of this deep dive, as I see it, is to grapple 00:02:16.389 --> 00:02:18.800 with his central premise. And it's a terrifying 00:02:18.800 --> 00:02:22.280 idea. The problem of what he called comfortable 00:02:22.280 --> 00:02:25.180 unfreedom. Comfortable unfreedom. That's the 00:02:25.180 --> 00:02:27.199 hook right there. Because usually when we think 00:02:27.199 --> 00:02:29.360 of oppression, we think of misery. We think of 00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:32.719 chains, of poverty, of, you know, Orwell's boots 00:02:32.719 --> 00:02:35.599 stamping on a human face forever. Precisely. 00:02:35.599 --> 00:02:38.840 That's totalitarianism through terror. But Marcuse 00:02:38.840 --> 00:02:42.099 asked a harder, more subtle question. How does 00:02:42.099 --> 00:02:44.979 a society that seems free, that seems prosperous, 00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:47.879 actually trap its citizens? How does it happen 00:02:47.879 --> 00:02:50.199 without the jackboots? His premise was that in 00:02:50.199 --> 00:02:53.000 modern advanced industrial society, we have lost 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:55.439 the ability to think critically, or what he called 00:02:55.439 --> 00:02:58.240 negative thinking. And why? Because we are so 00:02:58.240 --> 00:03:00.240 comfortable. We are fed, clothed, and entertained 00:03:00.240 --> 00:03:02.659 so efficiently that we lose the will and maybe 00:03:02.659 --> 00:03:04.939 even the ability to demand anything fundamentally 00:03:04.939 --> 00:03:07.900 different. So today, we're going to dissect that. 00:03:07.979 --> 00:03:09.719 We're going to look at the concept of the one 00:03:09.719 --> 00:03:12.460 -dimensional man. We're going to tackle his incredibly 00:03:12.460 --> 00:03:14.740 controversial ideas on repressive tolerance, 00:03:15.060 --> 00:03:18.039 which, I mean, it explains so much of the debate 00:03:18.039 --> 00:03:20.020 we see on college campuses today. It absolutely 00:03:20.020 --> 00:03:22.400 does. It's the intellectual root of it. And we'll 00:03:22.400 --> 00:03:24.800 see why he thought the working class, the traditional 00:03:24.800 --> 00:03:27.139 heroes of the Marxist story, had essentially 00:03:27.139 --> 00:03:29.900 sold out for creature comforts. It is a heavy 00:03:29.900 --> 00:03:33.580 stack of concepts. Marx, Freud, Hegel. But they 00:03:33.580 --> 00:03:36.319 all point to that one nagging question he leaves 00:03:36.319 --> 00:03:40.150 us with. Is your happiness real? Or is it just 00:03:40.150 --> 00:03:42.710 a beautifully engineered way to keep you quiet? 00:03:42.909 --> 00:03:46.129 Let's rewind. To understand how a guy ends up 00:03:46.129 --> 00:03:48.370 basically predicting our obsession with smartphones 00:03:48.370 --> 00:03:52.110 back in 1964, we have to see where he came from. 00:03:52.270 --> 00:03:54.430 You have to start in Berlin, turn of the century. 00:03:54.729 --> 00:03:58.030 Herbert Marcuse was born in 1898. And the sources 00:03:58.030 --> 00:04:00.129 paint a picture of a very specific type of upbringing, 00:04:00.310 --> 00:04:02.189 right? This wasn't a story of poverty and struggle. 00:04:02.569 --> 00:04:04.870 No, not at all. He came from an upper middle 00:04:04.870 --> 00:04:07.490 class Jewish family in Scharlenburg, a prosperous 00:04:07.490 --> 00:04:10.169 district of Berlin. His father was a textile 00:04:10.169 --> 00:04:12.710 merchant. This was a comfortable bourgeois existence. 00:04:13.189 --> 00:04:15.969 He was well integrated, assimilated into German 00:04:15.969 --> 00:04:18.410 society. He wasn't an outsider looking in. He 00:04:18.410 --> 00:04:20.649 was part of the fabric of that world. And then 00:04:20.649 --> 00:04:23.189 the pivotal moment for his entire generation 00:04:23.189 --> 00:04:27.259 arrives. World War I. The cataclysm. The end 00:04:27.259 --> 00:04:29.759 of the old European order. And this is where 00:04:29.759 --> 00:04:32.019 I found the first detail that really stuck with 00:04:32.019 --> 00:04:35.680 me. He gets drafted in 1916. Now, usually when 00:04:35.680 --> 00:04:38.680 we read about WWI writers or philosophers, we 00:04:38.680 --> 00:04:41.379 picture the trenches. We picture the mud and 00:04:41.379 --> 00:04:44.160 the horror of the Western Front. But Marcuse 00:04:44.160 --> 00:04:46.839 had a very different experience. He did. Because 00:04:46.839 --> 00:04:49.060 of his poor eyesight, he was deemed unfit for 00:04:49.060 --> 00:04:51.339 frontline combat. So instead of being sent to 00:04:51.339 --> 00:04:53.560 Verdun or the Somme, he spent his service in 00:04:53.560 --> 00:04:55.519 the horse stables in Berlin. In the stables. 00:04:55.639 --> 00:04:58.199 The future philosopher of the radical left spent 00:04:58.199 --> 00:05:01.379 the Great War shoveling. Well, tending to horses 00:05:01.379 --> 00:05:03.490 for the German army. It is a humble beginning 00:05:03.490 --> 00:05:06.209 for a revolutionary certainly, but there is a 00:05:06.209 --> 00:05:09.449 crucial distinction here. Because he was in Berlin 00:05:09.449 --> 00:05:12.810 and not in a trench in France, he was witnessing 00:05:12.810 --> 00:05:15.290 the collapse of the German home front firsthand. 00:05:15.670 --> 00:05:18.689 He saw the strikes, the food shortages, the growing 00:05:18.689 --> 00:05:21.449 discontent. He was at the political heart of 00:05:21.449 --> 00:05:24.290 the empire as it crumbled. And he managed to 00:05:24.290 --> 00:05:26.910 do something quite extraordinary. He actually 00:05:26.910 --> 00:05:29.410 secured permission to attend lectures at the 00:05:29.410 --> 00:05:31.810 University of Berlin while he was still on active 00:05:31.810 --> 00:05:35.029 duty. So, shovel manure by day, study high philosophy 00:05:35.029 --> 00:05:38.129 by night. Essentially. It speaks to his incredible 00:05:38.129 --> 00:05:40.810 intellectual drive, even as a young man. But 00:05:40.810 --> 00:05:43.370 it wasn't just books. As the war ended in 1918, 00:05:43.769 --> 00:05:46.910 Germany went into absolute chaos. The Kaiser 00:05:46.910 --> 00:05:49.649 abdicated, the monarchy collapsed, and there 00:05:49.649 --> 00:05:52.170 was this massive power vacuum. And Marcuse didn't 00:05:52.170 --> 00:05:53.790 just watch from the sidelines. Not at all. He 00:05:53.790 --> 00:05:55.829 joined a soldier's council. These were the revolutionary 00:05:55.829 --> 00:05:58.170 councils, right? Kind of modeled after the Soviets 00:05:58.170 --> 00:06:00.750 in Russia. Exactly, they were sparting up all 00:06:00.750 --> 00:06:03.430 over Germany. For a brief, chaotic moment, it 00:06:03.430 --> 00:06:05.350 looked like Germany might have a socialist revolution. 00:06:05.910 --> 00:06:09.089 This was the Spartacist uprising, led by figures 00:06:09.089 --> 00:06:12.149 like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. And 00:06:12.149 --> 00:06:14.610 Marcuse was there. He was a member of this council, 00:06:14.850 --> 00:06:17.170 participating in the attempt to reshape society 00:06:17.170 --> 00:06:19.819 from the ground up. But it failed. It failed 00:06:19.819 --> 00:06:22.600 brutally. The uprising was crushed by the Freikorp. 00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:25.800 These are right -wing paramilitaries, demobilized 00:06:25.800 --> 00:06:28.240 soldiers who were virulently anti -communist. 00:06:28.360 --> 00:06:30.660 And this is a key psychological moment for him. 00:06:30.759 --> 00:06:33.259 He saw a revolutionary door open, and then he 00:06:33.259 --> 00:06:35.600 saw it slam shut with extreme violence. So he 00:06:35.600 --> 00:06:37.480 learned a lesson there. A very harsh one. He 00:06:37.480 --> 00:06:40.000 saw that the old order was incredibly strong, 00:06:40.180 --> 00:06:42.480 strong enough to survive even a world war and 00:06:42.480 --> 00:06:45.279 a popular uprising. He became disillusioned with 00:06:45.279 --> 00:06:47.120 the Social Democratic Party, which he felt had 00:06:47.120 --> 00:06:49.379 betrayed the revolution. So the revolution is 00:06:49.379 --> 00:06:52.579 dead for now. He's disillusioned. He pivots back 00:06:52.579 --> 00:06:56.500 to what he knows, academia. Right. He leaves 00:06:56.500 --> 00:06:58.800 politics behind and goes to the University of 00:06:58.800 --> 00:07:02.459 Freiburg. He gets his Ph .D. in 1922, writing 00:07:02.459 --> 00:07:05.480 about the German artist novel. He tries to work 00:07:05.480 --> 00:07:07.740 in publishing in Berlin for a few years, but 00:07:07.740 --> 00:07:10.329 the pull of philosophy is just too strong. He 00:07:10.329 --> 00:07:13.370 returns to Freiburg in 1928 to write his habilitation. 00:07:13.569 --> 00:07:16.269 And the habilitation, that's the advanced postdoctoral 00:07:16.269 --> 00:07:18.089 qualification you need to become a professor 00:07:18.089 --> 00:07:19.870 in the German system, right? Exactly. It's a 00:07:19.870 --> 00:07:22.850 second, more substantial dissertation. And this 00:07:22.850 --> 00:07:25.529 is where he meets a giant. His advisor is Martin 00:07:25.529 --> 00:07:27.750 Heidegger. This is one of the most significant 00:07:27.750 --> 00:07:30.610 and, frankly, tragic relationships in modern 00:07:30.610 --> 00:07:32.910 philosophy. It really is. We need to unpack this 00:07:32.910 --> 00:07:34.649 because... Heidegger's a name that gets dropped 00:07:34.649 --> 00:07:37.389 a lot, but he's notoriously difficult to understand. 00:07:37.889 --> 00:07:40.170 What was Marcuse trying to do with him? What 00:07:40.170 --> 00:07:43.230 was the project? To put it as simply as possible, 00:07:43.410 --> 00:07:45.610 Marcuse was trying to bridge a huge gap. On one 00:07:45.610 --> 00:07:48.449 side, you had Marxism. Marxism is great at analyzing 00:07:48.449 --> 00:07:51.850 economics, class structures, historical forces, 00:07:52.110 --> 00:07:55.079 the big material world out there. But it can 00:07:55.079 --> 00:07:57.620 be a bit cold, can't it? It treats people as 00:07:57.620 --> 00:08:00.639 groups or classes. It's all about the proletariat, 00:08:00.639 --> 00:08:03.420 not about Bob and his anxieties. Exactly. On 00:08:03.420 --> 00:08:06.259 the other side, you had Heidegger. In 1927, he 00:08:06.259 --> 00:08:09.120 had just published his magnum opus, Being and 00:08:09.120 --> 00:08:12.740 Time. He was working on ontology, the study of 00:08:12.740 --> 00:08:16.019 being itself. He was asking these deeply personal, 00:08:16.220 --> 00:08:18.980 existential questions. What does it feel like 00:08:18.980 --> 00:08:21.100 to exist in the world? What is the nature of 00:08:21.100 --> 00:08:23.740 anxiety? How do we relate to our own finitude, 00:08:23.839 --> 00:08:27.100 our own death? So Marcuse is trying to mix the 00:08:27.100 --> 00:08:30.199 hard economics of Marx with the deep existential 00:08:30.199 --> 00:08:33.179 dread of Heidegger. Yes. He wanted to create 00:08:33.179 --> 00:08:35.980 a concrete philosophy. He felt that Marxism was 00:08:35.980 --> 00:08:38.460 missing a theory of the individual, of the lived 00:08:38.460 --> 00:08:40.919 experience of alienation. And he thought Heidegger's 00:08:40.919 --> 00:08:43.100 philosophy was too abstract, disconnected from 00:08:43.100 --> 00:08:45.580 the historical reality of capitalism. He wanted 00:08:45.580 --> 00:08:47.779 to understand how historical forces like capitalism 00:08:47.779 --> 00:08:50.440 actually feel on the inside of the human subject. 00:08:50.740 --> 00:08:52.899 To synthesize the political and the personal? 00:08:53.059 --> 00:08:55.620 A phenomenological Marxism is what some people 00:08:55.620 --> 00:08:57.779 call it. It was an incredibly ambitious, brilliant 00:08:57.779 --> 00:09:00.019 project. But we know how this ends. It's 1933. 00:09:00.720 --> 00:09:02.899 The year the Nazis take power. And Heidegger. 00:09:02.980 --> 00:09:04.919 Yeah. He doesn't just keep his head down. He 00:09:04.919 --> 00:09:07.779 doesn't just go along to get along. No. Martin 00:09:07.779 --> 00:09:11.039 Heidegger actively joins the Nazi party. He becomes 00:09:11.039 --> 00:09:13.279 the rector of the University of Freiburg under 00:09:13.279 --> 00:09:16.779 the Nazi regime and delivers a now infamous rectoral 00:09:16.779 --> 00:09:20.759 address praising the new state. I cannot imagine 00:09:20.759 --> 00:09:23.960 the sense of betrayal. You are a Jewish Marxist. 00:09:24.320 --> 00:09:27.500 And your mentor, the man whose philosophy you 00:09:27.500 --> 00:09:30.159 were trying to champion and build upon, puts 00:09:30.159 --> 00:09:32.620 on the swastika. It was a catastrophic break. 00:09:32.759 --> 00:09:34.820 For Marcuse, it wasn't just a political disagreement. 00:09:34.899 --> 00:09:37.019 It proved to him that Heidegger's philosophy, 00:09:37.240 --> 00:09:40.080 for all its talk of authenticity, had a fatal 00:09:40.080 --> 00:09:43.220 flaw. It could somehow lead to Nazism. He realized 00:09:43.220 --> 00:09:45.220 immediately that there was no place for him in 00:09:45.220 --> 00:09:47.159 the German university system. He could not be 00:09:47.159 --> 00:09:49.159 a professor under that regime. The door slammed 00:09:49.159 --> 00:09:51.860 shut again. And the synthesis he dreamed of was 00:09:51.860 --> 00:09:55.240 dead. At least in that form, he had to run. So 00:09:55.240 --> 00:09:57.100 this crisis leads him to his true intellectual 00:09:57.100 --> 00:09:59.720 home. He joins the Institute for Social Research, 00:09:59.940 --> 00:10:02.539 which we now know as the Frankfurt School. That's 00:10:02.539 --> 00:10:04.700 right. He connects with figures like Max Horkheimer 00:10:04.700 --> 00:10:07.100 and Theodor Adorno. This is the famous group. 00:10:07.399 --> 00:10:09.879 Let's define what they were doing. Because critical 00:10:09.879 --> 00:10:12.779 theory is a buzzword that gets thrown around 00:10:12.779 --> 00:10:15.539 a lot these days, often incorrectly. What did 00:10:15.539 --> 00:10:17.600 it mean to them in that moment? At its core, 00:10:17.720 --> 00:10:19.759 critical theory is a way of analyzing society 00:10:19.759 --> 00:10:22.340 that isn't satisfied with just describing how 00:10:22.340 --> 00:10:25.259 things work. It aims to critique the underlying 00:10:25.259 --> 00:10:27.679 power structures, whether that's capitalism, 00:10:28.039 --> 00:10:31.720 culture, the state, the family unit. with the 00:10:31.720 --> 00:10:34.659 explicit goal of human emancipation. So it's 00:10:34.659 --> 00:10:36.639 philosophy with a purpose. It's not just navel 00:10:36.639 --> 00:10:39.279 -gazing. Exactly. They were asking why, with 00:10:39.279 --> 00:10:41.419 all our technology and wealth, is humanity sinking 00:10:41.419 --> 00:10:43.600 into a new kind of barbarism? They were looking 00:10:43.600 --> 00:10:47.080 at the rise of fascism, of Nazism, of Stalinism, 00:10:47.179 --> 00:10:49.259 and trying to understand the deep psychological 00:10:49.259 --> 00:10:51.899 and social reasons for it. They were combining 00:10:51.899 --> 00:10:54.840 Marx with Freud, with sociology, with cultural 00:10:54.840 --> 00:10:57.039 analysis. So they are watching the Nazis rise, 00:10:57.259 --> 00:10:59.480 and they're using this theory to figure out why. 00:10:59.960 --> 00:11:02.179 But they can't do it from Frankfurt. No. They 00:11:02.179 --> 00:11:05.220 were incredibly smart. Horkheimer, the director, 00:11:05.460 --> 00:11:07.899 had moved their endowment to Holland in 1931 00:11:07.899 --> 00:11:10.740 just in case. They established a branch in Geneva. 00:11:10.980 --> 00:11:13.700 And eventually, like so many other brilliant 00:11:13.700 --> 00:11:16.600 intellectuals of that era, Marcuse emigrated 00:11:16.600 --> 00:11:19.679 to the United States in 1934. So he lands in 00:11:19.679 --> 00:11:21.960 New York. He's safe. He has a position at Columbia 00:11:21.960 --> 00:11:24.019 University for a bit, where the Institute is 00:11:24.019 --> 00:11:26.240 now based. But then World War II breaks out. 00:11:26.559 --> 00:11:28.379 And this leads to the chapter of his life that 00:11:28.379 --> 00:11:31.179 I still find the most surprising. The U .S. government 00:11:31.179 --> 00:11:33.139 hires him. It really speaks to the desperate 00:11:33.139 --> 00:11:35.399 pragmatism of the war effort, doesn't it? The 00:11:35.399 --> 00:11:37.659 enemy of my enemy is my friend. But think about 00:11:37.659 --> 00:11:40.139 the irony. He is a revolutionary Marxist. He 00:11:40.139 --> 00:11:41.919 believes capitalism is a system of domination. 00:11:42.419 --> 00:11:44.299 And he's working for the Office of Strategic 00:11:44.299 --> 00:11:48.019 Services, the OSS. which is the spy agency that 00:11:48.019 --> 00:11:50.000 eventually becomes the CIA. He wasn't just a 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:52.139 low -level clerk either. He started in the Office 00:11:52.139 --> 00:11:55.899 of War Information, or OWI, working on anti -Nazi 00:11:55.899 --> 00:11:59.259 propaganda projects. Then in 1943, he joins the 00:11:59.259 --> 00:12:02.080 OSS's Research and Analysis Branch. Right, and 00:12:02.080 --> 00:12:04.080 he becomes part of the Central European Section 00:12:04.080 --> 00:12:07.240 and rapidly becomes, according to the sources, 00:12:07.519 --> 00:12:10.559 the leading analyst on Germany. Leading analyst. 00:12:10.700 --> 00:12:13.700 That is a serious title for a refugee philosopher. 00:12:14.350 --> 00:12:16.750 What was he actually doing? He was reading everything. 00:12:17.169 --> 00:12:19.809 He was using his skills in critical theory to 00:12:19.809 --> 00:12:22.009 deconstruct the Third Reich for the U .S. military. 00:12:22.450 --> 00:12:25.509 He analyzed Nazi propaganda to understand its 00:12:25.509 --> 00:12:28.570 psychological effects. He analyzed economic reports 00:12:28.570 --> 00:12:31.070 to identify structural weaknesses in the German 00:12:31.070 --> 00:12:33.990 war machine. He wrote reports identifying different 00:12:33.990 --> 00:12:36.029 factions within the Nazi party and the German 00:12:36.029 --> 00:12:38.809 state. So he was using critical theory as a weapon 00:12:38.809 --> 00:12:41.700 of war? In a manner of speaking, yes. He was 00:12:41.700 --> 00:12:43.820 helping the U .S. understand its enemy not just 00:12:43.820 --> 00:12:46.379 as a military force, but as a political and social 00:12:46.379 --> 00:12:49.259 system. His reports, which were later compiled 00:12:49.259 --> 00:12:51.840 into a book called Secret Reports on Nazi Germany, 00:12:52.139 --> 00:12:54.820 showed just how deep his analysis went. And he 00:12:54.820 --> 00:12:57.039 stayed on even after the war. He worked for the 00:12:57.039 --> 00:13:00.200 State Department until 1951. He did. He became 00:13:00.200 --> 00:13:02.480 the head of the Central European Section, working 00:13:02.480 --> 00:13:05.179 on denazification. He was essentially writing 00:13:05.179 --> 00:13:07.399 the U .S. government's playbook on how to deal 00:13:07.399 --> 00:13:09.940 with post -war Germany. I wonder how that experience 00:13:09.940 --> 00:13:12.289 shaped him. Most philosophers live in the ivory 00:13:12.289 --> 00:13:15.549 tower. They deal with abstract concepts. Marcuse 00:13:15.549 --> 00:13:18.210 spent almost a decade inside the belly of the 00:13:18.210 --> 00:13:20.649 beast, the biggest, most powerful bureaucracy 00:13:20.649 --> 00:13:23.610 in the world. That is a crucial insight. He saw 00:13:23.610 --> 00:13:26.509 the rationality of administration up close. He 00:13:26.509 --> 00:13:28.750 saw how modern states, whether they're fascist, 00:13:28.750 --> 00:13:31.529 communist or democratic, manage their populations 00:13:31.529 --> 00:13:33.610 through bureaucracy, through data collection, 00:13:33.830 --> 00:13:36.129 through paperwork. When he later writes about 00:13:36.129 --> 00:13:38.669 how society administers the individual from cradle 00:13:38.669 --> 00:13:41.179 to grave, he isn't guessing. He's seen the memos. 00:13:41.179 --> 00:13:42.840 He's written some of them. It must have given 00:13:42.840 --> 00:13:45.519 a very different, very concrete understanding 00:13:45.519 --> 00:13:48.720 of state power. Absolutely. So he leaves the 00:13:48.720 --> 00:13:50.840 government in the early 50s. His first wife, 00:13:50.940 --> 00:13:54.139 Sophie, tragically passes away in 1951. He goes 00:13:54.139 --> 00:13:56.559 back to academia. He holds positions at Columbia, 00:13:56.799 --> 00:13:59.159 Harvard, Brandeis, and eventually UC San Diego. 00:13:59.419 --> 00:14:01.559 And this is where he writes the book that changes 00:14:01.559 --> 00:14:04.159 everything, One Dimensional Man, published in 00:14:04.159 --> 00:14:07.240 1964. This is his masterpiece, the culmination 00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:09.080 of everything he's learned from Weimar Germany, 00:14:09.259 --> 00:14:11.500 the Frankfurt School, and his time in the OSS. 00:14:11.700 --> 00:14:13.659 Okay, let's go back to that quote about the soul 00:14:13.659 --> 00:14:15.850 and the automobile. What is the core argument 00:14:15.850 --> 00:14:18.909 here? Because on the surface, having a car and 00:14:18.909 --> 00:14:22.250 a nice kitchen and a hi -fi set, it sounds good. 00:14:22.330 --> 00:14:24.690 If I have a dishwasher, I'm happy. Why is that 00:14:24.690 --> 00:14:27.379 a trap? Marquise would say that your happiness 00:14:27.379 --> 00:14:30.740 is real, but it is a euphoric unhappiness. Euphoric 00:14:30.740 --> 00:14:32.860 unhappiness. Explain that. It sounds like another 00:14:32.860 --> 00:14:34.779 one of his contradictions. His argument is that 00:14:34.779 --> 00:14:37.360 advanced industrial capitalism, especially in 00:14:37.360 --> 00:14:40.519 post -war America, has solved the basic material 00:14:40.519 --> 00:14:43.620 problems of existence for a huge number of people. 00:14:43.679 --> 00:14:46.500 It's incredibly productive. But in doing so, 00:14:46.519 --> 00:14:49.139 it has created a closed loop, a self -reinforcing 00:14:49.139 --> 00:14:52.019 system of control. He starts with the idea of 00:14:52.019 --> 00:14:54.360 false needs. What's the difference between a 00:14:54.360 --> 00:14:57.500 false need and a truth? A true need for him is 00:14:57.500 --> 00:15:00.200 a vital biological one. Nourishment, clothing, 00:15:00.460 --> 00:15:02.559 shelter. The basic requirements for survival. 00:15:02.960 --> 00:15:05.220 A false need, on the other hand, is a need that 00:15:05.220 --> 00:15:07.419 is superimposed on the individual by a particular 00:15:07.419 --> 00:15:09.960 social interest in their repression. So a need 00:15:09.960 --> 00:15:13.220 created by the system to keep itself going. Exactly. 00:15:13.399 --> 00:15:16.799 It's the need to relax in a specific way, to 00:15:16.799 --> 00:15:19.039 consume the latest entertainment, to have the 00:15:19.039 --> 00:15:22.039 newest gadget, to behave and consume in accordance 00:15:22.039 --> 00:15:25.159 with the advertisements. The system creates the 00:15:25.159 --> 00:15:27.720 need, say it, the need for a new smartphone every 00:15:27.720 --> 00:15:30.440 year, and then it graciously satisfies that need. 00:15:30.700 --> 00:15:33.600 And because the system satisfies that need, we 00:15:33.600 --> 00:15:35.799 feel grateful. We feel like it's working. We 00:15:35.799 --> 00:15:38.500 feel happy. We feel comfortable. We feel free. 00:15:39.019 --> 00:15:41.200 Because we can choose between an iPhone and an 00:15:41.200 --> 00:15:44.519 Android. But Marquis says this is a very limited 00:15:44.519 --> 00:15:46.879 kind of freedom. And because we are so comfortable, 00:15:47.039 --> 00:15:49.940 we lose the capacity for negative thinking. Now, 00:15:49.960 --> 00:15:52.419 negative thinking sounds like just being a pessimist. 00:15:52.419 --> 00:15:54.419 Oh, everything sucks. Yeah, it's a technical 00:15:54.419 --> 00:15:57.279 term from Hegelian dialectics. Negative thinking 00:15:57.279 --> 00:16:00.360 is the power of critique. It's the ability to 00:16:00.360 --> 00:16:03.399 say no, to recognize the contradiction between 00:16:03.399 --> 00:16:06.019 what is and what could be. It's the engine of 00:16:06.019 --> 00:16:08.139 critical reason that allows you to imagine a 00:16:08.139 --> 00:16:10.980 fundamentally different, better reality. So it's 00:16:10.980 --> 00:16:13.759 the power of imagination almost. In a way. And 00:16:13.759 --> 00:16:15.820 Marcuse's argument is that because the system 00:16:15.820 --> 00:16:19.019 delivers the goods, literally, we can no longer 00:16:19.019 --> 00:16:21.440 imagine a world that is qualitatively different. 00:16:21.539 --> 00:16:24.919 The gap between what is and what could be has 00:16:24.919 --> 00:16:27.460 closed. All of our problems are presented as 00:16:27.460 --> 00:16:29.179 technical problems that can be solved within 00:16:29.179 --> 00:16:31.279 the system, not problems of the system. We become 00:16:31.279 --> 00:16:34.279 one -dimensional. Exactly. This second dimension, 00:16:34.539 --> 00:16:36.799 the dimension of critique, of opposition, of 00:16:36.799 --> 00:16:39.840 transcendence, withers away. We become extensions 00:16:39.840 --> 00:16:43.080 of the objects we produce and consume. When he 00:16:43.080 --> 00:16:45.320 says people recognize themselves in their commodities, 00:16:45.539 --> 00:16:48.519 he means our very identity, our soul is defined 00:16:48.519 --> 00:16:51.320 by what we can buy. So if I try to rebel, the 00:16:51.320 --> 00:16:53.519 system just turns my rebellion into a new product 00:16:53.519 --> 00:16:56.399 to sell. Precisely. You see a movie about anti 00:16:56.399 --> 00:16:58.740 -corporate hackers, but you stream it on a mega 00:16:58.740 --> 00:17:01.419 corporations platform. You buy a ripped up pair 00:17:01.419 --> 00:17:04.700 of punk jeans from a luxury fashion brand. The 00:17:04.700 --> 00:17:06.920 system absorbs all opposition and sells it back 00:17:06.920 --> 00:17:09.039 to you as a style. This connects directly to 00:17:09.039 --> 00:17:11.380 his view on the working class, doesn't it? Because 00:17:11.380 --> 00:17:14.559 in classical Marxism, the workers, the proletariat, 00:17:14.700 --> 00:17:17.220 are supposed to be the heroes. They are the revolutionary 00:17:17.220 --> 00:17:19.779 agent who will overthrow capitalism. That was 00:17:19.779 --> 00:17:22.900 the orthodox view, yes. But Marcuse looked at 00:17:22.900 --> 00:17:25.299 the American worker in the 1950s and 60s and 00:17:25.299 --> 00:17:28.799 said, it's over. He declared the proletariat 00:17:28.799 --> 00:17:31.519 obsolete as a revolutionary force. Why? What 00:17:31.519 --> 00:17:33.859 happened to them? They had been integrated. The 00:17:33.859 --> 00:17:35.819 working class had the split -level homes and 00:17:35.819 --> 00:17:38.380 the hi -fi sets. They had something to lose. 00:17:38.660 --> 00:17:41.539 He argued that unions and labor parties had become 00:17:41.539 --> 00:17:44.059 bureaucratized. They were no longer organs of 00:17:44.059 --> 00:17:45.779 opposition, but had become part of the machine. 00:17:46.180 --> 00:17:48.960 They were negotiating for a slightly bigger slice 00:17:48.960 --> 00:17:51.619 of the capitalist pie, not trying to bake a different 00:17:51.619 --> 00:17:54.680 kind of cake. Comfort is control. They are terrified 00:17:54.680 --> 00:17:57.140 of losing their jobs to automation and technology, 00:17:57.359 --> 00:18:00.279 so they conform. They don't rock the boat. Exactly. 00:18:00.539 --> 00:18:02.660 And speaking of technology, that's another key 00:18:02.660 --> 00:18:04.579 part of the book. He talks about technological 00:18:04.579 --> 00:18:07.319 rationality. He argues that technology isn't 00:18:07.319 --> 00:18:09.720 neutral. In this system, technology and science 00:18:09.720 --> 00:18:12.559 are used as instruments of control. It creates 00:18:12.559 --> 00:18:15.940 a totalitarian society, not through terror, but 00:18:15.940 --> 00:18:18.059 through overwhelming efficiency and productivity. 00:18:18.660 --> 00:18:21.099 How is efficiency totalitarian? Because it makes 00:18:21.099 --> 00:18:23.539 any other way of organizing life seem irrational. 00:18:24.019 --> 00:18:26.789 Why would you want a less efficient system? The 00:18:26.789 --> 00:18:28.990 logic of technology becomes the logic of society. 00:18:29.410 --> 00:18:32.529 It dictates how we live, how we think, and how 00:18:32.529 --> 00:18:35.029 we spend our time, all in the name of progress 00:18:35.029 --> 00:18:38.190 and rationality. So if the workers are out, who 00:18:38.190 --> 00:18:40.869 is left to change the world? Marcuse didn't just 00:18:40.869 --> 00:18:42.750 give up and say, well, we're all doomed to buy 00:18:42.750 --> 00:18:45.190 toasters forever, did he? No, and this is where 00:18:45.190 --> 00:18:48.009 he was incredibly prophetic. He looked away from 00:18:48.009 --> 00:18:50.329 the factories and toward the margins of society. 00:18:51.180 --> 00:18:54.180 He pinned his hopes on what he called the substratum 00:18:54.180 --> 00:18:56.839 of the outcasts. Who are they? Who makes up this 00:18:56.839 --> 00:18:59.140 group? It's the unemployed and the unemployable. 00:18:59.500 --> 00:19:02.240 The persecuted minorities, the outcasts from 00:19:02.240 --> 00:19:05.200 other countries, the exploited, essentially anyone 00:19:05.200 --> 00:19:08.079 who is effectively outside the benefits of this 00:19:08.079 --> 00:19:11.099 comfortable one dimensional society because the 00:19:11.099 --> 00:19:12.819 system doesn't work for them because they don't 00:19:12.819 --> 00:19:15.019 have the split level home. They are the only 00:19:15.019 --> 00:19:17.099 ones who retain that second dimension. They are 00:19:17.099 --> 00:19:19.799 the only ones capable of the great refusal. The 00:19:19.799 --> 00:19:21.700 great refusal. I love that term. It sounds so 00:19:21.700 --> 00:19:24.640 dramatic. It is. It's the total rejection of 00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:27.099 the system's logic and its values. It's not just 00:19:27.099 --> 00:19:29.940 asking for reforms. It's refusal to play the 00:19:29.940 --> 00:19:32.619 game at all. And you can see immediately why 00:19:32.619 --> 00:19:35.119 this appealed so strongly to the 1960s generation. 00:19:35.420 --> 00:19:37.019 The civil rights movement, the burgeoning student 00:19:37.019 --> 00:19:39.680 movement, the anti -war protesters. Exactly. 00:19:39.779 --> 00:19:41.940 These weren't necessarily factory workers demanding 00:19:41.940 --> 00:19:44.700 higher wages. These were people demanding a completely 00:19:44.700 --> 00:19:47.240 different set of values, racial equality, an 00:19:47.240 --> 00:19:50.559 end to imperialism, a rejection of consumerist 00:19:50.559 --> 00:19:53.710 culture. It really predicts the shift from class 00:19:53.710 --> 00:19:57.230 politics to identity politics in a way. It absolutely 00:19:57.230 --> 00:19:59.609 does. He saw that the revolutionary energy was 00:19:59.609 --> 00:20:01.730 moving toward those who were marginalized by 00:20:01.730 --> 00:20:03.930 race, by social status, by their intellectual 00:20:03.930 --> 00:20:06.390 descent, rather than just by their economic class. 00:20:06.690 --> 00:20:08.910 But Marcuse didn't just talk about economics 00:20:08.910 --> 00:20:12.069 and cars. He also went deeper into our, well, 00:20:12.230 --> 00:20:15.009 our inner lives, our desires, our sex lives. 00:20:15.109 --> 00:20:16.730 We have to talk about arrows and civilization. 00:20:17.150 --> 00:20:20.069 Yes, this was published earlier in 1955. It's 00:20:20.069 --> 00:20:27.819 his famous... Now, Freud is usually seen as pretty 00:20:27.819 --> 00:20:30.279 pessimistic about society, isn't he? He basically 00:20:30.279 --> 00:20:33.019 says civilization requires us to be miserable. 00:20:33.440 --> 00:20:36.619 Right. Freud's argument in civilization and its 00:20:36.619 --> 00:20:39.299 discontents is that for society to function, 00:20:39.400 --> 00:20:42.160 we have to repress our basic instincts or drives, 00:20:42.420 --> 00:20:45.400 particularly our sexual drives, eros, and our 00:20:45.400 --> 00:20:48.640 aggressive drives, thanatos. If everyone just 00:20:48.640 --> 00:20:51.259 acted on their impulses all the time, we'd have 00:20:51.259 --> 00:20:54.220 chaos. So repression is the necessary price of 00:20:54.220 --> 00:20:56.440 civilization. And Marquis challenged that. He 00:20:56.440 --> 00:20:58.680 thought we could have civilization without misery. 00:20:59.099 --> 00:21:01.180 He introduced a crucial distinction. He said, 00:21:01.299 --> 00:21:03.759 yes, some level of repression is necessary to 00:21:03.759 --> 00:21:05.839 live together. He called that basic repression. 00:21:05.900 --> 00:21:08.460 But he argued that capitalism and indeed all 00:21:08.460 --> 00:21:11.200 class based societies imposes a huge amount of 00:21:11.200 --> 00:21:13.400 surplus repression. Surplus repression. So extra 00:21:13.400 --> 00:21:15.849 misery just to keep the factories running. Exactly 00:21:15.849 --> 00:21:18.150 that. It's all the extra oppression required 00:21:18.150 --> 00:21:21.509 to maintain a specific unjust social order. He 00:21:21.509 --> 00:21:24.089 argued that the performance principle, the demand 00:21:24.089 --> 00:21:27.470 for ever increasing productivity, forces us to 00:21:27.470 --> 00:21:30.069 suppress our arrows, our life drive, our desire 00:21:30.069 --> 00:21:32.630 for pleasure, much more than is actually necessary 00:21:32.630 --> 00:21:35.309 for human survival. We are conditioned to be 00:21:35.309 --> 00:21:38.170 productive workers first and joyful human beings 00:21:38.170 --> 00:21:40.569 second. And this leads to that concept is a real 00:21:40.569 --> 00:21:43.170 mouthful, but the source material highlights 00:21:43.170 --> 00:21:47.670 it as crucial. Repressive desublimation. It is 00:21:47.670 --> 00:21:49.869 a complex term, but once you get it, you see 00:21:49.869 --> 00:21:52.630 it everywhere. Let's break it down. Sublimation, 00:21:52.630 --> 00:21:55.710 in Freud, is when you take your raw sexual energy 00:21:55.710 --> 00:21:58.109 and you channel it or sublimate it into something 00:21:58.109 --> 00:22:01.289 socially acceptable, like work or art or science. 00:22:01.589 --> 00:22:04.410 So desublimation would mean letting that energy 00:22:04.410 --> 00:22:07.640 out directly, being sexually free. Right. So 00:22:07.640 --> 00:22:09.980 repressive desublimation sounds like a complete 00:22:09.980 --> 00:22:12.579 contradiction. How can it be repressive if you 00:22:12.579 --> 00:22:14.460 are being sexually free? Yeah, that's the question. 00:22:14.640 --> 00:22:17.299 Think about modern advertising. Think about pop 00:22:17.299 --> 00:22:19.779 culture, reality TV, the Internet. Is it a sexually 00:22:19.779 --> 00:22:22.559 repressed culture? No way. Sex is everywhere. 00:22:22.700 --> 00:22:24.660 It's used to sell everything from burgers to 00:22:24.660 --> 00:22:28.690 cars to perfume. Precisely. Marcuse argued. that 00:22:28.690 --> 00:22:31.470 this wasn't true sexual freedom. It was a controlled, 00:22:31.529 --> 00:22:35.210 managed release of libido. It was inauthentic 00:22:35.210 --> 00:22:38.769 sexual stimulation. The system encourages a kind 00:22:38.769 --> 00:22:41.930 of shallow, commodified sexuality. You can be 00:22:41.930 --> 00:22:44.549 sexy. You can consume pornography. You can wear 00:22:44.549 --> 00:22:47.349 revealing clothes. But it's all contained within 00:22:47.349 --> 00:22:49.490 the logic of the market. So the system says, 00:22:49.609 --> 00:22:51.589 sure, have all the sex you want. Just don't try 00:22:51.589 --> 00:22:53.809 to change the economic structure. It's even more 00:22:53.809 --> 00:22:56.569 insidious than that. By giving people this outlet, 00:22:56.670 --> 00:22:59.049 this fun, it actually actually drains their political 00:22:59.049 --> 00:23:02.470 energy. If people are preoccupied with this localized, 00:23:02.849 --> 00:23:05.970 managed sexual gratification, they are less likely 00:23:05.970 --> 00:23:08.029 to be critical of the government or the economy. 00:23:08.190 --> 00:23:10.829 It de -sublimates the rebellious energy that 00:23:10.829 --> 00:23:12.369 might have otherwise been channeled into political 00:23:12.369 --> 00:23:15.130 action, but in a way that reinforces the status 00:23:15.130 --> 00:23:26.059 quo. It's a safety valve. And he contrasted this 00:23:26.059 --> 00:23:28.559 with his vision of a non -repressive civilization. 00:23:29.140 --> 00:23:31.920 He imagined a world where eros could be freed 00:23:31.920 --> 00:23:34.500 from surplus repression, allowing work to be 00:23:34.500 --> 00:23:37.420 transformed into free play. He thought that if 00:23:37.420 --> 00:23:39.500 we automated labor and distributed resources 00:23:39.500 --> 00:23:42.220 fairly, we could have a society where morality 00:23:42.220 --> 00:23:44.740 wasn't based on rigid commands and labor wasn't 00:23:44.740 --> 00:23:49.079 drudgery. Very. But it was that utopian spark 00:23:49.079 --> 00:23:51.759 that the 60s generation was drawn to. So we have 00:23:51.759 --> 00:23:55.119 this guy who thinks we are trapped by our toasters 00:23:55.119 --> 00:23:58.200 and distracted by billboards. How does he become 00:23:58.200 --> 00:24:01.440 this unlikely hero of the students? Well by the 00:24:01.440 --> 00:24:04.420 1960s he is teaching at Brandeis and then at 00:24:04.420 --> 00:24:06.859 the University of California San Diego. And unlike 00:24:06.859 --> 00:24:09.640 many older, more conservative professors who 00:24:09.640 --> 00:24:11.480 looked at the long -haired, rebellious students 00:24:11.480 --> 00:24:14.160 with disdain and fear, Marcuse looked at them 00:24:14.160 --> 00:24:16.559 and saw hope. He saw the great refusal in the 00:24:16.559 --> 00:24:18.779 flesh. The source says the media called him the 00:24:18.779 --> 00:24:21.279 father of the new left. A title he rejected. 00:24:21.420 --> 00:24:23.900 He was in his late 60s by then. He joked that 00:24:23.900 --> 00:24:25.799 at his age he should be the grandfather. But 00:24:25.799 --> 00:24:27.839 he really did connect with them, didn't he? He 00:24:27.839 --> 00:24:30.809 did. He spoke their language. He took their concerns 00:24:30.809 --> 00:24:33.650 seriously. He understood that their rebellion 00:24:33.650 --> 00:24:35.809 wasn't just about specific policies like the 00:24:35.809 --> 00:24:38.769 Vietnam War. It was a deeper refusal of the whole 00:24:38.769 --> 00:24:40.869 lifestyle of their parents, of the whole one 00:24:40.869 --> 00:24:43.789 -dimensional society. He even appreciated rock 00:24:43.789 --> 00:24:46.089 and roll as a genuine expression of this new 00:24:46.089 --> 00:24:48.829 sensibility, which is charming for a German philosopher 00:24:48.829 --> 00:24:51.589 trained in the 1920s. Who were some of the key 00:24:51.589 --> 00:24:54.690 figures he influenced? The list is really impressive. 00:24:55.279 --> 00:24:58.000 At Brandeis, he mentored Angela Davis, who became 00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:00.279 a central figure in the Communist Party USA, 00:25:00.680 --> 00:25:03.160 the Black Power movement, and later the prison 00:25:03.160 --> 00:25:06.339 abolition movement. He directly influenced Abbie 00:25:06.339 --> 00:25:08.440 Hoffman, the Yippie leader known for his theatrical 00:25:08.440 --> 00:25:11.359 protests. In Germany, he was a major inspiration 00:25:11.359 --> 00:25:14.200 for Rudi Deutsch, the charismatic leader of the 00:25:14.200 --> 00:25:16.700 German student movement. He wasn't just an observer. 00:25:16.940 --> 00:25:19.259 He was an active participant in their debates. 00:25:19.380 --> 00:25:21.539 So he's cheering them on. But this support for 00:25:21.539 --> 00:25:23.980 the radicals got him into a lot of trouble. And 00:25:23.980 --> 00:25:26.359 we have to talk about the essay Repressive Tolerance. 00:25:26.660 --> 00:25:28.480 This is probably the most controversial thing 00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:31.420 he ever wrote. It was published in 1965. And 00:25:31.420 --> 00:25:33.960 frankly, it is still the blueprint for many of 00:25:33.960 --> 00:25:36.279 the fiercest debates we have today about free 00:25:36.279 --> 00:25:39.140 speech, especially on university campuses. OK, 00:25:39.220 --> 00:25:41.000 let's break it down because it's a tricky argument. 00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:45.000 The standard liberal idea of tolerance is tolerate 00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:47.710 everything. Right. Free speech means everyone 00:25:47.710 --> 00:25:50.589 gets a voice, even the people you hate, and the 00:25:50.589 --> 00:25:53.549 marketplace of ideas will sort it out. The truth 00:25:53.549 --> 00:25:56.170 will win in the end. Right. That is the classical 00:25:56.170 --> 00:25:58.910 John Stuart Millview. Marcuse argued that in 00:25:58.910 --> 00:26:01.589 a society with deeply entrenched, unbalanced 00:26:01.589 --> 00:26:04.970 power structures, this kind of pure or abstract 00:26:04.970 --> 00:26:07.950 tolerance is a trap. He called it repressive 00:26:07.950 --> 00:26:10.250 tolerance. How is tolerance repressive? That 00:26:10.250 --> 00:26:12.480 sounds like Orwellian doublespeak. He argued 00:26:12.480 --> 00:26:15.000 that we don't live in a neutral marketplace of 00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:17.859 ideas. The mainstream media, the education system, 00:26:18.059 --> 00:26:20.000 the government, they are already rigged. He called 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:22.740 it a system of organized repression and indoctrination. 00:26:23.019 --> 00:26:25.579 So if you just open the floor to everyone, the 00:26:25.579 --> 00:26:27.799 powerful voices, the ones who own the megaphone, 00:26:27.839 --> 00:26:30.019 the ones who represent the status quo will always 00:26:30.019 --> 00:26:32.099 drown out the marginalized and radical voices. 00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:34.940 So he's saying that being neutral and tolerating 00:26:34.940 --> 00:26:38.160 all sides actually helps the oppressor. Exactly. 00:26:38.779 --> 00:26:41.680 He argued that tolerating speech that advocates 00:26:41.680 --> 00:26:45.279 for regressive or oppressive policies actually 00:26:45.279 --> 00:26:48.539 blocks the path to change and reinforces the 00:26:48.539 --> 00:26:51.079 existing power structure. It gives the illusion 00:26:51.079 --> 00:26:53.539 of debate while ensuring the outcome is always 00:26:53.539 --> 00:26:56.490 the same. So what was his solution? And be honest, 00:26:56.589 --> 00:26:58.069 because this is the part that scares a lot of 00:26:58.069 --> 00:27:00.849 people. He advocated for what he called liberating 00:27:00.849 --> 00:27:03.990 tolerance. And yes, this is the highly controversial 00:27:03.990 --> 00:27:06.750 part. He defined this as, and I'm paraphrasing 00:27:06.750 --> 00:27:08.890 here, intolerance toward movements from the right 00:27:08.890 --> 00:27:10.990 and tolerance toward movements from the left. 00:27:11.130 --> 00:27:13.410 Wow. He explicitly said we shouldn't tolerate 00:27:13.410 --> 00:27:16.269 the right. He was quite specific. He argued that 00:27:16.269 --> 00:27:19.029 movements promoting aggressive policies, chauvinism, 00:27:19.049 --> 00:27:21.589 discrimination, or those opposing the extension 00:27:21.589 --> 00:27:24.410 of public services should not be tolerated. He 00:27:24.410 --> 00:27:27.359 believed that to reopen the path to truth, society 00:27:27.359 --> 00:27:30.319 might need to use apparently undemocratic means. 00:27:30.660 --> 00:27:32.980 Like what did he mean by that? He meant things 00:27:32.980 --> 00:27:35.019 like withdrawing the right of free speech and 00:27:35.019 --> 00:27:37.140 free assembly from those groups that he saw as 00:27:37.140 --> 00:27:39.720 actively promoting oppression. That sounds like 00:27:39.720 --> 00:27:42.700 what his critics would call totalitarianism. 00:27:43.039 --> 00:27:45.660 We have to destroy freedom to save it. And that 00:27:45.660 --> 00:27:47.839 is exactly what his critics said and continue 00:27:47.839 --> 00:27:50.420 to say. But you have to understand Marcuse's 00:27:50.420 --> 00:27:52.700 logic from his perspective. He believed that 00:27:52.700 --> 00:27:56.099 democracy we live in is already a form of totalitarianism, 00:27:56.119 --> 00:27:58.619 a totalitarianism with a smiling face because 00:27:58.619 --> 00:28:00.980 it brainwashes people into supporting their own 00:28:00.980 --> 00:28:03.819 oppression. So he saw suppressing the right not 00:28:03.819 --> 00:28:06.579 as an act of aggression, but as an act of liberation 00:28:06.579 --> 00:28:09.660 or even defensive violence. He compared it to 00:28:09.660 --> 00:28:11.380 the civil rights movement breaking segregation 00:28:11.380 --> 00:28:14.579 laws to achieve justice. This feels like the 00:28:14.579 --> 00:28:17.119 direct intellectual root of so many arguments 00:28:17.119 --> 00:28:19.940 we have on college campuses right now. The debate 00:28:19.940 --> 00:28:22.200 over whether hate speech is a form of violence 00:28:22.200 --> 00:28:24.519 and shouldn't be protected. When you see students 00:28:24.519 --> 00:28:26.359 shouting down a speaker they consider dangerous, 00:28:26.559 --> 00:28:29.200 they are consciously or not enacting Marquise's 00:28:29.200 --> 00:28:32.220 idea of liberating tolerance. It is the direct 00:28:32.220 --> 00:28:35.180 lineage. Marquise provided the philosophical 00:28:35.180 --> 00:28:38.119 framework for the idea that in a structurally 00:28:38.119 --> 00:28:42.769 unjust society, some speech is not neutral. It 00:28:42.769 --> 00:28:46.369 is an act that perpetuates harm. Therefore, silencing 00:28:46.369 --> 00:28:48.730 that speech can be a legitimate act of resistance. 00:28:49.210 --> 00:28:51.809 Naturally, this made him a massive target. Absolutely. 00:28:51.950 --> 00:28:54.369 He was criticized from all sides. He was a radical's 00:28:54.369 --> 00:28:56.230 radical, but he also terrified people across 00:28:56.230 --> 00:28:58.430 the political spectrum. Let's look at those critics. 00:28:58.589 --> 00:29:00.269 Obviously, the conservatives went after him. 00:29:00.349 --> 00:29:03.049 Oh, yes. Ronald Reagan was governor of California 00:29:03.049 --> 00:29:05.309 at the time Marquise was teaching at UC San Diego. 00:29:05.609 --> 00:29:08.789 I bet Reagan loved having a revolutionary Marxist 00:29:08.789 --> 00:29:11.950 on the state payroll. Not quite. Reagan and other 00:29:11.950 --> 00:29:14.069 conservatives put immense pressure on the University 00:29:14.069 --> 00:29:17.109 of California system. They objected to his contract 00:29:17.109 --> 00:29:19.809 renewal. They saw him as a corrupter of youth, 00:29:19.970 --> 00:29:22.390 someone who was advocating violence and indoctrination. 00:29:22.769 --> 00:29:26.049 The American Legion demanded his firing. He received 00:29:26.049 --> 00:29:28.589 constant hate mail and even credible death threats. 00:29:28.789 --> 00:29:30.950 Wow. He had to have bodyguards. His students 00:29:30.950 --> 00:29:33.410 often acted as his informal security detail. 00:29:34.059 --> 00:29:36.319 The university eventually let his contract run 00:29:36.319 --> 00:29:39.680 out in 1970 under all that pressure. But it wasn't 00:29:39.680 --> 00:29:41.500 just the right who had a problem with him, was 00:29:41.500 --> 00:29:44.000 it? Other philosophers on the left had major 00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:47.240 issues with his theories. Yes, and these critiques 00:29:47.240 --> 00:29:50.579 are really important. Lacek Kuszakowski, a famous 00:29:50.579 --> 00:29:53.000 Polish philosopher who had actually lived under 00:29:53.000 --> 00:29:56.599 Soviet communism, called Marcuse an anti -Marxist. 00:29:56.680 --> 00:29:58.980 Anti -Marxist. But Marcuse was all about the 00:29:58.980 --> 00:30:02.269 revolution. How could he be anti -Marxist? Kushikovsky's 00:30:02.269 --> 00:30:04.509 argument was that Marcuse had thrown out the 00:30:04.509 --> 00:30:07.750 core of Marx's scientific analysis of capitalism 00:30:07.750 --> 00:30:11.529 and replaced it with a vague, romantic new world 00:30:11.529 --> 00:30:14.150 of happiness. He thought Marcuse wanted a world 00:30:14.150 --> 00:30:16.829 ruled despotically by an enlightened elite, basically, 00:30:16.849 --> 00:30:19.029 that Marcuse and his intellectual friends would 00:30:19.029 --> 00:30:21.569 get to decide what is true and false for everyone 00:30:21.569 --> 00:30:23.730 else. That brings us back to the false needs 00:30:23.730 --> 00:30:26.769 idea. Who gets to decide my need for a new iPhone 00:30:26.769 --> 00:30:29.130 is false? Maybe I just really like the camera. 00:30:29.210 --> 00:30:31.529 It feels very elitist, doesn't it? That was exactly 00:30:31.529 --> 00:30:33.349 the critique from another important philosopher, 00:30:33.849 --> 00:30:37.819 Alastair MacIntyre. He argued that Marquise was 00:30:37.819 --> 00:30:41.579 profoundly wrong about ordinary people. McIntyre 00:30:41.579 --> 00:30:43.599 said consumers aren't these passive zombies, 00:30:43.839 --> 00:30:45.799 these cultural dokes who are just controlled 00:30:45.799 --> 00:30:48.720 by advertising. People make choices. They find 00:30:48.720 --> 00:30:51.859 meaning. They resist in small ways. He thought 00:30:51.859 --> 00:30:53.940 Marquise was just looking down on regular people 00:30:53.940 --> 00:30:56.500 for enjoying the comforts of modern life. So 00:30:56.500 --> 00:30:58.440 McIntyre saw him as an out -of -touch academic. 00:30:58.539 --> 00:31:01.420 He called Marquise a pre -Marxist thinker, basically 00:31:01.420 --> 00:31:03.599 a utopian socialist who was just complaining 00:31:03.599 --> 00:31:07.140 about modernity. Marcuse's key positions one 00:31:07.140 --> 00:31:10.579 by one and claimed almost all of them were demonstrably 00:31:10.579 --> 00:31:13.000 false. And even within the social movements he 00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:15.799 supported, there was some friction, right? The 00:31:15.799 --> 00:31:18.039 source mentions a feminist critique. He supported 00:31:18.039 --> 00:31:20.480 the women's liberation movement. He called it 00:31:20.480 --> 00:31:22.319 potentially the most radical movement of all. 00:31:22.380 --> 00:31:25.240 He did. He was very supportive. But later feminist 00:31:25.240 --> 00:31:27.359 theorists, particularly people like Jessica Benjamin 00:31:27.359 --> 00:31:30.400 and Nancy Totoro, argued that his reliance on 00:31:30.400 --> 00:31:32.460 Freud's classical drive theory was a problem. 00:31:32.599 --> 00:31:35.400 Because Freud's drive theory is very biological 00:31:35.400 --> 00:31:39.019 and individualistic. It's all about the individual's 00:31:39.019 --> 00:31:42.849 body. and its innate instincts they felt it didn't 00:31:42.849 --> 00:31:44.829 adequately account for the social and relational 00:31:44.829 --> 00:31:47.269 aspects of identity formation particularly for 00:31:47.269 --> 00:31:49.990 women they argued for a more intersubjective 00:31:49.990 --> 00:31:52.630 approach understanding how we form our identities 00:31:52.630 --> 00:31:55.089 through our relationships with others not just 00:31:55.089 --> 00:31:58.170 through channeling our inner drives so even his 00:31:58.170 --> 00:32:00.690 allies found his freudian framework sometimes 00:32:00.690 --> 00:32:03.910 inadequate or outdated despite all this criticism 00:32:03.910 --> 00:32:06.859 from every direction He kept going. He kept writing 00:32:06.859 --> 00:32:10.039 until the end. He did. He published Counter -Revolution 00:32:10.039 --> 00:32:13.099 and Revolt in 1972, analyzing the backlash to 00:32:13.099 --> 00:32:15.440 the 60s movements. He published The Aesthetic 00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:17.859 Dimension in 1978, arguing for the revolutionary 00:32:17.859 --> 00:32:20.380 potential of art. He supported dissidents in 00:32:20.380 --> 00:32:22.799 East Germany like Rudolf Barrow. He never stopped 00:32:22.799 --> 00:32:24.640 engaging with the world. In his personal life, 00:32:24.720 --> 00:32:26.460 the source mentions he was married three times. 00:32:26.799 --> 00:32:30.640 Yes. After his first wife, Sophie, died, he married 00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:32.839 Inde Neumann, who was the widow of his close 00:32:32.839 --> 00:32:34.920 friend and Frankfurt School colleague, Franz 00:32:34.920 --> 00:32:38.039 Neumann. After she passed away, he married Erika 00:32:38.039 --> 00:32:40.460 Schrover, a former graduate student of his, in 00:32:40.460 --> 00:32:44.259 1976. He had a full and complex life, personally 00:32:44.259 --> 00:32:46.259 as well as politically. He lived a long life. 00:32:46.299 --> 00:32:49.339 He died in 1979. Just 10 days after his 81st 00:32:49.339 --> 00:32:52.039 birthday, he was in Germany in Starnberg. He 00:32:52.039 --> 00:32:54.259 was actually there visiting at the invitation 00:32:54.259 --> 00:32:56.660 of Jürgen Habermas, who's sort of the second 00:32:56.660 --> 00:32:59.240 generation leader of the Frankfurt School. He 00:32:59.240 --> 00:33:01.180 suffered a stroke during his visit. It seems 00:33:01.180 --> 00:33:03.019 fitting that he died in Germany where it all 00:33:03.019 --> 00:33:06.450 started for him. Closing of the circle? It is. 00:33:06.710 --> 00:33:08.970 But there is a poignant and slightly strange 00:33:08.970 --> 00:33:11.990 postscript to the story. His ashes were brought 00:33:11.990 --> 00:33:14.529 back to the U .S. by his wife, Erica. But for 00:33:14.529 --> 00:33:16.410 years, they were essentially kept in the States. 00:33:16.509 --> 00:33:19.549 They were rediscovered in 2003. Rediscovered? 00:33:19.549 --> 00:33:21.849 Like they were lost in a closet somewhere? The 00:33:21.849 --> 00:33:23.829 details are a bit murky in the source material, 00:33:24.009 --> 00:33:28.250 but essentially, yes. It wasn't until 2003 that 00:33:28.250 --> 00:33:30.789 a concerted effort was made to give them a final 00:33:30.789 --> 00:33:33.829 resting place. His ashes were taken back to Berlin 00:33:33.829 --> 00:33:36.730 and buried in the Dorotheen -Städtischer Cemetery. 00:33:37.009 --> 00:33:39.470 Is that a significant place? It's one of Germany's 00:33:39.470 --> 00:33:41.970 most famous cemeteries. It's where Hegel is buried. 00:33:42.769 --> 00:33:46.700 And Bertolt Brecht. So the great exile, the critic 00:33:46.700 --> 00:33:49.880 of Hegel, finally returned home to rest among 00:33:49.880 --> 00:33:52.380 the giants he'd spent his life studying and arguing 00:33:52.380 --> 00:33:54.900 with. So let's zoom out. We've gone from the 00:33:54.900 --> 00:33:57.599 stables to the OSS to the student barricades. 00:33:57.740 --> 00:33:59.799 What does this all mean for us today? We are 00:33:59.799 --> 00:34:02.319 sitting here now in a world he could only glimpse. 00:34:03.069 --> 00:34:05.349 Why does Herbert Marcuse still matter? I think 00:34:05.349 --> 00:34:07.849 his legacy is constantly being debated, but it's 00:34:07.849 --> 00:34:10.670 clearly visible in two main areas. First, as 00:34:10.670 --> 00:34:12.869 we've said, the nature of protest, the idea of 00:34:12.869 --> 00:34:14.969 the great refusal is the blueprint for a lot 00:34:14.969 --> 00:34:17.469 of modern activism. When you see movements like 00:34:17.469 --> 00:34:19.710 Black Lives Matter or Extinction Rebellion, they 00:34:19.710 --> 00:34:22.530 are often operating on a Marcuse logic that the 00:34:22.530 --> 00:34:24.550 system is fundamentally illegitimate and must 00:34:24.550 --> 00:34:26.929 be rejected, not just tweaked. They are looking 00:34:26.929 --> 00:34:29.309 for that new sensibility he talked about, a whole 00:34:29.309 --> 00:34:32.630 new way of living. Exactly. And the second area, 00:34:32.769 --> 00:34:35.349 which is maybe even more relevant to our daily 00:34:35.349 --> 00:34:38.769 lives, is his critique of technology and consumerism. 00:34:39.250 --> 00:34:42.050 If Marcuse thought we were one dimensional because 00:34:42.050 --> 00:34:45.139 of our hi -fi sets and our televisions. What 00:34:45.139 --> 00:34:47.260 would he say about us now? That is the scary 00:34:47.260 --> 00:34:49.840 part, isn't it? We carry our commodities, our 00:34:49.840 --> 00:34:52.219 means of entertainment and administration in 00:34:52.219 --> 00:34:55.019 our pockets every second of the day. We do. And 00:34:55.019 --> 00:34:56.960 our social media feeds and search algorithms 00:34:56.960 --> 00:35:00.159 predict our false needs before we even know we 00:35:00.159 --> 00:35:03.210 have them. We are more administered, more managed 00:35:03.210 --> 00:35:06.329 now than he could have ever imagined. That happy 00:35:06.329 --> 00:35:08.210 consciousness he described, the consciousness 00:35:08.210 --> 00:35:10.710 that accepts the status quo because it is comfortable 00:35:10.710 --> 00:35:13.829 and efficient, that is the default setting of 00:35:13.829 --> 00:35:16.309 the digital age. It brings us right back to that 00:35:16.309 --> 00:35:19.199 fundamental question of freedom. It does. Marcuse 00:35:19.199 --> 00:35:22.320 challenged us to ask, is your freedom just the 00:35:22.320 --> 00:35:24.579 ability to choose between different brands of 00:35:24.579 --> 00:35:27.099 the same car? Is it just the freedom to pick 00:35:27.099 --> 00:35:29.599 which streaming service to subscribe to or which 00:35:29.599 --> 00:35:31.579 political party to vote for within the existing 00:35:31.579 --> 00:35:35.300 system? Or are you capable of imagining and demanding 00:35:35.300 --> 00:35:38.139 a world that is qualitatively, fundamentally 00:35:38.139 --> 00:35:40.840 different? That is the ultimate challenge of 00:35:40.840 --> 00:35:43.800 the great refusal then. It is. To say no when 00:35:44.090 --> 00:35:46.869 Every advertisement, every algorithm, every comfortable 00:35:46.869 --> 00:35:49.769 appliance in your life is subtly and efficiently 00:35:49.769 --> 00:35:53.550 designed to make you say yes. So, listener, that 00:35:53.550 --> 00:35:55.489 is the provocation we want to leave you with 00:35:55.489 --> 00:35:58.530 today. Herbert Marcuse believed we are so comfortable 00:35:58.530 --> 00:36:01.230 in our unfreedom that we can't even imagine a 00:36:01.230 --> 00:36:03.070 different way of living. We want you to take 00:36:03.070 --> 00:36:04.650 a look at your own life, look at your smartphone, 00:36:04.829 --> 00:36:06.530 look at your subscriptions, your gadgets, your 00:36:06.530 --> 00:36:09.429 perfectly curated online identity, and ask yourself, 00:36:09.630 --> 00:36:12.369 is your soul trapped inside that machine? And 00:36:12.369 --> 00:36:14.889 if you decided you wanted to refuse it, could 00:36:14.889 --> 00:36:16.929 you even do it? Thanks for diving deep with us. 00:36:17.570 --> 00:36:19.230 And maybe try to keep thinking negatively.