One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

Marcuse sees the denial of universals as preventing philosophy from being radical. This denial of universals is called “nominalism,” and Marcuse initially focuses his criticism of nominalist thinking on analytic philosopher William Van Orman Quine, who assumes a “scientistic” method. Marcuse is troubled by the ways modern analytic philosophy dismisses that which cannot be verified empirically, so that concepts such as “will,” “soul,” etc., are deemed irrelevant and often ridiculed.

For a nominalist, there is no true definition of anything universal: all is nominal. Nominalism, according to Marcuse, is a tool of the status quo, and we need realism so that we can apprehend substances of oppression. Liberation must be material, but it also must occur intellectually, in the ways we think. To be free of any totalitarian system is to liberate the individual from oppressive structures, which requires a recognition of universal and historical substances.

As part of this criticism, Marcuse offers several examples of substances of one over many, including the university, Congress, etc. Marcuse insists that these institutions are substances that must be acknowledged, because without acknowledgment of these oppressive forces as substances, political revolution cannot occur. We need to take action to change these substances, which requires that we think of them as substances.

The world is metaphysically rich, and the rest of the chapter defends universals of experience. Marcuse works through a Hegelian analysis of the universal, explaining how Hegel is interested in what the substance falls under and what it can aspire to be (its potential), with the Hegelian difference from classical Greek philosophy being an insistence on a historic view of what the substance has been. Historicism is intrinsic to the realism that Marcuse turns toward; our reality can change, and we can play a role in this change, and thus, as Marcuse has been insisting all along, we must work to destroy advanced industrial society. We can recognize universals at the same time that we must situate these universals historically. This does not mean that we cannot still apprehend the universal.

Marcuse analyzes the difference between the “terroristic totalitarianism” of Hitler that is visible, public, and extremely violent and the totalitarianism of advanced industrial society that controls internally and invisibly. There is no need for the terroristic totalitarianism of concentration camps with the “softer” totalitarianism of advanced industrial society, where everyone is controlled without their realizing that they are being controlled.

Marcuse returns, once again, to classical Greek philosophy, where humans ideally create a society (or polis) that mimics the teleology of the world, which is moving toward the good—toward the ultimate, quintessential metaphysical reality. He again goes through his rejection of scientism and analytic philosophy’s refusal of the metaphysical, which denies substances’ teleological purposes, thus allowing us to do as we wish with the world, which inevitably results in manipulation and exploitation.

Marcuse emphasizes, however, that metaphysical reality is also historical and has been, in part, created by humans. The Greeks held the metaphysical and physical apart; politics was a way of bringing them together. Modern thinking sees the metaphysical and the physical as collapsed together. Marcuse theorizes this collapse as including all three realms, so that everything serves politics. Philosophical critics of modern technology, such as Heidegger, insist that the only “alternative” to this one-dimensionality is a sequestering of self away from this one-dimensionality, finding or creating a place that is divorced from this totalitarianism. Marcuse insists on something much more radical: Instead, we need to take control and destroy the technological system as part of the liberation process. There is no refuge.

Marcuse again refers to the ways the ancient Greeks think of techne or crafts as the “perfection” of nature, applying this ancient thinking to his theory of “the pacification of existence” (235). For the Greeks, this “perfection” does not change the fundamental properties of nature, but rather, works with those properties. The polis can similarly be thought of as nature coming into its best life. Marcuse then turns to the natural world as something that can, in fact, be “perfected” in the Greek sense of the word.

In radically revising the material techne of the technological machine, then, we can “pacify” existence so that there is less violence and competition for resources. Metaphysical reality is, in part, up to humans. Rather than trying to remove ourselves from the technological machine, Marcuse suggests that we reinvent it so that we can approach existence nonviolently, which would make life better for everyone. Natural teleology can partially be determined by humans, after all, and this revised teleology can potentially benefit all sentient lives.

Marcuse repeatedly uses the phrase “pacification of existence” to describe this reconception of techne and, also, the world. This pacification radically contrasts with the deployment of modern techne for the destruction of life, which manifests most extremely with nuclear weapons, which the technological system insists are beneficial. Such a pacification would be “catastrophic” in its nonviolent rethinking of what the world would be, which would mean radical liberation from the violence of advanced industrial society’s totalitarianism.