The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing

A student and friend of Herbert Marcuse in the late 1960s, Andrew Fenberg gives in this new book an outstanding contribution not only to the knowledge of his philosophy, but also to the ruthless criticism of advanced capitalism. Feenberg shows, with great insight, how Marcuse's Marxism, rooted in Phenomenology, Hegelian dialectics, and Freudian Eros, was able to combine rationality and imagination, producing a radical version of Critical Theory which won the hearts and souls of the rebellious youth of the 1960's. And which is still very much relevant in our times, because, as Feenberg concludes, climate change validates his revolutionary call for a new society, based on life-affirmative values. -- Michael Loewy, author of <i>On Changing the Word: Essays in Political Philosophy, from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin</i> (Haymarket Books). For a half century, Andrew Feenberg has tirelessly explicated, interrogated and applied the lessons of his controversial mentor, Herbert Marcuse. The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing is the culmination of these efforts, building on the strengths of Marcuse's thought, while candidly confronting its weaknesses, in the hope of convincing a new generation of readers of its abiding relevance. -- Martin Jay Praise for The Philosophy of Praxis * : * Feenberg's subtle and wide-ranging study of Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness reaches forward to Marcuse and the Frankfurt School and backwards into Marx's 1844 manuscripts. The book offers a whole new framework in which to grasp the history of Marxist theory, at the same time restoring Marcuse's centrality in it. -- Fredric Jameson A model of lucid and sophisticated intellectual history. -- Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley A vigorous and thoughtful reassessment of both Lukacs and the Western Marxist tradition. Of great interest to anyone interested in critical theory or continental philosophy. -- Robert Pippin, University of Chicago A most fascinating and significant book. * Theory and Society * Feenberg achieves his goal of demonstrating the relevance of seemingly dusty and abstract philosophical conundrums not only to contemporary social theory but to politics as well. * American Political Science Review * Poses the central problem of history in such a way that every reader can identify its elements. The author knows the subject thoroughly, and illuminates many points in the texts of his main authors, as well as in those of such subsidiary figures as Marcuse and Habermas. * Review of Metaphysics * Praise for Questioning Technology - : Andrew Feenberg's Questioning Technology is one of the most important books on technology in the present era. -- Douglas Kellner Praise for The Essential Marcuse - : When [Marcuse] addressed gathering of young people from California to Paris to Berlin, he spoke as a philosopher who was perennially struggling with the challenges of critical theory to engage directly with contemporary social issues. He was received as a philosopher who urged participants in radical social movements to think more philosophically and more critically about the implications of their activism. -- Angela Davis Praise for Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity - : Andrew Feenberg, one of the most prominent contemporary philosophers of technology, has uniquely pursued a development of a critical theory of technology. The dominant philosophical traditions from which philosophy of technology has arisen are praxis traditions: pragmatism, phenomenology-hermeneutics, Marxian and critical theory. Feenberg's strength spans both critical theory and phenomenology-hermeneutics. -- Don Ihde * Technology and Culture * Praise for Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason * : * Feenberg presents a compelling argument about where we might find democratic sources of resistance to the distortions and pathologies arising from the application of various technologies in daily life. In an extremely far-reaching and important conclusion, he shows that there is no such thing as value-neutral technology, even at the simplest level of a tool. This is one of the best attempts known to me to realize Hegel's account of philosophy as the attempt to 'comprehend one's own time in thought'. -- Robert Pippin, University of Chicago Feenberg has written his magnum opus. It is as ambitious and broad- ranging as it is carefully argued and lucidly illustrated. He develops a theory of politics of the technosystems by combining STS and philosophy and thus making politics thinkable in our technological cultures. Technosystem is obligatory reading for all STS scholars interested in democratization of our techno-scientific societies. -- Wiebe Bijker