The Paralysis in Criticism

This essay outlines the concept of life that operates as the problematic of Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory. After raising a series of questions about Marcuse’s 1964 One-Dimensional Man, it responds to those questions by turning to Marcuse’s 1932 book Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity, which it reads as part of Marcuse’s dispute with Martin Heidegger. The essay concludes by showing that Marcuse’s work revolves around an antithesis to life that is neither death nor unlivability, but paralysis.