Page "Herbert Marcuse" Paragraph 22

During his years in Freiburg, Marcuse wrote a series of essays that explored the possibility of synthesizing Marxism and Heidegger's fundamental ontology, as begun in the latter's work " Being and Time " ( 1927 ).

This early interest in Heidegger followed Marcuse's demand for “ concrete philosophy ,” which, he declared in 1928, “ concerns itself with the truth of contemporaneous human existence .” These words were directed against the neo-Kantianism of the mainstream, and against both the revisionist and orthodox Marxist alternatives, in which the subjectivity of the individual played little role.

Though Marcuse quickly distanced himself from Heidegger following Heidegger's endorsement of Nazism, it has been suggested by thinkers such as Juergen Habermas that an understanding of Marcuse's later thinking demands an appreciation of his early Heideggerian influence.