Hegel and Critical Social Theory: New Perspectives from the Marcuse Archives

Abstract

Recently published archival material suggests the need to reexamine Herbert Marcuse's interpretation of Hegel's thought. Social theory generally will benefit from reflections upon Marcuse's historical attempts to understand contemporary societal domination, including its abstract forms, and his original social “translations” of Hegel's Subjective Logic. Following sections on Being and Essence, the latter often favored by Marxists, the final part of Hegel's Science of Logic was undervalued in the development of critical social theory before Marcuse's close readings in the years 1932–1941. Marcuse took the lead among Critical Theorists in explicating Hegel's texts. Just as significant, Marcuse was among the first to point out the sociological relevance of key categories in the most abstract final sections of Hegel's most abstract work. The newly published materials document Marcuse's unique attempts to conceive Hegelian dialectic proper as itself a practical force of social transformations. Most important, these articles concern the relationship between theory and social practice that Marcuse investigated in Hegel's dialectic of the idea of the true and the idea of the good—the absolute idea.