Radical Philosophy Review

Volume 19, Issue 1, 2016

Refusing One-Dimensionality, Part 1

Celebrating Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man
Deprovincialization and the Recovery of Philosophy

In this historical contextualization of Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, I present critical arguments that Marcuse deploys in the US context—especially in light of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. I argue that (1) Marcuse’s critical perspective worked to deprovincialize Anglo-American philosophy and to demythologize the extravagantly glorified and sanitized “American Pageant” view of the world that prevailed in the United States at the time and (2) Marcuse’s critical pedagogy thus led to a revitalization and recovery of philosophy in the United States after World War II.