Marcuse and the Crisis of the New Radicalism: From Politics to Religion?

It is not a sign of disrespect to any major thinker if his thought is considered a symptom of wider phenomena that belong to whole social or cultural movements. In the case of Herbert Marcuse, in fact, such a treatment seems especially warranted. The chief interest of Marcuse's thought, accentuated by the writer's depth, erudition, and sophistication as a philosophical synthesizer, is that it exhibits in a curious and dramatic way the strains and stresses characterizing "New Left" radical thought as a whole in advanced industrial society. Marcuse's thought is situated almost exactly at the center point along the New Left spectrum, poised between and