tailieunhanh - Reactionary Philosophy and Ambiguous Aesthetics in the Revolutionary Politics of Herbert Marcuse—A Review Essay

Regarding the results of the three studies, we shall consider only the contrasts performed between the conditions of positively and negatively valued stimuli. Kawabata and Zeki (2004) and Vartanian and Goel (2004) obtained interesting results when comparing brain activity before different categories of stimuli, such as abstract vs representational, but such issues will not be commented on here, given that this review is primarily concerned with the neural basis of general aesthetic preference. | Book Review Reactionary Philosophy and Ambiguous Aesthetics in the Revolutionary Politics of Herbert Marcuse A Review Essay Ralph Dumain Art Alienation and the Humanities A Critical Engagement with Herbert Marcuse. By Charles Reitz. Albany State University of New York Press 2000. 336 pages cloth paper . Charles Reitz s essential contribution to the study of Marcuse is his marvelous demonstration of how deeply Marcuse s philosophical framework is imbued with reactionary Lebensphilosophie. While Reitz successfully locates Marcuse s ideas in their original European social and intellectual context he fails to explain adequately how Marcuse s ideas function in the . context. Though chapter 10 presenting Reitz s contemporary perspective is disappointing this book is an outstanding achievement and indispensable for anyone interested in Marcuse. Reitz points out that Marcuse holds positivism and rationalism rather than metaphysics or irrationalism to be among the more pernicious intellectual forces favoring romantic oppositional philosophies of protest like Lebensphilosophie and finding a liberating negative that is countercultural value in Nietzsche Nature Society and Thought vol. 16 no. 2 2003 1 2 NATURE SOCIETY AND THOUGHT and Schopenhauer 114-15 . Marcuse even finds a spirit of negativity in traditional metaphysics and advocates a retooled Platonism 153 . Marcuse assigns an important role to imagination and the consciousness of death. The influences of Heidegger and Nietzsche are pervasive. Reitz provides an extensive analysis of Marcuse s early intellectual work imbued with the weighty influence of Dilthey chapter 2 . Marcuse was the first to review Marx s newly available 1844 manuscripts but Dilthey and Heidegger determined Marcuse s reading of the young Marx 58-61 . Marcuse was heavily influenced by Lukács whose notion of reification is rooted in German idealism not Marx 65-66 . Marcuse was concerned here and elsewhere with reification and the .