From One-Dimensional Man To Two-Dimensional Man: On Marcuse's Humanistic Thoughts

After World War II, Western developed capitalist countries have experienced a big step forward in technology, economic development and the accumulation of wealth, during which people's material standard of living has been greatly increased, but behind the increase are the facts that fetishism is prevailing and human nature is suppressed Under the strict control the inner dimensions of people in the whole society have eventually disappeared. Man becomes one-dimensionality .In order to safeguard the dignity of people Marcuse has given a sharp criticism of the capitalist society . He attempts to find out a pair of solutions to save the contemporary capitalist society on the basis of the early Marx's thought and Freud's psychoanalytic theory . He also assumes that there was an ideal society in which no one would be oppressed and everyone could enjoy full freedom . In such a society, man's eros would be liberated and man's abilities would be freely cultivated. And one-dimensional man would turn into two-dimensional man . In addition, he also designs an accessible way to this ideal society. He proposes a "utopian revolution" to emancipate modern capitalist society. The revolution means"big refuse" to the modern capitalist society to change man's inherent instinct structure . In fact, he shows us an process as to how to make one-dimensional man become two-dimensional man. so far the whole imagery of Marcuse's humanistic thoughts has already been very clear.Marcuse thinks that man should be the noblest in the world and he pursues the liberation of mankind all his life. We can say that the core and the final destination of Marcuse's humanistic thoughts is to achieve the liberation of human nature and a change from one dimensional man to two dimensional man . This shows that Marcuse's humanistic thoughts are valuable and significative. Marcuse's humanistic thoughts not only reflect the tradition of western humanistic spirit, but also help expand our understanding of the capitalist society. At the same time it offers some advice to our socialist modernization , which should aim at unity between economic development and the development of people in order to avoid the appearance of one-dimensional man . Of course, Marcuse's humanistic thoughts also have some romantic factors and even serious errors. For example, starting from the abstract theory of human nature he sees humanity as human nature and regards the liberation of Eros as man's liberation. Even though he has a good wish to liberate mankind, he can not really find a way out.