Marcuse's "rational" A Conceptual Analysis

Herbert Marcuse is one of the important representatives of Frankfurt school. His rational thoughts mainly originated from ancient Greek philosophy, Hegel, Marx and Floyd. With his perceptiveness and sharp tongue, he severely criticized the problems in capitalist societies and revealed the root cause of humans'alienation and the suppression of Eros. In this sense, he constructed and consummated the theoretical system of social criticism of Frankfurt school. This thesis mainly deals with the origin, background and constitutions of Marcuse's rational thoughts to explore its real intrinsic value and meaning to human society.After the comparison between the similarities and differences between Hegel's and Marx'rational thoughts and Marcuse's, the author introduces the rational thoughts upon which Floyd exerted his great influence. And then it moves onto Marcuse's understanding on the connotations of ration. Firstly, Marcuse's connation of ration is a unity of"as it is"and"as it ought to be". These two aspects form the basic for human life. However, Inherent marks the direction to which man forge ahead. On one hand, man should focus on real life and always remember to pursue the ideal; on the other hand, man should pursue the ideal on the grounds of his real life. Secondly, Marcuse's connation of ration can be used to reshape the society, though ration itself contains a critical and negative internal tension when it arose. Marcuse's ration criticized many fields of capitalism including its politics, economy, consumption, culture, thoughts and philosophy, etc. Meanwhile, he tried to construct a multidimensional Utopia with negative thinking. Thirdly, he demanded for the emancipation of Eros and tried to replace the emancipation of society with the emancipation of Eros. In his"general revolution", Marcuse pointed out that the ultimate goal of revolution is the free and full development of all human beings and the establishment of an Eros society. By psychological instinct revolution, man can be himself independently, regain the ability of reasonable criticism to be a real subject of freedom and construct an Eros society.Because of the exceptional status of Marcuse's rational thoughts in criticizing capitalism, deep and detailed exploration becomes especially significant. This thesis conducts a systematic study on Marcuse's critical system from the angle of his rational thoughts.