Eros and Civilization : A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud

Rating:
Summary: Try to keep a straight face...
Review: Marcuse has successfully taken one dubious eschatological theory (Marxism) and merged it with another dubious totalizing theory (Freudian psychology). I begin to wonder whether the dubiousness of Marx is added to the dubiousness of Freud, or whether they are multiplied by each other. Eros and Civilization is certainly a very IMPORTANT book, but it's not a particularly good one. During the 1950's Marxism tried to appropriate all of the other ideas floating around at the time to its own uses, and Marcuse epitomizes this trend.

One gets the sense that Marcuse wrote Eros and Civilization as an expanded version of a paper he wrote in college answering the question, "How can Freud's ideas be related to Marxism?" Well, Marcuse relates them to Marx, and he does a pretty good job of it, but so what? When reading this book, I begin to wonder whether Marcuse really believes what he's writing, or whether he's just trying to get the Freudians out there to join the Communist Party.

At any rate, Eros and Civilization is an interesting read, and if you can stomach Freud's un-founded historical nonsense long enough to examine how it interacts with Marxian eschatology, then go ahead and read it. It's a great example of utopian thinking, and the way Marcuse relates the Reality Principle to the functioning of the capitalist economy is certainly thoughtful...I just don't buy it.

Rating:
Summary: Essential reading for all Freudo-skeptics
Review: Marcuse's "Eros and Civilization" lays the foundations for a major critique of the fundamental tenets of Freud's theory of the psyche. In this book the German philosopher demonstrates how Freud transformed what was essentially a psychology of society into a sociology of the mind. "Freud's "biologism"", Marcuse writes, "is social theory in a depth dimension".
Specifically, Marcuse explains how Freud did not see repression as a historically situated pheomenon resulting from particular (and therefore mutable) material conditions but as a general category, inextricably intertwined with the very idea of civilization.
Perhaps for reasons of opportunity (Freud's ideas were still too influential in 1956 for an overt attack), Marcuse still elaborates his argument that a non-repressive society IS possible, within a Freudian framework. But the damage is done: once you read this book it is hard to miss the moralistic intention behind Freud's idea that repression is salutary and necessary for psychic development.
If you want to read other books along this line try Rieff's "Freud: the Mind and the Moralist".
(Note: Not everything that Freud said is rubbish, but I suspect the part of it I mentioned here is).

Rating:
Summary: Interesting predecessor to Deleuze and Guattari
Review: The most annoying feature of this book is the the continual use of the Freudian concepts of ego, Es, and so on... in the first part. To accept that, you really need to believe in the orthodox psychoanalytical theory, which maybe is a bit hard these days.
But Marcuse trascends the boundaries of psychoanalytical theory, and develops a range of arguments that stand on their own.
He thinks that society throughout History ha s been one huge repressive endeavour, accepted by the individuals because it allowed them to survive, even though it deprived them of the possibility of happiness.
But nowadays, we should have reached the stage where everyone's basic needs can be satisfied with a minimal amount of work; in fact, penury subsists only because those detaining power create it in order to justify their domination.
If everyone could free their libido, the Death instinct would disappear, because it exists only on the basis of the "Nirvana principle"(we desire destruction because death equalls with the quiet of complete satisfaction).
A porttrait of a society where everyone wouold be free to apply their libido to everyone else, and to engage in work in a way more akin to playing follows.
This sounds bit distressing, especially the concept of "jolly work", if I dare name it so. The most interesting parts are in fact the "asides", where Marcuse explains how we imagine "complete satisfaction" always to reside in a past which our memory conserves as a token both of the oppression of the individual and of the human species, how art is limited by form, the existence of which defines it as something incapable of influence on reality, the way that philosophy since Plato has cooperated with oncoming Christianity to define "Nirvana" as finding itself substantially "beyond" our world etc..
And of course, the parts where he speaks of libido applied to everyone and everything reccalls our friends Deleuze and Guatari's "desire" tracing its rhyzomatic paths.