Transcending Herbert Marcuse on Alienation, Art and the Humanities Essa

Transcending Herbert Marcuse on Alienation, Art and the Humanities (1) ABSTRACT: This paper discusses how higher education can help us in accomplishing our humanization. It looks at the critical educational theory of Herbert Marcuse, and examines his notion of the dis-alienating power of the aesthetic imagination. In his view, aesthetic education can become the foundation of a re-humanizing critical theory. I question the epistemological underpinnings of Marcuse's educational philosophy and suggest an alternative intellectual framework for interpreting and releasing the emancipatory power of education. "Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power #822 What is the relationship of truth to beauty, learning to art, political education to human flourishing? Philosophers from Confucius and Aristotle to John Dewey and Paulo Freire have investigated, as the axial human problem, how education is to help us in accomplishing our own humanization. The contemporary search for a genuinely critical theory and an authentically democratic society continues that project. But what can make theory critical, education liberating, society democratic? It is necessary to theorize our society critically if we are to have a vehicle for correctly informed transformative practice. The problem is that much of what is called critical theory today is rooted in ideas developed by Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Georg Lukacs. What I want to argue here is that their work has tended to formulate a particular approach to aesthetic educationand a unique version of a philosophical humanismwhich is then presented as critical theoryagainst the debilitating fragmentation ... ...88); Jurgen Habermas, "Von Lukacs zu Adorno: Rationalisierung als Verdinglichung," in Theorie des kommunikativen HandelnsBand I (Fft: Suhrkamp, 1981). (4) Karl Marx, Das Kapital(Stuttgart: Alfred Kroener Verlag, 1965) p. 52. (5) Aeron Haynie, Imperialism and the Construction of Femininity in Mid-Victorian Fiction(Gainesville: University of Florida, Ph.D. dissertation, 1994). (6) Martin Heidegger in Marcuse's notes to seminar, "Heidegger, Einfuhrung in das akademische Studium. Sommer 1929" Herbert Marcuse Archiv of the Stadt- und Universit. tsbibliothek, Frankfurt, Catalog # 0013.01, p. 6. Works Cited 1941 RR Reason and Revolution, Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (Boston:Beacon, 1960). 1972 CR Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon, 1972). 1978 AD The Aesthetic Dimension, Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon, 1978).

The Best Way of Reducing Stress

Almost stresses and difficulties of modern life are caused by high density of working when people face to hard problems in daily working. It seems to me that the best ways to reduce the stress is playing sports to relax and think wisely to find the best solution to overcome the difficulties. According to me, playing sports is the best way to relax and release the stress. When you get the stress it means that your body is tired and your brain is no longer sober. In that case playing sports gives you not only good physical health but also sober mind. Moreover, playing sports help you extricate yourself from negative thinking because when you focus in the game you always think positive therefore you will get fresh mental powers. In my case, whether I feel stressed or not, I always play my favorite sports at the weekend. In summer I choose swimming, in winter I choose table tennis or badminton. To me, playing sports at the weekend helps me free all the strains of the passing week and give me more power for the coming week. Along with the way that I have mentioned above, in order to get out of the difficulties, one more thing you should do is to think wisely and try to find the best solution for hard problem that you are facing to. When getting into hard problems, people tend to work continuously for very long time without a break and they think with high density of working will help them escape the hard situation. They are wrong, because the more they are tired the less their brain is intelligent. In my opinion, in that case they should reduce their work and think in another way before continue. For example, they had better discuss and share this problem with other friends and co-workers, more people have more ideas and the best idea will help them to solve the hard problem. Taking all above discussions into account, it seems very clear that playing sports is the most effective way for combating stress and thinking wisely is the most positive way to solve the difficulties.

The Enlightenment And The American Revolution - 2027 Words

The Enlightenment and the American Revolution Everyone knows the story of how America came to be. It was similar to David versus Goliath, the American colonists against the potent England. England at the time of the Revolution, boasted the largest and most powerful fighting force in the history of the world. The Americans were rebellious country-cousins who wanted freedom from what they regarded as a capricious and tyrannical paternal England so they could govern themselves. The result was America. How did they do it? A look at what influenced and motivated them might help answer this question. In particular, understanding the impact of Enlightenment thinking on the Revolutionaries, especially that small group of men, most people call The†¦show more content†¦Although when a new idea was introduced to the world, it angered the king (or other ruler), it did not have such an enormous effect on the population, usually because the king portrayed himself as a â€Å"universal ruler†. Jean-Jacques Rousseau hated this. The king claimed it was his â€Å"divine right† to rule, which supposedly gave him the ability to say or do anything he pleased. Rather than having a â€Å"divinely chosen† ruler, Rousseau believed in popular sovereignty, the idea that governments should express the will of the people. The divine right of kings is exactly what The Founders wanted explicitly to avoid when contemplating their new nation. As John Locke said, in his most famous book Two Treatises on Government, â€Å"People have the right to revolt if government doesn’t protect people’s natural rights.† Maybe the most important concept to the Founding Fathers was natural law and natural right. This was a concept that had most thoroughly been discussed by John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke had very similar views on natural law and natural right. What was their difference, and why did John Locke’s thinking end up influencing The Founders? John Locke’s views on natural rights were reciprocal, that is, one could exercise their rights as long as they respected the same exercise of right’s for others and did not infringe upon those rights. He rooted this reciprocity in â€Å"natural law†. Thomas Hobbes state of the natural man was