Marcuse’s first Hegel book lacked the critical negation central to his later work

Evidence

What set Hegel’s Ontology apart from Reason and Revolution, which was written after Marcuse had been at the Institut for several years, was its basic indifference to the critical elements in Hegelian philosophy. Marcuse’s stress on unity and identity led to a kind of theodicy, which he did not attempt to reconcile with the Marxism he displayed in his other writings. The concept of negation, which was to play such a crucial role in the second Hegel book, was treated in the first as only a moment in the historical differentiation of being. Moreover, because the underlying unity of being was understood to persist throughout time, negation was made to appear as almost an illusion. Nowhere in the book was Hegel treated as having preceded Marx in assailing the irrationality of the existing order. Nowhere was the nonidentity of the actual and the rational stressed, as it would be in Reason and Revolution. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 278

Categorization

• XREF: Traces the identity-theory vs. nonidentity-theory fault line that later distinguishes Marcuse from Horkheimer and Adorno in the Institute’s negative dialectics. — connects to: Marcuse rejected total mystical fusion, retaining Hegel’s subject-object tension. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1199; Marcuse’s early project merged Heideggerian phenomenology with Marx against Engels’ naturalism — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 274; Marcuse’s Reason and Revolution sought to absolve Hegel from Nazi association. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 290

Broader Connections

• Marcuse’s early project merged Heideggerian phenomenology with Marx against Engels’ naturalism #qualifies (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 274
• Marcuse rejected total mystical fusion, retaining Hegel’s subject-object tension. #complicates (0.70) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1199