Marcuse’s political disillusionment preceded and shaped his turn to philosophy

Evidence

Marcuse was born in 1898 in Berlin, into a family of prosperous assimilated Jews, like most of the others. After completing his military service in the war, he briefly became involved in politics in a Soldiers’ Council in Berlin. In 1919 he quit the Social Democratic Party, which he had joined two years earlier, in protest against its betrayal of the proletariat. After the subsequent failure of the German revolution, he left politics altogether to study philosophy at Berlin and Freiburg, receiving his doctorate at the latter university in 1923 with a dissertation on the Kunstlerroman (novels in which artists played key roles). For the next six years he tried his hand at book selling and publishing in Berlin. In 1929 he returned to Freiburg, where he studied with Husserl and Heidegger, both of whom had a considerable impact on his thought. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 154

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Philosophers’ later intellectual turns are often political disengagements from earlier commitments — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 566; Marcuse’s move from revolution to academia followed the failure of the German revolution

Broader Connections

• Philosophers’ later intellectual turns are often political disengagements from earlier commitments #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 566
• Marcuse’s move from revolution to academia followed the failure of the German revolution #corroborates (0.72)