Marcuse and Horkheimer converged on the durability of a death instinct despite their differences

Evidence

Thus, despite both men’s insistence that their positions were miles apart, they seemed to converge on at least the one question of the strength and durability of an instinct to die. Marcuse’s most utopian book ended on a note of yea-saying tempered only by an argument Horkheimer had made several decades earlier, concerning the impossibility of redeeming the suffering of those who had died before. Aside from this, it expressed a sanguine confidence far removed from the dark ironies of the other masters of Critical Theory. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 380

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Marcuse rejected the innate death instinct in favor of life-preservation failing against circumstance — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 379