Marcuse borrowed Whitehead’s ‘Great Refusal’ to make death itself a target of change

Evidence

Marcuse’s final chapter, Eros and Thanatos', attempted to snatch the topic of death from the opponent and view even deathwhich had taught humanity that every pleasure is short and led mankind into resignation even before society forced it into itas something capable of being changed. Philosophy should respond to death with a Great Refusal’the striking formula Marcuse borrowed from A.N. Whitehead, who had used it in an attempt to define the principal characteristic of artwith an insistence on the claims of humanity and nature to complete fulfilment. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 527

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names and sources a load-bearing Marcusean term (‘Great Refusal’), tracing it to Whitehead’s aesthetics.
• XREF: Links to Marcuse’s claim that a repression-free culture is conceivable — the Great Refusal is his vehicle for saying so at the level of death. — connects to: Marcuse rejected the innate death instinct in favor of life-preservation failing against circumstance — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 379; Marcuse coined the Great Refusal as protest against unnecessary repression — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 541; Marcuse treated premature and agonized death as civilization’s greatest indictment — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2138
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Marcuse rejected the innate death instinct in favor of life-preservation failing against circumstance — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 379; Marcuse coined the Great Refusal as protest against unnecessary repression — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 541; Marcuse treated premature and agonized death as civilization’s greatest indictment — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2138