Marcuse shifted from attacking existentialism to embracing Fanon’s anticolonial solidarity

Evidence

What had emerged only timidly in One-Dimensional Man, the turn towards a theory of practical commitment, was given passionate expression in the essay on tolerance. In 1948 Marcuse had severely criticized Sartre’s Being and Nothingness in accordance with Frankfurt theory, seeing the ideology of free competition, of free initiative and equal opportunity for all' as being at work behind the nihilistic language of existentialism’. With his essay on tolerance, however, Marcuse took sides with Sartre, who in 1961 had written an introduction to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth expressing unreserved solidarity with it and describing the book as `the Communist Manifesto of the anticolonial revolution’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2586

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Critical Theory strand on Frankfurt School evolution and to Marcuse’s shift from academic theory to practical commitment. — connects to: Marcuse diluted existentialist anthropology into a theory of indirect essence correspondence — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 422; Marcuse and Negt argued Third World solidarity could revive revolutionary consciousness at home — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2613

Broader Connections

• Marcuse diluted existentialist anthropology into a theory of indirect essence correspondence #contradicts (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 422