Hegel in Herbert Marcuse’s Hegelian Marxism, Critical Theory, and Value Theory

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the Hegelian side of Herbert Marcuse’s Hegelian Marxism. Rockwell’s consideration of Marcuse’s chapter in Reason and Revolution on Hegel’s Science of logic involves a close reading of sections on the movement from the objective to the subjective logic, or from necessity to freedom. Rockwell argues that Marcuse’s reading, while suggesting that the relationship of necessity and freedom was the underlying dialectic driving Hegel’s philosophy, nonetheless did not consider relevant sections of Hegel’s text, including the key one on reciprocity that immediately precedes Hegel’s turn from the objective to the subjective logic. Later, in the midst of his intensive correspondence with Raya Dunayevskaya, Marcuse identified the movement from necessity to freedom as the “hardest” transition, which Hegel made explicit in the (Encyclopaedia) Logic.