1
Russell Rockwell, PhD.
No current institutional affiliation
28-55 Hobart Street
Woodside, N.Y. 11377
Telephone
(718) 728-6458
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Keywords
Hegel, Marcuse, absolute idea, critical social theory, dialectic
The Social Relevance of Hegel’s Absolute Idea: Herbert Marcuse’s Two Hegel Books
Abstract
The central chapter of Herbert Marcuse’s relatively well-known 1941 work, Reason and
Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, presents what is actually an abbreviated
version of a more through investigation of the social relevance of Hegel’s absolute idea Marcuse
first developed in Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity, published a decade earlier
(1932). In addition, Marcuse’s initial, more comprehensive interpretation blunts the critical
points he makes against the social relevance of Hegel’s absolute idea in the later work.
Introduction
Herbert Marcuse took the lead among Critical Theorists in explicating Hegel’s texts and,
just as significantly, in conceptualizing their social relevance. He wrote two major books on
Hegel in the decade 1932-1941—Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity (Hegel’s