Thomas Uebel, Herbert Marcuse e l'immagine unidimensionale dell'empirismo logico

This paper discusses Herbert Marcuse’s influential criticisms of Logical Empiricism and their role in the still customary dismissal by Critical Theorists and like-minded thinkers. The background is provided by Max Horkheimer’s shift of emphasis from his earlier empirical and interdisciplinary social scientific research program (which shows notable agreements between the two programs) to a self-consciously philosophical critique of capitalism in the mid-1930s. An analysis of Marcuse’s contributions to the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung shows that and how he did not only follow Horkheimer’s lead and deepened his reliance on essentialism and turn to Hegelian dialectics, but also further radicalized his misinterpretations of central doctrines of Logical Empiricism and his misrepresentation of its supposedly conformist socio-political and cultural orientation. Marcuse’s emblematic theme of the one-dimensionality of all positivist and non-dialectical thought is traced from its first emergence in these early writings to his eponymous 1964 bestseller which became a basic point of reference for the then emerging anti-authoritarian left and stayed influential ever since.