Can We Truly Love That Which is Fleeting? The Problem of Time in Marcuse's Eros and Civilization

Florida Philosophical Review (1):25-42 (2010)
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Abstract

In Eros and Civilization, Marcuse claims that the two fundamental drives of civilization, namely, Eros and Thanatos, may eventually be reconciled. Such reconciliation, Marcuse contends, could potentially lead to new, utopian possibilities for humankind. However, Marcuse’s argument is deeply flawed: he equates time with death and therefore only defeats a straw man. Thus, it may be argued that Marcuse’s entire project in Eros and Civilization not only remains incomplete, but indeed fails. In the following paper, I demonstrate—by relying on Heidegger’s understanding of temporality in Being and Time—that it may still be possible to reconcile Eros and temporality after all. I conclude that Marcuse’s project may still be viable, but only by reconciling time with Eros, and not death

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Brian Lightbody
Brock University

References found in this work

Herbert Marcuse and the crisis of Marxism.Douglas Kellner - 1984 - Berkeley: University of California Press.
Foucault and his interlocutors.Arnold Ira Davidson (ed.) - 1997 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
The eternal recurrence.Alexander Nehamas - 1980 - Philosophical Review 89 (3):331-356.
Critique of pure reason.Immanuel Kant - 2003 - Mineola, N.Y.: Barnes & Noble. Edited by J. M. D. Meiklejohn.

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