Abstract

This paper focuses on the central theme of this conference and discusses how higher education can help us in accomplishing our humanization. It looks at the critical educational theory of Herbert Marcuse, and examines his notion of the dis-alienating power of the aesthetic imagination. In his view, aesthetic education can become the foundation of a re-humanizing critical theory. I question the epistemological underpinnings of Marcuse's educational philosophy and suggest an alternative intellectual framework for interpreting and releasing the emancipatory power of education.