Herbert Marcuse's "New Sensibility"

New Discourses

Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2021

⏱️ 160 minutes

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Summary

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 44 Liberation Series, Part 2 of 4 Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential Leftist thinkers of the 1950s and 1960s, and for that reason he is often regarded as the father of the "New Left," which is reaching something of a crescendo in the Woke Movement of today. His goal was straightforward: liberation. In 1969, he wrote an influential essay (or short book) called "An Essay on Liberation" in which he explains what liberation looks like and how we should achieve it. So that you can better understand the moment we find ourselves in, James Lindsay has been reading "An Essay on Liberation" (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/1969/essay-liberation.htm) for the New Discourses Podcast in full, with his explanation and commentary. This is the second part of that series, reading through part two of Marcuse's infamous essay, "A New Sensibility." In the first part of the essay, Marcuse lays out a case that we need to change mankind at the "biological" (meaning, it seems, mostly psychological and instinctual) level to make way for a liberated socialism. In this part of the essay, Marcuse explains that man will need to develop a "new sensibility" and even a "new rationality" (Critical Consciousness) in order to break the cycle of repression that he believes characterizes free, liberal societies (i.e., those that aren't Communism). His argument is that what people consider "sensible" constrains and represses their imagination, so a new (liberated, read: communistic) "sensibility" is needed and must replace the old sensibility. Then we will understand how sensibility and reason constrain and repress us and prevent previous (Communist and French) revolutions from succeeding at producing true liberation. It's a truly shocking piece of work, and it is obvious upon understanding it that its general thrust defines the ethos of radical Leftism today in the Critical Social Justice movements that have derived from it. Part 1 of this series, "A Biological Foundation for Socialism?", can be found here: https://newdiscourses.com/2021/06/biological-foundation-socialism/ Another series on Marcuse's work, featuring his essay "Repressive Tolerance," begins here: https://newdiscourses.com/2021/01/how-not-to-resolve-the-paradox-of-tolerance/ Support New Discourses: paypal.me/newdiscourses newdiscourses.locals.com/support patreon.com/newdiscourses subscribestar.com/newdiscourses youtube.com/channel/UC9K5PLkj0N_b9JTPdSRwPkg/join Website: newdiscourses.com Follow: facebook.com/newdiscourses twitter.com/NewDiscourses instagram.com/newdiscourses newdiscourses.locals.com pinterest.com/newdiscourses linkedin.com/company/newdiscourses minds.com/newdiscourses reddit.com/r/NewDiscourses Podcast: @newdiscourses podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-…es/id1499880546 bit.ly/NDGooglePodcasts open.spotify.com/show/0HfzDaXI5L4LnJQStFWgZp stitcher.com/podcast/new-discourses © 2021 New Discourses. All rights reserved.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone, this is James Lindsay, you're listening to the new Discourses podcast
0:23.3	we're picking back up with our exciting four part series reading through Herbert Marcusa's 1969
0:31.7	essay and essay on liberation so this is his kind of manifesto about what a liberation politics looks
0:39.4	like right at the end of the 1960s to kind of frame out for you I don't need to go into who Herbert
0:44.8	Marcusa is for all of my listeners now especially in the middle of the series but just remind you
0:49.3	he's a huge left wing thinker kind of father of the new left that comes out of the 1960s huge
0:54.4	influence big book in 1964 a critical theory called one dimensional man huge influence out of that
1:03.5	1965 he writes an essay called a long essay called repressive tolerance which we've discussed we
1:09.9	I actually read the entire thing here on the podcast so you can go check that out um the thesis of
1:16.0	that is we must tolerate the left movements from the left even when they're violent we must not
1:21.0	tolerate or extend tolerance to movements from the right no matter what including we must censor
1:25.9	and even pre censor them huge influence then we have kind of following his agitations around
1:33.6	the left of the 1960s we have the riots breaking out in 67 and 68 and even into 69 kind of the
1:41.1	most immediate precursor to the to the mayhem of 2020 and 2021 that we're facing right now
1:47.2	for the same reasons Marcusa's hot again today even though people don't realize that he
1:51.5	meant toward Angela Davis for example he was influential within black feminist circles that
1:56.4	went on to form critical race theory and intersectionality Angela Davis is still active on the left
2:02.0	she still works with black lives matter she works uh primarily in the police and prison evolution
2:09.2	movement which she's kind of a de facto thought leader of even though she's quite old now
2:14.7	she has all kinds of bad stuff to her name we'll talk about Angela Davis more in the future but
2:19.8	today we're talking about her Marcusa and here he is after this kind of violence breaking out in the 1960s
2:25.6	the late 1960s looking at what's going on looking at what's going on around the world and writing
	...

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