A clear guide to Lukács's History and Class Consciousness, Feenberg unlocks one of Marxism's most influential—and challenging—works for a new generation.Drawing deeply from the well of German philosophy, Lukács forged a bold, new understanding of Marxism—one that broke with the standard interpretations shaped by Engels and early orthodoxy. Here Feenberg offers clear, accessible explanations of the key concepts that define Lukács's thought: reification, tot...

The Essential Marcuse provides an overview of Herbert Marcuse's political and philosophical writing over four decades, with excerpts from his major books as well as essays from various academic journals. The most influential radical philosopher of the 1960s, Marcuse's writings are noteworthy for their uncompromising opposition to both capitalism and communism. His words are as relevant to today's society as they were at the time they were written.

How Marcuse helps us understand the ecological crisis of the 21st centuryFor several years after 1968, Herbert Marcuse was one of the most famous philosophers in the world. He became the face of Frankfurt School Critical Theory for a generation in turmoil. His fame rested on two remarkable books, Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man. These two books represent the utopian hopes and dystopian fears of the time.In the 1960s and 70s, ...

This volume presents state-of-the-art creative scholarship in political science and area studies with an emphasis on Russia. The contributors, all well-known in their specialties, share the conviction that advancement in the social sciences can only be achieved through plural methodological approaches and interaction with various disciplines. Their work in this collection provides critical analyses of key issues in Russian and post-Soviet studies. It explores the most fruitful ways of stud...

Thoroughly revised, this new edition of Critical Theory of Technology rethinks the relationships between technology, rationality, and democracy, arguing that the degradation of labor--as well as of many environmental, educational, and political systems--is rooted in the social values that preside over technological development. It contains materials on political theory, but the emphasis has shifted to reflect a growing interest in the fields of technology and cultural studies.

First published in 2005. Herbert Marcuse was Martin Heidegger’s most famous student. He claimed to have left existentialism behind in 1933 when Heidegger was declared first Nazi rector of Freiburg University and Marcuse fled into exile.The contentious relations between these two thinkers reflected the split in twentieth-century continental philosophy between exist- entialism and Marxism. But Andrew Feenberg’s careful study of Heidegger’s early lectures, as well as of previously unpublished...

Georg Lukács' early Marxist philosophy of the 1920s laid the foundations of Critical Theory. However the evaluation of Lukács' philosophical contribution has been largely determined by one-sided readings of eminent theorists like Adorno, Habermas, Honneth or even Lukács himself. This book offers a new reconstruction of Lukács' early Marxist work, capable of restoring its dialectical complexity by highlighting its roots in his neo-Kantian, 'pre-Marxist' period.In his pre-Marxist wor...

Digital Identities in Tension deals with the ambivalence of universal digitalization. While this transformation opens up new possibilities, it also redistributes the interplay of constraints and incentives, and tends insidiously to create a greater malleability of individuals.Today, companies and states are increasingly engaged in the surveillance and management of our digital identities. In response, we must study the effects that the new industrial, economic and political logics ...

In this extraordinary introduction to the study of the philosophy of technology, Andrew Feenberg argues that techonological design is central to the social and political structure of modern societies. Environmentalism, information technology, and medical advances testify to technology's crucial importance.In his lucid and engaging style, Feenberg shows that technology is the medium of daily life. Every major technical changes reverberates at countless levels: economic, political, an...

Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human–Technology Relations provides an introduction to the school of thought called postphenomenology and showcases projects at the cutting edge of this perspective. Postphenomenology presents a unique blend of insights from the philosophical traditions of phenomenology and American pragmatism, and applies them to studies of user relations to technologies. These studies provide deep descriptions of the ways technologies transform our abilities...

We live in a world of technical systems designed in accordance with technical disciplines and operated by personnel trained in those disciplines. This is a unique form of social organization that largely determines our way of life, but the actions of individuals and social protest still play a role in developing and purposing these rational systems. In Technosystem, Andrew Feenberg builds a theory of both the threats of technocratic modernity and the potential for democratic chang...

Philosophy of Praxis examines the work of four Marxist thinkers, the early Marx and Lukács, and the Frankfurt School philosophers Adorno and Marcuse. The book holds that fundamental philosophical problems are in reality social problems, abstractly conceived. This argument has two implications: on the one hand, philosophical problems are significant insofar as they reflect real social contradictions; on the other hand, philosophy cannot resolve the problems it identifies because on...