The Aesthetic Dimension Quotes

“Inasmuch as art preserves, with the promise of happiness, the memory of the goal that failed, it can enter, as a 'regulative idea,' the desperate struggle for changing the world. Against all fetishism of the productive forces, against the continued enslavement of individuals by the objective conditions (which remain those of domination), art represents the ultimate goal of all revolutions: the freedom and happiness of the individual.”
― Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics

“The revolution is for the sake of life, not death.”
― Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics

“Lucien Goldmann has stated the central problem of Marxist aesthetics in the period of advanced capitalism. If the proletariat is not the negation of the existing society but to a great extent integrated into it, then Marxist aesthetics is confronted with a situation where "authentic forms of cultural creations" exist "though they cannot be attached to the consciousness -even a potential one- of a particular social group." The decisive question therefore is: how the "link is made between the economic structures and literary manifestations in a society where this link occurs outside the collective consciousness, i.e., without being grounded in a progressive class consciousness, without expressing such consciousness?”
― Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics

“Lucien Goldmann has stated the central problem of Marxist aesthetics in the period of advanced capitalism. If the proletariat is not the negation of the existing society but to a great extent integrated into it, then Marxist aesthetics is confronted with a situation where "authentic forms of cultural creations" exist "tough they cannot be attached to the consciousness -even a potential one- of a particular social group." The decisive question therefore is: how the "link is made between the economic structures and literary manifestations in a society where this link occurs outside the collective consciousness, i.e., without being grounded in a progressive class consciousness, without expressing such consciousness?”
― Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics