Saturday, May 21, 2016

Eros and Dialectical Materialism

Marcuse's positing of Eros as the fundamental principle of development in human society implies a critique of Dialectical Materialism, though not one that he carries out.  Now, one feature of such a critique can be derived from a familiar instance of Eros--the collaboration of a male and a female in the reproductive process.  But, before that relation is abstractly and arbitrarily represented as a 'polarity', it is concretely and patently one of complementarity.  Similarly, therefore, the Antithesis of Dialectical Logic is no more than a special case of Complementarity, aggrandized by Hegelianism and Marxism.  However, though Marcuse does briefly recognize that some forms of "Logic" are distortions of Eros, his chapter title 'Dialectic of Civilization' suggests that he is unaware that the critique might apply to Dialectical Materialism, as well.

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