Marcuse in Verso's Radical Thinkers series

A Study on Authority

by Herbert Marcuse

Translated by Joris De Bres

The great theorist of radical liberation analyzes the relationship between authority and freedom.

This is the first paperback edition of what is now recognized as Marcuse’s most important collection of writings on philosophy. He analyzes and attacks some of the main intellectual currents of European thoughts from the Reformation to the Cold War. In a survey that includes Luther, Calvin, Kant, Burke, Hegel and Bergson, he shows how certain concepts of authority and liberty are constant elements in their very different systems. The book also contains Marcuse’s famous response to Karl Popper’s Poverty of Historicism, and his critique of Sartre.

Paperback, 111 pages

ISBN: 9781844672097

January 2008

$12.95 / £6.99

• Part of the Radical Thinkers series
  
  

Reviews

• “Marcuse brought a forceful clarity to the leftist table; a classical Marxism willing to confront new realities.”
  – The Nation
• “Lucid and powerful.”
  – New Society
• “It is a worldly philosopher's dream: his long neglected works catch fire, illuminate his times and emblazon his name for posterity. It does not often come true, but it did for Herbert Marcuse.”
  – Time Magazine
• “Well worth reading.”
  – Radical Philosophy

New reviews of Pat Churchland's BRAINTRUST

Update: Pat was interviewed on KPBS this morning: you can listen the interview or read a transcript here.

Following up the earlier post on Patricia S. Churchland's new book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality (Princeton 2011), here are some recent reviews available electronically:

• Margaret Boden. If it feels good, perhaps it is. (Review of Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality) Times Higher Education Supplement 5 May 2011. 

• Steven Poole's Nonfiction Choice- Reviews. The Guardian 7 May 2011. 

• Richard S. Mathis. Our Caring Neurons. (Review of Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality). Science 13 May 2011: Vol. 332 no. 6031 p. 793. (Note: requires institutional access.) DOI: 10.1126/science.1205721

Congratulations to Pat on these very engaging and laudatory reviews.

Volume 5 of Herbert Marcuse's Collected Papers

Volume 5 of the Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, edited by Douglas Kellner and Clayton Pierce, has been published in late 2010. There is much of interest here with regards to the history of the UCSD Philosophy Department, including a reprint of Marcuse's 1969 Presidential Address to the Pacific APA entitled 'The Relevance of Reality'; an interview with KPBS, a local San Diego radio station; and an afterward by UCSD Philosophy Alum Andrew Feenberg. In general, there is much of philosophical interest, including Marcuse's critiques of positivism and pragmatism, reflections on the philosophy of technology, and the ethics of science. Below I copy the blurb on the Routledge page, which usefully contains the table of contents (as well as links to descriptions and tables of content for the prior 4 volumes).

Edited by Douglas Kellner and Clayton Pierce, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Emancipation is the fifth volume of Herbert Marcuse's collected papers. Containing some of Marcuse’s most important work, this book presents for the first time his unique syntheses of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and critical social theory, directed toward human emancipation and social transformation.

Within philosophy, Marcuse engaged with disparate and often conflicting philosophical perspectives - ranging from Heidegger and phenomenology, to Hegel, Marx, and Freud - to create unique philosophical insights, often overlooked in favor of his theoretical and political interventions with the New Left, the subject of previous volumes. This collection assembles significant, and in some cases unknown texts from the Herbert Marcuse archives in Frankfurt, including:

• critiques of positivism and idealism, Dewey’s pragmatism, and the tradition of German philosophy
• philosophical essays from the 1930s and 1940s that attempt to reconstruct philosophy on a materialist base
• Marcuse’s unique attempts to bring together Freud and philosophy
• philosophical reflections on death, human aggression, war, and peace
• Marcuse’s later critical philosophical perspectives on science, technology, society, religion, and ecology.

A comprehensive introduction by Douglas Kellner, Tyson Lewis and Clayton Pierce places Marcuse’s work in the context of his engagement with the main currents of twentieth century politics and philosophy. An Afterword by Andrew Feenberg provides a personal memory of Marcuse as scholar, teacher and activist, and summarizes the lasting relevance of his radical thought.

Pat Churchland's Braintrust

Today's San Diego Union Tribune has an interview with Patricia Churchland (UCSD Presidential Professor of Philosophy Emeritus) about her new book Braintrust: what neuroscience tells us about morality (Princeton 2011). From the interview:

The word “braintrust” has a certain meaning for most people, but you use it in a different way here. Please explain the significance of the title.

Yes, the expression has a meaning dating back to F.D. Roosevelt’s cabinet. My use of “braintrust” evokes the fact that trust is a fundamental feature of harmonious social life, and is essential for the development of social institutions of various kinds — including markets, courts, religions, medical services, schools and guilds. And we now know a little about the neurochemical platform that enables the formation of social bonds and relationships of trust.

Featured Publication: Eric Watkins' Sourcebook for Kant's First Critique

In the upcoming months, I will be featuring works published by philosophers while they were or are professors at UCSD, beginning with a major new scholarly resource produced by Eric Watkins: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Background Source Material (Cambridge, 2009). The front matter and some other material is available at the official page at Cambridge University Press. The work has also been recently reviewed at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Below is the blurb and a short bio from the CUP page.

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: Background Source Materials

This volume offers English translations of texts that form the essential background to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Presenting the projects ofKant’s predecessors and contemporaries in eighteenth-century Germany, it enables readers to understand the positions that Kant might have identified with “pure reason,” the criticisms of pure reason that had been developed prior to Kant’s, and alternative attempts at synthesizing empiricist elements within a rationalist framework. The volume contains chapters on Christian Wolff, Martin Knutzen, Alexander Baumgarten, Christian Crusius, Leonhard Euler, Johann Lambert, Marcus Herz, Johann Eberhard, and Johann Tetens. Each chapter includes a brief introduction that provides succinct biographical and bibliographical information on these authors, a concise account of their projects, and information on the importance of these projects to Kant’s first Critique. Extensive references to the firstCritique, brought together in a concordance, highlight the potential relevance of each text.

Eric Watkins is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. The recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he is the author of Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality, which won the Book Prize in 2005 from the Journal of the History of Philosophy.