Heidegger and Marcuse: the catastrophe and redemption of history

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 But Andrew Feenberg’s careful study of Heidegger’s early lectures, as well as of previously unpublished work by Marcuse, suggests that the famous student remained closer than he cared to admit to the even more famous teacher. Heidegger and Marcuse examines for the first time Marcuse’s remarkable attemptsin his early and late work to bridge the gap between existentialism and Marxism in a radical critical theory.