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Whitehead and Marcuse

Essential elements of Marcuse’s Critical Theory can be better understood and appreciated when their Whiteheadian origins are examined. Marcuse’s recourse to Whitehead’s philosophy in both Eros and Civilization and One Dimensional Man has escaped explicit and sustained attention and this essay addresses this lacuna. The primary theme of the essay therefore consists of a careful examination of the instances of terminological and textual intersection grouped around three headings: the great refusal, universals and reason. A secondary objective that focuses the investigation concerns ‘provisional realism’. The phrase ‘provisional realism’ was used by Whitehead infrequently. I adopt it here to suggest the shared metaphysical concerns of Critical Theory and Whitehead’s philosophy. The great refusal is an appeal to a provisional realism implicating universals functioning as the intersection of actuality with possibility. This in turn facilitates the expansion and intensification of human reason as an agency in history.