Aesthetic Dimension

Author: Herbert Marcuse
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-09-01
Features: In this book, Marcuse summarizes the decline of the 20th-century leftist radical movement in practice and reemphasizes the theoretical liberation of human instincts. Based on critiques of capitalism, examinations of Marxist aesthetics, and modern art, the book systematically elaborates the following arguments: the sociopolitical role of art and its aesthetic functional form remain dialectically connected; the utopian concept of the liberation of human instincts must be achieved through artistic-aesthetic means. Only a revolution centered around art and literature, the "aesthetic dimension," can fundamentally create a new psychological-ideological structure of humanity, thereby achieving human liberation. This book is a classic work in the history of contemporary aesthetics.