When I Was One-Dimensional: One-Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse

Abstract

Abstract:This essay is a memoir exploring how Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man changed the author's life. How can such a text so shake us from our indifference, or our undiscriminating curiosity, as if calling us to follow a different path in life? And how does such a revelation of the written word—even if it is regarded as the gospel truth for a significant period of one's life—subsequently fall apart, to be set aside emphatically, as if shaking off a mistaken set of convictions?