Edited and translated by José Manuel Romero Cuevas

The essays published by Herbert Marcuse in New York in the journal of the Institute for Social Research between 1934 and 1941 have an indisputable theoretical and political relevance. In them he deals with decisive issues of the time (political and economic liberalism, philosophical tradition, bourgeois culture, the individual demand for happiness or contemporary technology) in the light of the catastrophe represented by the triumph of National Socialism.

But, beyond their historical-philosophical value, these texts are also relevant for critically analysing our current situation: the new rise of the extreme right on the ruins of neoliberalism, the devaluation of philosophy to a mere distraction and means of self-help, the reduction of culture to an irrelevant game of appearances, the colonisation of the most intimate needs in the search for economic profit or the oppressive closure of the technological universe for the sake of of efficiency.