The ruthless critique of everything existing: nature and revolution in marcuse’s Philosophy of Praxis

Abstract

Published in 2023, The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Nature and Revolution in Marcuse’s Philosophy of Praxis is Andrew Feenberg’s second book published by Verso. The work establishes a line of continuity with its predecessor, The Philosophy of Praxis: Marx, Lukács, and the Frankfurt School, originally published almost ten years earlier. Despite the time gap between them, one constant remains: the quest to expose the Frankfurt School's connection to Marx, a relationship mediated by the unavoidable link of Lukács' History and Class Consciousness. The idea of a “philosophy of praxis,” which connects the long-term project, is borrowed from Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, where it is used as a keyword for “Marxism,” or rather, for a cultural current of interpretation of Marxism designated as “absolute historicism.”