There was a notable anecdote at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in the stream of Marcuse’s philosophy: a mobile clinic offering free abortion and free vasectomies. I think it is highly unlikely that the organizers of this initiative were sitting around reading either Eros and Civilization or One-Dimensional Man. But, this particular “practice”—a mobile clinic offering free abortions and free vasectomies—can rightly be interpreted as conceptually linked to, and ideologically quite consistent with, the voice and counsel of Herbert Marcuse.

Note: For the month of February and March, Crossway Publishers is generously allowing our readers to download a free copy of John Owen’s Overcoming Sin and Temptation (Edited by Kelly M. Kapic & Justin Taylor). This work is an unabridged collection of Owen’s three classic works: Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, Of Temptation: The Nature and Power of It, and The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin. May God use this resource to help you better understand and overcome sin!

Creation, fall, redemption, consummation. This familiar outline summarizes the whole biblical storyline and encompasses every major doctrine in Christian theology. But it might be argued that non-Christian worldviews—even every worldview—has a similar outline? Every worldview has to address where the world came from and what went (or is) wrong with it. Every worldview likewise offers some sort of solution to the problem, and some hope for what the world and society will be like if its problem is solved. The problem, of course, is that non-Christian worldviews get these doctrines wrong: for example, they may have a doctrine of sin (i.e., what is wrong with the world) but it isn’t understood biblically as rebellion against the good and holy God who created all things good. In this article, I will examine the understanding of sin in one non-Christian thinker, Herbert Marcuse.[1] Marcuse’s thought was vital to the development of critical theory, and his skewed understanding of sin, as well as his faulty—even wicked—solution to the problem, continues to infect all levels of western society today.

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. Even if one has never heard of Marcuse or read him, his ideas permeate our culture in significant and deep ways. Marcuse is one of the early members of what is sometimes called the Frankfurt School (the key or founding school of the so-called Critical Theorists), a group Jewish and Marxist intellectuals in Germany, going back to 1920s. Besides Herbert Marcuse, key members of the Frankfurt School would include Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin. (The seminal twentieth century philosopher Jürgen Habermas—still living as of early 2025—would eventually join the ranks of the Critical Theorists at the Frankfurt School).

The Frankfurt School sought to explain a central problem: Why had the hoped for Marxist revolution not occurred in Germany like it had occurred in Russia? If World War I (and eventually World War II) had not been enough of a world crisis to spur on the revolution, what would bring about the anticipated and hoped-for revolution? These early Critical Theorists—including Marcuse—began to re-think and re-work their Marxism, and these theorists produced a significant amount of literature in which they considered how Marx and Marxism might have to be reconsidered, adjusted, and even rejected at times, to account for the failure of the revolution to materialize. Other issues were seen to be at stake—especially issues of culture, religion, and the family. Man might not be simply a material and economic creature after all (as Marxism seemed to presume). Perhaps Marx had not seen as far and wide as he needed to see.

One of the most important of the Critical Theorists was Herbert Marcuse, and he offered his own understanding of the world and what had gone wrong with things. He had, in a sense, his own understanding of “sin.” I want to suggest that one way of interpreting the Critical Theorists is that they have their own understanding (or “doctrine”) of:

(1) Creation or the nature of reality (their own metaphysic)

(2) Sin

(3) Redemption, eschatology, and history

Here, let us briefly look at the thought of Marcuse, keeping in mind that Marcuse has, in a sense, his own understanding of “sin” (i.e., what has gone wrong with the world).

Herbert Marcuse and the Reality of “Sin”

For Marcuse, one of the marks of the “one-dimensional” society is that man has ceased (or has partially ceased) to realize his own great desire for full and free sexual expression. In short, the technological society has so shaped man that he has, in a sense, forgotten his true sexual desires and impulses (or has partially done so). Marcuse contrasts the “Pleasure Principle” (i.e., we all really desire to maximize unfettered sexual pleasure) with the “Reality Principle” (i.e., to have society and order there must be a restraint on such unfettered sexual desire). But now, in our technological, one-dimensional society, the “Reality Principle no longer seems to require a sweeping and painful transformation [i.e., muting, suppressing] of instinctual needs [the Pleasure Principle].” Indeed: “The individual must adapt himself to a world which does not seem to demand the denial of his innermost needs—a world which is not essentially hostile.”[2] That is: we have become so conditioned by technological society, by our “one-dimensional” culture, that we no longer (basically) have a sense that our deepest (i.e., sexual) needs are not being expressed and fulfilled and enjoyed.

For Marcuse, our dilemma is that we have forgotten who we really are and what we really want. Thus, Marcuse coins the phrase “institutionalized desublimation.” “Institutionalized” is fairly straightforward: amidst our technological society, our one-dimensional culture so works that we forget our deeper and truer self (the one that wants—rightly—unfettered sexual pleasure). By “desublimation” Marcuse means we can experience a limited amount and extent of sexual pleasure, and this pleasure is encouraged by our technological and capitalistic society. But this partial fulfillment of our sexual pleasure can blind us to the fact that we are not experiencing the full sexual freedom that we truly desire.[3] Marcuse puts it this way:

This liberation of sexuality (and aggressiveness) [i.e., the kind of liberation encouraged by technological and capitalistic society] frees the instinctual drives from much of the unhappiness and discontent that elucidate the repressive power of the established universe of satisfaction.[4]

For Marcuse this “desublimation” may lessen a person’s desire to seek full liberation, and thus the person who experiences “desublimation” may be almost unconsciously submitting to a “one dimensional” technological and capitalistic culture.

What Turning from Sin Looks Like for Marcuse

One of Marcuse’ key books is his 1955 Eros and Civilization, subtitled, A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud.[5]

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