Reason and Revolution (Routledge Classics)

Few philosophers have had a more lasting impact on the philosophy of history than Friedrich Hegel. Reason and Revolution is Herbert Marcuse's brilliant interpretation of Hegel's philosophy and the influence it has had on political thought, from the French Revolution to the twentieth century.

In a masterpiece of dialectical thought, Marcuse superbly illuminates the implications of Hegel's philosophy, rescuing it from the taint of reactionary thought that distorted or dismissed it for the early part of the twentieth century. After a masterful survey of the main elements of Hegel's philosophical system, Marcuse argues that it is Hegel the rationalist and progressive who stands in contrast to the irrationalism of Nazism, providing the crucial platform on which Marxist thought would later build and take Hegel's thought in a radical and explosive new direction.

A vital book in the development of critical theory and for understanding the great battle between liberal and reactionary thought, Reason and Revolution remains essential reading today.

This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by J.M. Bernstein.

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) was born and educated in Berlin, before leaving Nazi Germany in 1934 for refuge in the United States. He taught at Columbia University and then held appointments at Harvard, Brandeis, and the University of California San Diego. One of the leading radical theorists of the twentieth century, he was hailed as the 'Guru of the New Left' and philosophical talisman of the 1960s counterculture movement. His books include Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man, also published in Routledge Classics.