Silvio Ricardo Carneiro

Nosso ensaio procura compreender o sentido atual da Teoria Crítica de Herbert Marcuse. De início, fazemos a contraposição de Marcuse à versão mais contemporânea da Teoria Crítica, representada pela perspectiva normativa de Jürgen Habermas e Axel Honneth. Notamos, em seguida, a insuficiência deste modelo crítico diante dos desafios contemporâneos, conforme a crítica de John Abromeit e Amy Allen. Ambos apresentam os limites da segunda geração para compreender o avanço do pensamento conservador. Recuperamos aqui as reflexões de Marcuse sobre os limites da democracia burguesa nos anos 1970. Este será o mote para pensarmos uma perspectiva de Teoria Crítica diversa da normatividade. A experiência crítica de Marcuse é marcada pelo contorno dos acontecimentos e dos corpos, o conteúdo material das questões morais – elementos centrais para o embate contra a cultura do medo que alimenta o autoritarismo nas vias democráticas.

Following a Weltanschaaung that involves a concept of life, Hitler has organized one of central chapiters of his autobiography My Struggle, named “Nation and Race”. Three human groups – to know, the founders of culture, the bearers of culture, the destroyers of culture – would be organized as forms of life. These three groups cohabit in competition for the territory of living space. With Hitler´s interpretations, come up then a living economic, that justifies the Total State or the Total War. In front of this horizon, appear critiques as Marcuse, which efforts intend to face the usurpation of concepts as life, nature and racionality by Nazi myth of race and nation. Into this field, Marcuse meets psychoanalysis. Someone considers this meeting as a return to some naturalism too far from the critical exigencies of this time; however, it is possible to insist that this resourse to Freud makes evident a straight critic to a living economic operated from a totalitarian Weltanschauung