Herbert Marcuse and the Reality of 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.

1. This essay is adapted from my forthcoming book, What is Critical Theory: A Concise Christian Analysis (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Publishers, 2026).

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.

2. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1964), 74.

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:

3. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 75-76.

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]

4. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 76.

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] His thesis in Eros and Civilization is quite clear: every effort must be made to liberate persons from anything that will inhibit a proper kind of erotic pleasure. Marcuse speaks positively of “Polymorphous sexuality,” and writes: “the new direction of progress would depend completely on the opportunity to activate repressed or arrested organic, biological needs: to make the human body an instrument of pleasure rather than labor.”[6] In short, Marcuse is arguing that the forces and reality of “civilization” mitigate against erotic satisfaction. He writes: “the erotic energy of the Life Instincts cannot be freed under the dehumanizing conditions of profitable affluence.”[7]

Marcuse takes for granted “Freud’s proposition that civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of the human instincts . . .”[8] Indeed: “Free gratification of man’s instinctual needs is incompatible with civilized society: renunciation and delay in satisfaction are the prerequisites of progress.”[9] And again: “The methodological sacrifice of libido, its rigidly enforced deflection to socially useful activities and expressions, is culture.”[10] Hence, culture is the culprit, for culture by its very existence hampers or impedes the “free gratification of man’s instinctual needs.”[11]

Marcuse summarizes Freud’s Pleasure Principle and Reality Principle as being in fundamental conflict.[12] Like other Critical Theorists, “society” or “civilization” (the Reality Principle) mitigates against true human freedom (the Pleasure Principle). As Marcuse writes: “The replacement of the pleasure principle by the reality principle is the great traumatic event in the development of man . . .”[13]

In summarizing Freud, Marcuse does not hesitate to speak in architectonic terms of this struggle between the “Pleasure Principle” and the “Reality Principle.” As Marcuse writes: “Freud considers the ‘primordial struggle for existence’ as ‘eternal’ and therefore believes that the pleasure principle and the reality principle are ‘eternally’ antagonistic.” In short, we have something like an older metaphysical and moral dualism. We have something like the old Manichean dualism between good and evil, but transposed into different categories: the “eternal” struggle between (1) the provenance of true freedom, which is sexual—the Pleasure Principle, and (2) that which constrains and leads to repression of one’s desire—the Reality Principle.

Not only is “civilization” in general hostile to human well-being. Work in particular is hostile to human well-being—at least “non-libidinal” work.  That is, work in itself is essentially hostile to true pleasure. Marcuse can write, “Labor time, which is the largest part of the individual’s life time, is painful time, for alienated labor is absence of gratification, negation of the pleasure principle.”[14]

14. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 45.

This can be confusing. What Marcuse is getting at (at least in his own time, this book was written in 1955) is that work in the West is generally “alienated” from one’s deepest desire for pleasure. It is non “libidinal” work—work disconnected from the “pleasure principle” (which again is primarily sexual). In order to have a functioning society, the “reality principle” must dominate over the “pleasure principle.” So, in general, work can be seen as a part of the “reality principle”—a principle or realm in fundamental conflict with the “pleasure principle.” So, as Marcuse sees it, as far as Freud worked things out, he was fundamentally right—at least it seems. What Marcuse does—here moving past Freud—is suggest that there is a way for the pleasure principle to be dominant. Or to put it more subtly, there is a way for every aspect of human life to be “libidinal,” to become sexualized. That is: a new reality principle must, and can, be forged.

Marcuse strikingly gives voice to Freud’s understanding of sexual desire, and how his understanding relates to more traditional understandings of sexuality. As Marcuse summarizes Freud, before civilization comes into being and clashes with the deepest, unfettered sex instinct, “sexuality is by nature ‘polymorphous-perverse’.”[15] As society (the “reality principle”) comes to dominate, society condemns or marginalizes “as perversions practically all its [i.e., the sex instinct’s] manifestations which do not serve or prepare for the procreative function.”[16] As Freud saw things, sexual experience apart from that which is directed toward procreation promises more pleasure than sexual relations directed to procreation. What is the source of such a promise of increased sexual bliss promised by such perversions?: “their rejection of the procreative sex act.”[17] What Marcuse says next is striking:

The perversions thus express rebellion against the subjugation of sexuality under the order of procreation, and against the institutions which guarantee this order.[18]

18. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 49.

In short, these various sexual perversions are rebelling against the notion that sexuality has as a key goal the procreation of children, and these same perversions are in rebellion against the institutions which encourage such a traditional sexuality: and certainly the key institutions in mind here must be the traditional family as well as traditional religious organizations (including the church).

Marcuse continues:

Psychoanalytic theory sees in the practices that exclude or prevent procreation an opposition against continuing the chain of reproduction and thereby paternal domination—an attempt to prevent the “reappearance of the father.[19]

19. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 49.

In short, as Marcuse understands Freud (and Marcuse seems to approve of Freud at this point), the various sexual practices that “exclude” or “prevent” procreation are a way of resisting, stopping, halting “paternal domination,” or what in more recent decades would simply be called “the patriarchy.”[20] It is important not to miss this. For Marcuse, the link between (1) sexual pleasure and (2) procreation is a link which should be challenged, or rejected, or at least mitigated. The block quote just above is central. Marcuse sees in “the practices that exclude or prevent procreation” a helpful and necessary reality. These “practices”—practices that “exclude or prevent procreation”—are good and right practices that can help to resist patriarchy or “paternal domination.”

20. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 49.

This kind of thinking has borne fruit even today. 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.

Here again we see something of the “gnostic” tendency of Critical Theory. It is not that civilization can be destructive, or might do harm, or will possibly at times lead to conflict. Rather, civilization—in its essence—is destructive, harmful, or full of conflict. As Marcuse writes: “the very progress of civilization leads to the release of increasingly destructive forces.”[21] The Christian can most certainly say that after the fall, civilization will indeed be filled with destruction, harm, and conflict. But the Critical Theorists appear to inject such destruction, harm, and conflict, into the very essence and nature of things. Indeed, as Freud himself wrote, his intention in Civilization and Its Discontents is as follows:

21. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 54.

to represent the sense of guilt as the most important problem in the development of civilization and to show that the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt.[22]

22. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, translated and edited by James Strachey (New York and London:  W.W. Norton & Company, 1961), 97. There are numerous editions of this work. This quote comes from the first page of chapter eight, where Freud is summarizing the entire work.

It is also important to keep in mind that with Marcuse, the development of the traditional family is a part of the problem. Thus, “the reduction of Eros to procreative-monogamic sexuality [i.e., traditional marriage between one man and one woman] . . . is consummated only when the individual has become a subject-object of labor in the apparatus of his society . . .”[23]

23. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 90.

In an intriguing way, Marcuse has his own version of a creation and fall motif. As Marcuse summarizes Freud, once upon a time there was a Camelot. In Marcuse’s “pre-fall” world the “pleasure principle” and the “reality principle” co-existed peacefully. What disrupted this peaceful co-existence?: civilization. Thus, as Marcuse works this out, civilization “can develop only through the destruction of the subhistorical unity between pleasure principle and reality principle.”[24] That is: as man forged civilization, this happy co-existence between the pleasure principle and the reality principle could no longer remain. But Marcuse thinks Freud came up short in thinking through possibilities for a better future. Freud could have done better than he did, as Marcuse sees it. What Marcuse wants to do is to move beyond what Freud concluded, but to do so by being consistent with Freud himself. In short: Marcuse believed that it was possible to forge a new reality principle, in which “repression” would be unnecessary. This “new reality principle” is essentially Marcuse’s redemptive story.

24. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, 147.

Conclusion

If we get the doctrine of sin wrong, the rest of our worldview falls apart. Because Herbert Marcuse understands the human problem (“sin”) as the institutionalized repression of sexual desire, his version of “redemption” entails a fundamental challenge, not only to civilization, but to each and every family. As our culture drifts farther away from the biblical worldview, our churches must redouble our commitment to teaching and preaching on sin: sin is rebellion against God, violation of his law, and breach of covenant—all driven by the exaltation of the self over against God. It is the exchange of God’s truth for a lie, and the worship of the creature rather than the creator. Let us never exchange the bible’s view of sin for weak, man-centered counterfeits. If we do, the rest of our theology will soon follow.