Herbert Marcuse: Social Critique, Haecker and Kierkegaardian Individualism J. Michael Tilley Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) was an influential interpreter of Hegel, Marx, and Freud, and his work has influenced an entire generation of social and critical theorists comprising the New Left in the 1960s. Although his work displays amazing insight regarding German philosophy and social theory, his exposure to Kierkegaard was rather limited and filtered through this tradition. As a result, there are only two extended discussions of Kierkegaard in Marcuse's authorship, and in his mature thought Marcuse rejects what he identifies as Kierkegaard‘s view. I. Overview of Marcuse’s Life and Works Marcuse, a German Jew, was born in Berlin and educated at Freiburg receiving his doctoral degree in literature in 1922 and another doctoral degree in philosophy under the direction of Martin Heidegger. In Freiburg he later completed his Habilitation, Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity in 1932. 1 In this work, Marcuse tried to synthesize the work of Hegel, Heidegger and Marx. Upon leaving Freiburg, he briefly joined the Frankfurt School (The Institute for Social Research) before fleeing Germany in 1934. For this point forward, he 1 Herbert Marcuse, Hegels Ontologie und die Grundlegung einer Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 1932. (English translation: Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity, trans. by Seyla Benhabib, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1989.)