Herbert Marcuse's first philosophical project

This paper presents the first philosophical project of Herbert Marcuse as expressed in his writings between 1928 and 1933. In these writings, Marcuse tried to put into dialogue ideas from Heidegger and Marx to articulate a dialectical phenomenology of historical existence. This original and philosophically ambitious attempt was full of tensions because of the particular statute given to the ontology of historicity within a frame of thinking strongly linked to Marx. In this way, Marcuse's first philosophical project evidences theoretical tensions which clear up the later development of this thinker as a member of the Frankfurt School.