The gaya scienza and the aesthetic ethos: Marcuse's appropriation of Nietzsche in An Essay on Liberation

In his Essay on LiberationMarcuse draws on Nietzsche explicitly in his formulation of the gaya scienza, or the aesthetic ethos of liberation. In this article, I demonstrate that Marcuse’s usage of Nietzsche runs much deeper. In addition to his interest in the gaya scienza, Marcuse articulates distinctively Nietzschean critiques of the self-undermining logic of modernity, the repressive effects of entrance into society, and the Great Refusal (or, for Nietzsche, the transvaluation of all values) that can bring about a newmode of human life. Once I have established the numerous ways in which Marcuse’s work can be understood as an extension of Nietzsche’s, I offer an analysis of the various differences between the two thinkers’ positions. Marcuse, publishing eight decades later, was confronted with a qualitatively different modernity from that of Nietzsche and subsequently reformulated Nietzsche’s critiques. Understandably, Marcuse did not elaborate on his departures from Nietzsche, but these discontinuities are instructive in understanding the relationship between the two thinkers. Among these differences are their opposed attitudes towards cruelty and suffering, their discussion of solidarity, the contents of aestheticism, and the status of politics and its emancipatory possibilities. Finally, in an attempt to bring Nietzsche and Marcuse into productive conversation, I offer an Aufhebung, or sublation, of the two thinkers’ work. I seek to alleviate the tension between Nietzsche’s individualism and Marcuse’s socialism by elaborating on the extent to which Nietzschean individuals’ self-creation is inextricably bound up with their culture. Further, I give an alternative formulation of solidarity that is reconcilable with Nietzsche’s perspectivism and experimentalism. Finally, I respond to both Marcuse’s claim that an aesthetic ethos is inevitably political and to Nietzsche’s general rejection of the State by offering views of socialism and democracy that are qualitatively