Eros effect – “Elective affinities”, hope and the one-dimensional man

Abstract

“it is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us”. This enigmatic last sentence of One-Dimensional Man is also the last sentence of Walter Benjamin essay “Goethe’s Elective Affinities” (“Nur um der Hoffnungslosen willen ist uns die Hoffnung gegeben”). What does the One-Dimensional Man have in common with Goethe’s romantic novel? Focusing Eros, this paper examines the three texts – Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man, Walter Benjamin essay about “Goethe’s Elective Affinities” and the Goethe’s novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften – in order to enlighten the almost desperate concept of hope that shines at the end of Herbert Marcuse’s book.