Required reading for anyone who believes in the equality of the sexes. A long awaited, highly acclaimed new translation of Simone De Beauvoir's landmark work.

In this classic work, Herbert Marcuse takes as his starting point Freud's statement that civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of the human instincts, his reconstruction of the prehistory of mankind - to an interpretation of the basic trends of western civilization, stressing the philosophical and sociological implications.

In this classic work, Herbert Marcuse takes as his starting point Freud's statement that civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of the human instincts, his reconstruction of the prehistory of mankind - to an interpretation of the basic trends of western civilization, stressing the philosophical and sociological implications.

After World War II, a change of the “sexual economy” was beginning in the most highly developed industrial societies, the islands of prosperity with “mixed economic systems” (P. Mattick). In the thirties, indeed even in the fifties, bourgeois-capitalist society was still considered by both opponents and defenders to be one in which the sexual needs of its acculturated members are limited, prohibited and penalized as much as possible, with sexuality banned from publicity (except as a scandal or a crime). The (...) “sex-wave” however, brought a return of the repressed. Since then “sex” is not only recognized but propagated as a “central life interest.”. (shrink)

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Conceptions of life. Chinese, Greeks, and Christians.--Conceptions of life. Modern rationalism and science.--The rights of human beings. Food; work; knowledge.--The rights of human beings. Sex and parenthood.--The rights of children.--Modern civilization.