affirmative culture

is a model of bourgeois idealist culture (art, philosophy, religion) whereby abstract notions of equality and happiness and beauty came to stand in for actual equality and happiness and beauty, where actual life is denigrated and indicted for falling short.

In his essay, The Affirmative Character of Culture' (1937) Marcuse argues that . .. . 'the assertion of a universally obligatory, eternally better and more valuable world that must be unconditionally affrmed' . . . 'This is the real miracle of affirmative culture' the injection of cultural happiness into unhappiness and the spiritualization of sensuality mitigate the misery and the sickness 'to a healthy work capacity.'(122) (net)

is the wrongheaded idea that dimensions of the intellectual and spiritual world, such as art, philosophy and religion are to be held to be intrinsically higher and more valuable than interests which contribute directly and more immediately to earning a living.

The concept 'affirmative culture' denotes those dimensions of the intellectual and spiritual world, such as art, philosophy and religion which are held to be intrinsically higher and more valuable than interests which contribute directly and more immediately to earning a living.

affirmative culture, n.All

affirmative culture