Marcuse is a philosopher in the Western tradition. He both embraces and criticizes Western philosophy, consistently referring to Western philosophy as both inspiration for, and obstruction to, radical thinking.

Marcuse consistently returns to Plato’s dialogues as a model for dialectical, liberatory thinking. The dialogues generally consist of a conversation between Socrates and someone else. They begin with an assumed truth rooted in experience, which is then subjected to questioning via this assumption coming into tension with something else that contradicts it. For Socrates, tensions and contradictions are nothing to be feared in thinking; rather, they are the foundation for and enable philosophical inquiry and the pursuit of truth.

These dialogues narrate the origin of Western philosophy as grounded in dialectical logic: Thinking occurs in the genuine consideration of a challenge and the subsequent revision in light of this challenge. The result is a new idea that must be subjected to the same process of inquiry. This process continues until there are no more tensions or contradictions, and truth has been achieved. It is only in holding an assumption up to something that is in tension with it that thinking can ever occur. For Marcuse, philosophy is dialectical thinking.

This embrace of contradiction and tension runs contrary to current assumptions about thinking.