At first glance, the two now-classic essays presented here seem to have nothing in common. In reality, however, they are two different and complementary ways of defending the same central tenet for Marcuse: that at the heart of social life there is indeed something true and inherently beneficial. Something that is neither relative nor subject to individual opinion; something that can never be a mere product of external influences. Starting from this premise, "Repressive Tolerance" criticizes the idea of ​​tolerance in Western democracies, which tends to see balance in giving equal space to the warmonger and the pacifist, the racist and the defender of Black rights; always on the assumption that one cannot know what is right. Meanwhile, and fundamentally from the same perspective, "The Aesthetic Dimension" argues, in contrast to what Marcuse considers Marxist aesthetic orthodoxy, that art can transcend economic and class limitations to give voice to the universal and latent powers of humanity. Powers that owe nothing to any particular moment in history nor to solidarity with any particular social class, and which would be the basis of any truly revolutionary production, without needing to intend it. "The more immediately political a work of art is," he says, "the more it loses its power of estrangement and its transcendent and radical goals of change."