Marcuse

“The possible ‘other’ that appears in art is trans-historical inasmuch as it transcends any and every specific historical situation. Tragedy is always and everywhere while the satyr play follows it always and everywhere; joy vanishes faster than sorrow. This insight, inexorably expressed in art, may well shatter faith in progress but it may also keep alive another image and another goal of praxis, namely the reconstruction of society and nature under the principle of increasing the human potential for happiness.”

 -Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics, 1978