This thesis asserts that Marcuse and Nietzsche, in their concepts of one-dimensionality and nihilism, are discussing properties of the same phenomenon, and that their discussion can be structured through reference to Hegel's theory of alienation: Beginning with a separation of the subject and object-world (which I will call 'first stage Hegelian alienation'), the subject orders the object-world (in their perception of it) in order to dominate it (in order to avoid the dissolution of the self in nature/Being). The same structure applies to the state-subject relationship. Once this structure is instigated, it is self-perpetuating as its criteria of acceptability are limited precisely to 'value-less values' that already fit its 'schema of calculability'. This has the effect that everything is pre-determined, and also that dissent, defined as a (transcendent) form of contradiction of the status quo, is no longer admitted. Given that dissent will be defined as the assertion of an alternative possibility, the paradigm grounded in instrumental reason, in denying the possibility of such dissent, is, it will be argued, a nihilistic paradigm.