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Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Herbert Marcuse Quotes

“The ontological concept of truth is in the centre of a logic which may serve as a model of pre- technological rationality. It is the rationality of a two-dimensional universe of discourse which, contrasts with the of thought and behavior that develop in the execution of the technological project.”

MayTwoUniverseTruth IsBehaviorProjectsModelsConceptsLogicContrastExecutionTechnologicalCentreDiscourseRationality
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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“Precisely because Galilean science is, in the formation of its concepts, the technic of a specific Lebenswelt , it does not and cannot transcend this Lebenswelt . It remains essentially within the basic experiential framework and within the universe of ends set by this reality.”

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Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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“Many, and I think the determining, constitutive facts remain outside the reach of the operational concept. And by virtue of this limitation this methodological injunction against transitive concepts which might show the facts in their true light and call them by their true name the descriptive analysis of the facts blocks the apprehension of facts and becomes an element of the ideology that sustains the facts. Proclaiming the existing social reality as its own norm, this sociology fortifies in the individuals the "faithless faith" in the reality whose victims they are.”

ThinkingFactsShowsRealityLightMightNamesIndividualSocialVirtueElementsConceptsVictimBlockIdeologyLimitationAnalysisNormSociologyApprehensionProclaimingFaithless
Book:One dimensional man: studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society
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“At the classical origins of philosophic thought, the transcending concepts remained committed to the prevailing separation between intellectual and manual labor to the established society of enslavement. ... Those who bore the brunt of the untrue reality and who, therefore, seemed to be most in need of attaining its subversion were not the concern of philosophy. It abstracted from them and continued to abstract from them.”

NeedsPhilosophyRealityIntellectualConceptsConcernLaborCommittedSeparationAbstractBoresManualsUntruePrevailingEnslavementTranscendingPhilosophicSubversionManual Labor
Author:Herbert Marcuse
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“Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the Establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to expressions of its own morality but to those of another. Pbscene is not the picture of a naked woman who exposes her pubic hair but that of a fully clad general who exposes his medals rewarded in a war of aggression; obscene is not the ritual of the Hippies but the declaration of a high dignitary of the Church that war is necessary for peace.”

WarTermChurchMoralExpressionHairMoralityConceptsAbuseNakedRitualEstablishmentAggressionDeclarationMedalHippieArsenalObsceneObscenityPubic Hair
Book:An Essay on Liberation
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“This (functional - E.W.) language controls by reducing the linguistic forms and symbols of reflection, abstraction, development, contradiction; by substituting images for concepts. It denies or absorbs the transcendent vocabulary; it does not search for but establishes and imposes truth and falsehood.”

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Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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“Where these reduced (operational - E.W.) concepts govern the analysis of the human reality, individual or social, mental or material, they arrive at a false concreteness - a concreteness isolated from the conditions which constitute its reality. In this context, the operational treatment of the concept assumes a political function. The individual and his behavior are analyzed in a therapeutic sense - adjustment to his society. Thought and expression, theory and practice are to be brought in line with the facts of his existence without leaving room for the conceptual critique of these facts.”

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Author:Herbert Marcuse
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