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Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Herbert Marcuse Quotes

“In the form of the oeuvre, the actual circumstances are placed in another dimension where the given reality shows itself as that which it is. Thus it tells the truth about itself; its language ceases to be that of deception, ignorance, and submission. Fiction calls the facts by their name and their reign collapses; fiction subverts everyday experience and shows it to be mutilated and false.”

FactsShowsRealityFormNamesLanguageGivenFictionIgnoranceCircumstancesEverydayCeaseDeceptionDimensionsTelling The TruthCollapseReignSubmissionReality Shows
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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“Freed from the sublimated form which was the very token of its irreconcilable dreams - a form which is the style, the language in which the story is told - sexuality turns into a vehicle for the bestsellers of oppression. ... This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and of exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression. Sexuality is no exception.”

StoriesDreamFormTurnsLanguageProgressStyleSourceSatisfactionSexualityOppressionExceptionVehicleExploitationTokensThis SocietyDrudgery
Author:Herbert Marcuse
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“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.”

PeopleMenNeedsFormDangerCapitalismDestructionInstrumentsConsumersCorporateTiesDevicesEnginesCommodityConsumingPossessingGadgetsNature Of Man
Book:An Essay on Liberation
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“Hypostatized into a ritual pattern, Marxian theory becomes ideology. But its content and function distinguish it from classical forms of ideology; it is not false consciousness, but a rather consciousness of falsehood, a falsehood which is corrected in the context of the higher truth represented by the objective historical interest.”

FormInterestConsciousnessTheoryHigherFunctionHistoricalPatternsObjectivesIdeologyCommunismRitualFalsehood
Author:Herbert Marcuse
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“If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator -- the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts.”

IfsArtSoulPhilosophyTogetherFormValuesCultureCommonCommunicationMassRealmsCommodityCommon DenominatorSalesmanshipMass Communication
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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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.”

DoeFormCultureLanguageDevelopmentReflectionConceptsDenySymbolsContradictionFalsehoodVocabularyAbstractionReducingTranscendentTruth And Falsehood
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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