Concepts carry excess meaning that reveals the deceptiveness of immediate facts

Evidence

The “excess” of meaning over and above the operational concept illuminates the limited and even deceptive form in which the facts are allowed to be experienced. Therefore the tension, the discrepancy, the conflict between the concept and the immediate fact—the thing concrete; between the word that refers to the concept and that which refers to the things. Therefore the notion of the “reality of the universal.” Therefore also the uncritical, accommodating character of those modes of thought which treat concepts as mental devices and translate universal concepts into terms with particular, objective referents. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 426

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the ‘excess of meaning’ — the load-bearing idea behind why operational concepts are accommodations to the given.
• XREF: connects to: Over-restricting thought to verifiable facts invites the charlatanism it meant to prevent — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 20; Words used instrumentally become lies; only obdurate thought resists; Concepts are reflections that explain things through context beyond immediate experience — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 423 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Concepts are reflections that explain things through context beyond immediate experience #corroborates (0.95) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 423
• Comprehending the interrelation of experienced facts shatters false realism #complicates (0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 801
• Knowledge created from a position of strength produces the object it claims to describe #expands (0.75)
• Concepts supposedly abolished in theory keep returning in altered form. #complicates (0.72) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 199