Dialectical thinking requires abstraction from existing forms to form general concepts.
Evidence
For Marcuse, dialectical thinking involved the ability to abstract one’s perception and thought from existing forms in order to form more general concepts. This conception helps explain the difficulty of One-Dimensional Man and the demands that it imposes upon its reader. For Marcuse abstracts from the complexity and multiplicity of the existing society its fundamental tendencies and constituents, as well as those categories which constitute for him the forms of critical thinking. This demands that the reader also abstract from existing ways of looking at society and modes of thinking and attempt to perceive and think in a new way. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 12
Categorization
- XREF: The abstraction-demand on the reader echoes the ‘deep listening’ material’s insistence on clearing prior assumptions before perception can shift. — connects to: Reaching the concrete in thought requires successive abstractions that add conditions of existence.; Human thought fundamentally requires categorizing new experiences into old concepts. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 1151; Sociological method can unify disciplines through shared abstract generality. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 1446 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Reaching the concrete in thought requires successive abstractions that add conditions of existence.
#expands(0.88) - Moving from abstract theory to concrete analysis requires adding new concepts
#expands(0.80) - Historical change forces theorists to invent new, more concrete concepts
#expands(0.78) - Sociological method can unify disciplines through shared abstract generality.
#expands(0.75) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 1446 - Human thought fundamentally requires categorizing new experiences into old concepts.
#qualifies(0.72) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1151 - Very general theories guide thinking but resist direct application to specific cases
#expands(0.72) — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 102