Idealism’s supremacy of thought masks thought’s practical impotence

Evidence

In this sense, “idealism” was germane to philosophic thought, for the notion of the supremacy of thought (consciousness) also pronounces the impotence of thought in an empirical world which philosophy transcends and corrects—in thought. The rationality in the name of which philosophy passed its judgments obtained that abstract and general “purity” which made it immune against the world in which one had to live. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 518

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Belief in spirits is Idealism’s degradation, the literal death of mind — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 266; All ontology after Parmenides has been secretly idealist — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2278; Deferential invisibility inside power corrupts an idealist’s stated goals — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 620