Truth remains an unrealized potential for anyone bound to procuring necessities.

Evidence

Who is, in the classical conception, the subject that comprehends the ontological condition of truth and untruth? It is the master of pure contemplation (theoria), and the master of a practice guided by theoria, i.e., the philosopher-statesman. To be sure, the truth which he knows and expounds is potentially accessible to everyone. Led by the philosopher, the slave in Plato’s Meno is capable of grasping the truth of a geometrical axiom, i.e., a truth beyond change and corruption. But since truth is a state of Being as well as of thought, and since the latter is the expression and manifestation of the former, access to truth remains mere potentiality as long as it is not living in and with the truth. And this mode of existence is closed to the slave—and to anyone who has to spend his life procuring the necessities of life. Consequently, if men no longer had to spend their lives in the realm of necessity, truth and a true human existence would be in a strict and real sense universal. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 502

Categorization

• XREF: This rehearses Marcuse’s core thesis that freedom/spirit requires freedom from necessity — connects to Marx’s theory of alienation and the reader’s attention-economy work on how cognitive labor constrains critical thought.
• DEFINE: Defines the classical division between theoria and the realm of necessity — the foundational distinction for understanding one-dimensionality.