Universals function as normative ideals, not logical class concepts

Evidence

This interpretation, which stresses the normative character of universals, may be related to the conception of the universal in Greek philosophy—namely, the notion of the most general as the highest, the first in “excellence” and therefore the real reality: “… generality is not a subject but a predicate, a predicate precisely of the firstness implicit in superlative excellence of performance. Generality, that is to say, is general precisely because and only to the extent that it is ‘like’ firstness. It is general, then, not in the manner of a logical universal or class-concept but in the manner of a norm which, only because universally binding, manages to unify a multiplicity of parts into a single whole. It is all-important to realize that the relation of this whole to its parts is not mechanical (whole = sum of its parts) but immanently teleological (whole = distinct from the sum of its parts). Moreover, this immanently teleological view of wholeness as functional without being purposive, for all its relevance to the life-phenomenon, is not exclusively or even primarily an ‘organismic’ category. It is rooted, instead, in the immanent, intrinsic functionality of excellence as such, which unifies a manifold precisely in the process of ‘aristocratizing’ it, excellence and unity being the very conditions of the manifold’s full reality even as manifold.” — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 790

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames the normative—not merely logical—character of universals, tracing it to a teleological Greek conception where the universal unifies by excellence rather than class membership.
• XREF: connects to: Universal techniques exist only as incarnated in concrete individual acts; Philosophic universals designate unrealized potentialities rather than existing states — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 753; Reducing typical characters to class allegories is itself an idealist move — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 390 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Philosophic universals designate unrealized potentialities rather than existing states #corroborates (0.90) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 753