Abstract
In this paper I reconstruct Adorno’s arguments against the phenomenological project as developed by Husserl in the early phase of his thought, with particular focus on the dialectical nature and meaning of such a critique. Primary references are Adorno’s article Husserl and the Problem of Idealism, published in 1940, and his book Against Epistemology: A Metacritique, published in 1956. I argue that, for Adorno, Husserl’s attempt must be understood as both logically impossible and theoretically productive. After laying down the general framework of Adorno’s reading in the first three sections, I examine his criticism of Husserl’s “involuntary dialectic” in detail, also with the help of an independent analysis of some ambiguities in Husserl’s concept of “categorial intuition”. In the last section, I explain why and under what conditions, according to Adorno, the original impulse of Husserlian phenomenology toward an intact knowledge of “things themselves” needs to be maintained in spite of all.
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Notes
- 1.
See Wolff (2006).
- 2.
See Tiedemann (1997).
- 3.
See Tiedemann (1997, 386).
- 4.
See Testa (2011).
- 5.
Quoted in: Adorno (1993, 67).
- 6.
See O’Connor (2004, 127–148).
- 7.
See Zanotti (2014, especially 71–76).
- 8.
See Miller (2009).
- 9.
See Adorno (1986, 129–132).
- 10.
It can also be conjectured that if Adorno had dealt with the idea of a “passive synthesis”, he might have found it no less antinomic – and interesting – than categorial intuition itself.
- 11.
- 12.
See for example Adorno (1993, 14–17).
- 13.
See Adorno (2013, chap. 4, especially 224–234).
- 14.
See above, 7–8.
- 15.
Quoted in: Adorno (1993, 67).
- 16.
Quoted in: Adorno (1993, 67).
- 17.
“The farther Hegel takes idealism, even epistemologically, the closer he comes to social materialism; the more he insists, against Kant, on comprehending his subject matter from the inside out” (Adorno 1993, 68).
- 18.
See Adorno (1986, 120).
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Zanotti, G. (2019). Adorno on the Meaning of Phenomenology. In: Ferrarin, A., Moran, D., Magrì, E., Manca, D. (eds) Hegel and Phenomenology. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 102. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17546-7_9
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