This classic book by Theodor W. Adorno anticipates many of the
themes that have since become common in contemporary philosophy:
the critique of foundationalism, the illusions of idealism and the
end of epistemology. It also foreshadows many of the key ideas that
were developed by Adorno in his most important philosophical works,
including Negative Dialectics.
Against Epistemology is based on a manuscript Adorno
originally wrote in Oxford in 1934-37 during his first years in
exile and subsequently reworked in Frankfurt in 1955-56. The text
was written as a critique of Husserl’s phenomenology, but the
critique of phenomenology is used as the occasion for a much
broader critique of epistemology. Adorno described this as a
‘metacritique’ which blends together the analysis of
Husserl’s phenomenology as the most advanced instance of the
decay of bourgeois idealism with an immanent critique of the
tensions and contradictions internal to Husserl’s thought.
The result is a powerful text which remains one of the most
devastating critiques of Husserl’s work ever written and
which heralded many of the ideas that have become commonplace in
contemporary philosophy.
Tabla de materias
Preface 1
Introduction 3
Procedure and Object Immanent Critique
Mediating the First Mathematicizaton
Concept of Method Promoting the Subject
Persistence as Truth The Elementary
The Regressive
Philosophy of Origins and Epistemology
System and Debit Opposing Forces in Epistemology
The Drive for System Doctrine of Antinomies
Nominalism Motivation and Tendency of Ontology
Illusory Concretization and Formalism
New and Old
1 Critique of Logical Absolutism 41
Philosophy, Metaphysics and Science
Contradiction in Scientificization
Concept of Intuition Husserl’s Scientism
Dialectic in Spite of Itself A Head-Start for Science
‘Realism’ in Logic The Logical In-Itself
Presupposition of Logical Absolutism
Essence and Development (Entfaltung)
Calculators, Logic and Mechanics
Reification of Logic The Logical ‘Object’
Autosemantic and Synsemantic Expressions
Logical Laws and Laws of Thought
Aporia of Logical Absolutism
Relating Genesis and Validity Genesis and Psychology
Thinking and Psychologism
The Law of Non-Contradiction The Law of Identity
Contingency Abandoning the Empirical
Phenomenological and Eidetic Motifs
2 Species and Intention 89
Propositions in Themselves and Essences
Lived Experience (Erlebnis) and ‘Sense’
Critique of Singular ‘Senses’
Origin of Essential Insight (Wesensschau)
‘Ideational Abstraction’ Abstraction and ()
The Primacy of Meaning Analysis (Bedeutungsanalyse)
The Function of the Noema Noema and ()
Relation Between the Two Reductions Noema as Hybrid
Essence and ‘Factual States of Consciousness’
Antinomy of Subjectivism and Eidetics
‘Eidetic Variations’ Essence as Fiction
3 Epistemological Concepts in Dialectic 124
Phenomenology as Epistemology
Positivism and Platonism Husserl’s Concept of
Givenness ‘Foundation’ (Fundierung)
Ontologization of the Factical
Thing as Model of the Given
Givenness Mediated in Itself The Subject of Givenness
Paradoxia of Pure Intuition
Matter as Fulfilment Sensation and Perception
Antinomy of the Doctrine of Perception
Sensation and Materialism
Epistemology as Elementary Analysis ‘Gestalt’
Intentionality and Constitution Enter Noesis and Noema
The Forgotten Synthesis Critique of Correlation Theory
Pure Identity and Noematic Core
The Primacy of Objectifying Acts
Thing as Clue (Leitfaden) Antinomy of the Noema
Critique Dismissed
Antagonism to System
Husserl’s Transition to Transcendental Idealism
Fragility of the System
4 Essence and Pure Ego 186
Husserl and his Successors Phenomenology
Attempts to Break Out Self-Revocation
Character of Immanence and the Fetishism of the Concept
‘Attitude’ (Einstellung) Fantasy and Body
Categorial Intuition The Paradoxical Apex
The Provenance of Logical Absolutism
Fulfilment of Unsensed Moments
‘Becoming Aware’ (Gewahrwerdung)
Motivation of Objectivism
Withering Away of Argument
Phenomenology as Philosophy of Reflection
The System in Ruins
Advanced and Restorative Elements
Natural History Museum Abstract Ideal of Security
Infinitization of the Temporal Origin of the Ego
Consciousness, Pure Essence, Time
Transcendental Ego and Facticity Equivocation of ‘I’
Solipsism The Aporia of Transcendental Experience
The End of Idealism
Translator’s Note 235
Bibliographical Note 239
German-English Lexicon 242
Index 245
Sobre el autor
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist, and a leading member of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.