Adorno on the Meaning of Phenomenology

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.