This article investigates the importance of the evolution of Adorno’s interpretation of Husserl for the formation of his own philosophy. The weakness of Husserl’ notion of immediate data is revealed within the light of Hans Cornelius’s Transcendentale Systematik . When Adorno discovers in his Habilitationsschrift the importance of the social setting and ideological function of theory, he departs from Cornelius’ transcendentalism as norm for his reflection - and this insight is deployed against Husserl. Henceforth, Husserl’s philosophy is interpreted as idealist, (...) as a prima philosophia , as a philosophy of identity and totality and ultimately in service of the totalitarian political tendencies Key Words: Theodor Adorno • Hans Cornelius • critical theory • first philosophy • Edmund Husserl • phenomenology • transcendental idealism. (shrink)

The present study examines Adorno’s critique of Husserl and Heidegger by asking whether one can find a systematic equivalent for Adorno’s notion of a,spiritual experience‘ in the works of the two phenomenological thinkers. This question is answered affirmatively. The first part summarizes Adorno’s critique of Husserl and Heidegger; the second analyzes the notion of,spiritual experience‘ in Adorno’s negative dialectics; the third part explains in which sense one can speak of a,spiritual experience‘ in Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology; the final part describes (...) the main differences of a,spiritual experience‘ in negative dialectics and in phenomenology, i. e. on the one hand the originally epistemological approach of phenomenology and the originally practical approach of negative dialectics and on the other hand the attitude with regards towards metaphysics. (shrink)

Adorno describes Bergson and Husserl as the proper originators of philosophical modernity. What is characteristic of the initiatives these thinkers take is, according to him, an essay in breaking out both from the philosophical systems of idealism and from neo-Kantian formalism. It is shown in the present paper that Adorno’s own project to elaborate a negative dialectics can be understood as a continuation, or re-enactment, of this Ausbruchsversuch of his great predecessors. Moreover, in one of his lecture courses given in (...) the early sixties of the last century, Adorno makes it clear that his main philosophical project is mediated by Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggerian ontology. On the other side, however, the justification of a negative dialectics relies, to a large extent, on a criticism of Bergsonian intuitionism, as well of Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggerian ontology. The upshot of these conflicting tendencies in Adorno’s later philosophical work is a tragic feature, which, in the present paper, is exhibited and highlighted on the ground of an enquiry into the idea of a spiritual experience put forward by Adorno in one of his lecture courses from the sixties, as well as in the Introduction to his main philosophical work Negative Dialectics. (shrink)

"With provocations on every page, this book is a philosophical feast. The specialist will find familiar ingredients assembled here in a perspicuous and compelling way, while the nonspecialist will discover a Husserl whose philosophy is made of flesh and blood." —Journal of the History of Philosophy In this thorough study of the full body of his writings, Donn Welton uncovers a Husserl very different from the established view. Arguing against established interpretations, The Other Husserl traces Husserl’s move from static to (...) genetic phenomenology and uses accounts of perception, discourse, subjectivity, and world to elaborate the scope of his systematic phenomenology. This serious reflection on the meaning of phenomenology is the first book in English to outline in full Husserl’s phenomenological method and to argue for its cogency. Welton’s stimulating interpretation highlights Husserl’s relevance for current philosophical debates. (shrink)

Der Zentralbegriff der Soziologie, jener Zentralbegriff, den sehr viele Soziologen heute einfach uber Bord werfen Zentralbegriff ist der Begriff der Gesellschaft, denn Soziologie heißt ja soviel wie - der logos von der societas, also, die Erkenntnis oder.

In seiner letzten Schrift unternimmt Husserl den Versuch, auf dem Wege einer teleologisch-historischen Besinnung auf die Ursprünge unserer kritischen wissenschaftlichen und philosophischen Situation die Notwendigkeit einer transzendentalphänomenologischen Umwendung der Philosophie zu begründen. Er geht von seinem Begriff der "Lebenswelt" aus und entwickelt eine auf diesen Zentralbegriff seiner Spätphilosophie gegründete eigenständige Einleitung in die transzendentale Phänomenologie.

Phanomenologie als Ursprungswissenschaft vom Leben in ihren Strukturen und thematischen Bereichen aufzuweisen, steckt Rahmen und Ziel dieser Freiburger Dozentenvorlesung ab. In dieser Grundtendenz ist die Vorlesung ein bedeutendes Zeugnis des Durchbruchs des Heideggerschen Denkens hin zur Position von Sein und Zeit. Sie ist aber mit Blick auf Heideggers Denkweg nicht nur entwicklungsgeschichtlich von Interesse, sondern sie bezieht ihr Gewicht zudem auch aus ihrer Anlage als systematische Vorlesung. Mit kritischem Blick auf die Tradition, insbesondere aber im Bemuhen um Distanzgewinnung zur zeitgenossischen (...) Philosophie (Phanomenologie, Neukantianismus, Lebensphilosophie) sucht Heidegger die eigenen Konzeption einer Urwissenschaft vom Leben an und fur sich zu profilieren. Im Zentrum steht dabei der Aufweis der in sich unterschiedenen, aber darin gleichwohl ineinander verwobenen Bekundungsgestalten des faktischen Lebens (Selbstsein, Mitwelt, Umwelt) und ihrer Thematisierungsmoglichkeiten im alltaglichen, wissenschaftlichen und philosophischen Verhalten. In immer neuen Anlaufen lasst so diese Vorlesung plastisch Heideggers Ringen um den Ansatz einer hermeneutischen Phanomenologie hervortreten. (shrink)

The entity in this book is neither soul nor body. It is that which has been forgotten since Greek classicism, that which can be perceived without the help of sight or touch, in shock, in - for example - fear, pain, hunger, thirst, revulsion, lust, rapture, freshness, tiredness, when feelings of affect are awakened, in sensations of movement, in the direction of gaze. Using new concepts dealing with expansion and dynamics, this forgotten entity is brought out of the shadows and (...) examined with the aid of examples. This work examines the role of the "Leib," according to its meaning, in the structure of the individual person, in the feeling of feelings, in art, history, space, time, soul, body. The book ends with a sketch of the different ways in whichthe "Leib"has been addressed, from the ideas of Homer up to the present.". (shrink)

In this contribution I will discuss Husserl’s eidetic method, which is dedicated to discover the apriori structures of consciousness. The method of seeing essences of the Logical Investigations (1900) should mark the opposition of phenomenology as an apriori science of consciousness and empirical psychology. The eidetic method starts as an everyday human ability to recognize equalities in different things, but it can and must be refined to become the basic phenomenological method. In the lecture Phenomenological Psychology (1925) the eidetic method (...) is specified as eidetic variation, which is characterized by the demand for unlimited variation of the starting example in phantasy. – The second part of my article is dedicated to critical considerations. One topic is the problematic interaction of an ideally infinite variation together with the necessary limitation of this variation (to avoid crossing the conceptual demarcations of the starting example). From this point of view questions concerning the true sense and unavoidable limitations of the eidetic method are discussed anew. (shrink)

An approach to phenomenology, by D. Cairns.--Husserl's critique of psychologism: its historic roots and contemporary relevance, by J. Wild.--The ideal of a presuppositionless philosophy, by M. Farber.--On the intentionality of consciousness, by A. Gurwitsch.--The "reality-phenomenon" and reality, by H. Spiegelberg.--The phenomenological concept of "horizon", by H. Kuhn.--Phenomenology and logical empiricism, by F. Kaufmann.--Phenomenology and the history of science, by J. Klein.--Phenomenology and the social sciences, by A. Schuetz.--Art and phenomenology, by F. Kaufmann.--The relation of science to philosophy in the light (...) of Husserl's thought, by L. O. Kattsoff.--Husserl and the social structure of immediacy, by C. Hartshorne.--A materialist approach to Husserl's philosophy, by V. J. McGill.--Outline-sketch of a system of metaphysics, by W. E. Hocking.--Men and the law, by G. Husserl.--The ghost of modality, by H. Weyl.--Supplement: Grundlegende untersuchungen zum phänomenologischen ursprung der räumlichkeit der natur, by E. Husserl. (shrink)

In the third book of his Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, Husserl devotes an extensive discussion to the relationship between phenomenology and experimental psychology. In this context, he also addresses the possible use of experiments in phenomenology, by contrasting “phenomenological experiments” to the regular use of experiments in the empirical sciences. The present paper seeks to offer a minute interpretation of this notion. As such, it is structured in three parts. The first part exposes (...) the historical background of Husserl’s conception by specifically analyzing the experimental procedures of the Würzburg school of psychology and their relationship to phenomenology. The second part circumscribes Husserl’s conception of “phenomenological experiments” in difference to the experiments of empirical psychology. The third part relates this conception to the frequently invoked comparison between the phenomenological method and thought experiments, reflecting on the paradoxical status of experience in phenomenology. (shrink)

»Selten hat in den neueren Jahrhunderten ein philosophischer Erstling so durchgeschlagen und einen so unverrückbaren Platz unter den >großenHans Georg Gadamer in DIE ZEIT Nr. 47 vom 19.11.1982.

(1990). Philosophy as Primordial Science (Urwissenschaft) in the Early Heidegger. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology: Vol. 21, Husserl, Heidegger, and French Thought, pp. 121-135.