Against Epistemology by Theodor W. Adorno

Author:Theodor W. Adorno
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley

* [Possible reference to Strindberg′s Dream Play where the daughter of Indra ascends and descends on a cloud. Trans.]

* [Christian Morgenstern (1871–1914), German ′functionalist′ poet, friend of Rudolf Steiner. Trans.]

* When the Logical Investigations appeared, Gestalt theory was not yet fully developed. Yet Christian von Ehrenfels′ treatise, ′Über Gestaltqualitäten′ was certainly available (Vierteljahreszeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, vol. 14, 1890), which already contains the elements of the critique of an atomistic interpretation of immediate givens. It is hardly likely that Brentano′s student, Husserl, did not read it.

* Husserl, of course, already dropped the theory of the essence of the species – which occurs in the individual act and is to be immediately dissected out – in Ideas. For he there relates act analysis to the continuity of the stream of consciousness. He rediscovered for himself that such an absolutely singular act does not exist, especially in perception; every act is more than just itself and as a result the species cannot be based on the individual act.

As in the second Logical Investigation of volume 2, however, he persists in maintaining that phenomenology ′drops only individuation′, while ′it raises the whole essential content in the fullness of its concretion into eidetic consciousness′. (Ideen [140]; cf. Ideas, p. 192). He thus never gives up the paradoxical concept of ′eidetic singularities′ (ibid.). He goes on to say that this ′concrete′ essential content belonging to singularity ′could particularize itself not only hic et nunc but in numberless instances′ (ibid.). So the concept of every particular individual would be inferred simply by ignoring its spatio-temporal locus irrespective of other individuations. But, surely under the influence of William James, he still states considerations opposing that sort of absolute singularity as such. ′We can see at once that a conceptual and terminological fixation of this and every similar flowing concretum is not to be thought of, and that this applies to each of its immediate and no less flowing parts and abstract moments.′ (ibid.) It follows that essence is no longer to be sought in individual intention as the second Logical Investigation had taught. This difficulty contributed greatly to the conception of categorial intuition as a cognitive process sui generis.

* These weaknesses have, of course, not escaped pre-Husserlian idealists. They were pointed out in particular in Heinrich Rickert′s posthumous volume, Unmittelbarkeit und Sinndeutung (Tübingen, 1939). Rickert criticizes with great acuity the alleged absolute certainty of beginning with the immediately given as the contents of the consciousness of every isolated and – on idealistic grounds – contingent subject.

* [Literally ′real components of intentional lived experiences′. Trans.]

* [′allgemeinsame Wesen′ (′universally common essence′) in Husserl. Trans.]

1 LU I, p. 231; cf. Findlay, p. 228.

2 LU II, i, p. 144; cf. ibid. p. 369.

3 Cf. ibid. p. 186; and ibid. p. 403,

4 Cf. ibid. pp. 197 ff; and ibid. pp. 411 ff.

5 LU I, p. xv; cf. ibid. p. 49.

6 LU II, i, p. 107; cf. ibid. p. 337.

7 Ibid. pp. 106 ff; ibid.

8 Ibid. p. 223; ibid. p. 432.

9 Cf. ibid. p.

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