review of adorno, husserl and the problem of idealism

International Phenomenological Society

"Husserl and the Problem of Idealism" by Theodore W. AdornoReview by: Fritz KaufmannPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Sep., 1940), pp. 123-125Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2103204 .

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REVIEWS 12 3

tarily underlining the fact that the viewpoint from which the critical observations are made is itself a random collection of bits of Aristotle, naive realism (compare the argumentation against Husserl's analysis of time), and Christian theology (overemphasis on the role of the concept of God in Husserl's system, also the discussion of absolute consciousness as the ultimate rational source of being and meaning).

Sofia Vanni Rovighi's essay nevertheless has the particular merit of doing good pioneer work on a difficult terrain, which we hope will now be worked over more intensively by her compatriots.

WALTER H. CERF. PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY.

"!Husserl and the Problem of Idealism." By Theodore W. Adorno. The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1; January 4, 1940; pp. 5-18.

Adorno's article, a by-product of many years of study devoted to Husserl, both in Germany and England, is a critical examination of Husserl's doctrine and an intelligent representation of the convergence of positivistic and idealistic trends in his phenomenology. Although I may have some doubts regarding the adequacy of his interpretation and even, here and there, of its correctness, I do not depreciate the seriousness of Adorno's effort.

Adorno fails, it seems to me, to do full justice to the transfigu- ration of idealism as well as positivism in the medium of Husserl's philosophy. Taking Husserl's merit to be the challenge of the naive re- ligion of facts in its psychological form (p. 9), Adorno sees in Hus- serl's phenomenology "an attempt to destroy idealism from within," a reductio ad absurdum of transcendental analysis by its own thorough- going use (p. 6). The idealism envisaged in this statement centers in the phenomenalist thesis of ""the ultimate identity of subject and object" (ibid.), though this formula as such would also cover absolute idealism of the dialectical type.

Husserl's transcendental idealism, on the other hand, (and this means the mature work of the three most productive decades of Hus- serl's life) does not receive a positive appreciation and not even serious attention in a paper that attributes to transcendental analysis a primarily self-destructive function.'

The result of this shortcoming is the bare construction of "an extreme and irreconcilable dualism" between what is said to be EHus-

1. One feels that the deepest motive of Adorno's praise for Husserl as well as of his polem- ics against him is the opposition to the analysis of consciousness as the philosophical method, and one regrets that this motive has not been properly worked out.



124 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

ser's Platonic realism and his epistemological idealism. Adorno takes Husserl's conception of "categorical intuition" to be invented to serve as a bridge between these antagonistic "isms." Unfortunately, this concept does not seem likely to give the solution of the (alleged) problem. Adorno denounces it as a mere coup de force and attributes its apparent success to Husserl's having fallen victim to one of those equivocations, to which otherwise he was always so much alert.

This part of Adorno's criticism seems to me both uncongenial and incorrect. It is, perhaps, not just a tour de force itself, but rather a clever arrangement than a faithful account of the facts. It separates the first volume of the Logische Untersuchungen from the second one and the bulk of Husserl's work: a mistake that has become almost a custom more honored in the breach, e. g., by Wilhelm Dilthey, than the observance. Consequently Adorno neglects Husserl's transcendental reduction in favor of the eidetic, and objects, quite unnecessari- ly, to Husserl's alleged attempt to reduce the world to pure essences and the transcendental ego to "a mere possibility" (p. 17), while, accord- ing to Husserl himself, the ego enjoys an absolute existence independ- ent of any mundane reality and prior to its "real-apperception."

Husserl's extended use of the term "intuition," covering in- tellectual awareness as well as sense-perception, is not a mere impromp- tu, but has its root in a significant aspect of knowledge and in a long and noble tradition, illustrated by the two-sidedness of words like intuition itself, vision, insight, and many others. No criticism will do that does not account for these historical motives and the material analogy that give the proper background to Husserl's thought.

Adorno is inclined to overstress the static, passivistic and seem- ingly dogmatic features in Husserl's theory of knowledge. As a mat- ter of fact, while the dynamic trend becomes more and more out- spoken in Husserl's later development, the very key to his position is given, from the beginning, in the relation between intention and fulfilment and its dynamic implications. This fact, by the way, is ob- scured in Adorno's article by one of the rather frequent and mislead- ing inaccuracies in his rendering of Husserl's words. "Erfuellung in der Weise einer abzielenden Intention" (Logische Untersuchungen, vol. 11, 2, p. 32) cannot be translated, ""fulfillment ... as if the intention were actually directed toward some aim or design" (p. 14). The dynamic character of this experience is a real and not fictitious one.

Consequently categorial intuition (or intuition of essences) has not the character of passiveness which is supposed to show "the pos- itivist Husserl" in his imperative need for "immediate givenness" as "the only legal source of knowledge" (p. 13). Husserl never held



REVIEWS 125

this quietistic view of a knowledge without our doing. The very anchoring of his theory of ideation in "ideational abstraction" should suffice to prevent such an assumption. In Husserl's language "im- mediacy of givenness" does not exclude realization in the way of syn- thetic action, but means the overcoming of distant and merely sym- bolic intentions, intentions through signs or other substitutes (images, etc.), by the close intuitive presence of the object itself.

Immediate intuition, thus, has a critical sense and not a merely dogmatic one. It does not figure as a deus ex machine in the problem-play of knowledge. Husserl does not endorse the doctrine which Adorno ascribes to him (p. 16), sc. that categorical intuition is beyond "the possibility of being fallacious" and the very guarantee of pure evidence. The process by which essences are given may pass through the same steps as does the experience of individual objects; namely, from empty intentions or their partial fulfilment toward original, total and strict evidence.'

Finally, the alleged equivocation of the term "intuition" seems to me of the interpreter's own making. The confusion whose roots I can only briefly indicate begins with a quotation, or rather a ques- tionable paraphrase, of Husserl's concept of "Sachverhalt"' ;3it is in- creased by Adorno's ambiguous use of the word "reflexion" both in the sense of "innere Wahrnehmung" (immanent perception) in the Lockian sense, which alone is explicitly adopted in this context by Husserl himself, and in the sense of discursive thought; and it cul- minates in Adorno's confounding the immediate, i. e., original, givenness of the object or Sachverhalt with the immediate (inner) experience of the act of judging or of one's awareness of the Sachverhalt' while the problem concerns only the first alternative, sc. the intuitive presence of the Sacbverhalt which is given in recto, not the second one, sc. the presence of the act which is given by reflection, in obliquo.

Though there is not much hope for light from so much darkness gathering around this point in Adorno's paper, I take pleasure in recognizing its richness in brilliant formulations and its insight in the history of ideas in the nineteenth century. It shows a high level of thought in itself, even if it may not always, perhaps, represent the proper level of Husserl's thought.

FRITZ KAUFMANN. NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY.

2. Cf., e. g., Ideen, ch. 1, par 3-this first chapter being, by the way, very much condensed, indeed, but not "cryptic" at all.

3. Husserl's true meaning becomes evident in the same passage (Logische Untersuchungen. vol. II, 2, p. 140) through the words: "Sachverhalt, das objektive Correlat des vollen Urteiles."- Cf. Ideen, e.g., par. 148.

4. The act of judgment and this awareness are not identical, as Adorno takes them to be. Cf., e. g., Adolf Reinach, Zur Theorie des negativen UrteiI8.



review of adorno, husserl and the problem of idealism

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