myth and reason, principles and responsibility

[MSalter1@aol.com]

In a message dated 05/07/97 19:04:10 GMT, you write:

<< This reminds me: on the back of PRISMS is a reference to an Adorno book
 (also from MIT Press) I've never seen nor heard of: AGAINST EPISTEMOLOGY: A
 METACRITIQUE--STUDIES IN HUSSERL AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANTINOMIES.
 What's this all about, and is it still available?
  >>
Well yes

I have just pulled a copy from my bookshelf.  its tr by W Domingo, published
in paperback by Blackwell Oxford 1982, and I paid #7.95 for it. It is
basically a close immanent critique of Husserlian phenomenological method,
esp its emphasis on the immediacy of intentional objects to consciousness,
that unfortunately largely (because much of it was written 1934-37, ignores
the aspects of the latter Husserl that most impress Habermas, the idea of the
lifeworld and the dialectical tension between insitutional
positivism/scientism and transcendentalism.

In many places Adorno shows that he is struggling to get to grips with
Husserl. Although I have found this text useful in terms of developing an CT
critique of the phenomenology (of law/crime/deviance), the immanent character
of his critique often goes a little off course, and the dialectical assertion
of the mediated quality of the immediate is more asserted than shown from
within; surely an irony for anyone claiming to do justice and respect the
qualitative difference of non-identity. . Curiously it was only in 1966 that
some of the lessons learned from this study fed more directly into his design
of negative dialectics.

Hope that is more constructive than negative dialectics itself!"

Michael