Against Epistemology

This classic book by Theodor W. Adorno anticipates many of thethemes that have since become common in contemporary philosophy:the critique of foundationalism, the illusions of idealism and theend of epistemology. It also foreshadows many of the key ideas thatwere developed by Adorno in his most important philosophical works,including Negative Dialectics. Against Epistemology is based on a manuscript Adornooriginally wrote in Oxford in 1934-37 during his first years inexile and subsequently reworked in Frankfurt in 1955-56. The textwas written as a critique of Husserl's phenomenology, but thecritique of phenomenology is used as the occasion for a muchbroader critique of epistemology. Adorno described this as a'metacritique' which blends together the analysis ofHusserl's phenomenology as the most advanced instance of thedecay of bourgeois idealism with an immanent critique of thetensions and contradictions internal to Husserl's thought.The result is a powerful text which remains one of the mostdevastating critiques of Husserl's work ever written andwhich heralded many of the ideas that have become commonplace incontemporary philosophy.