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Die Konstitution von Natur und Geist und die Klarung ihresVerhaltnisses zueinander als Seins- und als Wissenschaftsregionenbildet eines der Hauptthemen von Husserls Philosophie. Die letztegrose Auseinandersetzung mit dieser Problematik stellt dieim vorliegenden Husserliana-Band veroffentlichte `Natur undGeist'-Vorlesung vom Sommersemester 1927 dar.

In keinem anderen Text hat Husserl so umfassend versucht, uberverschiedene Modelle philosophischer Wissenschaftsklassifikationeneinen Zugang zur Losung der `Natur und Geist'-Problematik zufinden. Im Ausgang von wissenschaftskritischen Erorterungen unddem Streit der Natur- und Geisteswissenschaftler um dasVerhaltnis ihrer Wissenschaften zueinander gelangt Husserl zu denunterschiedlichen Klassifikationsmodellen fur die Wissenschaften.In kritischer Abhebung von diesen Modellen, insbesondere von derWissenschaftsklassifikation der Neukantianer Windelband und Rickert,versucht er dann auf seinem eigenen Weg uber die Beschreibung desallgemeinen Stils der Erfahrungswelt zu ihren a priori notwendigenStrukturen und korrelativ dazu der prinzipiellenWissenschaftsklassifikation zu gelangen. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (5)

30+ missing pages....
While I agree with other reviewers that this is an excellent introduction to Husserl's work, I am giving this book one star because it came to me missing pgs. 119-150. That is a significant printing error!! Unfortunately I did not catch this until after my window for returning it had expired, so I have to shell out the money again. I hate providing a bad rating, because it does not reflect on the author or the content, but I do want to ensure others avoid a similar fate.

Zahavi shows his masterful understanding of Husserl
In _Husserl's Phenomenology_ Zahavi has really blown me away with how much he could fit into such a short amount of space with such clarity.This is, without a doubt, the best slim volume written on Husserl to date.

Very concise, supremely competent
At first glance, it seems improbable that Zahavi's slim volume (the text is only 144 pages) could do justice to the voluminous, minutely argued, stylstically challenged, sometimes tortured work of Edmund Husserl.In fact such a suspicion is well-taken, since no single volume that anyone could carry is likely to exhaust all the possibilities for commentary that Husserl inspires.But it is hard for me to imagine that anyone could write a better introduction in terms of lucidly and precisely explicating the central themes of Husserl's phenomenology.Any normal mortal who is seriously interested in Husserl would profit from reading this book.

The themes that have given students the greatest difficulty are treated concisely and with an elegance of expression that belies a deep understanding on Zahavi's part.These include intentionality, the nature of evidence and "apodicticity," the transcendental reduction and epoche, the balance of idealism and realism in Husserl's thought, the transcendental ego and constitution, time consciousness, the body, intersubjectivity, and the life world.The discussion of idealism/realism is very good, to a great extent owing to Zahavi's encyclopedic knowledge of all of Husserl's work -- both the major works published during or shortly after his lifetime, and the Husserliana, Husserl's notes and lectures that have only been available fairly recently.The discussion of the body, particularly in its role as both subject and object, and the foundation for intersubjectivity, is also extremely useful.The discussion of intersubjectivity is nothing short of superb.And the discussion of the life world, and the complexities and subtleties that this idea interjects into Husserl's developing understanding of the phenomenological project, is quite valuable.

It is a measure of how good this book is that I like it in spite of fundamentally disagreeing with several of the author's central arguments about how Husserl should be interpreted.Zahavi is one of a growing number of revisionists that challenge the traditional interpretation of Husserl.The traditional interpretation is held by explicators and anthologists such as Dermot Moran (Introduction to Phenomenology, Routledge, 2000), and other philosophers such as Paul Ricouer (Husserl: an Analysis of his Phenomenology, Northwestern, 1967), Leszek Kolakowski (Husserl and the Search for Certitude, St. Augustine's Press, 1975), and Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton, 1979).This tradition sees Husserl as the culmination of a philosophical line that begins with Descartes, touches upon the skepticism of Hume, and comes to its fullest statement in Kant.It emphasizes Husserl's debt to Descartes, his focus on subjectivity as the basis and origin of knowledge, a radical understanding of Husserl's doctrine of the ego's activity in constituting the given world, the foundationalist nature of Husserl's approach, and the consequent disjuncture between Husserl and the continental philosophers -- hermeneuticists, existentialists, and postmodernists -- that come after him.Not surprisingly, the revisionists tend to take opposing positions on each of these points.Examples of revisionist commentary in addition to Zahavi's are The Cambridge Companion to Husserl (Cambridge, 1995), and The New Husserl (Donn Welton, ed., Indiana, 2003).

Some correction of the received wisdom on Husserl is probably in order.It is possible to take an overly restrictive view of his treatment of subjectivity, for instance.But a couple of Zahavi's arguments just seem wrong to me.For instance, Zahavi argues that Husserl is not a foundationalist thinker.This is a difficult position to maintain in the face of Husserl's oft repeated claim that through phenomenology philosophy can finally fulfill its promise of a life lived according to reason alone.He also argues, against a number of other interpreters, that Husserl is able to escape the solipsism that is implied by the radical focus on subjectivity set forth at the beginning of the Crisis and the Cartesian Meditations, among other places.Here he points to the extensive attention that Husserl gives to "intersubjectivity," the objectivity leant to the external world by the overlapping of the consciousnesses of multiple subjects.My constitution of a particular object must take into account the consitution of the same object by others.But the problem for Husserl, as for Descartes before him, is not one of focus but of method.The question is how either, given the radical subjectivity of their initial methodology, can build a bridge to an objectively existing world.Descartes relies on God.Husserl offers a tortured doctrine of "the Other."Many, including some of Husserl's disciples, believe that neither approach is altogether satisfactory.

One of the well-taken points made by many of the revisionists, however, is that the relative neglect of Husserl in favor of later thinkers such as Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, and Gadamer is not justified.Husserl changed the face of continental philosophy, and gave much to analytical philosophy as well.Happily, because of his work among thers, Zahavi can say that "Husserl is no longer simply regarded as a surpassed chapter in the history of phenomenology."

Zahavi's Husserlian Phenomenology
Dan Zahavi is widely recognized for his numerous contributions to different areas of Husserlian scholarship and his expertise in these areas of research are reflected, as he admits freely, in the selection of themes with which the strengths of Husserl's phenomenology are introduced and exhibited. The themes of time, body, inter-subjectivity and life-world, with which Zahavi navigates the expansion of transcendental phenomenology in Husserl's later thinking, attest to the range of Zahavi's familiarity with Husserl's written corpus. His specialized work is, I think, best characterized by its intellectual dexterity, as it operates on and across different fronts simultaneously: correcting mistaken and uninformed views of Husserl's phenomenology, not only by way of scrupulous reconstructions of Husserl's arguments but also by way of original research into Husserl's vast Nachlaß; reflecting on and engaging with recent trends in Husserlian scholarship, not only on both sides of the Atlantic but also on both sides of the Rhine; and assessing the defining claims of Husserlian phenomenology with an ear for and an openness to contemporary discussions in analytic philosophy of mind and epistemology. All of these strengths of Zahavi's specialized studies richly inform Husserl's Phenomenology, which confidently weaves a course through sympathetic reconstructions of key Husserlian arguments, the dismantling of widespread misconceptions afflicting Husserlian phenomenology, redressing apparent inconsistencies in Husserl's views and staking out Husserl's positions vis-à-vis contemporary debates. Through-out, Zahavi's discussion of Husserl's concepts expertly attains what has often eluded other notable introductions to phenomenology: a balance between the complex talk of phenomenology, the continual shifting and development of Husserl's views, and the teasing out of arguments in an accessible manner that speaks to a broad range of philosophical talent, and not just to those long initiated to the esoteric domain of the phenomenological reduction. Striking a perfect balance is perhaps an impossible ideal; but in the form of Zahavi's introduction, we have a text that remains readable from beginning to end that does not, however, shy away from technical discussions nor from wrestling with the profounder issues that define the enduring significance of Husserl's phenomenology. An introduction should not only introduce the basic concepts and arguments that define a philosophy, it should also introduce readers to what is philosophically at stake in it-both tasks are executed with aplomb in Husserl's Phenomenology.

In the first section, `The Early Husserl: Logic, Epistemology, and Intentionality,' we are introduced to Husserl's phenomenology in the form of an introduction to the central concept of intentionality, as first developed in the Logical Investigations. Zahavi rightly seizes on the concept of intentionality as a vehicle with which to present the basic orientation of Husserl's phenomenology but also as providing the central plot to the unfolding of the phenomenological drama. The more notable moments in this first section are an especially succinct and lucid account of Husserl's tripartite distinction of act, meaning, and object and a well-tempered appraisal of phenomenology's metaphysical neutrality. The second section, `Husserl's Turn to Transcendental Philosophy: Epoché, Reduction, and Transcendental Idealism,' sets Husserl's controversial "transcendental turn" in the context of unresolved ambiguities in Husserl's early conception of intentionality. The ambiguous status of the intentional correlate coupled with the basic "anti-metaphysical" orientation of phenomenology motivates, for Zahavi, Husserl's transcendental turn. The novel methodological instruments of epoché and reduction and the decisive, if nonetheless ambiguous concept of the noema are well presented in this section and Zahavi here convincingly argues how interpretative questions surrounding the concept of noema are crucial for deciding and clarifying the sense in which Husserl's brand of transcendental idealism over-comes a series of traditional distinctions: idealism / realism; internalism / externalism; subject / object. In the process of following the motivation and strategy of Husserl's transcendental turn, a number of widespread misunderstandings of Husserl's phenomenology (mainly: the overly simplistic "Cartesian" image of Husserl) are confidently undone on the strength of explaining the relationship between the "Cartesian and Ontological" ways to the reduction. This section ends with an extremely truncated report of Husserl's notion of constitution that unhesitatingly opts for a Heideggerian interpretation of constitution as a "process of disclosing." In the final and to my mind best section of the book, `The Later Husserl: Time, Body, Intersubjectivity, and Lifeworld,' a suggestion made at the end of the second section is expanded into a panoramic view of the expansion of transcendental phenomenology. At the end of the second section, Zahavi claimed that "constitution" is not a one-sided affair for Husserl involving a solitary subjectivity, but rather must involve what Zahavi terms the three "transcendental constituents" of subjectivity, intersubjectivity and world. Each of the four themes treated in this third section is meant to further articulate in detail the significance of this proposal and the entire section is subsumed under the undisputable claim that Husserl's later thinking is characterized by an expansion of the transcendental domain-a process largely motivated by the inclusion of inter-subjectivity and world into the nexus of constitution. Zahavi's nimble discussion of his four themes covers much complicated ground in an expertly manner. However, his treatment of intersubjectivity is, to my mind, the high-point of this section; his argument that there is not one but at least three concepts of intersubjectivity coupled with his claim that Husserl does not regard the intersubjective transformation of transcendental philosophy as implicating a rejection of subjectivity but, rather, its radicalization, are compellingly argued. On the basis of Zahavi's third section alone, we would be convinced that Husserl is not a "surpassed chapter in the history of phenomenology." Taking all three sections of Husserl's Phenomenology together, we can also no longer avoid recognizing that Husserl is equally not a surpassed chapter in the history of philosophy.

Dan Zahavi's Husserlian Phenomenology is unquestionably one of the most accessible and engaging introductions to Husserl's complex thinking. Undergraduates at any level of study as well as individuals versed in other fields of philosophy would do themselves well to read this book.

Great Husserl introduction
The book is concise, clear, and up to date. The best introduction to Husserl currently available. ... Read more

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One of Husserl's Greatest Works
Anybody who wants to know more or less in detail about Husserl's phenomenology is invited to look at this book which is a great exposition of his doctrine.In it, we also can find one of the most important doctrines in his system:the doctrine of states of affairs as reference of assertive sentences, and the reference basis as being the situation of affairs.According to the correspondence between the assertive sentence to the states of affairs and situation of affairs that the truth can be determined. ... Read more

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This study includes a close textual examination and critical analysis of the major works in which the concept of synthesis is presented. Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" and the "Inaugural Dissertation", and Husserl's "Experience and Judgment", "Ding und Raum" and "The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness" are all examined. The text seeks to demonstrate the manner in which Husserl formulated his theory of passive synthesis through his analysis of Kant's discussions of synthesis. The volume also aims to advance an understanding of two major philosophical figures through providing a ground for understanding the development of the theory of consciousness and cognitive theory. ... Read more

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Im vorliegenden Band wird Husserls 1920 erstmals gehaltene und 1924 wiederholte Vorlesung über Ethik veröffentlicht. In ihr wendet sich Husserl nach einer systematischen Bestimmung des Begriffs der Ethik einer kritischen Darstellung der Geschichte der Ethik zu. Diese Darstellung ist am Gegensatz von Rationalismus und Empirismus orientiert, der sich in der Ethik in den gegensätzlichen Ansätzen der Verstandes- und Gefühlsmoralisten zeigt. Im Rahmen einer Auseinandersetzung mit klassischen Positionen aus der Geschichte der Ethik versucht Husserl, die Grundlagen seiner eigenen Ethik zu gewinnen und darin die traditionellen Gegenüberstellungen zu versöhnen. So steht für Husserl die Gefühlsgrundlage der Moral nicht im Widerspruch zur Idee eines absoluten Sollens, an der Husserl im Anschluss an Kant und Fichte festhält. Husserls Ausführungen gipfeln in dem Ideal eines universalen vernunftbestimmten Willenslebens, in dem alle Aktsetzungen endgültig zu rechtfertigen wären.
Zur Vorlesung gehört ein umfangreicher Exkurs, in dem Husserl durch eine phänomenologische Analyse des Unterschieds zwischen Sach- und Normbegriffen den wissenschaftstheoretischen Charakter der Ethik als normativer Geisteswissenschaft bestimmt. ... Read more

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Husserls Briefwechsel is von entscheidender Bedeutung furdas Verstandnis seiner philosophischen Entwicklung, seinerwissenschaftlichen Arbeit und Publikationsvorhaben. Er nimmt darinStellung zu den politischen Entwicklungen in Deutschland und sprichtsich aus uber weltanschaulich-religiose Fragen.Auserdem bestimmt er sein Verhaltnis zu anderen Philosophenund Schulen. Die vorliegende, textkritisch konstituierte und reichkommentierte Gesamtausgabe ist nicht nur fur Philosophen,Wissenschaftshistoriker und Zeitgeschichtlicher von hohem Interesse.Die Ausgabe umfast in sachlicher Gliederung HusserlsKorrespondenz (ca. 1300 Einzelstucke) mit uber 250 Personenund Instanzen, wobei neben den Briefen Husserls - und, ingroszugiger Auswahl, seiner Frau Malvine - auch alleerhaltenen Briefe an Husserl aufgenommen sind (ca. 700Einzelstucke). Die Bande I--IV orientieren sich an derchronologischen Entwicklung der Husserlschen Philosophie, dieBande V--IX an der sachlichen Nahe der Korrespondenzpartnerzu Husserls Philosophie. Band X enthalt neben der Einfuhrungin die Ausgabe verschiedene Register zur differenziertenAufschlusselung der Ausgabe.Edmund Husserl's correspondence is of eminent importance for a clearunderstanding of his philosophical development, his scientific work,and his publications. In his letters, he reacts on the politicaldevelopments in Germany and ponders on the philosophy of life and onreligious questions.He also clearly defines his relationships with other philosophers andschools of philosophy. This annotated and richly commentedcorrespondence edition is of vital interest to philosophers,researchers and historians. The ten volumes consist of Husserl'scorrespondence (about 1300 letters) with more than 250 institutes andpersons, and in addition to his letters, the letters of his wifeMalvine and those received by both (about 700) are also included.Volumes I--IV present a chronological development of Husserl'sphilosophical system, Volumes V--IX are devoted to the correspondencepartners in philosophy. The last volume consists of an extensiveIntroduction and a variety of indexes to all volumes in the set. ... Read more

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Exploring the full range of Husserl's work, these essays reveal just how systematic his philosophy is. There are treatments of his most important contributions to phenomenology, intentionality and the philosophy of mind, epistemology, the philosophy of language, ontology, and mathematics. An underlying theme of the volume is a resistance to the idea, current in much intellectual history, of a radical break between "modern" and "postmodern" philosophy, with Husserl as the last of the great Cartesians. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Kit Fine and The Cambridge Companion
The major flaw of this volume, to my mind, is that Barry Smith included his own chapter on "Common Sense".

The two strengths of the book are the inclusion of essays by Hintikka and by Kit Fine.

The sad thing to note is that Fine's essay is short and truncated while others are bloated.

I would hope that in a re-edition that the Smith essay would be dropped and the Fine essay extended and revised.

Two and possibly three of the authors in this Cambridge volume do not merit the space allotted to them but that can be an issue when "phenomenological" insiders are busy getting each other published.It is a problem in various of the philosphy "movements" but can be a particular embarrassment in the Husserlian and Heideggerian movements.

There should be a chapter on Husserl, Cantor, Goedel and Hilbert and a separate chapter on Husserl, Twardowski and Lotze.I would like to see Claire Ortiz have a chapter on Husserl and Frege and Don Weldon have a chapter on Husserl.

A companion of this size should now have a digital option with web links to the available digital texts.

In hindsight, I would not have purchased this volume.

not bad but unjustified in its perspective
Cambridge companions are about philosophers and thinkers who have opened new and alternative ways of thinking in history of philosophy and have well established themselves in Western thought. Now there is no problem in writing about Husserl or anybody else in the history of philosophy from whatever vantage point one wants to; it can prove fruitful exercise.But when one claims to illuminate key historical figures for the student, one is responsible to illuminate the point of view from which its really justified at all to compile such a companion on the relevant philosopher.Using this book as a guide to Husserl would leave you wondering "well so what did this guy do all in all."Husserl as presented here is a philosophical logician ofRussell variety, but seriously perplexed in his engagement with the problems, but with occassional insights in this or that subject.Well if this is what we should understand from Husserl, then he doesn't deserve a place in no companion to landmark philosophers. If he does he should be taken from the point of view of the tradition in which he has achieved his historical stature as the founder of the phenomenological school (which doesnt mean we should be uncritical and dogmatic)
The essays here deserve much better than two stars, some of them are very good quality.But the overall conception, being the kind of book its claimed to be, is very misleading.

Husserl on Mathematics
The Cambridge Companion to Husserl contains essays byvariousHusserl scholars who attempt to show the relevance of Husserl's ideas to many recent issues in philosophy.Barbosa says that I seem to ignore Husserl's ideas of categorial intuition and categorial abstraction and to characterize Husserlian mathematical epistemology in terms of detecting invariants in the flow of experience.Evidently Barbosa did not read the paper very carefully.Footnote 17 gives some examples of places to look in Husserl's writings for the view that ideal objects (including mathematical objects) are to be understood as invariants through the variations in our cognitive acts and processes.Many more citations to Husserl's works could be added to this footnote.In my paper I do not use the terms 'categorial intuition' and 'categorial abstraction'.So I am guilty of not using these terms but I am not guilty of failing to discuss the ideas of intuition and abstraction in mathematics.There are many technical Husserlian terms that I do not use in the paper.I do use the terms 'intuition' and 'abstraction'.In places where I use these terms and describe Husserl's views on mathematical intuition and the abstractions, idealizations and formalizations involved in mathematics, I also cite Husserl's texts on categorial intuition and categorial abstraction.An attentive reviewer would only need to see footnotes 16, 19 and 24.Open Husserl's Logical Investigations, for example, to sections 40-58 and read the Chapter title:Sensuous and Categorial Intuitions.

Generally it is a good reference
"The Cambridge Companion to Husserl" is useful in the following ways.First it helps to somehow finish with the legend that the reason Husserl turned away from psychologism was because of Frege's review.Secondly there are very good essays on Husserl's phenomenology, particularly Jakko Hintikka's "The Phenomenological Dimension" which restores the role of phenomenology not as merely looking for noemas, but to refer and know the object itself, giving an account of the Husserlian difference between sense (meaning) and reference (object).Another good essay was Dallas Willard's "Knowledge" which accounts for the epistemological dimension of Husserl's phenomenology.

This anthology also accounts for Husserl's analytical philosophy.From these readings the best essay I could find was Kit Fine's "Part-whole", which deals with the often disregarded Husserlian doctrine of the part and whole in the third logical investigation.The other essay that seemed less interesting was Peter Simons' "Meaning and language".This essay has the defect of not taking into account the Husserlian difference between "states of affairs" and "situation of affairs" which leads him into many equivocal views on Husserl.

However, the worst essay in this anthology was Richard Tieszen's "Mathematics".This apparent authority in Husserlian doctrine on his philosophy of mathematics seems to ignore the Husserlian notions of "categorial intuition" and "categorial abstraction" which both are the way in which mathematical and logical objects are known. This is explained in Husserl's sixth investigation from sections 40-52 and sections 59 to 66. However, Tieszen seems to ignore this and attributes Husserlian mathematical epistemology to an unexplained way that we detect invariants from the flow of experience.Readers should take this into account when evaluating Tieszen's essay.

A must for the beginner or the advance phenomenologist.
Ever wonder how we can know anything outside our consciousness?Ever wonder what the consciousness is itself, or what structures it possesses?Ever wonder how we can have any objectivity if we live as subjectivecreatures?If you have then phenomenology may be something that interestsyou. To explore this topic, one can't help but encounter Husserl.Hefounded the discipline and laid broad grounds which must be thoughtthrough.Even as a graduate student in philosophy, I find the Husserliantext to be extremely difficult to read.This is not because the materialitself is intrinsically hard.Husserl himself stressed the importance ofintuitive understand.His ideas, once understood really do appeal to thisintuitive understanding of how things are.What makes reading Husserldifficult is that all of the English translations have somehow forsakengood prose for accuracy.This and because the Husserlian corpus is verybroad makes phenomenology a little threatening.

Enter the CambridgeCompanion to Husserl. Succinct, relevant to the field, and applicable toeveryday thinking, this book is a wonderful partner for the thinker who isbeginning to think phenomenologically.It summarized Husserl's thoughtsclearly so that the beginner can understand.However, it is not Husserlfor Dummies!The thoughts expressed are subtle enough, so that newinsights can be garnered in rereads of the the essays.All main areas ofhis philosophy are covered: the epistemology, the derivative ontology,language theory, ideas on math and objectivity.

Though not Husserl forDummies! neither is it Husserl for the Husserlian. As a student, I had thepleasure of studying with two of the authors: David Smith and Rick Tiezen. From personal experience, both men are particularly precise and rigorouswith their thinking.Besides teaching at UCIrvine, Smith also teacheselementary school children the fundamentals of philosophy.Bothexperiences carries in his writings, as he is able to express complexthoughts cogently to experts and laymen alike.As for Tiezen is expertiseas both a logician, mathematician and phenomenologist makes his especiallyqualified to speak on Husserl's mathematics.Half of professor Tiezen'stime is spent with freshmen in introductory classes.The other halfworking with ornry graduate students like myself.Both men's ability toteach high and low shows in their writings, making the Companion a pleasureto read. ... Read more

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As a disciple of Husserl, Emmanuel Lavinas was one of the most independent and original interpreters, testifying to the fruitfulness of Husserl's phenomenology and the many paths of thought it introduced. In collecting nearly all of Levinas's articles on Husserlian phenomenology, this volume gathers together a wealth of exposition and interpretation by one of the more important European philosophers of the 20th century . ... Read more

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An Important Translation, Even If Incomplete
Cohen's translation includes many of Levinas' important essays on Husserl, and holds a special place in Levinas scholarship for this reason.The essays in the book range from the 1930s to the 1980s, so it is useful for tracking the development of Levinas' reading of Husserl over the years.More important, the articles in this book show that for Levinas phenomenology isn't something to "escape" but is to be taken seriously.We can see this much in his two articles from 1959, "Reflections on Phenomenological Technique" and "The Ruin of Representation".As a book on Levinas' relation to Husserl, this work is indispensable.

However, this English translation is not without its problems.The full title of the French publication translates as _Discovering Existence with Husserl and Heidegger_ and the book itself contains articles on both Husserl and Heidegger.The translator Richard A. Cohen modifies the book's title and most of the articles on Heidegger are not included in the translation.Why would a translator modify the title of such an important book in Levinas' oeuvre and then omit many of its articles? In his foreword Cohen does not give an answer.It turns out, then, that this translation does not give a full picture of Levinas' relation to phenomenology, for Levinas' reading of Husserl is in many ways influenced by Heidegger.

Although the translation is incomplete, it is still important because it contains articles by Levinas that have not been published elsewhere in English. ... Read more

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Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) was a cultural philosopher, sociologist, literary critic, and historian of music who, along with Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Erich Fromm, founded the Frankfurt School. Against Epistemology is one of his most important works. It inspired Habermas and Marcuse and continues to influence other eminent thinkers in philosophy and the social sciences today.

Against Epistemology is in essence a long essay against Western metaphysics or, as Adorno put it, "the lordship of the subject." Traditional philosophy, he noted, leads in practice to fascism. In this book, he combines analytic philosophy, social theory, and cultural criticism to try to show how epistemology betrays experience, using Husserl's work as a concrete model. ... Read more