Adorno chose Husserl over Heidegger precisely because successors built on the fragile foundation

Evidence

Adorno wrote his studies on Husserl during the 1930s from his conviction that a genuine change in philosophical consciousness' could only be achieved through the strictest dialectical communication with the most recent attempts to solve the problems of philosophy and philosophical terminology’. He justified taking Husserl as his startingpoint rather than Scheler or Heidegger, who had increasingly overshadowed Husserl for the academic audience during the 1920s, by claiming that the ontologies drafted by Husserl’s successors were building on phenomenology. They did not develop it further, but merely used it as a foundation, without troubling themselves about its fragility. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2267

Categorization

• XREF: Adorno’s strategic choice to engage the least-fashionable recent philosopher as the dialectical entry point resonates with his later preference for Benjamin over orthodox theory. — connects to: Husserl came to see Heidegger as a rival to be destroyed philosophically — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 250