Adorno linked phenomenology’s reified premises to fascism as twin terminal crises.

Evidence

The disappearance of true experience, which Benjamin had also stressed as a characteristic of modern life,”’ corresponded to the growing helplessness of modern man. To Adorno, phenomenology thus represented the last futile effort of bourgeois thought to rescue itself from impotence. “With phenomenology,” he wrote, “bourgeois thought reached its end in dissociated, fragmented statements set against one another, and resigned itself to the simple reproduction of that which is.” 134 In doing so, it turned against action in the world: “The denigration of praxis to a simple special case of intentionality is the grossest consequence of its reified premises.” 115 But worst of all, the assumption of absolute identity and immediacy could well lead to the political domination of an absolute ideology. There was, Adorno suggested, a subterranean connection between phenomenology and fascism - both were expressions of the terminal crisis of bourgeois society. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 267

Categorization

• XREF: Anti-phenomenology critique anticipated the later Adorno-Husserl debate over the ‘crisis of the European sciences’ and parallels Heidegger’s contemporaneous politics. — connects to: Adorno grounded his analysis of fascist propaganda in Freud’s group psychology. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1578; Psychoanalytic theorists explained fascism’s appeal via unconscious personality needs. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 100; Fascism exploits psychological tendencies rather than being caused by them. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 206
• QUESTION: How exactly did Adorno periodize the interplay between Erfahrung’s death and modern helplessness — is this borrowed from Benjamin’s essay on experience?

Broader Connections

• Adorno grounded his analysis of fascist propaganda in Freud’s group psychology. #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1578
• Psychoanalytic theorists explained fascism’s appeal via unconscious personality needs. #expands (0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 100
• Fascism exploits psychological tendencies rather than being caused by them. #qualifies (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 206