Both positivism and idealism destroy the ego by breaking the link to perception.

Evidence

The inner depth of the subject consists in nothing other than the delicacy and wealth of the external world of perceptions. If the links are broken, the ego calcifies. If it proceeds positivistically, merely recording given facts without giving anything in return, it shrinks to a point; and if it idealistically creates the world from its own groundless basis, it plays itself out in dull repetition. In both cases it gives up the spirit. Only in that mediation by which the meaningless sensation brings a thought to the full productivity of which it is capable, while on the other hand the thought abandons itself without reservation to the predominant impression, is that pathological loneliness which characterizes the whole of nature overcome. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 365

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s critique of positivism as a mode of thought that abandons the object and shrinks the subject. — connects to: Adorno attacked positivism for severing logic from the world and knowledge from subjects. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2272; Positivism distorts science by hiding its constitutive interests and historical origins — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 606
• DEEPTHINKING: Frames epistemology as a pathology of the subject’s relation to nature, a claim worth sitting with against both empiricist and rationalist accounts of knowledge.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Adorno attacked positivism for severing logic from the world and knowledge from subjects. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2272; Positivism distorts science by hiding its constitutive interests and historical origins — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 606