Husserl represents idealism’s most reductive form, with Kant as its forerunner

Evidence

For Adorno, the great forerunner of Husserlprecisely in the exposure of contradictionswas Kant, who, as Adorno stated in his `Introduction to Epistemology’ lecture course in the winter semester of 1957-8, had attempted to rescue objectivity by passing it through subjectivity, to turn transcendence inward into the transcendental, and to put what was beyond experience on a level with the conditions that are constitutive for knowledge. If Hegel, with his cosmological and dialectical philosophy, was the climax of idealism, Husserl’s phenomenology represented the most consistent, most reductive form of his philosophy, in a way an absurd parody of it. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 561

Categorization

• DEFINE: Maps the Kant-Hegel-Husserl lineage in Adorno’s own terms: Kant rescues objectivity through subjectivity; Husserl is idealism’s reductive endpoint.
• SHARE: The line that Husserl’s phenomenology is ‘an absurd parody’ of Hegel is a niche zinger for one philosophically-minded friend.