Against epistemology

Against epistemology

number of areds. intellectuals. be considered proponent Ths of uhlch first IS the broader .Llolslada\ ;1s the Balhan dlmenslon ot‘ sockal an...

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number

of areds.

intellectuals. be considered proponent

Ths

of uhlch

first

IS the broader

.Llolslada\

;1s the Balhan

dlmenslon

ot‘ sockal and poiltlc3l

transt’ormatlon

of Balkan

5octet)

the abwrptlon

peoples,

ncce>,;Lr)

prrrequljlte

nerds of ;I hostile bsplns

importance

r\perww

ot’ B~iL3n

cultur,’

‘appearr’d

;lj

of t‘or

hrllenlc uphard

I> hlb supra-national

~iblon

and cducatlon

and \\ho. JS ;t

the catalbht

to tunctlon

In the ;luthor‘s

43 ;I t’orm 01 joclill

uorcl5.

‘LVlth

in the pruccbs 01

re\olutl~)n~“‘. among

mobtlir>.

~~OI>IU~LI\

1101,1odau‘~

the other

The

second

and cL>nscrn xbaut

the whole ot‘ Balkan soclrty. The third area ot .Llol,~oda\‘s enblronment.

and I[>

puts I[. he cun

education social

soviet\

.A> the Juthur

in the “age of democratic

illustrate

.Lto151odax’~

ul’ helknx

irltlclsm

e.\perienceh a

cultura!

1s LI t)p~
Balhan area

ot

the Intellectual

~;~lue 1s hi5 role wlthln

_. the

Enlightenment

crltlcl>m

In the cultural en\.ironment of suuthea>t 5:1>111g that \ilth K;ltr<>mllldrs‘ book. the

Europe’. One can ~,nl> conclude by Enlightenment in the Balkans become\ cklrer

and more

~ntelltxtuall~

\timuiaring.

Studies in Husserl 2nd the Against Epistemolog>. Theodor Wissengrund-Adorno. Phenomenological hntinomies, trans. Willis Domingo (Cambridge, Mass. and London. U.K.: MIT Press, 1985). vii + 248 pp., paperback $10.29. In Agairrsr E;nisrenfulo,~~, .Adorno gives us a prrview of the unique skill as n dialectician would later become so central to Negative Diolecfics and rlesfhefic Theory, among other works. Here, however, the critique is addressed to Husserl and Husserlian phenomenology. in particular Husserl’s claim to have achieved a standpointless cultivated splrlt ot origins safe from ‘the methodIcally philosophy of absolutr contradiction’ found most prominently in Hegel. Adorn0 first asserts the Marxian analytic against Hegel by addressing the latter’s critique from the perspective of a materialist dialectics which does not pretend ignorance of the impact of the historical and sociocultural on thought and thinking. There are no safe places for philosophy, Adorn0 argues, nor should we wish there to be. To use philosophy as a vehicle for deifying, and thereby reifying, life is to impoverish borh, not unlike Kant’s fetishisation of the practical in his theorericol claim of the supremacy of practical over pure reason. Critique must, above all, abjure all intentions of and efforts at systematisation. even when this enterprise is carried out in pursuit of the pure subject. Indeed, the resulting transcendental sgo drhistoricises reul subjects as the mark of a philosophy whose commitment to providing an objective rendering of subjectivity and intersubjectivity requires it to ignore the forms and conditions which make such renderings possible and necessary. The risk of addressing suffering and freedom is just too great to be undertaken in any other than the sort of superficial manner consonant with reductionism and false concreteness. Method as a device for uncovering and/or asserting ftrstness or its promise provides a reaffirmation of the idea that knowledge of the fetishised ‘pure’ subject provides us with truth in philosophy. False concreteness of the kind Marx warned against in his analysis of the method of political economy in the Grundrisse and elsewhere looms large in this loses the real subject in its empiricisation of the pure subject, which unavoidably endorsement of conceptual nominalism, coupled with the drive to system and a preference for antinomies rather than contradictions. All of this is, of course, grounded in psychologlsm, empiricism and the correspondence theory of truth. The secret of the Husserlian method is the fact that the process ofanalysis that

Inquisition

and Society

(Bloomington, S10.95.

Indiana:

In the preface to his first book’

history

in Spain Indiana

in the Sixteenth Uni\,rrsity

to InquisirionondSociel~ of the Spanish

(p. vii). Although

in Spain,

Inquisition,

the framework

and Seventeenth

Press,

19~35). \ii - 3

Henry

the present

of Inqulrliion

Kamrn work

C’enturies,

Henry

K;imC~l

I? pp., cloth SZ7.50, paper

writes

that,

with respect

‘is in all esstlntlals

andSocierj,remains

much

a new

the same,