This classic book by Theodor W. Adorno anticipates many of the themes that have since become common in contemporary philosophy: the critique of foundationalism, the illusions of idealism and the end of epistemology. It also foreshadows many of the key ideas that were developed by Adorno in his most important philosophical works, including Negative Dialectics. Against Epistemology is based on a manuscript Adorno originally wrote in Oxford in 1934-37 during his first years in exile and subsequently reworked in Frankfurt in 1955-56. The text was written as a critique of Husserl's phenomenology, but the critique of phenomenology is used as the occasion for a much broader critique of epistemology. Adorno described this as a 'metacritique' which blends together the analysis of Husserl's phenomenology as the most advanced instance of the decay of bourgeois idealism with an immanent critique of the tensions and contradictions internal to Husserl's thought. The result is a powerful text which remains one of the most devastating critiques of Husserl's work ever written and which heralded many of the ideas that have become commonplace in contemporary philosophy.

This volume comprises one of the key lecture courses leading up to the publication in 1966 of Adorno's major work, "Negative Dialectics," These lectures focus on developing the concepts critical to the introductory section of that book. They show Adorno as an embattled philosopher defining his own methodology among the prevailing trends of the time. As a critical theorist, he repudiated the worn-out Marxist stereotypes still dominant in the Soviet bloc - he specifically addresses his remarks to students who had escaped from the East in the period leading up to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Influenced as he was by the empirical schools of thought he had encountered in the United States, he nevertheless continued to resist what he saw as their surrender to scientific and mathematical abstraction. However, their influence was potent enough to prevent him from reverting to the traditional idealisms still prevalent in Germany, or to their latest manifestations in the shape of the new ontology of Heidegger and his disciples. Instead, he attempts to define, perhaps more simply and fully than in the final published version, a 'negative', i.e. critical, approach to philosophy. Permeating the whole book is Adorno's sense of the overwhelming power of totalizing, dominating systems in the post-Auschwitz world. Intellectual negativity, therefore, commits him to the stubborn defence of individuals - both facts and people - who stubbornly refuse to become integrated into 'the administered world'.

These lectures reveal Adorno to be a lively and engaging lecturer. He makes serious demands on his listeners but always manages to enliven his arguments with observations on philosophers andwriters such as Proust and Brecht and comments on current events. Heavy intellectual artillery is combined with a concern for his students' progress.

This classic book by Theodor W. Adorno anticipates many of the themes that have since become common in contemporary philosophy: the critique of foundationalism, the illusions of idealism and the end of epistemology. It also foreshadows many of the key ideas that were developed by Adorno in his most important philosophical works, including Negative Dialectics. Against Epistemology is based on a manuscript Adorno originally wrote in Oxford in 1934-37 during his first years in exile and subsequently reworked in Frankfurt in 1955-56. The text was written as a critique of Husserl s phenomenology, but the critique of phenomenology is used as the occasion for a much broader critique of epistemology. Adorno described this as a metacritique which blends together the analysis of Husserl s phenomenology as the most advanced instance of the decay of bourgeois idealism with an immanent critique of the tensions and contradictions internal to Husserl s thought. The result is a powerful text which remains one of the most devastating critiques of Husserl s work ever written and which heralded many of the ideas that have become commonplace in contemporary philosophy.

In December 1945 Thomas Mann wrote a famous letter to Adorno in which he formulated the principle of montage adopted in his novel Doctor Faustus. The writer expressly invited the philosopher to 'consider, with me, how such a work - and I mean Leverkuhn's work - could more or less be practically realized'. Their close collaboration on questions concerning the character of the fictional composer's putatively late works (Adorno produced specific sketches which are included as an appendix to the present volume) effectively laid the basis for a further exchange of letters.
The ensuing correspondence between the two men documents a rare encounter of creative tension between literary tradition and aesthetic modernism which would be sustained right up until the novelist's death in 1955. In the letters, Thomas Mann openly acknowledged his 'fascinated reading' of Adorno's Minima Moralia and commented in detail on the 'Essay on Wagner', which he was as eager to read as 'the one in the Book of Revelation consumes a book which tastes "as sweet as honey"'. Adorno in turn offered detailed observations upon and frequently enthusiastic commendations of Mann's later writings, such as The Holy Sinner, The Betrayed One and The Confessions of Felix Krull. Their correspondence also touches upon issues of great personal significance, notably the sensitive discussion of the problems of returning from exile to postwar Germany.
The letters are extensively annotated and offer the reader detailed notes concerning the writings, events and personalities referred or alluded to in the correspondence.

'My dears: this is but a brief note to welcome you to the new world, where you are now no longer all too far away from us. ' So begins Adorno's letter to his parents in May 1939, welcoming them to Cuba where they had just arrived after fleeing from Nazi Germany at the last minute. At the end of 1939 his parents moved again to Florida and then to New York, where they lived from August 1940 until the end of their lives. It is only with Adorno's move to California at the end of 1941 that his letters to his parents start arriving once more, reporting on work and living conditions as well as on friends, acquaintances and the Hollywood stars of his time. One finds reports of his collaborations with Max Horkheimer, Thomas Mann and Hanns Eisler alongside accounts of parties, clowning around with Charlie Chaplin, and ill-fated love affairs. But the letters also show his constant longing for Europe: Adorno already began to think about his return as soon as the USA entered the war.
Adorno's letters to his parents - surely the most open and direct letters he ever wrote - not only afford the reader a glimpse of the experiences that gave rise to the famous Minima Moralia, but also show Adorno from a previously unknown, very personal side. They end with the first reports from the ravaged Frankfurt to his mother - who remained in New York - and from Amorbach, Adorno's childhood paradise