This series of reflections is written in Adorno's characteristically intense and concrete style and harbors thematics and strands of thought that weave a fuller picture than first appears. This essay, selected from manuscripts written soon after his emigration to England, is Adorno's attempt to show how epistemology betrays experience. The author employs Husserl's work as a model in his anticipation of the movement announcing the end of epistemology.
Adorno is not bashful in his considerations of Husserl, placing in a critical light Husserl's assurances that pure phenomenology is not epistemology. Moreover, he restricts himself to Husserl's published texts with a decided preference for the earlier work. Adorno regards Husserl's later phenomenology as a betrayal, a form of philosophical treason wherein he slips into a modified Neo-Kantianism.
The essay addresses the antinomy within the Husserlian search for a pure beginning, a presuppositionless start. The issue is not what the content of the final ground is but the very concept and legitimacy of such a foundation. This philosophical compulsion must be identified and broken.
Adorno argues that the search for a first and fundamental principle involves antinomy. Every first principle must be universal and contains abstraction in it. The first, as a concept, is always mediated and therefore not the first. The principle, however, must guarantee completeness; it is regarded as all-encompassing. The method necessary to carry on this Husserlian project separates itself from what it intends to provide access. It does this by posing itself as the model and absolute. What appears here epistemologically is at the same time socially the split between mental and physical labor.