192 Part III: Emigration Years
on every front and Russia will probably be handed over to him....
I really do not know what keeps people alive apart from the animal fear
of suicide. I have stopped having any hopes for Germany.’^23 By the
end of 1934 he could see with almost prophetic clarity that the failure
of the democracies in dealing with Hitler would make war inevitable,
a war ‘in which no one knows what would be left and which will be
all the worse the later it comes.’ Around a year later, he foresaw that
Germany would invade Russia, ‘France and Britain would take no
action because of existing treaties and then nothing will stand in the
way of the definitive healing of the world at the hands of Germany. The
situation is desperate.’^24
Adorno’s intention of bringing Gretel over from Germany was quite
unrealistic in the circumstances. For the ‘advanced student’ had no
secure income of his own and was under pressure to complete his
epistemological study of Husserl within a fixed time. This meant regular
meetings with his supervisor, who happened to be Gilbert Ryle, the
philosophy tutor at Christ Church. Ryle was primarily interested in the
philosophy of language, but had also engaged with phenomenology,
with Heidegger and Husserl. There was therefore a good objective basis
for a productive encounter between the two philosophers despite the
fact that they came from two very different traditions. Adorno evidently
thought of Ryle as a highly competent interlocutor. For his part, Ryle,
who would later achieve fame with The Concept of Mind, was able to
read the works of classical German philosophy in the original, and hence
also Adorno’s critique of Husserl. In addition to Ryle, Adorno was in
contact with other colleagues, including Alfred Ayer, a representative
of logical positivism, Isaiah Berlin, the historian of ideas, the classical
philologist Maurice Bowra, and the economist Redvers Opie, who taught
at Magdalen College. What Adorno and Ryle had in common was their
criticisms of Husserl’s phenomenology. Both saw in Husserl’s thought
an antinomian tension between his systemic and anti-systemic intentions,
between the realist and idealist elements of epistemology. They agreed
that his programme had to be subjected to a comprehensive critique,
starting from the internal contradictions in phenomenology. What would
have to be shown would be that Husserl had not succeeded in overcom-
ing idealism and empiricism. Adorno was able to move in the direction
of analytical philosophy in that he focused on a conceptual analysis of
Husserl, forgoing any additional historical explanations.^25 The working
title Adorno chose for his study was ‘Phenomenological Antinomies:
Prolegomena to a Dialectical Theory of Knowledge’. In short, he was
preparing to renew his acquaintance with the philosopher whose work
he had studied ten years previously for his doctorate. In his dissertation
proposal to the board of the faculty of literae humaniores, he emphasized
that his aim was neither ‘a reproduction of the substance nor a purely
negative criticism of Husserl’s philosophy’. Instead, he wanted to lay
bare the contradictions of phenomenological thought. In particular, he