ABSTRACT
In contemporary ontological conceptions, in the name of a rationality which is becoming dogmatic, there has been a widening rift between thought and reality only to provide countering steps in further attempts to resurrect first beginnings through intellectual edict. With the liberal individualism of a bygone era as an ideological yardstick, the contemporary consumer mentality was tied through the accent on the ‘possessive’ character of humanity or on individual penchants to treat the entire world as personal property. The chapter traces the disruption of consciousness from its material context by contemporary hermeneutical and phenomenological methodology. Exploring the background and ramifications of the contradiction, Theodor Adorno traced Edmund Husserl’s dualism to his disregard of the submerged synthetic tasks of consciousness. In order to satisfy the postulate of immediate evidence, Husserl was forced to the conclusion that the ‘idea’ of a transcendent object was directly manifest to consciousness, although its substantive content remained the goal of an indefinite series of approximations.
