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Adaptation (Psychoanalysis)

Sigmund Freud

Carl Jung

Heinz Hartmann

Robert Langs

Adaptation as metapsychological concept

Voegelin critique of rationalism and phenomenology

Voegelin's later research into problems of social and political order, especially problems associated with the experience of the nature and meaning of history, required he study some of the dominant modern epistemological theories associated with what we might term the "critique of experience," i.e., the central sets of problems associated with the nature of human experience and how experience can be both a source and a justification for the theoretical understanding of history. In modern philosophy, specifically the reception of David Hume's critique of the range of experience in German philosophy initiated important investigations of this kind, e.g. in Friedrich Schelling and Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel. In the process of this study, Voegelin returned to some of the sources of his own earlier work, namely, phenomenology. Voegelin had already displayed a serious interest in the work of early (pre-Heideggerian) phenomenology, especially the work of Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, in his first books. His first book, On the Form of the American Mind, had studied several theories of time consciousness, including that of Husserl. Other of Voegelin's early works had utilized work of the currently lesser known phenomenologist Max Scheler, who was in his own time at least as well-known as Husserl himself. Voegelin's study of phenomenology was in part born of his recognition that phenomenology recovered classical philosophical ideas, such as the knowledge of essences and essential structures, as well as his recognition of the value of its disciplined, rigorous approach to many of the central problems of epistemology.

However, Voegelin's assessment especially of Husserl's phenomenology was that the latter was a mixed bag. On the one hand, Voegelin admired both Husserl's care and rigor, especially regarding central problems of epistemology like his establishing of the objectivity of the material world. On the other hand, Voegelin was highly critical of two essential components of Husserl's phenomenology: (1) Husserl's philosophy of history and (2) the inadequacy of Husserl's methods for understanding existentially important problems of philosophy.