REINACH, ADOLF

REINACH, ADOLF (1883–1917), German philosopher. Reinach, who was born in Mayence, was a student of husserl and taught at Goettingen with him. Through his lectures, articles, and personal discussions he had considerable influence on Husserl and on the early phenomenologists. Reinach's version of phenomenology was simpler and clearer than Husserl's and more concrete. He stressed the intuiting of the essential core of phenomena and developed a theory of the phenomenological a priori, a property of states of affairs rather than of acts of judging. He applied phenomenology to the philosophy of law, and tried to construct an a priori theory of law, contending that there are essential elements of law that have an absolute validity, independent of the mind that thinks of them and of temporal conditions. Reinach tried to explore the relationships of these elements. He was killed during World War I. His writings were collected and published by his students in Gesammelte Schriften (1921). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Husserl, in: Kantstudien, 23 (1919); J.M. Oesterreicher, Walls are Crumbling (1952), 99–134: H. Spiegelberg, Phenomenological Movement (1960), 195–205. (Richard H. Popkin)