Adorno’s natural history reconciles nature and history as a change of perspective

Evidence

While a historical ontology in the spirit of Heidegger, by means of the category of historicity, devalued history as being merely the location of what was new, the concept of natural history would reveal history up to the present as being bound to nature, as a scene of constantly changing historical prisons for the primeval essence of humanity'. At the same time, it would point to the idea of a reconciliation between nature and history in which history, in the form of natural history, would become the location of what was qualitatively new. Natural history’, Adorno stated in his lecture, `is a change of perspective.’ It was a change of perspective which combined a keen sense of what was old in the new and of what was new in the old. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 386

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Adorno’s key concept of ‘natural history’ (Naturgeschichte) as a perspective change against Heidegger’s historicity.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader Frankfurt-School reading: this is the same nature-history reconciliation developed across critical theory. — connects to: Adorno’s natural history concept rejected Heideggerian historicity — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 386; Adorno’s late aesthetics frames mind and nature as mutually redeemable rather than opposed. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2214
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 386

Broader Connections

• Adorno’s natural history concept rejected Heideggerian historicity #expands (0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 386