Adorno and Horkheimer rejected total identity with nature as regressive stasis

Evidence

Nature, Horkheimer and Adorno made clear, was in itself neither good nor bad. Moreover, a complete reconciliation with nature in the sense of total identity could only mean a regression to a state of unmediated stasis. Critical Theory continued to stress nonidentity in a way that precluded the reduction of subject to object and vice versa. It was on this point that its creators differed with Benjamin and Ernst Bloch, whose philosophy of hope spoke of the resurrection of a natural subject in a manner that seemed to obliterate the distinction between subject and object. Not in the unity of object and perception, Horkheimer and Adorno argued in their discussion of projection, but in the reflective opposition between them was the utopia of reconciliation preserved. Elsewhere, they made it clear that it was the memory of nature, rather than nature itself, that was the enemy of domination. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 803

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the core nonidentity principle of Critical Theory and distinguishes it from Benjamin and Bloch’s philosophy of hope.
• XREF: connects to: Fromm diverged from Horkheimer and Adorno by affirming a philosophical anthropology of human nature. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 321; Adorno rejects mastery of nature as progress because domination entangles humanity in nature — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1585; Adorno rejected both Hegelian absolute spirit and Lukácsian proletarian totality grasp. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 183 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno rejects mastery of nature as progress because domination entangles humanity in nature #expands (0.90) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1585