Adorno coined the non-identical as freedom’s postulate, not merely nature

Evidence

Since all Adorno’s criticisms were aimed at producing evidence of immanence', the goal of his critique could only be termed transcendence, or simply: releaseinto the transcendent, into a realm free of intention, into what was new, unrestricted, open, non-identical. The whole of dialectical materialism’ was centred on the potentiality of Novelty,' he wrote in the article on Spengler. Adorno used the concept of the non-identical for the first time in a letter to the article's translator clarifying the meaning of his statement that freedom, considered absolutely, would fall victim to mere existence. He suggested adding the sentence: Freedom postulates the existence of something non-identical.’ In the letter he explained that The non-identical element must not be nature alone, it also can be man.' — <cite>Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1303</cite> (#expands`, via linked claim)

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 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

To conceive of growth in the forces of production and in material wealth as progress is itself the product of a conception of history which Adorno refuses to abide. As long as human beings must dominate nature, it will also dominate them, for in their attempt to elevate themselves over nature, socialised individuals only become further entangled in it. If nature no longer needed to be dominated, humanity would no longer stand powerlessly at its mercy. At that point, nature, the progenitor of the human being which ‘posits’ itself as non-nature, would perhaps be reconciled as totality in such a way that human being – who would now be an element of nature instead of an appendage – could shape nature’s history, which would no longer be prehistory, in accordance with a reason no longer conceived of as distinct from and opposed to nature. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1585 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Adorno’s critique of immanence aimed at the non-identical, the new, the transcendent — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1303; Adorno and Horkheimer rejected total identity with nature as regressive stasis — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 803; Adorno rejects mastery of nature as progress because domination entangles humanity in nature — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1585

Broader Connections

• Adorno’s critique of immanence aimed at the non-identical, the new, the transcendent #expands (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1303
• Adorno and Horkheimer rejected total identity with nature as regressive stasis #corroborates (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 803
• Adorno rejects mastery of nature as progress because domination entangles humanity in nature #qualifies (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1585