Adorno rejects mastery of nature as progress because domination entangles humanity in nature

Evidence

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

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages the Dialectic of Enlightenment domination-of-nature thesis; connects to Adorno’s utopian totality as elsewhere read. — connects to: Enlightened progress remains entangled with domination and cruelty — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 200; Adorno and Horkheimer rejected total identity with nature as regressive stasis — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 803; Nature is the object of reason as liberation, not only domination — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 826 (+8 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies Adorno’s distinctive sense of reconciliation as transcending the nature/society dichotomy, not returning to nature.