Humanism and Nature in Horkheimer and Adorno

In the early Frankfurt School, especially in Horkheimer and Adorno, we find a critical attitude towards the traditional concepts of ‘humanism’ and ‘nature’. Frankfurt thinkers tackle these concepts of Western philosophy but with the aim of showing their internal limits and their dialectical connections. Indeed, they also consider the possibility of resemantising these concepts in the light of the specific needs of critical theory. On the basis of this approach, the book shows that Horkheimer and Adorno’s critical reflection on the destructive and self-destructive relation of human beings to nature, goes back to 1930, decades before the environmental movement emerged in the 1960s. On various occasions, and together in Dialectic of Enlightenment, they explain how the character of the relationship between the humans and nature has been one of domination. By highlighting the ambiguous outcome of Enlightenment, which has proven to be a double-edged sword (emancipation/barbarism), in particular when reason reduces itself to its instrumental dimension, they try to reinscribe human activities within broader natural parameters, without neglecting the fact that nature and history, environment and social domains are always inextricably intertwined.