Abstract

This essay treats the infl uence of Karl Marx in the relationship between humans and nature in Theodor Adorno’s and Max Horkheimer’s earliest work, arguing that this opposition is the key in the critical social theory of Marx. While Horkheimer rescues through the category of “social work”, the relationship between society and nature for social theory, Adorno does his thing with the concept of “natural history” has been in the manuscripts of Paris 1844. Marx identified a central issue for critical theory: any emancipatory politics lay in redefi ning the relationship between humans and nature