Two sorts of natural history: On a central concept in critical theory and ethical naturalism

Abstract

AbstractThe concept of natural history has received a great deal of attention in contemporary practical philosophy, especially as a result of Michael Thompson's concept of natural‐historical judgments which aims to explain the normativity of the human life‐form. With this concept, the norms effective in a life‐form are understood as something natural and constitutive for that life‐form. Although Thompson does not present a historical‐philosophical model, he claims to be able to determine the normativity of the historically developing human life‐form. By contrast, Theodor W. Adorno developed his own concept of natural history on the one hand as an interpretative conceptual model of historical reality, on the other hand, to indicate the normativity of the natural‐historical course of human history itself. The normativity of natural history that Adorno focuses on is historically and socially determined, in contrast to the categorically conceived natural normativity that is at the heart of Thompson's approach. This article analyses the similarities and differences between the two approaches in such a way that it becomes clear to what extent ethical naturalism also provides possibilities for critique that can be made fruitful for a critical theory inspired by Adorno.