The Future of a Catastrophe

The ecological catastrophe reveals an internal tension between two central features of Frankfurt School Critical Theory: Based on its ethical negativism, critical theory critiques the causes of avoidable suffering to motivate social transformation; grounded in epistemological critique, it refrains from offering substantive conceptions of nature informed by the sciences or ontology. However, this becomes problematic in light of a defining feature of the ecological catastrophe: uncalculable future consequences of present-day actions. Therefore, a critique of present-day practices as potential causes of future suffering must draw on conceptions of nature that strain the epistemological framework of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, which dismisses them as either scientistic or metaphysical. I address this problem by mediating more scientistic and more speculative concepts of nature, drawing on Horkheimer’s interdisciplinary materialism, Adorno’s epistemology, and Schelling’s late philosophy. In this way, I demonstrate how social criticism can address not only past and present suffering, but also an uncertain future.