Naturalism, Teleology, and the Ascent of Power Politics: An Analysis of Metaethical and Critical Theoretical Trajectories

Introduction

The philosophical evolution from a strictly naturalistic worldview to the relativistic power politics characteristic of contemporary critical theory represents one of the most profound intellectual transformations in the history of Western thought. The core inquiry of this transition investigates how a paradigm initially dedicated to empirical objectivity, scientific realism, and the demystification of the natural world paradoxically engenders a social epistemology where truth is frequently subordinated to power. When the cosmos is interpreted exclusively through the lens of metaphysical naturalism—a framework that systematically rejects transcendent teleology, divine architecture, and mind-independent moral facts—the foundations of objective normativity undergo severe strain. In the absence of an inherent, objective moral order, human values are increasingly understood as contingent artifacts of evolutionary biology, psychological conditioning, and historical power struggles.

Within this intellectual ecosystem, the descent into relativistic power politics is rarely viewed by its practitioners as a betrayal of Enlightenment rationalism. Rather, it is interpreted as the logical, unyielding culmination of naturalistic premises pushed to their absolute limits. If moral values and normative truths cannot be discovered within the empirical fabric of the universe, they must be socially constructed. If they are socially constructed, they are inexorably bound to the contingencies of human sociology and political economy. Consequently, ethical and political discourse transforms from a cooperative, rational pursuit of objective truth into a competitive arena where competing truth claims are deconstructed and unmasked as veiled exercises in hegemony.

This report exhaustively examines the philosophical, metaethical, and sociological mechanics that drive the devolution of naturalistic assumptions into the power politics of critical theory. By tracing the epistemological dismantling of objective morality through thinkers such as G.E. Moore, J.L. Mackie, and Sharon Street, and bridging these metaethical crises with the social and institutional critiques of Alasdair MacIntyre, the Frankfurt School, Michel Foucault, and Carl Trueman, this analysis demonstrates how the erasure of teleology creates an inescapable normative vacuum. In the absence of a transcendent telos, human interaction is reduced to instrumental rationality, the hermeneutics of suspicion, and the Nietzschean will to power, rendering the contemporary landscape of critical theory a seemingly foregone conclusion of the naturalistic worldview.

Part I: The Metaethical Void of Metaphysical Naturalism

The Is-Ought Problem and the Naturalistic Fallacy

The epistemological unraveling of objective morality within a naturalistic framework commences with David Hume’s articulation of the “is-ought” problem. Hume demonstrated that one cannot logically deduce prescriptive normative statements (what one “ought” to do) from purely descriptive empirical statements (what “is”). Naturalism, bound intrinsically to the empirical methodologies of the physical sciences, is highly adept at describing the mechanical and causal operations of the universe. However, it systematically struggles to generate an authoritative, non-arbitrary normative framework¹.

This philosophical tension was formalized by G.E. Moore in his 1903 work, Principia Ethica. Moore introduced the “naturalistic fallacy” and the corresponding “Open Question Argument” to refute attempts by ethical naturalists to reduce moral properties to natural properties³. Moore argued that any attempt to define the concept of “good” in terms of a natural property—such as pleasure, evolutionary survival, or societal consensus—fails because it remains logically coherent to ask if that natural property is itself good⁵. For example, if a utilitarian defines “good” as “that which maximizes pleasure,” it is still an open and intelligible question to ask, “But is pleasure always good?”².

For Moore, the fact that this question remains “open” demonstrates that moral properties cannot be analytically identical to natural properties. If metaphysical naturalism is true, and only natural properties exist within the cosmos, Moore’s argument implies a devastating conclusion: objective goodness does not exist, or any attempt to define it naturalistically is a semantic illusion⁵. While some contemporary “Cornell Realists” have attempted to circumvent this by arguing for “synthetic naturalism”—suggesting that moral properties supervene on natural properties much like water is identical to H2O despite having different meanings—the persistent vulnerability of naturalism to skeptical challenges remains a defining feature of modern metaethics⁴.

Error Theory and the Argument from Queerness

The implications of metaphysical naturalism were radically advanced by J.L. Mackie, who proposed a moral “error theory” premised on the assertion that there are no objective values in the universe⁹. Mackie’s widely cited “argument from queerness” posits that if objective moral values existed, they would have to be entities of an exceedingly strange sort—metaphysically and epistemologically “queer” in comparison to everything else in the natural universe¹¹.

According to Mackie, an objective moral fact would need to be intrinsically motivating and categorically binding on human action, possessing a unique prescriptive gravity entirely alien to the inert, descriptive universe posited by scientific naturalism¹². Because a strictly naturalistic ontology cannot accommodate such peculiar, norm-emitting entities, Mackie concluded that all moral discourse involves a systematic, ingrained cognitive error¹⁰. Human beings speak and act as if they are referencing objective moral facts, but these facts are fictitious projections onto a morally indifferent universe. When this error theory is accepted, the foundation of universal human rights, objective justice, and moral duty evaporates, leaving behind only the mechanics of power and preference.

Evolutionary Debunking Arguments

The metaethical crisis is further exacerbated by the integration of modern evolutionary biology into philosophy. Sharon Street’s “Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value” provides a devastating critique of moral realism from strictly within the naturalistic paradigm¹⁴. Street argues that human evaluative attitudes and moral beliefs have been thoroughly saturated and shaped by evolutionary forces¹⁵. The moral traits that promoted survival and reproductive fitness—such as kin altruism, reciprocal cooperation, and negative reactions to harm—were selected for by blind Darwinian processes over millennia¹⁵.

Street presents moral realists with an inescapable dilemma regarding the relationship between these evolutionary influences and the mind-independent moral truths posited by realism¹⁴. If the realist claims there is no relationship, then it is a massive, inexplicable coincidence that our evolutionarily instilled beliefs align with objective moral truth. This horn of the dilemma leads to profound moral skepticism, as the distorting pressure of Darwinian forces suggests most of our evaluative judgments are likely entirely off track¹⁴. Conversely, if the realist claims that evolution specifically tracked objective moral truths, this constitutes “bad science.” Natural selection selects purely for reproductive fitness and survival advantage, not for the ability to track independent moral truths¹⁷.

Consequently, Street embraces metaethical constructivism, concluding that moral truths are not objective features of the universe but are constructed by human agents based on contingent, evolutionarily derived commitments¹⁹. Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN) parallels this epistemological skepticism, arguing that if both naturalism and unguided evolution are true, the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable for discovering objective truth is low or inscrutable, as evolution selects solely for adaptive behaviors, not accurate metaphysical beliefs²¹. In the realm of ethics, if values are merely adaptive fictions, the naturalistic worldview strips moral claims of their universal authority. Without access to objective moral facts, ethical discourse inevitably devolves into a contest of competing biological instincts and social constructs.

Metaethical Concept	Core Argument	Consequence for Naturalistic Ethics
Naturalistic Fallacy / Open Question Argument (G.E. Moore)	Moral properties (“good”) cannot be reduced to or defined by natural properties (e.g., “pleasure” or “survival”).	Objective morality cannot be empirically grounded in the natural sciences without committing a logical fallacy.
Error Theory / Argument from Queerness (J.L. Mackie)	Objective moral facts would require bizarre, intrinsically motivating properties that do not exist in a physical universe.	All objective moral statements are systematically false; morality is a human projection onto an indifferent cosmos.
Darwinian Dilemma (Sharon Street)	Evolutionary forces shaped human moral attitudes for survival, not for tracking independent moral truths.	Evaluative judgments are subjective evolutionary artifacts; claims of objective moral knowledge are scientifically implausible.

Part II: The Collapse of Teleology and the Rise of the Emotivist Self

Alasdair MacIntyre and the Failure of the Enlightenment Project

The translation of metaethical skepticism into sociological power dynamics is exhaustively charted by Alasdair MacIntyre in his seminal work, After Virtue. MacIntyre contends that modern moral discourse is in a state of grave, unrecognizable disorder. He likens contemporary ethics to a post-apocalyptic world where the fragments of a destroyed scientific paradigm are utilized without any comprehension of the underlying theories that once rendered them coherent²³. Modern society utilizes the vocabulary of morality—rights, duties, justice—but has entirely lost the conceptual framework required to make these terms rational or actionable²⁵.

MacIntyre diagnoses the core of this catastrophe as the Enlightenment’s systematic rejection of Aristotelian teleology. In the classical and medieval framework, human beings possessed a specific telos—an objective, inherent purpose or end goal toward which human nature was directed, much like a watch is designed to tell time²⁴. Within a teleological framework, morality is functionally coherent; it consists of the virtues and disciplines required to transition from “untutored human nature as it happens to be” to “human nature as it could be if it realized its telos“²⁹.

However, by embracing a mechanistic, naturalistic worldview, the Enlightenment stripped both nature and humanity of any inherent, transcendent purpose. Philosophers such as Hume and Kant subsequently attempted to ground morality in pure reason or human passion. Yet, because they lacked a teleological framework defining what a human being ought to become, their projects inevitably and spectacularly failed²⁴. Without an objective end goal, moral rules became arbitrary restrictions lacking rational justification.

Emotivism and the Triumphant Will to Power

According to MacIntyre, the historical failure of the Enlightenment project resulted in the cultural and philosophical dominance of “emotivism.” Emotivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments, and specifically all moral judgments, are nothing more than expressions of personal preference, attitude, or feeling³². Because there are no objective moral facts or shared teleological goals to adjudicate disputes, moral arguments are unwinnable by rational means. Consequently, when individuals deploy moral language, they are not pointing to a shared truth; they are essentially attempting to manipulate others into aligning with their subjective preferences²⁴.

Once morality is unmasked as a mere expression of preference, it collapses into what Friedrich Nietzsche identified as the “will to power.” MacIntyre explicitly notes that the modern bureaucratic, capitalist, and liberal state operates on fundamentally Nietzschean principles under the deceptive guise of Weberian rationality²⁵. The “bureaucratic manager” and the “therapist” emerge as the archetypal characters of modern society. They employ instrumental rationality and psychological techniques to efficiently manage populations and emotions toward arbitrary ends²⁴. Because the ends themselves cannot be rationally justified in a teleology-void universe, the only remaining metric of success is “effectiveness”—the sheer exercise of power to manipulate reality, resources, and other human beings²⁴.

C.S. Lewis and the Abolition of Humanity

This grim trajectory was remarkably anticipated by C.S. Lewis in his philosophical treatise, The Abolition of Man. Lewis defended the concept of the Tao—a term he used to represent the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes and moral responses are intrinsically true or false regarding the objective universe³⁵. He warned that a strictly naturalistic worldview, which seeks to conquer and manipulate nature without submitting to the moral constraints of the Tao, ultimately leads to the abolition of humanity itself.

When nature is stripped of objective value and reduced merely to raw material to be measured and manipulated, human nature itself inevitably becomes raw material³⁶. Lewis predicted the ascent of the “Conditioners”—a scientific and bureaucratic elite who, having emancipated themselves from the Tao, possess the technological, genetic, and psychological power to condition the rest of humanity³⁵. Because the Conditioners no longer believe in objective value, their decisions about how to mold subsequent generations are guided solely by their arbitrary impulses and subjective desires. Thus, Lewis famously concluded that “man’s conquest of nature” translates in brutal practice to “the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men”³⁶. Lewis’s Conditioners are philosophically identical in function to MacIntyre’s bureaucratic managers: both are operators of raw power in a universe devoid of inherent moral restraint.

Part III: The Expressive Self and the Psychologization of Politics

Expressive Individualism and Cultural Amnesia

The dissolution of objective teleology not only transformed societal institutions but fundamentally restructured human identity and psychology. Charles Taylor, in Sources of the Self, outlines the emergence of “expressive individualism,” a paradigm wherein each human is viewed as a unique being whose ultimate moral imperative is to discover and express their authentic inner self, rather than conforming to an external, objective order³⁸.

Carl Trueman significantly expands upon Taylor, Philip Rieff, and MacIntyre to demonstrate how this dynamic psychologized, sexualized, and eventually politicized the modern self⁴¹. Drawing on Rieff’s taxonomy, Trueman observes that humanity has transitioned from “first worlds” (pagan cultures anchored in myth) and “second worlds” (cultures anchored in transcendent faith, like Christendom) into a “third world”⁴³. A third world culture deliberately attempts to destabilize and destroy transcendent cultural norms through “deathworks”—cultural products designed to make old values appear impotent, ridiculous, and oppressive⁴⁴.

Trueman traces this genealogy back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who established the foundation of the modern self by positing that man is born pure but is everywhere enslaved and corrupted by society⁴². The highest good shifted from conforming oneself to external virtue (mimesis) to nurturing the inner, untainted desires (poiesis)⁴¹. This Romantic notion of the self was subsequently weaponized by Sigmund Freud, who psychologized and sexualized identity. Following Freud, sex was no longer viewed merely as an activity for procreation or recreation; it became definitive of human identity and the core of the authentic self⁴³.

The Politicization of Identity

The synthesis of this psychological framework with critical theory was achieved by thinkers of the New Left, notably Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse. They took Marxist concepts of economic oppression and refracted them through the Freudian concept of psychological repression⁴². If the authentic self is defined by inner sexual and psychological desires, then traditional moral constraints, social norms, and religious institutions are no longer viewed merely as competing opinions on the good life. They are fundamentally reinterpreted as psychological violence and political oppression aimed at the eradication of the authentic self⁴².

As Trueman notes, “The self must first be psychologized; psychology must then be sexualized; and sex must be politicized”⁴⁵. In a naturalistic “third world” where there is no shared transcendent moral horizon to adjudicate competing claims of authenticity, identity becomes an absolute political battleground. Groups vie for institutional power to legitimize their internal psychological states and delegitimize those who oppose them⁴³. Because any boundary or moral restriction assumes an external authority that offends the autonomy of the modern self, the resulting political discourse devolves into a zero-sum game of power, where differing moral views are classified not as incorrect, but as literal acts of dehumanization⁴⁵.

Stage of the Modern Self	Key Thinker	Core Concept	Political Consequence
The Romantic Self	Jean-Jacques Rousseau	Society corrupts the pure, authentic inner desires of the individual.	Rejection of external moral authority; authenticity becomes the highest virtue.
The Psychological/Sexual Self	Sigmund Freud	Human identity is fundamentally defined by unconscious sexual desires.	Traditional morality is redefined as unhealthy psychological repression.
The Politicized Self	Wilhelm Reich / Herbert Marcuse	Psychological repression is a tool of capitalist/systemic political oppression.	Politics becomes a struggle to dismantle societal norms to achieve psychological liberation.

Part IV: The Epistemology of Suspicion and Instrumental Reason

The Hermeneutics of Suspicion

To comprehend how these competing claims of identity and morality devolve so seamlessly into the ruthless power politics of critical theory, one must examine the dominant epistemological methodology of late modernity: the “hermeneutics of suspicion.” Coined by Paul Ricoeur to describe the methodologies of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche (the “masters of suspicion”), this hermeneutic approach posits that the apparent, conscious meanings of texts, moral codes, and societal structures are deceitful facades⁴⁷.

Because metaphysical naturalism precludes the existence of objective, transcendent moral truths, any claim to objective morality, neutral justice, or universal reason is inherently suspicious. It is structurally impossible for such claims to reflect reality. Therefore, they must function as a cover-up for a deeper, material, or psychological agenda⁴⁸.

• For Karl Marx, moral, religious, and legal systems are ideological superstructures meticulously designed to mask and perpetuate the economic dominance of the ruling class. They generate “false consciousness” among the oppressed⁴⁷.
• For Sigmund Freud, religion and morality are neurotic sublimations of repressed sexual and aggressive drives, masking the true nature of human motivation⁴⁷.
• For Friedrich Nietzsche, objective morality is a “slave morality”—a psychological weapon forged by the weak to inhibit and control the strong, masking a covert, ubiquitous will to power⁵⁰.

The hermeneutics of suspicion institutionalizes the belief that all human discourse is a covert arena of domination. When applied rigorously to social theory, this methodology guarantees that any appeal to universal reason, natural law, or objective justice will be immediately deconstructed, historically relativized, and exposed as a mechanism of hegemonic control⁴⁹.

The Dialectic of Enlightenment and Instrumental Reason

This deep, structural suspicion of Enlightenment rationality was formalized by the first generation of the Frankfurt School, particularly Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno in their seminal text, Dialectic of Enlightenment. Drawing heavily on Max Weber’s theories of rationalization and the “disenchantment of the world,” Horkheimer and Adorno argued that the Enlightenment’s promise to liberate humanity from myth through reason paradoxically resulted in entirely new, terrifying forms of totalitarian domination⁵³.

Their devastating critique rests on the specific nature of the reason deployed by the Enlightenment. Having discarded the teleological and metaphysical frameworks of antiquity, the Enlightenment weaponized “instrumental reason”—a highly efficient form of rationality solely concerned with the calculation of means to ends, but entirely indifferent to the moral value or ultimate purpose of the ends themselves⁵³.

Initially directed toward the mastery and domination of nature, instrumental reason inevitably turned inward, resulting in the domination and quantification of human beings⁵⁴. Horkheimer and Adorno argued that advanced capitalism, the commodification of culture (the “culture industry”), and the rise of fascism were not aberrations, but the logical outgrowths of a rationality that views absolutely everything—including human subjects—as quantifiable, manipulable objects⁵⁴. Here, the direct link between the naturalistic worldview (the domination of nature) and power politics is made explicit: when reason is stripped of substantive normative content, it ceases to be a tool for discovering the good and becomes a pure, unadulterated instrument of power⁵⁶.

Part V: Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and the Ubiquity of Power

Anti-Humanism and the Decentered Subject

While the first generation of the Frankfurt School lamented the loss of human autonomy to bureaucratic systems, French structuralism and post-structuralism accelerated the naturalistic logic by explicitly targeting the concept of the autonomous human subject itself. Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault spearheaded an “anti-humanist” critique, fundamentally arguing that the “individual” is not a free, rational agent who creates meaning, but rather an epiphenomenal product of overarching structural, economic, and discursive forces⁵⁹.

Althusser, operating within a Marxist framework, argued that individuals are “interpellated” (hailed into being) by Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), which include schools, churches, families, and the media⁵⁹. These ISAs function to compel individuals to freely submit to the dominant capitalist ideology, rendering their perceived “autonomy” merely a functional requirement for the reproduction of capitalism⁵⁹.

Foucault expanded this paradigm far beyond economic class struggle, arguing that the subject is constituted by localized, ubiquitous networks of power and micro-disciplinary mechanisms⁵⁹. Humanism—the belief in an essential, autonomous human nature with inherent rights—was dismissed by Foucault as a recent historical invention, an epistemological fiction used to normalize, surveil, and control populations⁶⁰. By erasing the concept of a fixed human nature, radical naturalism clears the field entirely for absolute constructivism.

Foucault’s Power/Knowledge Regimes

For Foucault, the relationship between truth and power is absolute and inescapable. In a naturalistic, anti-teleological universe where objective, transcendent truth is inaccessible, what a society accepts as “truth” is merely the product of a “regime of truth” established by dominant, shifting power relations⁶⁴. Knowledge and power are not separate domains; they are inextricably fused as power/knowledge⁶⁵.

Foucault’s genealogical method traces how categories of knowledge—such as madness, criminality, and sexuality—were historically constructed by scientific and institutional discourses (e.g., psychiatry, criminology, clinical medicine) to classify, discipline, and normalize the human body⁶⁵. Because rationality itself is historically contingent and produced by ongoing power struggles, there is no neutral, objective ground from which to adjudicate competing claims⁶⁴. Foucault’s framework suggests that every social institution, norm, and scientific discipline is inherently coercive.

Consequently, emancipation does not come from discovering objective truth (which does not exist), but from resisting and subverting the dominant power structures at the local level⁶⁸. This epistemological stance effectively transforms all sociology, history, and philosophy into a relativistic struggle for power, where the only valid analytical question is not “Is this true?” but “Whose interests does this truth claim serve?”

Critical Legal Studies: Law as Politics

The transition from naturalistic, anti-foundational assumptions to relativistic power politics is vividly illustrated in applied disciplines such as jurisprudence, specifically in the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement. CLS emerged in the late 20th century as a radical extension of American Legal Realism. Legal Realism challenged classical jurisprudence (which often relied on natural law or strict doctrinal formalism), arguing that the law is fundamentally indeterminate and that appellate judges decide cases based on personal, psychological, or policy preferences, only subsequently rationalizing their decisions with legal precedent⁷⁰.

CLS theorists adopted this premise of legal indeterminacy and fused it with the hermeneutics of suspicion and Marxist/post-structuralist critiques⁷⁰. CLS operates on the fundamental, uncompromising maxim that “Law is politics”⁷⁰. CLS argues that the methods of legal reasoning are indistinguishable from political argument, and that the law is never neutral or objective⁷⁰. Instead, the legal system is a social construct meticulously designed to protect the economic and social interests of powerful, hegemonic groups while utilizing the language of “rights” and “objectivity” to make these contingent, oppressive arrangements appear natural and inevitable to the marginalized⁷⁰. By denying the existence of objective natural law, CLS reduces the entirety of jurisprudence to a theater of power, wherein legal reform requires ruthlessly deconstructing the hegemonic discourse of the ruling class.

Part VI: The Performative Contradiction and the Defense of Reason

Habermas vs. Foucault and Post-Structuralism

The rapid devolution of critical theory into relativistic power politics has not gone unchallenged from within the tradition itself. Jürgen Habermas, representing the second generation of the Frankfurt School, sought to rescue the emancipatory core of the Enlightenment project and critical theory from the abyss of post-structuralist relativism. Habermas mounted a vigorous critique against Foucault and other post-structuralists, accusing them of committing a fatal “performative contradiction”⁶⁴.

Habermas argued that if Foucault claims that all truth is merely a product of power, and that all forms of rationality are inherently coercive, then Foucault’s own genealogical critique must also be a mere exercise in power, utterly devoid of objective truth or moral authority⁶⁴. By using the tools of reason to systematically undermine reason, Foucault destroys the very normative yardstick required to justify his own societal critique. If there is no universal truth or objective good, why ought domination be resisted at all? Why is struggle preferable to submission?⁶⁷. Habermas contended that Foucault suffered from “crypto-normativity”—smuggling in unacknowledged, liberal values (such as freedom, autonomy, or resistance) while explicitly destroying the philosophical foundations required to sustain them⁶⁹.

Communicative Action and the Ideal Speech Situation

To provide a normative grounding for critical theory without returning to classical, transcendent metaphysics, Habermas proposed the theory of “communicative rationality”⁵⁴. Moving away from the philosophy of the solitary subject, Habermas focused on intersubjectivity. He argued that the very act of human speech contains implicit validity claims (truth, normative rightness, and sincerity) and inherently aims at mutual understanding rather than manipulation or coercion⁶⁶.

Habermas contrasted this with “strategic” or “instrumental” action, which treats others merely as means to an end. An “ideal speech situation”—a theoretical space free from coercion, deception, and power imbalances—provides a universal, procedural standard for democratic consensus and legitimate social critique⁶⁶. For Habermas, modernization becomes pathological when the “system” (driven by the non-linguistic media of money and administrative power) colonizes the “lifeworld” (the realm of shared cultural meaning and communicative action)⁷⁸.

However, post-structuralists and contemporary critical theorists have largely rejected Habermas’s procedural solution. Critics argue that the “ideal speech situation” is an impossible utopian fiction, inextricably bound to Western, Eurocentric conceptions of bourgeois rationality⁷⁷. Furthermore, Foucault’s defenders argue that communicative rationality naively ignores the insidious, micro-political ways in which power shapes the very subjects who are communicating, and dictates what counts as a “rational” argument in the first place⁶⁷. If the subject is entirely constructed by systemic power, there is no pre-discursive, rational agent capable of engaging in Habermas’s idealized dialogue. Consequently, much of contemporary critical theory has bypassed Habermas, finding Foucault’s analytics of power vastly more compelling for diagnosing structural oppression, thereby fully embracing the relativistic implications of power/knowledge.

Part VII: Social Constructivism and the Naturalistic Rebuttal

Epistemic Relativism and Constructivism

The entrenchment of power politics is further solidified by the broad adoption of Social Constructivism across the humanities and social sciences. Constructivism posits that categories of knowledge, reality, and human identity are actively created and negotiated by social relationships, rather than reflecting an objective, mind-independent nature⁸². While “weak” constructivism acknowledges a brute physical reality underlying social institutions (like money or borders), “strong” or epistemological constructivism—often termed radical or critical constructivism—asserts that all scientific facts, evidence, and truths are socially negotiated artifacts⁸².

When knowledge is viewed exclusively as socially constructed, the epistemic focus inevitably shifts from “Is this true?” to “Who constructed this, and whose political interests does it serve?”⁸². This naturally aligns with epistemic relativism, where justified belief is considered valid only relative to the varying cultural or political standards of different communities, with no neutral way to adjudicate between them⁸⁵. As soon as objectivity is abandoned as a myth, social and political power plays an exaggerated, defining role in the production and legitimation of knowledge⁸².

The Defense of Critical Naturalism and Realism

Recognizing the descent into relativism, some theorists have attempted to reconcile naturalism with objective critique. “Critical Realism,” spearheaded by Roy Bhaskar, argues against the “flat ontologies” of post-structuralism and new materialism⁸⁶. Bhaskar posits a “depth ontology” containing unobservable generative mechanisms and structures, arguing that without a commitment to mind-independent reality, social critique loses its emancipatory power⁸⁷.

Similarly, a recent movement toward “Critical Naturalism” attempts to rectify critical theory’s historical neglect of the natural world. Proponents argue that the illusion of human independence from nature—often reinforced by post-structuralist social constructivism—sustains the destructive “fossil-fuelled imperial mode of living” and the ecological crises of the Anthropocene⁸⁹. They advocate for a critical theory that integrates the empirical sciences to reconcile human society with both “inner” and “outer” nature⁹⁰.

In the realm of metaethics, Philip Kitcher advances “pragmatic naturalism” in The Ethical Project. Kitcher argues that ethics is a social technology that evolved to solve “altruism failures” in early human bands. He asserts that moral progress is objectively measurable by how well a society fulfills this original function, allowing for normative critique without resorting to “spooky” metaphysical realism⁹⁴.

However, critics from the critical theory and anti-realist camps frequently deconstruct these efforts. As Sharon Street’s Darwinian Dilemma illustrates, claiming that evolution favors normative “truth” over mere reproductive advantage begs the question¹⁶. Furthermore, defining ethical progress as the facilitation of “social cooperation” (as naturalists like David Copp or Kitcher do) is deeply vulnerable to the Foucauldian critique: historically, “cooperation” usually means enforced conformity to the hegemonic norms of the ruling class⁸. Because naturalistic ethics ultimately rely on descriptive biological or sociological facts, they cannot bridge the is/ought gap to provide a transcendent, authoritative critique of society; they merely describe the biological or social status quo, leaving the critical theorist no weapon but the assertion of counter-power.

Part VIII: Radical Orthodoxy’s Meta-Critique: The Ontology of Violence

The most comprehensive theological and philosophical critique of this trajectory is offered by the “Radical Orthodoxy” movement, most notably articulated by John Milbank. Milbank provides a profound meta-critique, arguing that secular naturalism and postmodernism are inextricably bound to an underlying “ontology of violence”⁹⁷.

Milbank traces this genealogy back to the late medieval shift toward the univocity of being (often associated with Duns Scotus), which severed the participatory, analogical relationship between God and creation⁹⁸. By rejecting a transcendent creator and a teleologically ordered creation (an “ontology of peace”), secular philosophy inherently assumes that the fundamental, bedrock reality of the universe is chaotic matter in motion, governed by Darwinian survival and Nietzschean conflict¹⁰⁰.

In a universe devoid of inherent harmony, peace is merely an artificial truce imposed by a dominant power or a temporary social contract¹⁰². When critical theory operates within this secular, naturalistic framework, it cannot help but view all social relations, institutions, and discourses as masked forms of violence and domination. Therefore, according to Milbank, the relativistic power politics of critical theory are not an aberration or a misreading of Enlightenment premises; they are the faithful, inevitable political expression of naturalism’s violent, anti-teleological ontology⁹⁸.

Conclusion

The assertion that the relativistic power politics of contemporary critical theory are a foregone conclusion based on the assumptions of a naturalistic worldview finds immense, rigorous substantiation across the history of modern philosophy. The causal chain linking empirical naturalism to the ubiquity of power politics is epistemologically devastating.

First, the adoption of metaphysical naturalism strips the universe of inherent teleology and objective moral facts. As demonstrated by G.E. Moore’s naturalistic fallacy and J.L. Mackie’s error theory, one cannot logically derive binding moral imperatives from the blind, mechanistic processes of nature. Evolutionary debunking arguments further confirm that within a strictly naturalistic paradigm, our moral intuitions must be viewed as adaptive survival mechanisms, not reliable trackers of objective, mind-independent truth.

Second, the collapse of objective teleology leaves a profound normative void. As Alasdair MacIntyre and C.S. Lewis diagnosed, when objective values are abandoned, moral discourse devolves into emotivism—a rhetorical facade for the psychological manipulation of others. Reason is reduced from a substantive faculty capable of discerning the good to an instrumental tool for maximizing efficiency and control. The Enlightenment’s project to master nature predictably turned inward, transforming human beings into raw material to be conditioned by bureaucratic and technological elites. Identity itself, as charted by Trueman, fractured into an expressive, psychologized, and ultimately politicized battleground.

Third, in a universe devoid of objective truth, the hermeneutics of suspicion becomes the only logical mode of analysis. If moral and truth claims are not objectively real, they must be ideological masks for underlying material, psychological, or evolutionary interests. Post-structuralism, led by Foucault, formalized this by inextricably linking all knowledge to power. If human nature is a fiction and all knowledge is socially constructed, then society is nothing more than an inescapable matrix of competing power/knowledge regimes, a view that quickly colonized applied disciplines like Critical Legal Studies.

Consequently, critical theory’s descent into relativistic power politics is the inevitable terminus of its ontological premises. Without a transcendent standard of justice or an objective human teleology to appeal to, critical theorists cannot engage in rational persuasion aimed at universal truth, for such concepts have been deconstructed as hegemonic fictions. As Habermas correctly identified, this leaves the critical project in a performative contradiction, possessing no normative yardstick by which to condemn domination other than its own competing will to power. In the naturalistic paradigm, Milbank’s “ontology of violence” reigns supreme: beneath the veneer of social constructs, there is only the eternal, Nietzschean struggle for dominance.

This report was generated by Google Gemini Deep Research using the prompt:

“Research what is it about the assumptions of a naturalistic worldview that cause it to devolve into a relativistic power politics of critical theory? In some ways, it seems like the relativistic power politics of critical theory are a forgone conclusion based on the assumptions of that worldview.” It was reviewed by Dr. Andrew Sears for accuracy.

Works cited

1. Is–ought problem – Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
2. When a Fallacy Ain’t a Fallacy: The Naturalistic Fallacy, https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2026/02/27/when-a-fallacy-aint-a-fallacy-the-naturalistic-fallacy/
3. G. E. Moore – Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._E._Moore
4. Moral Naturalism – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/naturalism-moral/
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