The minutes of January 18, 2011 Cafe Philo The man is - he dominate nature?
Accuracy address: This report does not pretend to trace exhaustively all the ideas that were expressed. And, of course, it is far from exhausting the many issues raised by the theme.
Introduction: This is a theme which, to be philosophical, is no less valid.
Global warming, depletion of natural resources, genetic engineering, GMOs etc ...
Some, more numerous, advocating sustainable development, a decrease or a radical change in lifestyles and consumption.
What do you think has made the benefits of action on human nature?
Debate 15 minutes
sciences and modern technologies give the man an unparalleled mastery of nature.
progress and areas are cumulative, there appears to be limited only to the temporary appropriation of the world by man.
Man is weak and helpless and did not have the same defense systems than animals.
In Greek mythology, Prometheus compensates the error of his brother Epimetheus who gave the animals to the detriment of mankind's most important gifts: strength, speed, courage and cunning, hair, wings or shells. He will give fire to man whereby he can prevail on animals.
With thought, man increases his knowledge and it is increasing its technical power so it can cope with natural aggression and explore the Universe.
Advances in understanding the world, men are hoping to go as "masters and possessors of nature" and the states in the Descartes discourse on method.
man was able to increase its power physical face of nature.
He was able to increase significantly and incessant life expectancy, its ability to predict natural disasters and to protect themselves. He even managed to transform nature itself especially through manipulation of the genetic heritage of living species, plant or animal or human.
For many, man can not dominate nature.
Who thinks so?
Discussion 15 minutes. The man said
Spinoza is not an empire within an empire, which means that the world he occupies no privileged position.
confidence in the future is much less triumphalist until the nineteenth century.
The perverse effects of technology pose many threats to the future of humanity and the planet (global warming, nuclear war or bacteriological, GMO etc. ...).
Pascal in thinking compares man to a reed, the weakest of nature but it is a thinking reed.
should not that the whole universe arm itself to crush a vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him.
If tradition biblical example is the fruit of man the highest of God's creation and to be alone the image of God in a cosmos geocenter, if it orders the man to subjecting animals and dominate the earth, it also recalls how he is but dust. Pascal says that the power of the human body is comparable only to that part of the universe, and even, as he stated, a particle that is a drop of water so that the fight is inherently unequal.
For Pascal, the thought that gives man not extra strength but the nobility, the value and dignity.
The man must think his humility. The man knows he is mortal, he is aware of its fragility.
Then all his actions, each her feelings have value for him.
may try in vain to compete with nature, which according to Pascal would be stupid but he can exploit the time of his life to "think" to measure the price of the moments of its existence, its short existence.
Despite exponential advances in science and technology, the human condition is that of a finished condemning the vanity of the excessive ambitions and hopes of eternity.
A little-known philosopher worth quoting. This is Hans Jonas, a German Jew, had to leave his country when Hitler came to power.
In his first major philosophical work he devoted to gnosis, he showed how Western civilization, by the violence of his technique, based on the irreducible duality of spirit and nature, the first to submit and reduce the second.
He warns against the remote consequence of this disastrous position, which should lead to a global catastrophe if no awareness intervenes to stop it.
It was he who first theorized the precautionary principle. Faced with a global threat which could destroy the living or the nature of this man, it is necessary to refrain from doing what he would be technically possible to do.
Return or the evocation of a return to a natural order is it necessarily an improvement?
Debate.
Weber believes that monotheism and especially his view of Christianity has disenchanted the world, thereby preparing the technical skill, scientific knowledge and economic exploitation.
Unlike schools of thought as Pantheism deified nature. Pantheism is the idea that the universe is of divine nature in any of its parts. For
Rousseau, nature has made man happy and good but society corrupts and makes the miserable.
The Enlightenment was the great century of nature. That - it appears everywhere and eventually qualify all, a certain way of thinking about law, religion, law, feelings and even music.
The revolutionary calendar, give new names to the months with the seasons and fields.
Voltaire violently criticized the design of Rousseau's exaltation of nature.
In a letter to Rousseau, he writes "we never used to want so much wit to make us stupid." It takes
want to walk on all fours when one reads your book.
Cynics like Diogenes believe that human law has nothing to do with the nature of things. For them to live down the law and return to nature.
The Stoics had the motto "Living according to nature" whatever its nature or nature in the sense of cosmic order. Some
ideology appealed to a natural order or a pseudo natural order
Living Space Nazis, eugenics etc. ....
Unlike the glorification of nature, Lacordaire was saying, which goes against the sanctity of a natural order, "Between the strong and the weak, freedom oppresses and the law that liberates. "
Could we say, and this is not the Lacordaire "Long live free foxes and chickens in a poultry-free free?
Elisabeth Badinter points out the dangers of a return to nature which is often advocated. For example, for her activism, pro-breastfeeding is the main danger to women's emancipation and would be the prelude to a return of the housewife. She also criticizes
what it calls eco totalitarianism.
Hegel, in contrast to the romantic view of nature not as an expression of the spirit but as his alienation.
Unlike most of his predecessors, Hegel does not believe in the existence of a natural right. The law is according to him an expression of freedom and non-assertive cons in nature. The greatness of spirit lies in its unnatural.
Hobbes is the author of the famous quote "Man is a wolf to man."
In the state of nature, man is not the reason be described by the Stoics but a creature of violent passion.
Without being able to coerce and restrain them, the men enjoy equal terrible than death to give anyone, because those who do not have great physical strength can always cunning or treachery.
Only the power of the state called by him on Leviathan may allow men to live together.
Rousseau does not justify absolute power but unlike the democratic power. For the author of the social contract, the sovereign, it is neither God nor the pope nor the king is the people.
Thanks to the social contract, civil law supersedes the regulation of the spontaneous state of nature.
It is possible to note there is a certain contradiction in Rousseau recognizes that the regulation made by nature can not sufficient law and harmony among people.
For Kant, "the human being is neither friendly nor completely unsociable. That is what realizes the oxymoron "unsocial sociability."
Nature is an illusion or as an entity or as a source?
Debate A philosophical existential questions is whether the material or intellectual nature, ie from the world of ideas. For
John Scotus Eriugena, a great philosopher of the ninth century Carolingian, these are the things that grow out of ideas. The resulting round circles of the idea circle.
It draws on the ideas of Plato, who opposes the myth of the cave the sensible world and the world intelligible.
For Plato, the intelligible world is an idea. For example, when a carpenter makes a bed, it does so after a model he has in his head. According to Plato, this model is an intelligible idea is an idea too.
For Montaigne, the laws of conscience that we say the unborn nature of reality are born of custom.
For Pascal, the men were quick to attribute the alleged nature of what they have them - even invented more or less arbitrary.
man can free himself from nature other than by technology?
Debate.
For Francis Bacon, which lend certain authorship of Shakespeare, "We do not command nature except by obeying her."
This phrase means that Bacon, to act on nature, it is first necessary to know. Not
example, dreaming of flying like Icarus birds that man could rise into the air but releasing the laws of mechanics.
Like Spinoza, Holbach believed that man is not an empire. There is no detachment from Nature. The man is both formed by nature and circumscribed by it.
Buddhism, or at least some of its current advocates the acceptance of nature. We can change the world but the relationship that we have in the world.
Psychoanalysis and psychology can try to understand the mechanisms underlying unconscious or that influence on people so they can get free at least to some extent.
Spinoza already spoke when he said that men are mistaken when they believe they are free in their opinion is that they are aware of their actions and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined.
Psychoanalysis distinguishes biological being a social being. The tale "The Three Little Pigs" is instructive in this regard. Only one of three that differed sufficiently immediate pleasure built a concrete house that is resistant to the wolf. This explanation comes from Bruno Bettelheim's book "The Fairy Tales of psychoanalyst.
Conversely, Desmons Morris in his famous book "The Naked Ape" that one can not read too adviser described the human race through a spy for ethologist ie with the same look as that which one wears on other animals.
It demonstrates that behaviors that seem to take on the most ethereal of Culture in fact derived from our primate ancestry.
is therefore an illusion, according to him, thinking that we can escape to nature.
In conclusion do you think that man must dominate nature?
Debate.
It might be interesting to change the perspective of the issue and not to think in terms of domination. For Bertrand
Duhaime, Hinduism teaches us that instead of dissecting the nature, human beings should try to understand her relationship with her. What man removes Nature, he removes it himself. And, by dint of subtle weaken the pyramid that supports it, it could cause its own collapse. If man respected nature, it would come to feel a reverence for all phenomena of everyday life, even simple. For the infinite ocean of power that is at work in the background of all events and phenomena of the natural world.
I found on the net's very beautiful words written in 1998 in a duty of philosophy near this theme Claire Hornung Student Terminale ES Thionville
"We know that Faust sold his soul to the devil in exchange for limitless knowledge and technical power it confers. Could not we dream of an anti-Faust technique that sacrifices to God in exchange for the rediscovery of his soul. "
