To treat a limit as final is often to ignore what effort has already made possible.

Supports

Descartes, Marx · Discourse on Method; Theses on Feuerbach

History is strewn with conquered « inevitabilities »: plague, famine, infant mortality, distances thought impassable. Each time, what was filed under the immutable order of things turned out to be a problem to be solved.
This retreat is nothing magical: it comes from knowledge, which grasps causes, and from action, often collective, which takes hold of them. assigned to science the task of making us « as masters and possessors of nature »; added that men make their own history, through their .
Before an ordeal, to presume the limit can be crossed is therefore no naivety, it is to draw the lesson of what has already happened. Whoever yields too soon denies himself victories that others, less resigned, knew how to win.

Therefore So refusing to treat the given as final is no pride, it is the condition of all progress: we change only what we first refused to endure.

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Deepenings

« Masters and possessors of nature »

opposes to purely speculative philosophy a practical one that would make us « as masters and possessors of nature ». Its first aim is not domination, but health and the easing of the human condition.
, later, will shift the emphasis from nature to society: it is human relations themselves that are to be transformed.

How far does this reasoning convince you?

Not at all

Entirely

Put to the test

Objection

Problems