Relation to the world· Nature and the living
Member among others
Axis: Humanity's place in nature — What place should human beings hold in nature: master, guardian, or simply one member among others?
Human beings hold no privileged position in nature: they are one living being among others, embedded in a web of interdependence. All forms of life have intrinsic value, independent of their usefulness to us.
Movements 3
Taoismexplicit
Everything, up to heaven and earth, models itself on what is more original than it is, and at the end of the chain the models itself only on : the human being therefore holds no commanding place, but is one creature among others, hanging on the same order. The right place is not to subdue nature but to conform to it as one follows a slope: to claim to correct it is to think oneself wiser than what made us. Taoism thus overturns the implicit anthropocentrism of schools that make the human order, the rites and government the summit of reality.
Laozi, Dao De Jing, ch. 25 · Zhuangzi, ch. 17 (Autumn Floods)
Romanticismexplicit
The human being is not the master and possessor of a nature-object, but one voice within the great living whole: rooted in it and communing with it, it is through the feeling of this belonging, not through domination, that one comes to oneself. Against the Baconian and Cartesian project of subjecting nature, the Romantic wanderer seeks in it a mirror of the soul and the presence of the infinite; finds there one and the same spirit that sleeps in the stone and awakens in us.
Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey · Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature
Environmental Ethicsexplicit
Against the program of and , the human as "master and possessor of nature", the current refuses as the primary relation to the natural world. It divides between two answers: the human as a of a community of the living, with no privileged position, in and ; or the responsible whom their very power obliges, in .
Næss, Ecology, Community and Lifestyle (1976) · Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility (1979)
Philosophers 5
Zhuangziexplicit
The human is neither to master nature nor to manage it as a steward: he must "let things be what they are" and tune his acting to theirs. The happiness of the fish, which Zhuangzi claims to know by watching them swim, and his sparring with over it, bespeak a lived continuity between the human and the living that makes any vantage of oversight idle. To follow the natural is neither to exploit nor to protect, but to know oneself a member of the same flux, exactly the reverse of Prometheanism.
Zhuangzi, ch. 17 (the happiness of fish) · Zhuangzi, ch. 7 (Fit for Emperors and Kings)
Laoziexplicit
"The human takes the earth as model, the earth the heavens, the heavens the Dao, and the Dao that which is so of itself": far from dominating nature, the human is set within a nesting in which he ranks after it. He is neither master nor steward charged with a mission, but one being among others called to follow the of the living. This humble inscription within the natural order brings him close to the deep ecology of Næss.
Dao De Jing, ch. 25 · Dao De Jing, ch. 51 and 64
Show inferred positions (3)
Schopenhauerinferable
The same will objectifies itself by degrees in gravitation, the crystal, the plant, the animal, and man: our place in nature is not that of a master but of one grade among others of a single blind energy. This metaphysical kinship grounds direct duties toward animals and rejects the idea that man is the sovereign owner of the living.
On the Will in Nature; On the Basis of Morality, §19
Marcus Aureliusinferable
Man is no empire within an empire but a part of the cosmic whole, akin to all the beings that issue from it: being a part, he says, I shall be discontented with nothing the whole assigns me. More than master or steward of the world, Marcus sees himself as one member among others of a single great living being.
Meditations, X, 6 · Meditations, IX, 9 · Meditations, IV, 40
Rousseauinferable
Against the Baconian project of making oneself master and possessor of nature, Rousseau sets the harmony of man with a natural order whose loss makes his unhappiness. Nature is not a material to exploit but a model and a refuge; in it man is first of all a living being among others, not a sovereign.
Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality · Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker
- PrescriptiveMoral Thought experimentThe last man
If the last human being could, as he died, wipe out all remaining life with no witness, would he do wrong? Does nature have worth only for us, or does it have worth in itself, independent of any human gaze?
the living world - DescriptiveA creature apart?
Is the human a being apart, held by reason and spirit above nature and bearing a singular dignity, or a living creature sprung from it, continuous with the animal and subject like it to its laws? The posture one adopts turns on this.
the human being - PrescriptiveAestheticSanctuary or garden
Should nature be left wild and untouched, preserving the part we did not make, or is the ideal a tended, gardened nature that human care completes rather than violates? And is there any "untouched" nature left to save at all?
wild nature - DescriptiveShould we follow nature?
Is nature a wise order to imitate and respect, or a blind power that crushes and starves with no regard for the good? Does calling something natural tell us anything at all about its worth?
the natural order