Modernity preserved the opposition to nature while discarding the afterlife

Evidence

For the post-Nietzschian subject, the afterlife stands revealed as a human reflection and invention; there is no significance outside ‘man himself. But the modern escape from this otherworldly identity remains incomplete in a number of ways. Modernity has dispensed with the other world, disconnected from and opposed to nature, as the basis for human identity, but this disconnection, this opposition, itself now becomes the basis of human identity. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 387

Categorization

• XREF: A key bridge to Merchant-esque claims (ch12: alienated identity intensified at the Enlightenment) and to Plumwood’s own ch1 thesis that identity, not human being, drives destruction. Central continuity argument for the pair. — connects to: Alienated identity developed over millennia, intensifying at the Enlightenment. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 289; Modern replacements for otherworldly religion remain hostile to nature — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 388; Modernity’s exclusion of nature from justice created its sustainability crisis — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice:…, 473 (+5 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: Dense and quietly paradigm-shifting: the very disavowal of transcendence becomes the new ground of human-nature opposition — worth sitting with for the whole polyad.

Broader Connections

• Human society is a historical reality that appropriates nature rather than submitting to it #corroborates (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 142
• Modernity’s exclusion of nature from justice created its sustainability crisis #expands (0.80) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 473
• Modernity’s core crisis is epistemological, not merely material or environmental #expands (0.75)
• Modernity’s self-image as rational depends on denying its own tacit metaphysics #corroborates (0.72)
• Animist vitalism functioned as an ethic restraining exploitation of nature #expands (0.72) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 158