Nature’s qualities are historical, not fixed, under human mastery

Evidence

But there are two kinds of mastery: a repressive and a liberating one. The latter involves the reduction of misery, violence, and cruelty. In Nature as well as in History, the struggle for existence is the token of scarcity, suffering, and want. They are the qualities of blind matter, of the realm of immediacy in which life passively suffers its existence. This realm is gradually mediated in the course of the historical transformation of Nature; it becomes part of the human world, and to this extent, the qualities of Nature are historical qualities. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 825

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the repressive vs. liberating mastery distinction that governs the whole chapter.
• XREF: connects to: Concepts are tools for dominating nature, not for understanding it — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 52; The Institute abandoned class conflict in favor of man-nature domination as history’s motor — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 773; Biology dictates no eternal sexual hostility because humanity is historical becoming, not mere species. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1965 (+17 more)

Broader Connections

• Human society is a historical reality that appropriates nature rather than submitting to it #expands (0.92) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 142
• People’s supposed deficiencies are historical facts, not natural traits #expands (0.90)
• Human culture originates in the socially mediated relation between man and nature #expands (0.88)
• Human nature is the totality of historically determined social relations, not a fixed essence. #expands (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 617
• The physically weaker dominate nature by deliberate adaptation rather than strength #exemplifies (0.85)
• Nature and history are inseparable and mutually qualifying #expands (0.82) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1339
• Human nature is the ever-changing complex of social relations, not a fixed essence #corroborates (0.80)
• Nature cannot anchor materialism because social and cultural structures now overdetermine the natural. #complicates (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 747
• Innate qualities constrain but do not abolish freedom within a situation #qualifies (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 717