Nature-domination’s roots precede the Enlightenment in earlier rationalism and Christianity.

Evidence

Moreover there are other good reasons to see a ‘flight from the feminine’ as taking place much earlier than the Enlightenment and as more thoroughly embedded in the western philosophical tradition (Lloyd 1984). The account of the Cartesian birth of human/nature alienation, striking though it is, depends for its analogy of psychical ‘birth’ of the separate human self on placing the whole development of an alienated identity in the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment period, and hence on a unitary conception of pre-Cartesian views of nature as ‘organic’. Such an account lets off dominant earlier traditions, especially those of earlier rationalism and of Christianity, much too lightly. It fails to recognise how deeply rooted in the western tradition is the oppositional account of reason and the associated master account of human identity and denigration of nature. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 287

Categorization

• XREF: Key divergence from Merchant’s periodisation focus and from the Bordo/Capra mechanism narrative; this frames the need to push the ecofeminist dualism critique before Descartes. — connects to: Mechanism removed the moral barrier that had made controlling nature seem impious — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 419; Modern domination both reacted against and transformed premodern Christian forms; Modern subjectivity emerged from Christianity’s principle of spiritual inwardness. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 615 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Modern domination both reacted against and transformed premodern Christian forms #corroborates (0.90)
• Modern subjectivity emerged from Christianity’s principle of spiritual inwardness. #corroborates (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 615