Society can escape nature’s compulsions by properly recalling its own nature.

Evidence

Dean’s notion of ‘accountability’ (1996) is very useful in understanding, and responding to, misrecognition in the social and cultural realms. In Dean’s framework the focus is on the process of the construction of the status of the misrecognized; she insists we uncover where accountability and responsibility lie for both the construction of problematic notions and the reconstruction of ones based in more authentic recognition. In addressing nature specifically, Bennett (2004: 349) insists on a ‘recognition of the agential powers of natural and artifactual things, greater awareness of the dense web of their connections with each other and with human bodies, and, finally, a more cautious, intelligent approach to our interventions in that ecology’. The view here is a Foucauldian one: what nature is, and how it has been treated and misrecognized, is maintained by the construction of the meaning and status of, and relationship with, nature. In this, we are both individually and socially—in addition to politically—complicit. — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 470 (#expands, via linked claim)

Horkheimer and Adorno repeatedly emphasized that only self-reflective thinking could give voice to repressed nature; that giving support to nature was only possible by releasing its apparent opposite, independent thought. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2146 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

From the interpenetration of the psychic and the physical achieved as a result of repeated exercise, man is able to discover the correct measure of his powers. If ‘naturally’ deprived of nature, the soul regains nature through the mechanisms of habit: ‘Habit is the mode of feeling (as well as intelligence, will, etc., so far as they belong to self-feeling) made into a natural and mechanical existence.’ — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 572 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Nature’s misrecognition is socially constructed and socially correctable — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice:…, 470; Self-reflective thinking alone can give voice to repressed nature. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2146; Barbarism is what lets mind master itself and stay open to nature (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Nature’s misrecognition is socially constructed and socially correctable #expands (0.88) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 470
• Self-reflective thinking alone can give voice to repressed nature. #corroborates (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2146
• Through habit the soul regains a nature it natively lacks. #corroborates (0.78) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 572
• Barbarism is what lets mind master itself and stay open to nature #complicates (0.75)