Western man’s conquest of nature begins with conquest of his own self

Evidence

Shame of nature and dominion over the earth are entwined, making the latter the means for the conquest of the former. If labor, nakedness, and death are the moral failures of natural man, then dominion over the self is the solution, an endless quest of denial. One might say that inasmuch as this redemption is an attempt to conquer and dominate nature, it is also a denial of the inevitability of nature. In chapter 4, I will continue this line of thought and attempt to show its relevance to colonialism and genocide, but for now I wish to stress that in this tradition it is the very nature of man himself, of man’s very self, that is the starting point of domination and conquest. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 178

Categorization

• QUESTION: The book promises this line of thought connects to colonialism and genocide — worth chasing how the self-domination thesis plays out in the later chapters.
• XREF: connects to: An imposed hunting rule taught its first ethical lesson in self-restraint — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 433