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>Pettit includes no discussion of nature at all: he is only interested in people dominating people. To me, this misses a fundamental truth about the human condi

>Pettit includes no discussion of nature at all: he is only interested in people dominating people. To me, this misses a fundamental truth about the human condition. This is probably because nature is nature - it is a fundamental fact of human existence, where as "human nature" in terms of social relations between producers and owners in society is not a fact of nature, and over the course of human history, has seen many forms. We're talking about sociology, not about biology. While biology certainly gets a look-in via, say, evopsych, that's not the main concern of the article, or the author's point. The idea that nature is itself dominating assumes a conception of nature in which nature oppresses, rather than creates us. The idea that 'nature' itself is oppressive is a Hobbesian tale that has not fared well in philosophy and the social sciences. Hurricanes are oppressive, sure; but we can't change that fact. Maybe we should focus on what we can change, and investigating the limits of what we can change. Meteorologists and physicists have safely ruled out the idea that we can get rid of hurricanes.

slibhb 6y ago
I have a stomach and if I don't fill it I'll die. Food isn't easy to come by. I don't see how you can build a political philosophy without taking facts like that into account. If we lived in Eden, if I could walk around and do whatever I want without dying, we wouldn't need politics or government. But nature's oppression isn't an immutable fact. We have vaccines, GMO crops, houses, and other technology. To some degree, we are liberated from nature today. I've ignored every hurricane I've ever lived through. Unhappily, domination (as in, arbitrary interference, not as in literal slavery) is necessary in order for us to escape from nature. In order for that to change we either have to decide we don't mind being dominated by nature (opt out, a perfectly reasonable decision, be my guest hackernews posters) or we have to invent lots of science fiction technology to do all the labor that keeps civilization running. Small countries with lots of natural resources may be able to achieve non-domination but that's only because there are big countries to buy the resources.
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  >I don't see how you can build a political philosophy without taking facts like that into account. We already have political philosophy which takes that into account; it concerns material conditions and relations of production, and the reproduction of labour-power. Economists on all sides of the political spectrum from Austrians to classical Marxists talk about population, growth, sustainability, and the need for necessities and shelter. Where people disagree is the subsumption of natural disaster and the basic human fact of life into a naturalistic conception of production relations. Production relations are built on top of natural requirements, but they are not the same thing, as evidenced by the wide variety of production relations which serve those natural requirements through history (whether slave societies, feudal societies, 'communal' societies, or capitalist societies). When talking in political philosophy, you abstract from raw physical facts of caloric intake to how those calories are organized and distributed in society, and to what degrees. "Domination by nature" is an irrelevant question to political philosophy, which strictly concerns matters known (natural disaster, food, shelter, sex) or hypothesized to be (transhumanism, gender relations, distribution and production of medicines, urban or rural life, the work day) in the hands of humans.
  - slibhb 6y ago
    How can domination by nature be irrelevant to political philosophy? There's never been a famine in a liberal democracy. Compare to the Holodomor. We can't "abstract" things that are immanent when we do political philosophy. If we do that we're chasing soap bubbles.

slibhb 6y ago

I have a stomach and if I don't fill it I'll die. Food isn't easy to come by. I don't see how you can build a political philosophy without taking facts like that into account. If we lived in Eden, if I could walk around and do whatever I want without dying, we wouldn't need politics or government. But nature's oppression isn't an immutable fact. We have vaccines, GMO crops, houses, and other technology. To some degree, we are liberated from nature today. I've ignored every hurricane I've ever lived through. Unhappily, domination (as in, arbitrary interference, not as in literal slavery) is necessary in order for us to escape from nature. In order for that to change we either have to decide we don't mind being dominated by nature (opt out, a perfectly reasonable decision, be my guest hackernews posters) or we have to invent lots of science fiction technology to do all the labor that keeps civilization running. Small countries with lots of natural resources may be able to achieve non-domination but that's only because there are big countries to buy the resources.

claudiawerner 6y ago
>I don't see how you can build a political philosophy without taking facts like that into account. We already have political philosophy which takes that into account; it concerns material conditions and relations of production, and the reproduction of labour-power. Economists on all sides of the political spectrum from Austrians to classical Marxists talk about population, growth, sustainability, and the need for necessities and shelter. Where people disagree is the subsumption of natural disaster and the basic human fact of life into a naturalistic conception of production relations. Production relations are built on top of natural requirements, but they are not the same thing, as evidenced by the wide variety of production relations which serve those natural requirements through history (whether slave societies, feudal societies, 'communal' societies, or capitalist societies). When talking in political philosophy, you abstract from raw physical facts of caloric intake to how those calories are organized and distributed in society, and to what degrees. "Domination by nature" is an irrelevant question to political philosophy, which strictly concerns matters known (natural disaster, food, shelter, sex) or hypothesized to be (transhumanism, gender relations, distribution and production of medicines, urban or rural life, the work day) in the hands of humans.
- slibhb 6y ago
  How can domination by nature be irrelevant to political philosophy? There's never been a famine in a liberal democracy. Compare to the Holodomor. We can't "abstract" things that are immanent when we do political philosophy. If we do that we're chasing soap bubbles.