November 10, 2015 - 00:08
Initial reactions to Kolbert's history...
"This capacity predates modernity, though, of course, modernity is its fullest expression. Indeed, this capacity is probably indistinguishable from the qualities that made us human to begin with: our restlessness, our creativity, our ability to cooperate to solve problems and complicated tasts" (Kolbert 266)
This passage struck me, as it so brilliantly connects to a current philosophical text I am reading in another class (woohoo interdisciplinary liberal arts curriculum)! Nietzsche says:
"When the ruling caste constantly looks afar and looks down upon subjects and instruments and just as constantly practices obedience and command, keeping down and keeping at a distance-- that other, more mysterious pathos could not have grown up either-- the craving for an ever new widening of distances within the soul itself, the development of ever higher, rarer, more remote, further-stretchhing, more comprehensive states-- in brief, simply the enhancement of the type of "man," the continual "self-overcoming of man," to use a moral formula in a supra-moral sense" (Nietzsche, Kauffman 257).
Both Kolbert and Nietzsche speak to the idea that the nature of humankind is itself overcoming... Its ability to evelove, to overcome, to go beyond itself. This quality is both our greatest virtue and our most-pressing weakness. The idea interests me... Looking at these texts through a philosophical lens complexifies and clarifies environmental concerns that are sometimes much too large and pressing to seem rooted in the everyday business of men.