"Humanity is not an animal species: it is a historical reality. Human society is an anti-physis: it does not passively submit to the presence of nature, but rather appropriates it." (62)
"The discovery of bronze enabled man, tested by hard and productive work, to find himself as creator, dominating nature; no longer afraid of nature, having overcome resistance, he dares to grasp himself as autonomous activity and to accomplish himself in his singularity. But this accomplishment would never have been realized if man had not originally wanted it; the lesson of labor is not inscribed in a passive subject: the subject forged and conquered himself in forging his tools and conquering the earth... there had to be another original tendency in man: in the preceding chapter we said that the existent can only succeed in grasping himself by alienating himself; he searches for himself through the world, in the guise of a foreign figure he makes his own." (65)
"In these riches of his, man finds himself because he lost himself in them: it is understandable then that he can attribute to them an importance as basic as that of his life itself. Thus man's interest in his property becomes an intelligible relationship. But clearly the tool alone is not enough to explain it; the whole attitude of the tool-armed man must be grasped, an attitude that implies an ontological infrastructure." (65)
"Because man is transcendence and ambition, he projects new demands with each new tool... Woman's powerlessness brought about her ruin because man apprehended her through a project of enrichment and expansion." (66)
"If the original relation between man and his peers had been exclusively one of friendship, one could not account for any kind of enslavement: this phenomenon is a consequence of the imperialism of human consciousness, which seeks to match its sovereignty objectively. Had there not been in human consciousness both the original category of the Other and an original claim to domination over the Other, the discovery of the bronze tool could not have brought about woman's oppression." (66)
"A truly socialist ethic - one that seeks justice without restraining liberty, one that imposes responsibilities on individuals but without abolishing individual freedom - will find itself most uncomfortable with problems posed by woman's condition." (67)
"To demand for woman all the rights, all the possibilities of the human being in general does not mean one must be blind to her singular situation. To know this situation, it is necessary to go beyond historical materialism which only sees man and woman as economic entities." (67-68)
"if they are not incorporated into the whole of human reality, sexuality and technology of themselves will fail to explain anything... the body, sexual life, and technology exist concretely for man only insofar as he grasps them from the overall perspective of his existence. The value of muscular strength, the phallus, and the tool can only be defined in a world of values: it is driven by the fundamental project of the existent transcending itself toward being." (68)
No comments:
Post a Comment