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5. On the Conquest of Human Nature Ancients, Moderns—Medievals, Futures The modern project was originated as required by nature (natural right), i.e. it was originated by philosophers; the project was meant to satisfy in the most perfect manner the most powerful natural needs of men; nature was to be conquered for the sake of man who himself was supposed to possess a nature, an unchangeable nature; the originators of the project took it for granted that philosophy and science are identical. After some time it appeared that the conquest of nature requires the conquest of human nature and hence in the first place the questioning of the unchangeability of human nature: an unchangeable human nature might set absolute limits to progress. Accordingly, the natural needs of men could no longer direct the conquest of nature; the direction had to come from reason as distinguished from nature, from the rational Ought as distinguished from the neutral Is.  Leo Strauss We must take a look at the foundations of the modern age. These are with particular clarity in the thought of Francis Bacon. That a new era emerged— through the discovery of America and the new technical achievements that had made this development possible—is undeniable. But what is the basis of this new era? It is the new correlation of experiment and method that enables man to arrive at an interpretation of nature in conformity with its laws and thus finally to achieve “the triumph of art over nature” (victoria cursus artis super naturam). The novelty—according to Bacon’s vision—lies in a new correlation between science and praxis. This is also given a theological application: the new correlation between science and praxis would mean that the dominion over creation—given to man by God and lost through original sin—would be reestablished. Benedict XVI 47 An earlier version of this chapter was published in the Catholic Social Science Review 14 (2009): 25–31. Epigraphs are from Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 7; Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 2007, #16. 48   Something or Other I • The basic thesis that I will argue in this chapter is that the principal time period from which we must protect ourselves is not that belonging to the ancients, the medievals, or even the moderns, but, to coin a phrase, to the “futures.” No doubt the only temporal thing we can “do” anything about, via the present, is the future, even though, with memory and forgiveness, we can do something to repair our actual past. The “now” is the only point at which we can affect anything in the future . The future, of course, for the moment, only exists in our minds where, though perhaps fleeting, it is not nothing. It is an idea awaiting a will to act in existence. Ideas, which are not substances, have their own relational reality. This fact is why we can talk about them. Indeed it is in talking about them that we have them. Our minds connect us with the world which is ongoing in time. What makes the future dangerous , or benign, is precisely that we, through our minds, can touch the world in our bodily actions and makings. These latter effects are ultimately based on our ideas or plans or thoughts. We seek to put into effect what we have concocted or configured in our minds. Though also contemplative, we can direct our minds to action and making through which mind is imprinted on matter or on the human being. Thus, the future has much to do with us. We are told that the Sun will burn out some day. No doubt it will. The ecologists have made a minor industry of confusing what is natural or cosmic with what is human. Yet, St. Paul tells us that the world itself awaits our redemption (Romans 8:19). The relation of cosmic to human purpose is, we suspect, intimate. The danger of the future does not consist in the fact that the heavens and earth may pass away, which probably will be the eventual case. The danger is whether we now have in our minds ideas of the future that are totally cut off in their formulation and application from what the ancients and medievals understood of man who, in their minds, was not in principle the creator of himself or the cosmos. Yet, he was, as we saw in chapter 3, a real actor in the existing world...

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