Quotation
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“We could make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.”
René Descartes · Rationalism · Early modern · 1637
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as the practical hope of the new science: knowledge of causes should yield inventions that ease labour and, above all, improve medicine, so that humans stand over nature as its users rather than its baffled subjects. The as it were matters. He is stating an aim, not a completed conquest. A rival reading hears a charter for unlimited exploitation, and critics of that charter have used the line as exhibit; The sentence is in part six, the defence of publishing, tied to health as the chief good.
Did René Descartes really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Cottingham's English of Discourse on the Method, part six, where Descartes defends publishing his physics for the sake of medicine and practical arts. The as it were is in the French. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
Discourse on the Method, part 6
Approximate date: 1637.
How to use it
A planning fight in the Somerset Levels over a drainage scheme can quote the line on either side, as a hope of not being ruined by floodwater, or as a warning that mastery has already cost the ground. Descartes ties the hope especially to medicine and to the relief of labour. He does not discuss wetlands; Using him as the sole author of a modern environmental crisis is a larger historical claim than one sentence can bear, and ignoring the sentence's ambition is the opposite mistake.
A mindset reading
The phrase is proud, and the as it were is the remnant of a limit inside the pride. He thinks the end is the preservation of health, which gives the mastery a stated purpose rather than a blank will to dominate. A reading that keeps only lords and masters, and drops the medical aim and the hesitation, has edited the part; A reading that pretends he had ecological worries he did not write has edited it the other way.
Understand the philosophy
Part six argues that he should publish, despite risks, because the method promises useful knowledge. The key term is mastery of nature, a technical command of causes for human benefit, with health ranked first among those benefits. Cottingham keeps the hedging phrase. The sentence becomes, in later centuries, a place where defenders and critics of technological power both stop; The Discourse itself is more specific than that later argument.
- knowledge
- power
- society
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as the practical hope of the new science: knowledge of causes should yield inventions that ease labour and, above all, improve medicine, so that humans stand over nature as its users rather than its baffled subjects. The as it were matters. He is stating an aim, not a completed conquest. A rival reading hears a charter for unlimited exploitation, and critics of that charter have used the line as exhibit; The sentence is in part six, the defence of publishing, tied to health as the chief good.
Did René Descartes really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Cottingham's English of Discourse on the Method, part six, where Descartes defends publishing his physics for the sake of medicine and practical arts. The as it were is in the French. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Discourse on the Method, part 6 Approximate date: 1637.