Domination Over Nature in Dialectic of Enlightenment and Eclipse of Reason

In Dialectic of Enlightenment, the concept of nature and the question of the relationship between man and nature taking the form of domination emerge from the preface to the first edition and in the initial pages of the first chapter onwards. The preface emphasises the inextricability of subjugation to nature and social progress in today’s society: economic powers (ökonomische Mächte), which oppress and nullify the individual, have enabled society as a whole to achieve unprecedented domination (Gewalt) over nature.1 The first chapter begins with a long quotation from Bacon, in which the English thinker argues for an adequate relationship between human understanding and ‘the nature of things’.2 Bacon shows that ‘[w]hat human beings seek to learn from nature is how to use it to dominate wholly [vollends zu beherrschen] both it and human beings’.3