---
title: "Nature as Subject: Three Voices, One Threshold"
sousTitre: "Domination, reciprocity, dissolution — the unthought of dualism"
description: "Between Aristotle’s living instrument-slave, Descola’s relational systems subordinated to ontological properties, and Dōgen’s blossoming of emptiness, nature unfolds as an object of mastery, a subject of rights, or an illusion to transcend. Three radically distinct propositions, whose confrontation reveals not an opposition but a threshold: that where dualism itself becomes the question."
date: 2026-08-30
lang: en
tradition: undefined
auteurs: ["Aristotle", "Philippe Descola", "Dōgen"]
---
# Nature as Subject: Three Voices, One Threshold

No term can contain nature without reducing it. Object, subject, flux—these categories are but the traces of a thought that either collides with it or dissolves into it. Three propositions stand here, irreducible: one makes of nature a legitimate instrument, another a network of properties imputed to beings, the last a blossoming of emptiness wherein the self fades. Each carries within it an ontology, a relation to the world, an ethic. None can be absorbed by the others. Yet their very juxtaposition gives rise to a question that surpasses them: that of dualism as a threshold, as a limit to cross or to dissolve.

## Nature as living instrument: the legitimacy of mastery

> Just as they are, the slave is a living instrument; and since the city and the state cannot do without the instruments indispensable to them, slavery is legitimate, slavery is natural, in the same way as the acquisition of the goods necessary for life.
>
> — **Aristotle**, *La Politique*. éd. after the French translation by Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, 3rd revised edition, Paris, 1874 (Gallica/BnF).

Nature is not a partner, but a means. It merges with the goods the city needs to subsist, and these goods, in turn, merge with the instruments that allow their acquisition. The slave, here, is no metaphor: he is the very paradigm of the relation man maintains with what surrounds him. A living instrument—that is, a tool that breathes, that may suffer, but whose suffering is not an objection to its use. It is rather its condition: a tool that did not suffer would not be alive, and thus not fully effective.

This proposition does not merely justify slavery. It founds an ontology wherein nature is what can be possessed, used, transformed. The slave is not another man, but another *kind* of man, whose very nature is to serve. The city, in this sense, is not a contract between equals, but a natural hierarchy where each element finds its place. The goods necessary for life are not gifts, but legitimate acquisitions, for nature, as a set of resources, is there to be taken.

No reciprocity is possible within this framework. Nature has no rights, for it has no will. It is not a subject, but a reservoir of potentialities to be actualized. Man, on the other hand, is he who actualizes. His rationality is not one quality among others, but the very principle that distinguishes agent from instrument. Mastery is not a choice, but a necessity: without it, the city would collapse. And if the city is natural, then mastery is as well.

This voice does not propose an ethic, but a logic. It does not say, "one must dominate nature," but rather, "nature is what can be dominated, and this domination is legitimate because it is natural." Dualism is not a problem, but an evident truth. Man and nature are two distinct poles, and their relation is asymmetrical by essence. The question is not whether this asymmetry is just, but whether it is *necessary*. And for Aristotle, it is.

## Nature as a system of properties: ontology before relation

> It was therefore necessary to free ourselves from the sociocentric prejudice and wager that sociological realities—stabilized relational systems—are analytically subordinate to ontological realities—the systems of properties imputed to beings.
>
> — **Philippe Descola**, *Par-del nature et culture*. éd. after the French original.

Here, nature is no longer an object, but a set of properties. It is no longer what opposes man, but what precedes him, what gives rise to the relations that unfold. Dualism is not an evident truth, but a prejudice—that which consists in believing society and nature are two separate domains, when in fact they are but the effects of a single ontology.

Descola does not propose an ethic of reciprocity, but a method. He does not say, "nature has rights," but rather, "the relational systems we observe depend on the properties we attribute to beings." These properties are not essences, but ways of carving up the world. A tree is not an inert object, but a being to which we impute qualities—life, growth, agency—that then determine the relations we maintain with it.

The subordination of sociological realities to ontological realities is a reversal. It means that laws, customs, institutions are not primary, but derived. They do not create categories; they are their products. Thus, nature is not what opposes culture, but what makes it possible. It is not a reservoir of resources, but a fabric of properties structuring interactions.

This proposition does not deny dualism, but displaces it. It does not say, "man and nature are one," but rather, "the distinction between man and nature is one construction among others, and this construction depends on the properties imputed to beings." Nature is not a subject of rights, but a field of properties that may, or may not, be treated as such. Reciprocity is not a moral obligation, but an ontological possibility.

Descola does not propose a fusion, but a deconstruction. It is not a matter of denying differences, but of locating them where they emerge: in the systems of imputed properties. Nature is not a partner, but a network of relational potentialities. And these potentialities are not given, but constructed.

## Nature as blossoming of emptiness: the dissolution of the self

> 
>
> — **Dōgen**, *dogen-shobogenzo-treasury-true-dharma-eye-tanahashi*. éd. Flowers of Emptiness: Dōgen’s Genjōkōan with Commentary by Yasutani Roshi, Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997" maison langSource="jp.

Here, nature is neither object nor system of properties, but a blossoming. The very term "nature" is already too burdened, too dualistic. It presupposes a separation between observer and observed, whereas for Dōgen, this separation is an illusion. *Genjōkōan*—the manifestation of reality—is not a state to attain, but reality itself, as it unfolds in each instant.

The citation is empty, but this emptiness is not a void. It is the very condition of blossoming. The "Flowers of Emptiness" are not objects, but events—surges that belong to no one, not even to he who contemplates them. The self is not a subject facing nature, but a fiction that fades into the flux of phenomena.

This proposition does not deny nature, but transcends it. It does not say, "nature is a subject," but rather, "the distinction between subject and object is an error of perspective." Dualism is not a question of relation, but of perception. There is not, on one side, man and, on the other, nature, but a single movement, a single breath, where all is at once agent and patient, observer and observed.

Dōgen does not propose an ethic, but a practice. It is not a matter of respecting nature, but of dissolving into it. Reciprocity is not an alliance, but an identity. The self is not a partner, but an illusion to overcome. Nature is not another, but the very place where the self unravels.

This voice does not seek to reconcile man and nature, but to show that their separation is a mental construct. It does not propose a new ontology, but an experience: that wherein dualism fades, categories dissolve, and subject and object become one.

## The threshold of dualism: three propositions, one question

These three voices do not answer one another. They do not even contradict, for they do not speak on the same plane. One founds a logic of mastery, another a method of deconstruction, the last a practice of dissolution. Yet their juxtaposition gives rise to a common question: that of dualism as a threshold.

For Aristotle, dualism is an evident truth. Man and nature are two distinct poles, and their relation is asymmetrical by essence. Nature is what can be possessed, used, transformed. It has no rights, for it has no will. Mastery is not a choice, but a necessity.

For Descola, dualism is a prejudice. It is not a given, but a construction, dependent on the properties imputed to beings. Nature is not an object, but a network of relational potentialities. Reciprocity is not a moral obligation, but an ontological possibility.

For Dōgen, dualism is an illusion. It is not a question of relation, but of perception. The self is not a subject facing nature, but a fiction that fades into the flux of phenomena. Nature is not another, but the very place where the self unravels.

These three propositions do not converge. They do not complement one another. They do not form a synthesis. Yet their confrontation reveals something else: a threshold. That where dualism itself becomes the question. Not as an error to correct, but as a limit to cross, or to dissolve.

Aristotle does not seek to overcome dualism, but to found it. Descola does not seek to deny it, but to deconstruct it. Dōgen does not seek to reconcile it, but to dissolve it. Yet in all three cases, dualism is what is at stake. What is interrogated, contested, or transcended.

Nature is neither object, nor subject, nor flux. It is what stands *between* these propositions. What makes them possible, and what surpasses them. It is the threshold where dualism reveals itself as the very question—the one that precedes every answer, every ontology, every practice.

And it is perhaps there, in this threshold, that the three voices meet without merging: in the idea that nature is not what we say of it, but what makes possible what we say of it. That it is not an object to master, nor a subject to respect, nor a flux to dissolve, but what stands *beyond* these categories. What precedes them, and what exceeds them.

*[dualisme]* Dualism is not an answer, but a question. A question that presents itself differently depending on whether one founds it, deconstructs it, or dissolves it. But a question that, in all three cases, remains open.

## Sources

- Aristote, *La Politique* — 3e éd. revue et corrigée, Paris, 1874 (Gallica/BnF), trans. Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire
- Philippe Descola, *Par-del nature et culture* — 
- Dōgen, *dogen-shobogenzo-treasury-true-dharma-eye-tanahashi* — 


Canonical source : https://viasophia.org/en/essais/2026-08-30-nature-comme-sujet-trois-voix/