#max scheler

Nature is a priori experienced by an organism bent to domination and therefore experienced as susceptible to mastery and control. And consequently work is a priori power and provocation in the struggle with nature; it is overcoming of resistance. In such work-attitude, the images of the objective world appear as “symbols for points of aggression”; action appears as domination, and reality per se as “resistance.” Scheler calls this mode of thought “knowledge geared to domination and achievement” and sees in it the specific mode of knowledge which has guided the development of modern civilization. It has shaped the predominant notion not only of the ego, the thinking and the acting subject, but also of its objective world--the notion of being as such.