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Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life

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The margins of philosophy are populated by non-human, non-animal living beings, including plants. While contemporary philosophers tend to refrain from raising ontological and ethical concerns with vegetal life, Michael Marder puts this life at the forefront of the current deconstruction of metaphysics. He identifies the existential features of plant behavior and the vegetal heritage of human thought so as to affirm the potential of vegetation to resist the logic of totalization and to exceed the narrow confines of instrumentality. Reconstructing the life of plants "after metaphysics," Marder focuses on their unique temporality, freedom, and material knowledge or wisdom. In his formulation, "plant-thinking" is the non-cognitive, non-ideational, and non-imagistic mode of thinking proper to plants, as much as the process of bringing human thought itself back to its roots and rendering it plantlike.

ISBN-13: 9780231161251

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Publication Date: 02-19-2013

Pages: 248

Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

Age Range: 18 Years

Michael Marder (PhD, Philosophy, the New School) is IKERBASQUE Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country. He is the author of, among other books, Groundless Existence: The Political Ontology of Carl Schmitt (Continuum, 2012), The Event of the Thing: Derrida’s Post-Deconstructive Realism (Toronto, 2013), Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (Columbia, 2013), The Philosopher's Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium (Columbia, 2014), Energy Dreams (Columbia, 2017), and, with Luce Irigaray, Through Vegetal Being: Two Philosophical Perspectives (Columbia, 2016).

What People are Saying About This

František Baluška

Recent advances in plant sciences reveal plants are sensitive organisms capable of rich sensory and communicative activities, based on complex and integrated signaling that allows for surprisingly sophisticated forms of behavior. Marder offers philosophical perspective on this paradigm shift with important consequences for theoretical philosophy, ethics, and politics.

David Wood

Marder argues that recent advances in animal ethics, for all their virtues, are often blind to the blinkered instrumentality of our understanding of plants. Re-thinking that relation opens the vegetal world to a thinking encounter few thought possible (or necessary), one that puts plants in a wholly different light yet also offers new resources for dismantling our deeply rooted metaphysical legacy. This is a remarkable book—original, daring, and timely.

František Baluška

Recent advances in plant sciences reveal plants are sensitive organisms capable of rich sensory and communicative activities, based on complex and integrated signaling that allows for surprisingly sophisticated forms of behavior. Marder offers philosophical perspective on this paradigm shift with important consequences for theoretical philosophy, ethics, and politics.

Vandana Shiva

For too long has the human mind been limited by thinking like a machine. Mechanistic thought has allowed humans to unleash violence on other species, both animals and plants. Plant-Thinking will help plants, but, even more importantly, it will help humans by understanding the sanctity and continuity of life and our place in the Earth Family.

Elaine P. Miller

A striking and unique contribution.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala
Acknowledgments
Introduction: To Encounter the Plants . . .
Part I. Vegetal Anti-Metaphysics
1. The Soul of the Plant
2. The Body of the Plant
Part II. Vegetal Existentiality
3. The Time of Plants
4. The Freedom of Plants
5. The Wisdom of Plants
Epilogue: The Ethical Offshoots of Plant-Thinking
Notes
Works Cited
Index