Plant-Thinking
A Philosophy of Vegetal Life
Columbia University Press
Plant-Thinking
A Philosophy of Vegetal Life
Columbia University Press
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.
A superbly presented seminal work.... Highly recommended. Midwest Book Review
Profoundly original Choice
We owe Marder...a great debt for widening the contemporary philosophical discussion of life and ethics, taking it into the plant kingdom. Jeffrey T. Nealon, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Michael Marder's book Plant-Thinking is a timely contribution to the project of expanding ethical considerations to non-human beings.... This is a strong contribution to the post-metaphysical project. Canadian Philosophical Review
Life-changing Bangalore Review
Anyone can find something of note or amusement here. Publishers Weekly
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
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
Read the introduction to Plant-Thinking (to view in full screen, click on icon in bottom right-hand corner)
Web Features:
- Gary Francione debates Michael Marder on plant ethics.
- Read Michael Marder's op-ed's for the New York Times, Is Plant Liberation on the Menu? and If Peas Can Talk Should We Eat Them?
- What Is Plant-Thinking?: Botany’s Copernican Revolution, Michael Marder's essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books
- Read Santiago Zabala's review in STIR
- Listen to an interview with New Books in Philosophy
- Read a review from the Los Angeles Review of Books
- The case for the ethical treatment of plants, by Ramon Gonzalez
- The Time is Ripe for Plant Rights by Michael Marder
- Read Michael Marder's essay Of Plants, and Other Secrets
- Is It Ethical to Eat Plants
- Michael Marder on the influence of Twitter.
- The State of European Disunion, by Michael Marder via Aljazeera
- Read Michael Marder's article, Plant intentionality and the phenomenological framework of plant intelligence
- Read an NPR article on Michael Marder
- Michael Marder's essay for Project Syndicate For the Love of a City
- Keep up with Michael Marder's blog series on Project Syndicate, The Philosopher's Plant: 1.0: Plato's Plane Tree, 2.0: Aristotle's Wheat, 3.0: Plotinus’ Anonymous ‘Great Plant’, 4.0: St. Augustine's Pear, 5.0: Maimonides's Palm Tree, 6.0: Avicenna's Celery, 7.0: Leibniz's Blades of Grass, 8.0: Kant's Tulip, 9.0: Hegel's Grapes, and 10.0: Heidegger's Apple Tree
- Read Michael Marder's essay The Life of Plants and the Limits of Empathy
- Michael Marder on Plant Intelligence and Attention
Short-listed, 2015 John N. Findlay Book Prize in Metaphysics