Plant-thinking: A Philosophy Of Vegetal Life
by Michael Marder /
2013 / English / PDF
3.1 MB Download
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.
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.
