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Plant- Thinking a Philosophy of Vegetal Life Michael Marder

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Plant- Thinking a Philosophy of Vegetal Life Michael Marder M “Mechanistic thought has allowed humans to unleash violence on other species, both animals and plants. Plant-Thinking will arder 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.”—Vandana Shiva, activitst and ecofeminist While contemporary philosophers refrain from raising ontological Plant and ethical concerns with vegetal life, Michael Marder puts plants at the forefront of the current deconstruction of metaphysics. He identifies the existential features of plant behavior and the vegetal -Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life Vegetal of A Philosophy -Thinking: heritage of human thought so as to affirm the potential of vegetation to overthrow the double yoke of totalization and instrumentalization. Along the way, Marder focuses on the plants’ own temporality, Plant- freedom, and wisdom. “Plant-thinking” comes to designate the non- cognitive, non-ideational, and non-imagistic mode of thinking proper to plants, as much as the process of bringing human thought itself Thinking back to its roots and rendering it plantlike. “A striking and unique contribution.” —Elaine P. Miller, Miami University A Philosophy “Drawing on both phenomenology and deconstructive motifs, 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), of Vegetal Life 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.” —David Wood, Vanderbilt University Michael “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 Marder’s philosophical perspective on this paradigm shift explores important consequences for theoretical philosophy, ethics, and politics.” —František Baluška, Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität Bonn columbia Michael Marder is IKERBASQUE Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country. ISBN: 978 978-0-231-16125-1 - 0 - 231 -16125 -1 Columbia University Press | New York cup.columbia.edu Cover Design: Evan Gaffney 9 780231 161251 Printed in the U.S.A. PLANT- THINKING C6065.indb i 12/7/12 7:37 AM C6065.indb ii 12/7/12 7:37 AM Plant-Thinking A Philosophy of Vegetal Life MICHAEL MARDER with a foreword by Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala Columbia University Press New York C6065.indb iii 12/7/12 7:37 AM Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu © 2013 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marder, Michael, 1980– Plant-thinking: a philosophy of vegetal life / Michael Marder. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-231-16124-4 (cloth: alk. paper)— isbn 978-0-231-16125-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)— isbn 978-0-231-53325-6 (e-book) 1. Plants—Philosophy. 2. Ontology. 3. Human-plant relationships. I. Title. qk46.m37 2013 580—dc23 2012023675 Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. This book is printed on paper with recycled content. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. C6065.indb iv 12/7/12 7:37 AM À memória da minha avó, Maria Inácia C6065.indb v 12/7/12 7:37 AM C6065.indb vi 12/7/12 7:37 AM Kai; ga;r zw̨̑a kai; futa; kai; lo;gou kai; yuch̑~ kai; zwh̑~ metalamba;nei. —Plotinus, Enneads 3.2.7 C6065.indb vii 12/7/12 7:37 AM C6065.indb viii 12/7/12 7:37 AM Contents foreword xi Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala acknowledgments xvii Introduction: To Encounter the Plants . 1 PART I: VEGETAL ANTI-METAPHYSICS 15 1. The Soul of the Plant; or, The Meanings of Vegetal Life 17 The Obscurity of Vegetal Life: On Barely Perceptible Motion 19 The Potentialities of Plants; or, The Vicissitudes of Nourishment 36 On “The Common”: Modes of Living and the Shared Soul 42 2. The Body of the Plant; or, The Destruction of the Metaphysical Paradigm 54 Back to the Middle: The Inversions of the Plant 56 ix C6065.indb ix 12/7/12 7:37 AM Vegetal Heteronomy 67 The Language of Plants and Essential Superfi ciality: An Approach to Vegetal Being 74 PART II: VEGETAL EXISTENTIALITY 91 3. The Time of Plants 93 Plant-Time (I): Vegetal Hetero-Temporality 95 Plant-Time (II): The “Bad Infi nity” of Growth 107 Plant-Time (III): The Iterability of Expression 112 4. The Freedom of Plants 118 The Shape of Freedom 119 Vegetal Indifference 130 A Tale of Two Freedoms 135 5 . The Wisdom of Plants 151 Non-Conscious Intentionality 153 Thinking Without Identity 162 Philosophy: A Sublimated Plant-Thinking 170 Epilogue: The Ethical Offshoots of Plant-Thinking 179 notes 189 works cited 207 index 217 x CONTENTS C6065.indb x 12/7/12 7:37 AM Foreword GIANNI VATTIMO AND SANTIAGO ZABALA On August 29, 2009, the democratically elected president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, was declared the “World Hero of Mother Earth” by the General Assembly of the United Nations in recognition of his politi- cal initiatives against the destruction of the environment caused by the global hegemonic economic system. According to the president of the Assembly, Rev. Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, the Bolivian politician has become “the maximum exponent and paradigm of love for Mother Earth.” 1 However, Morales is not the only South American leader to promote the environment; together with other socialist politicians, such as Castro and Chávez, he has been consistently calling for an end to capitalism’s violent imposition on the environment and for an adoption of sustainable social policies respectful of our most vital resources. The fact that Western democracies constantly delegitimize 2 such policies is 1 . Rev. Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, “Morales Named ‘World Hero of Mother Earth’ by UN General Assembly,” Latin American Herald Tribune (http://laht.com/article.asp? ArticleId=342574&CategoryId=14919). 2 . Examples of such delegitimization have been coming from prominent newspapers and journals such as the New York Times, El País, the Washington Post, and Foreign Policy. A detailed account of this distorted information can be found in the fourth chapter of our Hermeneutic Communism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). xi C6065.indb xi 12/7/12 7:37 AM an indication of their indifference toward the environmental calamities (and fi nancial crises) their own logic of profi t produces, not to men- tion that this delegitimization shows, most of all, how thoroughly these democracies are framed within metaphysics. If, as it seems, there is a correspondence between the liberal capitalist states and metaphysical philosophical impositions that consider the environment as something that must be manipulated for our own purposes, philosophy has the ob- ligation to break this deplorable alliance. Although Michael Marder does not mention these politicians in his study, the political essence of their ecological initiatives is not foreign to his philosophical endeavor, a project entrenched in “weak thought,”3 that is to say, in the philosophy of the weak who are determined to cut the tie between politics and metaphysics. But what exactly is weak thought? Weak thought, contrary to other philosophical positions, such as phenomenology or critical theory, has not developed into an orga- nized system, because of all the violent consequences such systematiza- tion always entails. The violence of systems is often expressed through metaphysical impositions, which aim to submit everything to their own measures, standards, and agendas. But as the philosophy of the “weak” (which claims the right of the oppressed to interpret, vote, and live), weak thought not only follows a logic of resistance, but also promotes a progressive weakening of the strong structures of metaphysics. Weaken- ing, like deconstruction, does not search for correct solutions wherein thought may fi nally come to rest, but rather seeks ontological emanci- pation from truth and other concepts that frame and restrict the pos- sibilities of new philosophical, scientifi c, or religious revolutions. These revolutions, as Thomas Kuhn explained, are the indications that sci- ence shifts through different phases and—instead of making “progress 3 . Weak thought— pensiero debole —was fi rst formulated in 1979 and has since become a position common to many post-metaphysical philosophers, including, among others, Richard Rorty. A full account of this concept can be found in the volumes Weaken- ing Philosophy , ed. S. Zabala (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2007), and Between Nihilism and Politics: The Hermeneutics of Gianni Vattimo , ed. S. Benso and B. Schroeder (Albany: SUNY Press, 2010). xii FOREWORD C6065.indb xii 12/7/12 7:37 AM toward truth”—changes “paradigms.” But just as science, so too phi- losophy, religion, and other disciplines constantly change paradigms, such that the older theories become different, though not incorrect; in this “postmodern” condition truth does not derive from the world “as it is,” but from what is responsible for its condition, namely “effective history.”4 Given these “scientifi c revolutions,” or, as Heidegger termed them before Kuhn, “destructions of metaphysics,” thinking is no longer demonstrative, but edifying, conversational, and interpretative. What does such emancipation from metaphysics entail and why is there a pre- dilection for weakness in “weak thought”? Contrary to some critics of weak thought,5 such emancipation 6 does not imply a simple refusal of metaphysics, which would inevitably pro- duce another variation on metaphysics, but rather, as Heidegger said, a Verwindung , distortion or twisting, in order to distance us from its frames.
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