Starting With Plants:
A Philosophy of Vegetal Life

Instructor: Michael Marder Date & Time: Oct 2, 9, 16, 23 9 to 11:30 AM ET

DESCRIPTION: Despite their conceptual allergy to vegetal life, philosophers have used germination, growth, blossoming, fruition, reproduction, and decay as illustrations of abstract concepts; mentioned plants in passing as the natural backdrops for dialogues, letters, and other compositions; spun elaborate allegories out of flowers, trees, and even grass; and recommended appropriate medicinal, dietary, and aesthetic approaches to select species of plants. Thus the vegetal world has the potential to rescue our planet and our species; it offers us a way to abandon past metaphysics without falling into nihilism by bringing thought back to its roots and rendering it plantlike.

The aspiration of this seminar is to elucidate what it means to start living and thinking with plants. In the course of our discussions, we will observe that this starting point is not equivalent to an origin or even to a beginning. Rather, following plants, we will commence our experiment in the middle, from which beginnings and ends will appear in a new light. As much a methodological probing as an ontological foray, we will aim to shift our perspective on time and existence, the vegetal as much as the human.

IMAGE: Emily Carr, Odds and Ends, 1939

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