Plants of Philosophers. An Intellectual Herbarium

Stepping "beyond" physics, the revered metaphysical tradition of philosophy continued to draw from its natural foundation, regularly turning to plant metaphors and allegories, while leaving them on the periphery of its attention and thus "devaluing, instrumentalizing, and trivializing" life itself. Michael Marder embarks on a deconstruction of this almost unconscious habit of philosophers from Antiquity to the present, uncovering the hidden plant philosophy in the shadow of mainstream thought, which literally sprouts in the works of twelve famous philosophers from Plato to Luce Irigaray. The palm of Maimonides, the grape of Hegel, the sunflowers of Derrida, and other "plants of philosophers" reveal themselves not merely as a "dried collection in books," a sentimental addition, but as an important aspect even of those philosophical systems whose path to intellectual and spiritual heights lay through ecocide.