Forthcoming Chapter in The Vegetal Turn: History, Concepts, Applications
Tree in Amsterdam
My chapter, “Arboreality and the Ethics of Standing in Place” is forthcoming in the volume The Vegetal Turn: History, Concepts, Applications edited by Marcello Di Paola, forthcoming from Springer on December 8, 2024. Please stay in touch for updates.
Abstract for my chapter:
“Arboreality and the Ethics of Standing in Place”
Trees and plants are receiving renewed attention as work in both the sciences and humanities is affirming their intelligence, agency, and relationality. If trees are more than merely instrumental beings, what is our ethical responsibility toward them? Taking a phenomenological approach, trees themselves are grounded in a particular place. Edward S. Casey’s phenomenological work on place gives insight into one approach to arboreal ethics by considering how trees create place both within and outside of the forest. While trees may not have a right to life, they may have a right to place, and an ethic of standing in place considers both individual and surrounding, acknowledging ecological interrelationships. In this chapter, I take Casey’s phenomenology of place as a starting point for an arboreal ethic which recognizes trees as non-human others that can be considered for some rights and also acknowledges that our lives depend on taking theirs. I will also consider vegetal ethics, particularly in Michael Marder’s philosophy, and other place-based approaches to environmental ethics. Rather than propose a fully developed ethic, I uncover some of the unique issues trees pose to Western ethics and point towards potential respectful relationships with trees and plants.
Abstract for the volume:
The Vegetal Turn: History, Concepts, Applications
This book charts the multidimensional course of what has come to be known as the “Vegetal Turn” in environmental humanities - a wave of theoretical and practical interest in the complexities and peculiarities of plant life and plant-human relations.
The Vegetal turn consists of increasingly sophisticated, inter- and trans-disciplinary, inter- and trans-cultural explorations of the multiple systems and networks of communication, intelligence, technical-operational capabilities, and relations articulated by and via plants - as well as the ethical, economic, cultural, and political dimensions of plant-human interactions and practices. The volume includes contributions from philosophy and the humanities more generally that explore and reflect on the history, prospects, and applications of four main themes that the Vegetal Turn has brought to general attention: the mind of plants, and what their peculiar mentality can tell us about mind more generally; plant personhood and/or moral standing, and the justifications and implications of attributions thereof; plant relationships with humans, plant-based human relationships, and the ethics of human practices with or regarding plants - from agriculture to the arts, from forest management to urban design ; as well as the rights and/or political representation of plant life and the other life-forms that depend on it, human as well as non-human, present and future.