Plant Ethics

Attention to plant life is currently flourishing across the social sciences and humanities. This paper introduces recent work in the informal sub-discipline of 'vegetal geography', placing it into conversation with the transdisciplinary field of 'critical plant studies' [CPS], a broad framework for re-evaluating plants and humanplant interactions informed by principles of agency, ethics, cognition and language. I explore three key themes of interest to multispecies scholars looking to attend more closely to vegetal life, namely: (1) plant otherness; (2) plant ethics; (3) plant-human attunements, in the hope of encouraging greater cross-pollination between more-than-human geography and critical plant studies.

Concern for what we do to plants is pivotal for the field of environmental ethics but has scarcely been voiced. This paper examines how plant ethics first emerged from the development of plant science and yet also hit theoretical barriers in that domain. It elaborates on a case study prompted by a legal article on ''the dignity of creatures'' in the Swiss Constitution. Interestingly, the issue of plant dignity was interpreted as a personification or rather an ''animalization of plants.'' This sense of irony makes sense when one realizes that on scientific grounds the plant is a ''second animal,'' i.e., it differs from the animal in degree of life or some ethically-relevant criterion but not in nature. From the point of view of ethics however, plants should be defended for what they are by nature and not by comparison to external references: the ethical standing of plants cannot be indexed to animals. It is thus reckoned that to circumvent this odd fetishism, the plant ethics can only be adequately addressed by changing the theory of plant science. Common sense tells us this: plants and animals belong to radically different fields of perception and experience, a difference that is commonly captured by the notion of kingdom. In this paper we remind the ethical conversation that plants are actually incommensurable with animals because they are unsplit beings (having neither inside nor outside), i.e., they live as ''non-topos'' in an undivided, unlimited, non-centered state of being. It is concluded that the unique ontology of plants can only be addressed through a major change from object-thinking to process-thinking and a move from ego-centric to ''peri-ego'' ethics.

Growing and breeding plants is pivotal to agriculture including also animal keeping. To understand what agricultural ethics implies, the significance of plant life ought to be given new attention. So far, little literature has been devoted to plant ethics and granting a moral standing to plants remains a difficult endeavour at this stage. One difficulty may be that, due to the unification of biology as a scientific discipline based on the theory of evolution, plants are granted the same theoretical standing as animals. Yet, for common sense plants and animals belong to different fields of perception and experience, a difference that used to be captured by the notion of kingdom. To make sense of common sense, a framework inspired by pragmatism and aesthetics is used to assess on novel grounds the specificity of plants. By considering morphogenetic forces embodied in biophysical forms and organic performances, it is shown that plants exhibit completely original features that make them incommensurable with animals. Because of their unique ontology, plants appear to be « non-topos », i.e. non-centred, unlimited, indeterminate, unsplit (having neither inside nor outside) entities. They are, along with algae, the only living beings able to directly convert sun energy into chemical energy and store it within organic matter. This matter does not represent food but their very body gradually coming to existence. Hence, although this may sound quite thought provoking, one has to realise that plant physical integrity actually encompasses soil, environment, living beings, and the cosmos. Here, the notion of integrity proves especially interesting because it captures both descriptive and normative contents. Because of their – literally – outstanding nature, plants require a completely new ethical approach. It is proposed that this is embedded to some degree in organic agriculture and agroecology. Indeed, the emergence of organic agriculture about a century ago was prompted by the advent of chemical fertilizers that caused disruption of crop life integrity at soil level. This emergence was not only an implicit call to respect plant life integrity but also a first step towards a comprehensive philosophy of agriculture, a philosophy that is clearly centred on the fertilisation of the world by plants. The recent development of farm seed and participatory plant breeding networks might represent a second step in the mental revolution that brings the plant, besides land and soil, to the forefront of agricultural concerns.

Artykuł analizuje technologię sonifikacji używaną w projektach artystycznych skoncentrowanych na wykorzystaniu roślin. Przytaczając historię rozwoju koncepcji biofeedbacku w pracach dźwiękowych z lat siedemdziesiątych XX wieku skupionych na badaniu roślin, autorka problematyzuje relację człowiek-obiekt w kontekście etyczności praktyk w przestrzeniach laboratorium i sztuki. Autorka koncentruje się na roli, w jakiej obsadza się obiekt badań, i na cechach, które przypisuje się organizmowi roślinnemu, by uznać go za partnera w procesie komunikacji.

The objective here is to show by a philosophical approach how ecological art contributes to requalify environmental times. The basic argument is that one cannot separate the philosophical foundation of problems and the true nature of time, the “Duration” defined by Bergson as a pure intensity underlying all differences in nature. Environmental emergency allows the criticism of time conceived as a spatial dimension, a time that is intrinsically non sustainable. By encouraging a new proximity between art and science, ecological art practices create sensitive tensioning of this criticism in the form of heterochronies – « other » times. The analysis of a number of examples leads to identify three modes of aesthetic expression : i) aesthetics of the ephemeral, cyclic and archaic ; ii) aesthetics of the ongoing, evolving and entangled ; iii) aesthetics of the still, dematerialized and upcoming. The wordings of these different aesthetic modes are identified in a case study, the exhibition-laboratory « The living and its energy » conducted at Inra in Versailles in 2013. This experiment shows the relevance of creating new research situations by forging closer ties between artistic induction, scientific reflection and a philosophy engaged in action. The aim of such practices is to address current mutations of relation to time, their expression in a new aesthetics of Duration and their capacity to sustain an ethics of care by intensity relations.

De laatste decennia is de muur die de mens tussen zichzelf en alle andere levende wezens op aarde heeft opgetrokken meer en meer aan het verbrokkelen. De eerste opening in deze muur betrof de dieren. Alle vermogens en verworvenheden die voorheen uitsluitend aan de mens voorbehouden leken te zijn, vond men nu ook bij dieren terug. Recent is er een tweede opening in de muur ontstaan en worden ook aan planten verbazingwekkende vaardigheden toegeschreven; ze zouden in staat zijn om afwegingen te maken, problemen op te lossen, te voelen, te leren, te communiceren enzovoort.

Jozef Keulartz zet alle ontwikkelingen op een rij en beschrijft zowel de lichtpunten als de schaduwzijden van de vermenselijking van planten. Keulartz besteedt veel aandacht aan de koning der planten: de boom, en aan de vele actiegroepen rondom bomen, zoals bomenridders en bomenstichtingen.