The Hybris of Plants: Reinterpreting Philosophy through Vegetal Life
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Date
2021-11-23
Authors
Kerr, Joshua
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This dissertation reexamines the place of plants in the history of Western philosophy, drawing on the diverse philosophical approaches of Plato, Aristotle, Goethe, Hegel, and Nietzsche, among others. I suggest that a close reading of these philosophers reveals an aspect of vegetal existence that calls for a fundamental reconceptualization of life as a manner of being: in its ambivalent encounters with philosophy, the vegetative shows itself in terms of what I call hybris. By “hybris” I mean the activity by which the plant relates a proliferative, overflowing growth with a characteristic proportionality by which the plant composes a determinate manner of existence. In Part One, I trace the emergence of “plant hybris” in Goethe and Hegel’s scientific writings and Nietzsche’s philosophy of life. In Part Two, I expand and develop this concept by returning to Plato and Aristotle’s biological works.