THE HYBRIS OF PLANTS: REINTERPRETING
PHILOSOPHY THROUGH VEGETAL LIFE
by
JOSHUA D. KERR
A DISSERTATION
Presented to the Department of Philosophy
and the Division of Graduate Studies of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy 
June 2021
DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE
Student: Joshua D. Kerr
Title: The Hybris of Plants: Reinterpreting Philosophy through Vegetal Life
This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the 
requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Philosophy by:
Daniela Vallega-Neu Co-Chairperson
Alejandro Vallega Co-Chairperson
Nicolae Morar Core Member
Peter Warnek Core Member
Malcom Wilson Institutional Representative
and
Andy Karduna Interim Vice Provost of Graduate Studies
Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Division of 
Graduate Studies.
Degree awarded June 2021
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© 2021 Joshua D. Kerr 
All rights reserved 
iii
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT
Joshua D. Kerr
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
June 2021
Title: The Hybris of Plants: Reinterpreting Philosophy through Vegetal Life
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.
iv
CURRICULUM VITAE
NAME OF AUTHOR: Joshua D. Kerr
GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:
University of Oregon, Eugene
California State University, Stanislaus
DEGREES AWARDED:
Doctor of Philosophy, 2021, University of Oregon
Master of Arts, Philosophy, 2018, University of Oregon
Master of Arts, Philosophy and Literary Studies, 2014, California State University, 
Stanislaus
Bachelor of Arts, Philosophy, 2007, California State University, Stanislaus
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:
Ancient Philosophy
Continental Philosophy
GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS:
Dissertation Fellowship, Oregon Humanities Center, 2020
Graduate Research Fellowship, University of Oregon Department of Philosophy, 
2019
Graduate Research Support Fellowship, Oregon Humanities Center, 2018
PUBLICATIONS:
Kerr, Joshua D. “Spinoza: From Art to Philosophy.” Philosophy Today, April 18, 
2020.
Kerr, Joshua D. “Thinking Through Sound: Martin Heidegger and Wallace 
Stevens.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 33, no. 4 (2019): 553–70.
Kerr, Joshua D. “Phytology, Between φύσις and ζώη,” Kronos Philosophical 
Journal VIII (2019): 144-150.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This dissertation is the product of a great deal of support and assistance. I would 
like to express my deepest appreciation to my supervisors, Dr. Daniela Vallega-Neu and 
Dr. Alejandro Vallega, for their profound belief in my abilities and unwavering 
commitment to nurturing them. Among so many other things, you have taught me that 
philosophy is impossible without friendship. I am sincerely grateful to the other members
of my committee, Dr. Nicolae Morar, Dr. Peter Warnek, and Dr. Malcolm Wilson, for 
their assistance throughout the project. To the latter I offer special thanks: your infectious
enthusiasm for the ancients is irresistable. I am also indebted to Dr. Jason Winfree, under 
whose inspirational mentorship I began the studies that here come to fruition. 
This investigation was supported in part by two generous fellowships from the 
Oregon Humanities Center, the Gary E. Smith Summer Professional Development award,
and a research fellowship from the Department of Philosophy. Particularly helpful to me 
during my studies was the enthusiastic feedback and inspirational comraderie I received 
from the members of the 2018 Collegium Phaenomenologicum. I am grateful to Larry 
Busk, Eli Portella, Martina Ferrari, Devin Fitzpatrick, Ricardo Friaz, and many other 
colleagues at the University of Oregon for their gift of philosophical companionship.
In addition, I would like to thank Scott, Karen, and, especially, my parents. You 
are always there for me. Mary and David, you have brought incomparable joy. Above all, 
I am forever grateful to Sarah, without whose faithful strength, gentility, and patience I 
would be neither the thinker nor the person I have become. You are most dear.
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for Sarah
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. PREFACE ............................................................................................................................. 1
II. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 8
§2.1. ὕβρις in Greek Thought .......................................................................................... 12
§2.2. The History of Philosophy ..................................................................................... 16
§2.3. Language ................................................................................................................... 20
§2.4. Synopsis .................................................................................................................... 22
PART ONE
III. TOWARD VEGETAL GROWTH ................................................................................ 28
§3.1. Unity and Difference ............................................................................................... 34
§3.2. Growth Itself ............................................................................................................ 43
§3.3. Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 51
IV. INTENSIFICATION AS LIMIT .................................................................................... 57
§4.1. Goethe’s Spinozism ................................................................................................. 60
§4.2. Delicate Empiricism ............................................................................................... 64
§4.3. Synopsis of the Plant .............................................................................................. 68
§4.4. Intensity and Limit ................................................................................................. 73
§4.5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 80
PART TWO
V. FORCE AND  ὝΒΡΙΣ ....................................................................................................... 89
§5.1. The Will to Flower ................................................................................................... 92
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Chapter Page
§5.1.1. Against Preservation ...................................................................................... 92
§5.1.2. Growth ............................................................................................................. 98
§5.1.3. Multiplicity ...................................................................................................... 102
§5.1.4. A Common Modality .................................................................................... 105
§5.2. ὕβρις .......................................................................................................................... 110
§5.2.1. ὕβρις in Heraclitus ......................................................................................... 114
§5.2.2. Vegetal ὕβρις .................................................................................................. 118
PART THREE
VI. BETWEEN ΦΎΣΙΣ AND ΖΩΉ ..................................................................................... 129
§6.1. Vegetal Beginnings ................................................................................................. 131
§6.2. Between Plant and Animal .................................................................................... 134
§6.3. Two Sites of Ambivalence ..................................................................................... 137
§6.3.1. Vegetal Striving .............................................................................................. 138
§6.3.2. Vegetal Imagination ..................................................................................... 143
§6.4. Phytology: Between φύσις and ζωή ...................................................................... 146
VII. CONCERNING NOURISHMENT ............................................................................. 156
§7.1. Proportionality ......................................................................................................... 158
§7.2. πῦρ and πέρας .......................................................................................................... 163
§7.3. Nourishing-Growing .............................................................................................. 169
VIII. A CHORIC LIFE ........................................................................................................... 183
§8.1. Anthropology and Zoology ................................................................................... 186
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Chapter Page
§8.2. Life and the Living .................................................................................................. 190
§8.3. The Wild and the Cultivated ................................................................................. 194
§8.4. Choric Motion ......................................................................................................... 199
§8.5. The Choric Plant ..................................................................................................... 202
§8.6. Nutrition, Revisited ................................................................................................ 208
IV. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................ 215
REFERENCES CITED ........................................................................................................... 226
x
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
1. Conferva ............................................................................................................................ 37
2. Acaena anserinifolia ........................................................................................................ 46
3. Dodder ............................................................................................................................... 49
4. Lepidium bidentatum ...................................................................................................... 53
5. Macrocycstis pyriferus .................................................................................................... 54
6. Annual Plant ..................................................................................................................... 70
7. Proliferous Rose ............................................................................................................... 77
8. Aechmea ............................................................................................................................ 86
9. Barringtonia asiatica ........................................................................................................ 87
10. Common Cattail ............................................................................................................... 97
11. Strangler Fig ...................................................................................................................... 101
12. Almond Blossom .............................................................................................................. 120
13. Cucumis mello .................................................................................................................. 126
14. Lygodium volubile ........................................................................................................... 127
15. Epilobium billardierianum ............................................................................................. 140
16. Peperomia leptostachya .................................................................................................. 154
17. Polystichum mohritides .................................................................................................. 155
18. Dendrobium involutum .................................................................................................. 164
19. Marsilea polycarpa ........................................................................................................... 175
20. Canavalia cathartica ......................................................................................................... 181
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Figure Page
21. Rodriguezia rigida ............................................................................................................ 182
22. Spondias dulcis ................................................................................................................. 195
23. Stigmaphyllon ciliatum ................................................................................................... 209
24. Tacca leontopetaloides .................................................................................................... 213
25. Antigramma repanda ...................................................................................................... 214
xii
CHAPTER I
PREFACE
We call “coincidental” what holds of something and is true to say, but neither of
necessity nor for the most part. It is as if, while digging a hole for a plant, one
found a treasure.
Aristotle
Every dissertation topic, I suppose, has something of the coincidental involved in its
selection.1 In a certain respect, my account is without beginning, or embraces a beginning
which is already underway: plants appear. We find ourselves next to a tree; there it is,
rising.
There rises a tree. O pure rising-over!2
The roots are hidden beneath the earth; the crown is hidden above the branches. Already
we are in the middle, situated within an interval of place and time. Many plants have
outlasted—and will yet outlast—our brief lives and most enduring institutions. Who can
say when or where a field of grasses begins, how long it will thrive, or whither it might
grow?
Plants appear, always already situating us. And what of it? What does philosophy
have to say about plants? In fact, innocuous and commonplace as they may initially appear,
plants remain surprisingly recalcitrant to thought. Few philosophers have concerned
themselves with vegetality, and those who have done so have found little to say on the
subject.3 At the same time, each of those philosophers who takes up the question of vegetal
1 Epigraph source: Aristotle,Metaphysics, 2003 1025a.
2 Da stieg ein Baum. O reine Übersteigung! Rilke, Duino Elegies &The Sonnets to Orpheus 82.
3 On the other hand, philosophy has never ceased to remain near to plants, putting them to use in a litany of
plant metaphors deployedmuch like decorative houseplants: adding vitality, comfort, and style to thinking.
1
existence does so under the conviction that plants are a particularly suitable place to begin
a project of philosophical inquiry. For these thinkers, plants are worthy of thoughtful
consideration because they constitute a site of fruitful beginning for the analysis of living
things more generally (“φύσις” in Greek, understood as the coming to be and passing away
of things⁴) and of human being specifically.
This beginning, however, remains unthought, at least insofar as these same
philosophers are unable to account for the originary status of the vegetal in their thinking.
In philosophy’s encounter with plants, vegetal life slips away. But in this respect, too, plant
life is exemplary of φύσις.
The indefinite, the impersonal, atmospheres and oceans, are precisely what I
love; and I don’t see why, for a philosopher, they should not be the ultimate
inamorata.
Wallace Stevens
Plants are a different kind of life, stretched between element and animal.⁵ On the one hand,
they possess something of the elemental monstrosity of a sheer granite cliff or the
wine-dark sea; on the other hand, they display something of the delicately intelligent
organization of a honey bee or a sparrow. No rock or bird’s nest is an animate creature,
living (ζωή) in quite the same sense as a leafy stem striving up from the earth or a flower
turning east during the long night to greet the morning sun. Likewise, no coyote or flock of
A study addressing this mode of proximity between plant and philosophy would be a fruitful undertaking.
For some initial gestures in this direction, see Marder,The Philosopher’s Plant, 2014.
⁴ In this essay, I leave a small number of Greekwords untranslated. I do sowhenmy intent is to reconsider the
meaning of theword in question. One suchword is φύσις (another is ὕβρις). Although the usual translation,
“nature,” is adequate in many contexts, for my purposes it obscures as much as it reveals (as will become
evident in the following pages).
⁵ Epigraph source: Stevens, Sur Plusieurs Beaux Sujects 33.
2
birds exhibits the elemental life of φύσις as such in quite the same sense as a turbulent
jungle or windswept prairie.
A few summers ago, while living in the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Yosemite
National Park, I hiked into the wilderness with a friend to admire a grove of Giant Sequoia
trees. When evening came, we sheltered in the heart of a giant that had been hollowed out
by an ancient fire, falling asleep while gazing up into its immense, dark trunk. Upon
awaking during the night, I discovered that the tree was mobile: the inside of the trunk was
pulsing with movement, seething in the night. Only slowly did I come to realize that the
tree around us churned with swarming ants, dimly illumined by the last embers of the
dying fire, stretching as far up as the eye could see. Here, in the deceitful play of firelight,
the tissues separating ash, tree, and ant became momentarily translucent: the glowing ants
very close to plant, the silent plant very close to the ant colony, the whole assemblage
sharing in the dance of flame. When I awoke again the next morning, the ants had
departed.
Such experiences cultivate thinking, for they reveal—even through a
deformation—the permeable boundaries that bear up our typical experience and habits of
thought. The study contained in these pages attempts to attend to these more or less
translucent tissues, discerning in plants a form of life that is almost imperceptible yet also
emblematic of a register of being that subtends the delineation between animal life and the
broader context of growing and withering that the ancient Greek thinkers addressed with
the concept of φύσις.
3
Life never speaks simply. It shows itself in its flower, hides itself in its roots. It
appears and disappears according to necessities that do not obey the opposition
of “yes” or “no.” It remains in the “yes and no” of manifestation.
Luce Irigaray
Socrates’ most famous encounter with plants takes the form of a disavowal: “I’m a friend of
learning,” he tells Phaedrus. “The countryside and the trees are unwilling to teach me
anything, whereas the people in town do.”⁶ In a dialogue whose participants pointedly
leave the city to enjoy their feast of speeches reclining upon soft grass under the sheltering
boughs of a tree, however, we cannot help but hear this declaration ironically. In point of
fact, the countryside and trees have much to offer philosophical reflection—not least
reprieve from the sophistical, misleading speeches heard in town. Socrates’ disavowal of
plants therefore expresses a profound problem concerning the relation between vegetal life
and philosophical discourse.
Unlike many of Plato’s other dialogues, the dramatic structure of the Phaedrus
considers human beings not in relation to the city only but also—in fact, primarily—in
relation to the country outside of the city. Weary of speeches, and gripped by an enfeebling
paralysis after sitting with Lysias since early morning, Phaedrus sets out on an aimless
stroll outside the city, having heard from his friend that such a walk is more refreshing
than one within the walls. Socrates joins him, and the two end up reclining on the grass
beneath a tall plane tree. In a comically exaggerated paean, Socrates praises the tree, “lofty
and wide-spreading in its abundance,” and the attendant flora.⁷ The particular qualities
upon which Socrates remarks concern the unobtrusive character of this vegetal space. On a
sweltering day at high noon, reflection and conversation would be difficult if the
conversants were exposed. It is because one can sit on the soft grass without noticing it (in
contrast to the uncomfortable hardpan) and can rest beneath the boughs of the tree
⁶ Plato, Phaedrus, 2017 230d. Epigraph source: Irigaray, In the Beginning, She Was 33.
⁷ Plato, Phaedrus, 2017 229e-230a.
4
without thinking of them (in contrast with the blistering heat of the sun) that the plants
offer to Socrates and Phaedrus a suitable place for their dialogue to unfold unhindered.
The role of plants here is peculiar: the trees and grass open a space for philosophy by
withdrawing, receding from awareness. In praising the “breath of the place,” Socrates
achieves poetic precision: just as breath gives way for the words it bears, the space beneath
the plane tree gives way for the encounter it shelters.⁸
Although plants comprise over eighty percent of the total planetary biomass,⁹
much of our encounter with—and understanding of—plants accords with this Platonic
trajectory. The soft grass disappears underfoot; the shade-casting tree disappears overhead.
The predominance of “house plants” and “landscaping”—which constitute the primary
relation to living plants for many people today—attest to the unobtrusive character of
vegetal life. Plants have an elusive presence that is rarely confronted in thought: they give
way and make space, allowing other things to appear and move to the forefront of our
attention.1⁰ For the philosopher interested in vegetal life, the imperceptibility of plants,
their hidden and unobtrusive character, is not something to be overcome, for this would
betray the plant in its living occurrence. Instead, the task is to understand this mute
withdrawal which belongs essentially to the unfurling of vegetal life in the world.
From this perspective, Socrates’ declamation of any role for plants in his love of
learning expresses not only irony but also an important claim: plants are a condition of
learning precisely because they do not want to teach. While plant life gives space to
thinking, it does not itself have a place in thought, and this is the condition of its giving
space to thinking.
⁸ Plato, 229e-230a. One who is “out of breath,” by contrast, cannot speak: her panting breaths are far too
present, interfering with speech.
⁹ Bar-On, Phillips, and Milo, “The Biomass Distribution on Earth.”
1⁰ This is one reason why understanding plants is not a task which properly belongs to the domain of the
special sciences. Whereas it is the task of the special sciences to lay bare as many biological facts as can
be produced, analyzed, and instrumentalized—and they have done so, it should be added, with astounding
success—philosophy does not wish to control.
5
Yet, does not plant life inevitably obtrude upon thinking, precisely by giving it such
a space? In addition to the plane tree under which Socrates and Phaedrus recline and
converse, the dialogue also portrays the plant as a “potent herb” (φάρμακον). “You seem to
have discovered a potent herb to entice me into walking outside the city,” Socrates tells
Phaedrus. “Just as one dangles green branches or fruit of some kind in front of a hungry
beast to lead him on, so you are likely to lead me through all of Attica or anywhere you
want, simply by holding words in a book in front of my nose.”11 As φάρμακον, the plant
possesses an intense and even excessive power: the power to drug or to heal, the power to
awaken desires and transform Socrates into a hungry animal. This speaks to a certain
monstrosity belonging to plant life—an indeterminate, multi-valent power reminiscent of
the tumultuous “hundred-headed Typhon” to which Socrates compares himself and whose
attack forced even the gods to turn into animals and flee.12 Socrates’ word for this aspect of
plant life is “ἀμφιλαφής”—abundant, wide-spreading, prodigal.13 Under this aspect, plant
life escapes determination, participating in a manner of growth that composes itself in
excess of its own limits. This manner of existence is what I will call the hubristic dimension
of vegetal life, which also bears us up, gives us a place, and subtends our human manner of
being and thinking.
Concealment is the companion of φύσις.
Heraclitus
11 Plato, Phaedrus, 2017 230d-e. For other examples of this aspect of plant life in the dialogue, see 229b-c,
249d, 248d, and 249b; compare also the myth of the cicadas at 259a-d.
12 Plato, 230a.
13 Plato, 230b. From ἀμφί, “around, on both sides,” and λάφυρα, “booty, spoils” (Beekes and Van Beek,
Etymological Dictionary of Greek 94-95, 838).
6
Plant life both exceeds and withdraws from the philosophical reflection to which it gives
space and context.1⁴ Vegetal life therefore appears as a beginning for philosophy, an
originary space from which philosophical inquiry occurs. At the same time, it is a
beginning which remains hidden, a difficult form of life which occurs as a movement that
exceeds or subtends our usual demarcations.
It is this nexus of tensions that I pursue in this study. Plato’s plant is a “potent herb,”
consisting of “words in books” that are like a “leafy shoot” that could lead Socrates all over
Attica—and have been enticing Plato’s readers for thousands of years.1⁵ This study traces
my own hungry pursuit: my attempt to inhabit the movements of certain texts in such a
way as to make evident the “leafy greens” that operate implicitly—and sometimes
explicitly—at the center of philosophy’s encounter with whatever grows and withers,
comes to be and passes away.
1⁴ Epigraph source: Kahn,The Art andThought of Heraclitus, DK 123.
1⁵ Plato, Phaedrus, 2017 230d.
7
CHAPTER II
INTRODUCTION
Life is found in animals and plants. But in animals it is manifest and clear,
whereas in plants it is hidden and does not show itself. To determine its
existence, much seeking is first necessary.
Pseudo-Aristotle, On Plants
The first recorded appearance of the word φύσις in Greek literature is found in the tenth
book of Homer’s Odyssey.1 Odysseus’ companions have been turned to swine through the
treachery of Circe’s plants, the “evil herbs” (κακὰ φάρμακ’).2 Hermes comes to Odysseus’
defense, explaining the danger and offering as a ward a mysterious plant with black root
and white flowers:
So spoke the Argos-slayer and gave to me the herb,
drawing it from the ground, and showed me its φύσις.
At its root it was black, but its flower was white as milk:
“μῶλυ” the gods call it. It is difficult for mortal men
to dig it up; but the gods have power to do all things.3
By consuming the plant, Odysseus will remain human, avoiding the fate of the pigsty. In
fact, he will mingle rather with the divine.⁴ Hermes’ contrary plant, the “noble herb”
(φάρμακον ἐσθλόν), secures the boundary between human and animal that Circe’s
“baneful herb” (φάρμακον οὐλόμενον) had undone.⁵ In order to do this work, however,
1 Epigraph source: Pseudo-Aristotle, “On Plants” 815a.
2 Homer, Odyssey, 1995 10.213.
3 Homer, 10.302-6.
⁴ Homer, 10.333-5.
⁵ Homer, 10.287, 10.276.
8
the plant must do more than merely appear. In the first place, it must appear in such a way
that its φύσις is made manifest by the god (μοι φύσιν αὐτοῦ ἔδειξε). The primary
etymological sense of φύσις is growth (from φύομαι, to grow). This is why the μῶλυ must
be uprooted: to be shown the φύσις, Odysseus must see the movement of growth that
extends from its rootedness in the earth to its fruitful blossom. The φύσις is therefore
beyond mortal knowledge, for although the white flower is readily visible, the dark root is
difficult (or dangerous) for mortals to unearth. Even once dislodged by the god, the root
retains some of the darkness of the ground. The nature of the plant is to have one part
submerged in the black opacity of the soil and one part unfurled brightly in the light of day.
Its φύσις appears as the movement of growth that encompasses both the hidden origin and
the white blossom.
In the second place, the plant must appear in such a way as to vanish: the μῶλυ
must be uprooted, deprived of life, and consumed by Odysseus in order to work its magic.
It must be pulled from its place in the dark earth and drawn into the economy of human
and divine concerns. In this sense, its φύσις appears only too late: the growth of the plant is
manifest only in deprivation of the soil on which it depends for growth; growth appears
only alongside withering. Likewise, the plant is revealed only to be consumed, to disappear
in the service of securing the boundary between human and swine that Circe’s sorcery has
transgressed.⁶ In this first appearance, then, φύσις shows itself in the guise of a plant—or
rather, in the guise of the movement of growth in which the plant consists—which bears
⁶ The appearance of φύσις also marks another boundary: the limit of names. In the twelfth book of the
Odyssey, Homer speaks of another divine name with no human equivalent: πλαγκταί, terrible rocks against
which the sea crashes and which not even birds can pass unscathed (Homer, 12.73). The rocks have no
human name because they are beyond human experience. Only Jason and the Argonauts survived them,
with the help of Hera. Although this is not the only divine name in Homer, it is one of only two that has
no human equivalent. The other is, of course, μῶλυ. That in which φύσις first appears has no human name
and can be unearthed by no human skill. And yet, Homer speaks—or rather, Homer has Odysseus have
Hermes speak—the name. Divine by origin, it is also human by utterance: here, if only for a moment and
through a string of deferrals, humans speak the language of the gods. For more on this subject, see page 20.
9
and secures the difference between animal and human, but only through its uprooting and
disappearance.
What is the relation between plant life and φύσις? Following Homer, we might say that Plants are emblematic of φύσις.
φύσις appears in a privileged way in vegetal life. For the study which follows, such a claim
constitutes neither a premise nor a conclusion, but rather a guiding thread, a premonition
that will be confirmed in the course of the inquiry. And yet, such a claim may at first
appear strange. In Physics II.1, Aristotle lists plants as only one among many things which
exist by φύσις: “both animals and their parts, and plants, and simple bodies.”⁷ The contrast
case for φύσις is whatever is artificial, such as beds and garments. Thus, “φύσις is
something like a principle [ἀρχή] and cause of motion and rest in that to which it belongs
primarily and according to itself,” unlike those things which result from human
craftsmanship.⁸ From this perspective, the plant is merely one type or instance of a more
encompassing manner of being. Such an abstractly general conception, however, expresses
the late stage of a concept that has a more concrete origin. The centrality of “growth” that is
present in Homer’s understanding of φύσις⁹ is explicit in Xenophanes, who uses the term
“φύονται” to refer to all natural things.1⁰ φύσις, as an originary principle (ἀρχή) of
whatever “has within itself the principle of its making,”11 first becomes manifest in the
growth (φύομαι) of a plant (φυτόν). In animals, growth is one activity among many,
subordinated to the other operations of the organism. In this sense, growth possesses a
modesty which involves an external determination and limit. In plants, however, growth12
⁷ Aristotle, Physics, 1957 192b9-10. “Simple bodies” refers to earth, fire, air, and water.
⁸ Aristotle, 192b21-23.
⁹ This sense is lacking in Pindar and Aeschylus; cf. Beardslee, “The Use of Φύσις in Fifth-Century Greek
Literature” 6-9.
1⁰ He refers, in contrast to the divine, to “all things, namely, what is born and grows.” Xenophanes, Fragments
fragment B29, p. 131.
11 Aristotle, Physics, 1957 192b29.
12 “Growth” must here be understood in a properly vegetal sense so as to include nutrition and reproduction,
as I explain in Chapter III.
10
appears as the primary, encompassing activity. Although not exhaustive of φύσις, plants are
in this way exemplary of it.
From this perspective, plants constitute a privileged site for philosophical inquiry. There is a tension between the
specificity of plants and the generality
Situated on the border of animal (and human) life in such a way as to secure that border, of life.
the plant offers insight into the vegetal dimension of life as such; emblematic of the broad
movement of φύσις, the plant offers insight into the coming to be and passing away of
things. Yet this promise already portends a difficulty: does not the specificity of vegetal life
itself thereby recede and give way to the generality of animal/human life on the one hand
and φύσις on the other? In the pages that follow, this challenge will appear as a necessary
tension between the specificity of plant life and the generality of life as such.13 On the one
hand, this essay is concerned only with the plant. On the other hand, fidelity to that very
concern requires a reckoning with the ways in which other forms of life are implicated in a
vegetal movement that subtends and enlivens them while remaining somehow very close
to φύσις itself.
The exemplary appearance of φύσις in plants is also, therefore, a dis-appearance. If, Vegetal life receeds and withdraws.
as Heraclitus says, φύσις is the friend of concealment, it conceals itself especially in the
plant.1⁴ Hermes’ plant remains hidden: first in its earthly submersion, then in the darkness
which clings to it even in its uprooting, next in the silence of that which has no human
name, and finally in the consumption by which it becomes for Odysseus a charm and ward.
Pseudo-Aristotle makes a similar observation concerning life as such, which is evident in
animals but is hidden in plants.1⁵ In the indeterminacy of its growth, the plant retains a
certain imperceptibility, receding from thought and remaining submerged, so to speak, in
the broad flow of φύσις. The phytological1⁶ study which follows strives to come alongside
13 I revisit this tension explicitly in the conclusion (page 220 and following).
1⁴ See page 6.
1⁵ Pseudo-Aristotle, “On Plants” 815a10-14 (see epigraph).
1⁶ “Phytology” is constructed from φυτόν (plant) analogously to “zoology.”
11
this broad flow and give articulation to a specifically vegetal form of life that does not
thereby lose its imperceptibility but appears precisely in and through it.
This dissertation reexamines plant life through an exploration of the place of plants in the Overview
history of Western philosophy. By engaging in a close study of those philosophers who
inquire concerning plant life, I show in each case how vegetality both (a) is constitutive for
the philosophical thinking in question and (b) cannot be adequately accounted for by that
thinking. Through this process, I suggest that the particular manner of resistance plant life
manifests vis-à-vis philosophy indicates an aspect of vegetal existence that calls for a
rethinking both of the plant specifically and of life as a manner of being. The foregoing
remarks offer a first, preliminary sense of what I mean by the “ὕβρις” of plants: a manner
of life, difficult to discern, for which growth is definitive (rather than partial) and which
therefore consists in exceeding itself apart from any external limit or measure. In the rest
of the introduction, I first clarify the concept of ὕβρις in relation to contemporary
philological research, then discuss the complementary deconstructive and constructive
aspects of my project. I then discuss the role that inquiry into language plays in my study,
and I conclude the introduction with a synopsis of the essay.
§2.1. ὕβρις in GreekThought
The invocation of ὕβρις on which this essay is predicated is not intended metaphorically.
Rather, I claim that the contemporary interpretation of ὕβρις has neglected an aspect of the
concept that was important to the Greeks and that articulates a crucial dimension of plant
life.
The past fifty years have seen a mild resurgence of interest in the interpretation of A typical interpretation of ὕβρις is
moralistic, behavioristic, and
the concept of ὕβρις.1⁷ Much of this contemporary work focuses on the concept of ὕβρις in anthropocentric.
1⁷ Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, Lattimore, Vickers, Rosenmeyer, and others treated the meaning
of ὕβρις for the Greeks. See Rosenmeyer, “Hubris and the Greeks”; Vickers, Towards Greek Tragedy 22-28;
12
the context of Greek tragedy and Athenian law. As I suggest in this section, however, such
an approach fails to adequately account for the way ὕβρις appears in other contexts.
Speaking with the dominant strain of interpretation, Fisher rigorously follows the
definition of ὕβρις given in Aristotle’s Rhetoric:
ὕβρις consists in causing injury or annoyance whereby the sufferer is
disgraced, not to obtain any other advantage for oneself besides the
performance of the act, but for one’s own pleasure.1⁸
Within the broadest currents of contemporary interpretation, the interpretation of ὕβρις is
moralistic, behaviorist, and anthropocentric: moralistic, since the term expresses an ethical
judgment; behaviorist, because what is judged is an action or behavior; anthropocentric,
because the action belongs to a human agent.1⁹ On this basis, it becomes possible to
understand ὕβρις in relation to the concept of “honor” which informs the subtitle of
Fisher’s seminal treatment, Hybris: a Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient
Greece: “one would expect to find implicit in almost all instances of hybris the notion of
injured honour; and that is in fact what I believe one does find,” he declares; “the vast
majority of uses of hybris-words in all classical authors fit without any strain into this
account.”2⁰ From this standpoint, it would be senseless to speak of the ὕβρις of plants.
Although perhaps appropriate to the legal context on which Aristotle is drawing in This interpretation of ὕβρις is
inadequate.
the relevant section of the Rhetoric, such an interpretation misunderstands the more
Lattimore, Story Patterns 29-32; see especially the work of N.R.E. Fisher, whose series of articles beginning
in 1976 culminate in his exhaustive monograph (Fisher, Hybris, 1992).
1⁸ Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1926 1378b5. See Fisher, Hybris, 1992.
1⁹ See Fisher’s own helpful summary in Fisher, “‘Hybris’ and Dishonour,” 1979 45.
2⁰ Fisher, “‘Hybris’ and Dishonour,” 1976 180, 185. See also Fisher, “‘Hybris’ and Dishonour,” 1979 32, 43. In
fact, Fisher admits only one exception to his account, namely, Plato, “whose use of the term hybris is, like
so much of his work, untypical” (Fisher, “‘Hybris’ and Dishonour,” 1979 44). This effect is achieved in part
by claiming that any usage which fits his definition is paradigmatic and any usage that does not is derivative
and metaphorical. Fisher’s most prominent reviewers reproach him on precisely this point; see Adkins,
“Review”, Cairns, “Hybris (Review),” 1994, and to a lesser extent Walcot, “Hybris”.
13
fundamental sense of ὕβρις.21 As an essentially negative definition which views ὕβρις from
the standpoint of the injured, this definition is already suspicious, especially from a
Nietzschean perspective. “Hybris presupposes a joyful condition,” Nietzsche emphasizes in
a notebook entry from 1883.22 That is to say, ὕβρις involves excellence and growth of force:
the essence of ὕβρις is not to be found in what injury it may do to another (which from the
perspective of ὕβρις is a matter of complete indifference) but in its own nature. This
Nietzschean suspicion is justified by a more careful consideration of the literature, which
undermines each of the three pillars of the received interpretation:23
1. Behaviorism. For the Greeks, ὕβρις is not so much a variety of behavior as it is a ὕβρις is not a behavior but a
disposition.
variety of disposition. David Cohen’s studies of ὕβρις and sexuality in Athenian legal cases,
for example, demonstrate that even in legal contexts a charge of ὕβρις can be established on
the basis of intention in the absence of act and, inversely, an otherwise hubristic act can
cease to be so if the intention is altered.2⁴ Similarly, a man might inflict ὕβρις upon himself
by consenting to sexual dishonor.2⁵ In both cases, the charge refers primarily to the way a
hubristic disposition is expressed (or not) in the action in question. Douglas Cairns comes
to a similar conclusion through a careful reading of Aristotle, showing that the passages
concerning ὕβρις occur within the context of an ethical theory that emphasizes the
determinative role of ethical comportment.2⁶ As Nietzsche says, ὕβρις is primarily a
“condition” understood as a disposition or modality of life, not a behavior which belongs to
a legal subject.2⁷
21 In fact, MacDowell convincingly reads Aristotle’s definition as a specialized one, concerned only with those
types of ὕβρις which can be prosecuted (MacDowell, “‘Hybris’ in Athens” 28).
22 eKGWB/NF-1883 7[161] (emphasis added). For more on Nietzsche’s interpretation, see Chapter V.
23 The three paragraphs which follow are deliberately brief. My intention is to first clear out common
misconceptions to open a space for later developing my own account on somewhat different terms.
2⁴ Cohen, “Sexuality, Violence, and the Athenian Law of ‘Hubris’”, esp. 174-177.
2⁵ Cohen, 178.
2⁶ Cairns, “Hybris, Dishonour, andThinking Big,” 1996, esp. 1-6.
2⁷ eKGWB/NF-1883 7[161].
14
2. Moralism. Although ὕβρις frequently has a normative sense in antiquity, J.T. ὕβρις is morally neutral.
Hooker argues that the term is morally neutral in the Homeric texts. In these earliest cases,
the word means something like “exuberant strength”; it is only later re-interpreted to mean
such strength applied wrongfully. Although Homer usually condemns ὕβρις, he does so
through the addition of a supplementary judgment. This shows that the concept does not
itself carry a normative valence.2⁸ When the suitors outside Odysseus’ house gather to
throw the discuss and javelin, for example, they are said to be “hubristic” neutrally, without
qualification: they are testing and enjoying their physical strength.2⁹ When Homer wishes
to condemn ὕβρις, by contrast, he typically feels the need to qualify it as over-violent
(ὑπέρβιος) and full of reckless folly (ἀτάσθαλος) or contrast it with whatever is
well-ordered (εὔνομος).3⁰ Hesiod follows Homer in the non-pejorative usage of ὕβρις. In
Solon, by contrast, ὕβρις for the first time becomes itself a moral term. Thenceforth two
strands of thinking survive: one understands ὕβρις as morally reproachful insolence and
pride, and the other understands it as morally neutral (or even occasionally admirable)
high spirits and exuberant strength.31 In its originary occurrence, then, ὕβρις carries no
moral judgment.
3. Anthropocentrism. In Greek thinking, ὕβρις is not confined to humans. To the ὕβρις is not specifically human.
contrary, there ὕβρις appears in many forms in animals, and even its manifestations in
human life often maintain a relation to the animal forms. In animals, as in humans, ὕβρις
often appears as an aggressive spirit and noisiness (as in the case of that most hubristic
animal, the donkey). Excessive eating and drinking, lustfulness, restless “larking about,”
and similar activities are characteristic of ὕβρις in both human and non-human
2⁸ Hooker, “The Original Meaning of YBPIΣ” esp. 126-128.
2⁹ Homer, Odyssey, 1995 4.627 and 17.169. This is the only case in Homer where ὕβρις is unqualified. See
Hooker, “The Original Meaning of YBPIΣ” 126.
3⁰ Homer, Odyssey, 1995 1.368, 4.321, 16.86, 16.410, 24.352, 17.487.
31 Hooker, “The Original Meaning of YBPIΣ” 128, 131-133. See also Michelini, “Ὕβρις and Plants” 35.
15
creatures.32 Is ὕβρις, then, a primarily human phenomenon metaphorically applied to
animals, or vice versa? Is the braying donkey, for example, especially human by virtue of
his noisiness? Or, on the contrary, is the rude and noisy youth something rather close to a
donkey in his braying, such that ὕβρις belong paradigmatically to the animal? In fact, the
dichotomy is a false one. For the Greeks, ὕβρις pertains rather to a register of life which
subtends both animal and human. This element comes to the fore in those passages in
which the Greeks speak of the ὕβρις of plants.33
Ultimately, it is the anthropocentric element of the interpretation that is decisively This corrective clears a way for
reinterpreting ὕβρις in vegetal terms.
delusory: by focusing on ὕβρις in humans—especially in legal contexts—one is led to
conceive ὕβρις from the point of view of a victim. Since direct imposition on the victim
takes the form of behavior, this prejudices the inquiry in the direction of a behavioristic
account; since the victim suffers the activity of ὕβρις, this prejudices the inquiry in the
direction of a moralistic account; since the victim suffers at the hand of a perpetrator, this
reinforces the prejudice favoring an anthropocentric account. Once beholden to such an
interpretation, it becomes difficult to understand ὕβρις in a way that makes sense of many
of the texts concerning human beings, much less those concerning animals and plants. By
beginning with a more nuanced view, however, this essay attempts a reorientation away
from these interpretations, beginning to hear the subtler notes in the ancient Greek
conception of ὕβρις and opening the possibility of rethinking ὕβρις itself in relation to
these underappreciated aspects. It is in this spirit that the essay will develop a
philosophical concept of ὕβρις focused on its vegetal aspect.
32 MacDowell, “‘Hybris’ in Athens” esp. 15-18, 20-21.
33 I discuss these passages in detail in Chapter V, pages 118–123.
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§2.2. The History of Philosophy
In the pages that follow, this essay attempts an investigation of plant life, taking its hubristic This study is both deconstructive and
constructive.
dimension as primary. At the same time, it is also an investigation in the history of
philosophy, consisting of a series of studies of Plato, Aristotle, Goethe, Hegel, and
Nietzsche with respect to the role of plant life in their philosophy. In each case, my reading
therefore contains a deconstructive element and a constructive element.
In its deconstructive aspect, the study involves reading certain texts in the history of Deconstruction
philosophy with an eye toward exhibiting, in each case, the manner in which the
philosophy in question cannot account for a vegetal element upon which it nevertheless
depends. In Plato’s Phaedrus, for example, plants appear as a condition for philosophical
reflection that nevertheless remains inaccessible to thought, which must approach the
vegetal only indirectly. Just as the plane tree makes discourse possible only by receding,
vegetal life will have a crucial role to play throughout the history of philosophy precisely in
virtue of its tendency to withdraw from philosophical articulation. The first goal of this
essay is to mark that withdraw in its various forms.
How do I understand the task of reading texts in the history of philosophy in a Philosophy proceeds dramatically.
philosophical way? From a philosophical standpoint, the doctrines taught and conclusions
warranted by the texts possess a crucial but strictly secondary importance and must be
read as symptomatic of the thought in question. To put the point in an idiom especially
appropriate to the Platonic texts, philosophy proceeds dramatically, and a philosophical
reading is attuned to this aspect of a given text. When, in the Phaedrus, Socrates says the
plane tree (πλάτανος) is “unwilling to teach,” we should also hear the pun: we will not
receive any teaching from Plato (Πλάτωνος).3⁴ The text does not essentially teach; rather, it
3⁴ Plato, Phaedrus, 2017 229a. The pun is repeated at 246d, where the myth of the soul occurs in the act
of imagining (πλάττω). Cf. Zaslavsky, “A Hitherto Unremarked Pun in the Phaedrus” and Plato, Plato’s
Phaedrus, 2003 27n69. In Geier’s interpretation, the role of the plane tree is to bring Socrates and Phaedrus
into contact with the sun in a diffuse, bearable form; likewise, the role of the imaginative myth—and of
Plato’s text—is to bring us into contact with the nature of the soul in a diffuse, bearable form (Geier,
17
dramatizes the movements of thought and of things.3⁵ To read such a text carefully
involves responding to an invitation to join in being so moved, to participate—as Plato says
later in the same text when retelling his myth of the soul—in an act of imagination that
nevertheless “speaks truly concerning the truth.”3⁶ Claudia Baracchi puts the issue
eloquently: “What is at stake here is beginning to disclose the possibility of reading Plato
in an altogether other register and simultaneously to hear the Platonic text elaborate on
questions that haunt and besiege us, today, with undiminished vitality and increasing
urgency.”3⁷ This study endeavors to read texts throughout the history of philosophy in this
spirit.
This essay is therefore not primarily historical in nature, although it is a study in the This essay is not primarily historical.
history of philosophy. I make no attempt to arrange historical facts or trace the historical
development of ideas for their own sake, although I enjoy frequent, fruitful recourse to
great scholars who have done so.3⁸ Nor is the order in which I address historical texts
chronological. Indeed, in a certain respect the order of chapters is arbitrary. A study of
plants, which reproduce by repeating themselves in rhizomatic proliferation, is bound to
repeat itself as well, producing shoots and graftings whose proper relation is one of
horizontal proximity rather than vertical dependence. At the same time, however, the essay
is organized following a dramatic or pedagogic logic which strives to arrange these
proximate relations in order to articulate the ὕβρις of plant life with deepening complexity
Plato’s Erotic Thought, especially 211-215). Although I admire his sensitivity to the dramatic context of
the dialogue, I do not find his specific interpretation of the plane tree to be compelling. More illuminating
is Peter Warnek’s discussion of Plato’s name in relation to the importance of “place” in the dialogues in
Warnek, “Platonic Displacements” 120-121, 124.
3⁵ For the case of the Phaedrus in particular, see Vallega, Sense and Finitude 72-79.
3⁶ Plato, Phaedrus, 2017 247c.
3⁷ Baracchi, “‘Words of Air’,” 2006 29.
3⁸ In the pages that follow, I therefore highlight only those texts which constitute the central body of work
for my study. Although my readings have emerged from a close engagement with a wide variety of texts,
references to secondary literature are typically limited to footnotes and, especially, to the bibliography. The
same is true for the scientific texts that have informed my work.
18
and increasing precision. Finally, this essay is not focused on “history” as a philosophical
problem in its own right. Many of the contemporary philosophers I most admire have
engaged this question with great subtlety. My own aims, by contrast, are more modestly
focused upon a simple form of life that sprouts anew in sundry historical periods with a
common tenacity.
At the same time, this essay is guided by the convinction that the recurrent Construction
difficulties philosophers face in addressing plants are not merely the result of the
idiosyncrasies of the authors in question. Rather, these difficulties indicate something
fundamental about plant life itself in its encounter with philosophy. In its constructive
aspect, this study interprets the withdrawal of plant life as disclosing an essential aspect of
the vegetal—namely, the ὕβρις of plants. The second goal of this essay is to develop an
understanding of this aspect of plant life.
As a form of friendship, philosophy is concerned in each case with listening to the Philosophy is a form of friendship.
subject which concerns it and coming alongside that subject in thought. In order to remain
rigorous, this science must be cultivated afresh in each encounter in such a way as to allow
its subject matter to show itself intelligibly. Just as the misguided person who attempts to
apply an externally formulated “friendship method” to each person she meets is likely to be
disappointed, so also will be the similarly misguided philosopher. In this discipline,
method guarantees nothing: the friendship must be risked and its outcome left open.
Phytology, as I attempt to practice it in these pages, is the attempt to risk an intellectual
encounter with plants. Such an encounter must ultimately be measured against the
concrete phenomena.3⁹ For this reason, the essay is punctuated by a number of images,
which complement the verbal discussion of plants with a visual presentation.⁴⁰
3⁹ That is to say, philosophy must approach things, as well as texts, with an eye toward their dramatic
occurrence. Cf. Deleuze, “The Method of Dramatization,” 2004.
⁴⁰ Of particular note are the paintings by Sydney Parkinson, a Scottish artist who accompanied Captain Cook
on his journey in the HMS Endeavor (1768-1771), on which journey he died of dysentary.
19
Each of these goals—the deconstructive and the constructive—predominates in
various parts of the essay. Ultimately, the study is carried out in a deliberate tension
between these two aspects. To the extent that I am successful, this tension is maintained
through the end of the text.
§2.3. Language
The issue of language enjoys a central importance in studies of the history of philosophy, This is not a study of language.
not least because it marks a chasm separating contemporary philosophy, which occurs in
the wake of the so-called “linguistic turn,” from earlier modes of thought. This issue
therefore occupies the attention of many of the most sensitive contemporary
commentators.⁴1 The present study, by contrast, does not focus on questions concerning
language; instead, it attempts to emphasize a different aspect of the philosophical
encounter with vegetal life. Readers will no doubt find many opportunities to justly point
out places where issues concerning language could fruitfully be given pride of place; I ask
only that they make the experiment with me of allowing a different concern to
predominate. Because of its importance within the scholarship to which I am indebted,
however, I offer a few remarks on the subject.
This study is concerned not primarily with words but with things: namely, plants.
To put the matter in this way—as a decision “against” words in favor of things—would,
however, betray a distinctively modern sensibility. For the ancients, λόγος does not belong
only to human beings over and against the natural world. Instead, as Alejandro Vallega
indicates, “the philosophical logos is understood as the dynamic undergoing of physis in its
unfolding, rather than as language separate or opposed to a nature or phenomena it
attempts to describe and explain.”⁴2 According to the Platonic text, language is itself living
⁴1 See for example Vallega, Sense and Finitude, esp. 72-79 and Sallis, Being and Logos, 1996, among others.
⁴2 Vallega, Sense and Finitude 66. See also 73: “the logos does not have to speak about beings; there is not a
space from mind to things which language must bridge. Rather, logos is in the soul and in beings, and this
20
and ensouled (τὸν λόγον ζῶντα καὶ ἔμψυχον).⁴3 “Every λόγος is just as a living creature” as
Socrates suggests, and therefore the philosophical λόγος also involves a participation in
vegetal life.⁴⁴ As life thus belongs to language, so also language belongs to the sphere of
living creatures: in times past, when people were content to listen to trees, Socrates insists,
the earliest prophetic words were the words of oak trees.⁴⁵ Thus, not only do words appear My goal is to find within things a
language by which they articulate
as living creatures, but—as Socrates says to Phaedrus—the tree occurs “in the middle of themselves.
our words” (μεταξὺ τῶν λόγων).⁴⁶ The challenge for philosophy, then, is not to find words
that can adequately describe plant life. Rather, the challenge is to listen attentively to the
λόγος, allowing the articulations of plant life to lend determination to a thought which
follows alongside the growing and withering of vegetal life.⁴⁷ Such a way of thinking does
not begin from language, understood as belonging to humans. Rather, beginning with
things, such a way of thinking finds within them a language—a language not first
possessed by anyone, but instead a language which belongs to the occurrence of vegetal
life, and to which we ourselves also belong. Such is the approach this essay pursues.
means that to take up the task of thinking or of a philosophical logos is to seek a way of being along with the
shine of the soul and beings.” Within the context of a text such as the Phaedrus, then, the matter “is not to
make a speech that represents nature but to encounter speech in the context of physis” (Vallega, 68). Such
an approach, however, would require developing a sense for φύσις. In particular, to encounter speech in
the context of φύσις would also mean to encounter φύσις as the context in which the speech of the dialogue
occurs.
⁴3 Plato, Phaedrus, 2017 276a.
⁴⁴ “πάντα λόγον ὥσπερ ζῷον,” Plato, 264c.
⁴⁵ Plato, 275b. In this connection, it is also noteworthy that the beginning of the speeches that Socrates offers
to Phaedrus is secured by an oath sworn upon the plane tree (Plato, 236d-e).
⁴⁶ Plato, 230a.
⁴⁷ This study is therefore deeply Aristotelian in the specific sense that it holds that thinking proceeds from
things and is of things. If Husserl responds to the Kantian assumption that “objects must conform to our
cognition” with the slogan, “to the things themselves,” then the principle of this study reverses the latter
slogan: “from the things themselves.” It is not primarily a study of concepts, except insofar as those concepts
come alongside and give voice to the occurrence of things.
21
§2.4. Synopsis
After the first two chapters, which are introductory in character,⁴⁸ Part One of the
dissertation addresses Hegel and Goethe’s philosophies of vegetal life. Chapter III, “Toward Chapter III
Vegetal Growth,” focuses on the role of plants in Hegel’s encyclopedic system. On the one
hand, vegetal life—which stands at the center of the Encyclopedia—is the pivot around
which his philosophical edifice turns. On the other hand, he conceives life in rigorously
non-vegetal terms. This leads Hegel to approach plants under a conception of unity and
difference that is inadequate to plant life. At the same time, however, I suggest that there is
a secondary discourse in Hegel’s text which, addressing plants in terms of growth, is able to
more adequately reveal the specificity of vegetal life. Hegel’s marginal discourse on plants
reveals an originary form of life that consists in a rhythmic expansion without
recuperation: the plant exists in excess to itself. At the same time, however, life requires a
limit in order to acquire determination. In the Hegelian system, this limit is the animal, in
which the truth of life appears in a more determinate form. Hegel’s marginal discourse,
however, hints at the possibility of conceiving a limit internal to the movement of plant life.
In Chapter IV, “Intensification as Limit,” I explore this internal sense of limit by Chapter IV
turning to Goethe’s botanical philosophy. Inspired by Spinoza, Goethe attempts to develop
an intuitive philosophical science of the natural world, beginning with plant life.
According to his approach, the plant must be understood as a generative process: the
essence of plant life is found in the transitions between its various morphological
developments. Like Hegel, Goethe seeks the limit according to which plant life constitutes
a determinate existence; he finds this in the interplay between, on the one hand, the
intensive process whereby the plant develops forms of increasing complexity and, on the
other hand, the rhythmic movements of expansion and contraction exhibited by plant
⁴⁸ The “Preface” and “Introduction” are enumerated with the main chapters in order to fulfill a formatting
requirement imposed by the University of Oregon.
22
growth. Ultimately, vegetal life appears in Goethe’s philosophy as an intensive force
characterized by a rhythmic temporality.
Part Two marks a pivot from recent German to ancient Greek philosophy and
introduces the concept of vegetal ὕβρις that becomes the guiding theme for the remainder
of the essay. It consists of a single chapter, “Force and ὕβρις,” which focuses primarily on Chapter V
Nietzsche and Heraclitus. For both Hegel and Goethe, the philosophy of plants remains
beholden to a concept of unity that is ultimately insensitive to the specific occurrence of
vegetal life. Nietzsche shares this concern, but in an inverted manner: he measures plants
against a concept of radical multiplicity. For Nietzsche, plant life is examplary of the “will
to power” that occupies much of his late thinking. Refusing any concept of
self-preservation, he asserts that vegetal life is essentially a multiplicative movement of
prodigal growth. Although Nietzsche’s emphasis on the unbounded plurality of life
predominates in his texts, there are also moments when he recognizes the need for
determination, which he understands in terms of unity and situates in nutrition (without,
however, developing this idea). The concept of the will to power appears in Nietzsche’s
earlier essays in association with the Greek concept of ὕβρις. In Heraclitus, ὕβρις appears
as a cosmic principle of whatever comes to be and passes away and is associated with life
understood as self-increase. Understood in this way, ὕβρις—especially insofar as it belongs
to plant life—marks the self-overcoming aspect of life that Nietzsche identifies as will to
power. Part Two, therefore, also marks a shift from the concern with unity and difference
that characterizes the thinking of Hegel, Goethe, and Nietzsche to a concern with excess
and limit that is more characteristic of Heraclitus and the Greek philosophers studied in
the rest of the essay.
Part Three focuses on the place of plants in Greek philosophy. Its first two chapters
concern Aristotle’s On the Soul, in which plants play a crucial role. In Chapter VI, Chapter VI
“Between φύσις and ζωή,” I examine the structure of Aristotle’s investigation. The inquiry
23
into the soul, Aristotle contends, reveals plants as an originary principle that holds together
the twofold character of life (φύσις and ζωή).⁴⁹ Plants therefore exhibit a fundamental
ambivalence, exemplified in Aristotle’s account of vegetal striving. On the one hand, plants
are alive; they strive toward the sun and into the depths of the earth as they live toward
their ends. On the other hand, plants have only a partial kind of life. Because they are not
perceptive, their activity of striving is indeterminate and profligate. Plants therefore reveal
a different kind of life, an “other side” that belongs to the occurrence of life itself.
In Chapter VII, “Concerning Nourishment,” I supplement this sense of Chapter VII
indeterminate striving with the theory of limit and proportion that emerges from
Aristotle’s specific account of nourishment. As nutritive proportion, life is characterized by
a sense of limit that emerges from the single activity of growing, nourishing, and
reproducing whereby vegetal life essentially relates to itself. Here, my readings of
Heraclitus and Aristotle (and, in the following chapter, of Plato) show how each struggles
to maintain the tension between the indeterminate, proliferative aspects of plant life and
the limit or proportion by which the plant exists as a determinate living thing.
This tension appears in a somewhat different context in Plato’s Timaeus, which is
the focus of Chapter VIII, “A Choric Life.” In Timaeus’ account, vegetal life appears as a Chapter VIII
second kind of life in which animal life comes to be. Plants are introduced into his account
as the principle of determination and limit for all living creatures. What Heraclitus and
Aristotle address in terms of the measure or proportionality of growth and nourishment
(Chapter VII), Plato addresses in terms of a specific form of motion. In this context, the
ὕβρις of plants appears as a wild movement that nevertheless possesses an inner balance
and harmony. Plants therefore parallel on a terrestrial scale the structural role of the χώρα
on a cosmic scale, and for this reason implicate the concept of life in the broadest sense.
⁴⁹ To a first approximation, φύσις (as we have seen) refers to the growing and withering of whatever has its
principle of motion and rest within itself, and ζωή refers to animal life. The meanings of these terms are
contested and complicated in the course of the discussion of Aristotle.
24
Finally, the conclusion of the study attempts to hold open and articulate the Conclusion
tensions involved in the study so as to gather together the various tendrils of the essay and
intensify the question concerning the ὕβρις of vegetal life in three ways. First, it address the
concept of ὕβρις in explicit relation to the reproductive activity of plants, which is a
recurrent but marginal theme throughout the essay. Second, it discusses the tension
between the specificity of plants on the one hand and the generality of life on the other that
becomes increasingly evident in the essay (especially in Chapters V and VIII). Third, it
points to the issue of vegetal temporality as an important area for further study.
Before drawing this introduction to a close, I would like to acknowledge the growing body
of recent literature, arising from an intensified interest in plant life across diverse
disciplines, that has come to be known broadly as “plant theory.” Many scholars are
increasingly turning to plants in order to challenge the human-animal divide that has long
haunted research in both the sciences and humanities.⁵⁰ Other scholars are finding in
plants novel resources for articulating and motivating urgent socio-political projects.⁵1
Perhaps because the philosophical tradition has largely ignored plants, however, most
recent scholars have been inattentive to the role of the vegetal in intellectual history.⁵2
Because this essay is concerned with the history of philosophy, these authors are rarely
cited in its pages. In a broader sense, however, my work would be much poorer without the
⁵⁰ See especially Nealon, Plant Theory; Miller, Vegetative Soul, 2012; Doyle, Darwin’s Pharmacy, 2011; Kohn,
How ForestsThink; Trewavas, “What Is Plant Behaviour?”. For a helpful overview of these recent trends, see
Nealon, Plant Theory xiii.
⁵1 See for example Marder, Plant-Thinking, 2013 and his related publications.
⁵2 On the failure of the philosophical tradition to adequately consider vegetal life, seeMarder,ThePhilosopher’s
Plant, 2014. In my view, Nealon, Plant Theory and Miller, Vegetative Soul, 2012 are amongst the most
important exceptions to this trend. Also of particular interest from a strictly historical perspective is the
“Phusis kai Phuta” project, which studies plants in the context of Ancient Greek thought and organized its
first conference in 2019 (see https://voices.uchicago.edu/phusiskaiphuta/).
25
benefit of their scholarship. I hope that this study in turn begins to suggest a recuperation
of the history of philosophy as a fruitful resource for contemporary studies of plants.
26
Part I
27
CHAPTER III
TOWARD VEGETAL GROWTH
In fact the plant is a thing prodigal and manifold, and so difficult to describe
according to the whole: in proof whereof is the fact that one can seize nothing
which exists in common to all.
Theophrastus
Hegel is a philosopher of life.1 His philosophical project, encapsulated in the three volumes
of the Encyclopedia, moves from the science of logic (in the first volume) to the philosophy
of spirit (in the last volume), producing something like a genetic anthropology by
grounding the historical realization of human consciousness in the structures of logic. This
movement, however, requires a lengthy detour through the philosophy of nature (in the
second volume). The first volume yields as its conceptual fruits the pure forms of space,
time, and matter, whence it is possible to develop a physics. The second volume, in turn,
yields the human animal, whence it is possible to develop a spiritual anthropology. As Life is primarily logical, not natural.
scholars have emphasized, the concept responsible for the coherence of this sprawling
system is Hegel’s idea of life:
There is a central, recurring rhetorical device that Hegel returns to again and
again throughout his philosophical system: that of describing the activity of
reason and thought in terms of the dynamic activity and development of
organic life. On closer inspection, it is evident that Hegel means for us to take
his descriptions quite literally, that he means to suggest not that reason is like
life but that reason is a dynamic, living activity in constant development. To
leave no doubt as to its central role in his understanding of reason and
thought, Hegel not only includes the category of life in his Science of Logic, a
1 Epigraph source: Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, 1999. I.1.10.
28
move as ‘scandalous’ as it is mysterious, but moreover, its specific placement
within that text suggests that it plays a foundational role for his entire
philosophical system, forming an essential part of his philosophical method.2
Life, ubiquitous in the Encyclopedia, belongs already to the account of logic and is therefore
not properly an accomplishment of nature. To the contrary, in the developmental account
of nature, a primarily logical life increasingly finds its adequation in nature, a process
which culminates in the life of spirit.3 Although philosophy adopts the concept of life from
nature, it elevates and clarifies it with respect to logical life and subsequently reinterprets
natural life in terms of its logical essence.⁴ Hegel therefore develops a peculiar account of
life as whatever “begins from an essential though abstract principle, distinguishes or
particularizes its components, and then reintegrates these real divisions within the original
2 Ng, Hegel’s Concept of Life 3. See also Greene, “Hegel’s Concept of Logical Life”, Hahn, Contradiction
in Motion, Houlgate, Hegel and the Philosophy of Nature, Kreines, “The Logic of Life”, Stone, Petrified
Intelligence, and Westphal, “Philosophizing about Nature”, among others. Unless otherwise specified,
emphasis in quotations is original throughout.
3 “The perpetual action of life is thus absolute idealism” (Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 9). Compare:
“Hegel consistently presents life and self-consciousness as sharing the same logical form, revealing
cognition’s powers to be essentially shaped by the form and activity of life. Life is not the ‘cause’ of spirit,
but its first actuality” (Ng, Hegel’s Concept of Life 14).
⁴ “AlthoughHegel indeed affirms that nature is living in fact, the strategy of his philosophical arguments with
respect to life as a constitutive concept always revolve around the question of what makes the concept of
life necessary a priori for self-consciousness and thought, and not primarily around questions concerning
empirical nature,” Ng comments. “The significance of the concept of life in Hegel’s system primarily
concerns the activity and form of the Concept, and the culmination of Hegel’s contribution can be most
clearly seen in the presentation of a logical concept of life in the Science of Logic” (Ng, Hegel’s Concept of
Life 8-9). In a remarkable passage from the Science of Logic, Hegel recasts a comprehensive vocabulary of
natural life in essentially logical terms: “First, life is therefore to be considered as a living individual that is
for itself the subjective totality and is presupposed as indifferent to an objectivity that stands indifferent over
against it. Second, it is the life-process of sublating its presupposition, of positing as negative the objectivity
indifferent to it, and of actualizing itself as the power and negative unity of this objectivity. By so doing,
it makes itself into the universal which is the unity of itself and its other. Third, consequently life is the
genus-process, the process of sublating its singularization and relating itself to its objective existence as to
itself. Accordingly, this process is on the one hand the turning back to its concept and the repetition of the
first forcible separation, the coming to be of a new individuality and the death of the immediate first; but,
on the other hand, thewithdrawing into itself of the concept of life is the becoming of the concept that relates
itself to itself, of the concept that exists for itself, universal and free, the transition into cognition” (Hegel,
The Science of Logic, 2015 678-679 (12.182)).
29
essential principle.”⁵ This definition of life depends upon a specific conception of the Life is a reciprocal whole/member
relation.
relation between unity and difference: namely, the codetermination of whole and member.
Hegel therefore contrasts life with mechanism, in which a whole is dependent upon parts
that are nevertheless indifferent to each other and to the whole.⁶ The mechanical, in other
words, lacks the reciprocal relation between whole and member that is characteristic of life:
The members and organs of a living body should not be considered merely as
parts of it, for they are what they are only in their unity and are not indifferent
to that unity at all. The members and organs become mere ‘parts’ only under
the hands of the anatomist.⁷
In mechanistic systems, wholes are composed only of indifferent “parts”; in living systems,
wholes are reciprocally determined through the unity of their “members.”⁸ Because of his a
priori understanding of life, Hegel’s philosophy of nature is dominated by a concern with
the relation between unity and difference, interpreted in terms of the whole/members
relation (or, in its failure, the whole/parts relation).⁹ Difference is paradigmatically
self-differentiation, and self-differentiation is paradigmatically the process whereby life (a)
enacts a diremption into members which (b) integrate back into a whole. From this
perspective, the natural life of plants and animals, which for example presupposes its
objective part in the form of external nutriment, appears as an inadequate form of life. By
⁵ Ferrini, “The Transition to Organics” 204. Life is therefore “the very dynamic of ‘conceiving’ or the very
form of pure conceptual thinking.”
⁶ “This is what constitutes the character of mechanism, namely, that whatever the connection that obtains
between the things combined, the connection remains one that is alien to them, that does not affect their
nature, and even when a reflective semblance of unity is associated with it, the connection remains nothing
more than composition,mixture, aggregate, etc.” (Hegel,The Science of Logic, 2015 631 (12.133).
⁷ Hegel,The Encyclopaedia Logic, with the Zusätze, 1991 §135. Cf. Ferrini, “The Transition to Organics” 204.
⁸ In logical terms, mechanism lacks judgment, in which the parts are elevated to the status of members
gathered into a whole (See Hegel,The Science of Logic, 2015 631 (12.133)).
⁹ For an example of how this works in detail, see Ferrini’s careful account of Hegel’s passages on chemistry at
the end of the Science of Logic (Ferrini, “The Transition to Organics” 207-214).
30
contrast, logical life, which generates—rather than receives—its objective content, appears
as paradigmatic.1⁰
If natural life is subordinated to logical life within the context of Hegel’s larger Natural life is primarily animal, not
vegetal.
philosophical system, the life of plants is further subordinated to that of animals within his
philosophy of nature. This is a consequence of the systematic shape of his project, which
makes animal life—ultimately, the life of the human animal—the aim and impetus of the
discourse on plants. “Animal life is the truth of organic being,” he declares; the study of
plants is merely a bridge toward the animal.11 In Michael Marder’s words, plants “are the
mere intermezzi between the inorganic and the organic that must, themselves, be
overcome for life to come into its own in the animal.”12 It is zoology, not phytology, that
forms the basic character of the Hegelian account.
The force of his systematic vision notwithstanding, Hegel remains far too careful a Plant life diverges from animal life.
thinker to submerge himself entirely within this subordinated conception of vegetality. In a
crucial passage of his botany, situated at the beginning of his explication of the three
processes which characterize the living organism (viz., formation, nutrition, and
reproduction), he adds a provisio. “In the plant, these processes coincide, and are not so
distinct as they are in the animal,” he muses. “It is precisely this which constitutes the
difficulty one encounters in expounding the nature of the vegetable organism.”13 The
problem Hegel faces in his explication of plant life, in other words, is that it is not the same
as animal life and therefore cannot be analyzed according to the same schema of processes.
And yet he then immediately proceeds to analyze these three processes entirely separately,
1⁰ See Burmeister, “Hegel’s Living Logic” 261.
11 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 47. This declaration signifies a chasm separating Hegel from Goethe, for
whom (as I discuss in the next chapter) the study of plants is an exercise in fidelity bordering on obsession.
12 Marder,The Philosopher’s Plant, 2014 159.
13 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 66.
31
as though he had not just declared such an approach inappropriate to the plant.1⁴ In fact,
Hegel had already recognized the essential divergence of plant and animal life: “the vital
principle of the animal is its soul, but the vital principle of the plant is still submerged,” he
says earlier in the botannical section of the Encyclopedia. “In the animal on the contrary,
there is one animation.”1⁵ In the encounter with the plant, Hegel thinks, life is doubled:
whereas the vital principle of the animal is one (soul), the principle of the plant is
something else that—in contradistinction to the animal—is not one. While the primary
tendency of Hegel’s discourse on plants reproaches vegetal life for its inadequacy in relation
to the zoological measure (and reproaches the zoological, in turn, in relation to the logical
measure), there remains a second, submerged discourse attentive to this second, vegetal
kind of life. Although unity remains the primary focus of Hegel’s account of plant life, this
focus belongs by his own admission to the sphere of animal life. On the one hand, then, we
must read Hegel’s botannical texts in terms of their zoological purpose and, more broadly,
within a schema oriented toward the beginning and end of the Encyclopedia: the uniform
life of logic and spirit. On the other hand, Hegel’s own insistence upon the duplicity of life
that is found in the plant suggests the possibility of a second reading which emerges from
the vegetal “middle” of Hegel’s project and stands in tension with its broader aims.1⁶
This chapter focuses on these two discourses concerning vegetal life in Hegel’s Section one: Hegel's primary
discourse
Encyclopedia. In the first section, I highlight the basic features of Hegel’s “primary” account
of plants, which understands the plant in terms of the unity proper to animal life.1⁷
1⁴ On this point, a major difference emerges between Hegel on the one hand and the other major figures I
discuss in this essay: in their different ways, Goethe, Nietzsche, Aristotle, and Plato all recognize and follow
the coincidence of these processes in plant life.
1⁵ Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 48.
1⁶ In this essay, the tension between what I have calledHegel’s “primary” and “secondary” discourses on plants
is a productive tension insofar as it sets into relief issues that are central to the rest of my study of vegetal
life. In a different context, it would be interesting to consider the productivity of this tension with respect to
Hegel’s broader philosophical approach. I am not aware of any scholars who have explored the importance
of Hegel’s philosophy of plants in this way.
1⁷ Although I focus on the presentation in the Encyclopedia, Hegel’s interpretation of plant life remains
remarkably consistent throughout his life, “from the earliest Jena system projects of 1803, 1804-1805, and
32
Although Hegel rightly criticizes “crude chemical interpretations” of life for missing the
point because “they kill living being, and are only able to grasp that which is dead, not that
which has life,” he himself falls victim to the inverse error: crude animal interpretations
alsomiss the point because they, too, destroy the living plant, and are only able to grasp
zoological, not vegetal, life.1⁸
What, then, of the life of plants? It does not disappear entirely from Hegel’s Section two: Hegel's secondary
discourse
account. “The physiology of the plant is necessarily more obscure than that of the animal
body,” Hegel explains, “because it is simpler, its assimilation passes through fewer
intermediaries, and change occurs as immediate infection.”1⁹ In the second section of this
chapter, I trace Hegel’s submerged discourse on plants, which focuses on the growth of
plants. In this discourse, growth is not understood as a function of intermediary organs
and parts, but appears as growth itself in its immediacy. “Difference” therefore assumes a
distinctive meaning in the plant. As in Hegel’s broader philosophical project, difference is
primarily self-differentiation. In the context of that broader project, self-differentiation is
rigorously conceived in terms of diremption into members and re-integration of members
into the whole. Consciousness, for example, must find itself objectively outside itself in the
world in order to return to itself. Within the context of plant life, by contrast,
self-differentiation—growth itself—appears as a process of continual stretching beyond
itself without return. Here identity does not consist in a moment of reintegration on a
higher level, but rather in the consistency of a process of increase.2⁰ This is why Hegel can
1805-1806, to the Berlin lectures on natural philosophy in 1819-1820 and 1825-1826, and through to the
Encyclopaedia presentation of 1830.” See Mitchell, “The Botany of Romanticism” 319n4.
1⁸ Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 93. This is what Marder reproaches Hegel with not recognizing: “At the
very least, the inapplicability of either of the two terms,” namely, unity and difference, “should have given the
philosopher pause and should have led to the conclusion thatmetaphysical umbrella categories do not cover
this kind of life, lived on the hither side of the dialectics the same and the other, identity and non-identity”
(Marder,The Philosopher’s Plant, 2014 83). As I show, however, Hegel does pause over this problem.
1⁹ Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 54.
2⁰ As I suggest in this chapter, Hegel does not explicate this process in detail. In later chapters, this process
will be addressed in a more sustained fashion.
33
say that “the vital process of the plant is complete within each part,” whereas in the animal it
requires a differentiated hierarchy of organs. This process, he continues “as an immanent
differentiation, appears in its beginning, as in its final product, merely as formation. In this
respect the plant occupies a position midway between the mineralogical crystal and the
freer shape of the animal.”21 Formation—that is, growth—constitutes the process of
immanent differentiation that Hegel here identifies with the life of the plant. It is this
power of growth which forms the fecund power of life by which plants “vacillate between
chemical and organic matter.”22 In fact, it is precisely because plants are not animal life that
they are able to play the role for which Hegel casts them, quietly preparing the way for the
animal in which Hegel would like to find the truth of organic existence. From this
perspective, the central place of life in Hegel’s philosophy might be rethought beginning
not from the first, logical volume of the Encyclopedia but from its central pivot: the
specifically vegetal life that appears as the middle term (between physics and animality) in
the volume which is itself the middle term (between logic and spirit) of Hegel’s system.
§3.1. Unity and Difference
Hegel begins his philosophy of the vegetal organism with an assertion of unity: “the whole The unity of the plant consists in the
form of the leaf.
production of the plant displays the same uniformity and simple development, and this
unity of form is the leaf.”23 Known as the “foliar theory” in botany, this approach to plant
life recognizes in the various parts of the plants modification of a single organ, the leaf. The
point or node, which “constitutes the type of the whole plant,”2⁴ is the basis for
development. The node casts off a thread or line, which is then arrested at the formation of
the subsequent node. The leaf spreads this line into a surface, recapitulating the first
21 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 65.
22 Hegel, 65-66.
23 Hegel, 59.
2⁴ Hegel, 55.
34
dimension in a second, and the curvatures of both line and surface extend into a third
dimension.2⁵ Thus the leaf figures the basic spatio-temporal movement of the node in all
its forms. The unity of the plant resides in this process whereby each organ transforms into
the next, and Hegel labors to identify that unity through an analysis of form. Indeed, he
contends that “primarily, life is shape.”2⁶ This is why even the geological organism (the
earth) constitutes a prototypical form of life. But whereas the earth ismere shape, plants
exhibit ideality in shape.2⁷ The status of this ideality constitutes the central concern of
Hegel’s analysis. Whatever is properly alive both “maintains the unity of multiplicity” and
“differentiates itself within itself.”2⁸ Without real difference, unity is merely superficial and
apparent. In the foliar theory of plant life, however, the identity of the organs predominates
over their differentiation. If the basic organ of the plant is in every case a leaf, then the
ideal whole is present in each part: “the members of the plant are only particular in
relation to one another therefore, not in relation to the whole.” Rather, each organ is itself
the whole.2⁹ For this reason, Hegel sees a need to supplement the foliar theory with a focus
on differential formations.3⁰
In Hegel’s view, there are four processes of differentiation evident in the plant. The Four processes of differentiation
first involves the diremption of the plant into root and leaf through a distinction between
the gravitropic and heliotropic extensions of the plant. The stem is the figure of this
diremption, although it is not strictly necessary (many plants lack it, the root growing
directly from the leaf).31 This process corresponds to the internal process of sap circulation
2⁵ Hegel, 65.
2⁶ Hegel, 9. Note the contrast between this and his more frequent definition of life, discussed earlier (page
29).
2⁷ Hegel, 45.
2⁸ Hegel, 47.
2⁹ Hegel, 45-46.
3⁰ Hegel, 54, 64.
31 Hegel, 67, 70.
35
throughout the plant which is required by the separation of subterranean and aerial
functions.32 The second division is the internal differentiation of cellular tissue into the
wood and cortical substances.33 In general terms, this is distinguished from the first
diremption into root and leaf in that it is (a) internal to the plant, not corresponding to any
visible exterior division, and (b) polarized perpendicular to, rather than parallel with, the
axis of linear extension in the plant. A third differentiation is the division into organs
through growth. In simpler plants this occurs as a production of distinct nodes along the
point-line structure of growth (fig. 1); in more complex plant forms, such as shrubs and
trees, it occurs as a process of division that follows a branching structure.3⁴ In both cases,
nodal development differentiates the plant within itself through the successive production
of distinct organs (leaf/leaf, leaf/petal, etc.). Finally, the plant is differentiated sexually. In
the bud, nodal differentiation reaches its apex, and the diverse elements of the bud—the
shift toward rotundity of shape, the concentration of leaves in a whorl, the emergence of
color, the increase of scent, and the subtle differentiation of organs—bear witness to the
unique character of this process: the blossom is the “final act” of the plant.3⁵ At this highest
point of development the sexual differentiation into male and female organs and organisms
appears (pistil and anther, sexed plants, etc.).
For Hegel, however, these processes of differentiation are inadequate. Precisely Differentiation in plants is superficial.
because the differences between the various parts of the plant can be understood as
equivalent across a process of transformation, these differences are “a fleeting breath of
forms, which does not attain to qualitative and fundamental difference,” offering only that
which is in essence “intrinsically the same.”3⁶ In some cases, for example, plants that have
32 Hegel, 79.
33 Hegel, 72, 80.
3⁴ Hegel, 55-56. Fig. source: Kops, “Chordaria Flagelliformis.”
3⁵ Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 91-92.
3⁶ Hegel, 59.
36
FIGURE 1. Conferva
37
articulated along a root/leaf polarity will, if uprooted, inverted, and replanted, continue to
grow, transforming the subterranean organs into aerial ones and vice versa.3⁷ The
distinction between the sexes suffers the same superficiality. In most plants, the sexual
distinction operates not on the level of individual plants as wholes, but only on the level of
their parts: many plants are monoecious, bearing both male and female flowers, and many
others bear flowers that are each hermaphroditic.3⁸ Even when present, sexual difference
operates on the level of distinctions between organs that are transformations of one
another. As Goethe demonstrates, the male and female parts of the plants are both
modifications of the foliar organ.3⁹ In those cases where an individual plant is entirely
identified with a single sex, the difference nevertheless remains controvertible, for these
plants can sometimes change from one sex to the other in the course of their
development.⁴⁰ Almost all plants, furthermore, practice the alternation of generations,
alternating between sexual and asexual reproduction in successive generations.⁴1 Some
plant species, though sexually differentiated, are completely sexually sterile: King’s
Lomatia, for example, is a chromosomal triploid that reproduces only by cloning itself
when branches fall off the shrub, take root, and grow into new plants. Finally, sexual
difference does not constitute an essential difference in plant life; the plant can develop and
reproduce effectively without it. “The synthesis of the sexes,” Hegel concludes, “is a game
and a luxury, and is not essential to propagation.”⁴2 Thus, he declares that as far as
fundamental differentiation is concerned, “the plant is sexless.”⁴3 These problems reappear
at the level of the differences of form between species, where distinctions again appear
3⁷ Hegel, 59.
3⁸ Tudge,The Tree xiv.
3⁹ Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 §§67, 69, 71-72. Hegel quotes Goethe’s book extensively in the Encyclopedia.
⁴⁰ Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 93.
⁴1 Tudge,The Tree 69.
⁴2 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 95.
⁴3 Hegel, 94.
38
inessential. “The course of leaf-development which displays itself in one species, is also the
principal determinant in the different species themselves,” Hegel claims; “consequently, the
leaves of all the species taken together exhibit the complete development of a leaf.”⁴⁴ Thus,
the formal differences that occur in plant development appear to be mere externalities that
do not constitute essential differentiation.
A second reason that differentiation in plant development consists in merely Differentiation in plants is merely
external.
exterior relations, according to Hegel, is that this differentiation always occurs with respect
to and at the behest of an exterior element. The diremption of the plant into root and leaf,
for example, is directed toward earth and water on the one hand and light and air on the
other.⁴⁵ Hegel views light as particularly important in this respect. “It is primarily their
sap, and in general a vigorous individualization, that plants receive from light,” he says.
“Without light plants certainly become larger, but they remain tasteless, colourless, and
odourless.”⁴⁶ Distinctions of taste, color, and odor occur in response to the influence of
light, as does the formation of sap, the principle of self-differentiation in general.⁴⁷ Hegel
contends that the plant’s relation to these external influences is one of reflex or reaction;
the sensitivity of plants is in the end “merely a mechanical elasticity.” “Air and water are
perpetually acting upon the plant,” he explains; “the plant does not sip water.”⁴⁸ Since
differentiation in the plant consists in responses to stimulation from without, the plant
possesses its principle of differentiation as something external rather than essential to
itself. “Light draws the plant out of itself by constituting its external self, so that the plant
⁴⁴ Hegel, 60.
⁴⁵ Hegel, 83-84.
⁴⁶ Hegel, 48.
⁴⁷ In Goethe’s theory, the development ofmetamorphic variation out of the single organ (the leaf) is attributed
to the work of the sap as it goes through progressive stages of refinement. In this sense, by attributing sap to
the action of light on the plant, Hegel attributes the entire development of formal variation to its influence.
See for example Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 §§30, 41, 95, 113, and 120.
⁴⁸ Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 51-52.
39
strives towards it, and branches out into a plurality of individuals,” Hegel explains.⁴⁹ What
determines the plant as itself is not found within itself. For this reason, he describes plant
identity as a process of “self-specification in accordance with externality.”⁵⁰ Furthermore,
these external beings are not individuated things with which the plant could enter into the
determinate relations proper to things, but rather abstract, elemental beings: light, air,
water, earth, etc.⁵1 The plant, internally deficient with respect to differentiation, situates the
determination of its difference in an other which is likewise deficient. Thus, once again, the
distinctions that appear in the course of plant development do not constitute processes of
essential differentiation.
Finally, Hegel understands differentiation in plant life to be merely external because The parts of the plant are external to
one another.
the various parts of the plant stand in external relation to each other. “The plant not only
develops outwards generally,” he observes, “but the preservation of its self as an individual
is only accomplished through the perennial positing of a fresh individual.”⁵2 The particular
structure of plant living is such that the formation of each part is a recapitulation of the
whole. “The side branches growing from the nodes of a plant may be considered separate
small plants placed on the parent in the same way that the parent is attached to the earth,”
Goethe notes, and “a bud opening on the oldest tree may be considered an annual plant
even though it develops on a long-existent stem and may itself last for a longer time.”⁵3
Hegel likewise describes the bud as “a new plant on the old one,” observing that “each
branch and each twig constitutes a complete plant, which has its root in the plant as it does
in the soil,” and he holds this to be true of plant development in general:⁵⁴
⁴⁹ Hegel, 84.
⁵⁰ Hegel, 83.
⁵1 Hegel, 51.
⁵2 Hegel, 55.
⁵3 Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 §§90, 110.
⁵⁴ Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 83, 56.
40
Nodes are continually developing further through self-repulsion, for the plant
splits up within a thread into a multitude of germs, each of which is a whole
plant. It is in this way that members are produced, each of which is the whole.
It makes no great difference whether these nodulations keep together within a
single individual, or whether they fall apart into several individuals.⁵⁵
The various parts of the plant are distinguished, but their distinction is not the
differentiation of self within itself that constitutes for Hegel the necessary counterpart to
the unity of multiplicity. “The members of the plant are only particular in relation to one
another therefore, not in relation to the whole,” he explains. “These members are wholes in
their own right.”⁵⁶ Whereas the members of the animal body constitute relationships of
mutual dependence and specialization within a whole, the members of the vegetal body are
not properly differentiated “organs” of a unity, but instead particularities defined by
exterior, indifferent relations.⁵⁷
The inquiry into the nature of vegetal life therefore ultimately leads Hegel to claim The plant's failure to differentiate is
also a failure of unity.
that the plant fails to achieve self-differentiation. Apparent processes of differentiation
reveal themselves to be merely transmutational or external distinctions that do not
constitute the differentiation of self within itself that is proper to life as such. Furthermore,
if the plant does not exhibit true differentiation, then neither can it be characterized by
genuine unity. The plant “cannot yet sustain the true differentiation of its members,” Hegel
says; it is “perpetually falling apart into its particularity, and is therefore unable to hold on
to itself.”⁵⁸ Hegel’s analysis identifies each part with every other part through the process of
transformation, and in so doing he shows that “the part—bud, branch, and so on, is also
⁵⁵ Hegel, 83.
⁵⁶ Hegel, 46.
⁵⁷ Hegel, 9.
⁵⁸ Hegel, 13, 50.
41
the whole plant,” such that “one part can easily assume the function of the other.”⁵⁹ A
whole which can simply be identified with each of its parts, however, is not a proper whole.
Unity, conceived as the unity of multiplicity which gathers together diversity into a whole,
requires precisely the internal relation between members that the plant lacks. Without
integrated, dependent parts, the plant is an aggregate of independent members, a
conflation of part and whole, and does not constitute a true unity. Its apparent unity, like
its apparent differentiation, is revealed to be merely external.⁶⁰
Hegel characterizes plant living as an immanent production of form operating Plants are zoologically impotent.
according to a nodal logic, but he views this process as abstract because it fails to achieve
either unity or plurality in the proper sense. This “falling apart” into indifferent
individuality is the primary feature of plant life for his interpretation and the one which
secures the position of plants within the Hegelian system:
Strictly speaking therefore, a plant is an aggregate of a number of individuals
constituting a single individual, the parts of which however are completely
independent. It is this independence of its parts which constitutes the
impotence of the plant. The animal on the contrary, has viscera, dependent
members, the whole existence of which is dependent solely upon the unity of
the whole. […]The animal organism can also have members removed of
course, but the plant consists of nothing but these removable members.⁶1
For Hegel, the plant is characterized primarily by a kind of impotence: specifically, the
impotence to be an animal. According to the zoological movement of Hegel’s thinking, the
plant must appear—as he says on two separate occasions—as a “feeble and infantine life.”⁶2
⁵⁹ Hegel, 45.
⁶⁰ Hegel, 48.
⁶1 Hegel, 58.
⁶2 Hegel, 46, 95.
42
Life, for Hegel, operates within the circumscription of the dialectic of unity and plurality,
and vegetal life occupies a deficient role in the movement of this dialectic. But does not
this logic proceed by way of a conceptual inversion? Hegel’s analysis demonstrates an
inadequation between his concept of ideal unity and the actuality of plant living. Instead of
seizing this as an occasion for rethinking plant living in different conceptual terms,
however, he understands the disjunction as an inadequacy of plant living to the concept of
identity rooted in his interpretation of animal life, and he takes this inadequacy as the
constitutive idea of vegetal life. While this move forms an essential step in the inner drama
of idea and nature in Hegel’s philosophy of nature, it also entails a departure from the
phenomena of plant living itself and leaves the plant unthought on its own terms.
§3.2. Growth Itself
Although Hegel’s primary, zoological discourse passes over plants, I have suggested that Plant differentiation is a coherent
process.
Hegel’s text also carries another discourse, more attentive to the “still submerged” vital
principle of the plant. This second, inchoate account of plants indicates the possibility of
recuperating a sense for the specific character of plant life. Let us return to the four
processes of differentiation Hegel identifies in vegetal life: that into root and leaf, that into
wood and cortical tissues, that into organs, and that which is sexual. In the first two
processes, differentiation occurs by polarized diremption, viz., along the vertical or
gravitropic/heliotropic poles and the horizontal or interior/exterior poles. In the second
two processes, differentiation occurs by periodic expansion and contraction, viz., the
expansion of growth followed by contraction of nodal formation and the expansion of
sexual organs preceded by the contracted bud and followed by the contracted seed. In both
cases, differentiation operates according to a logic of mobility: a rhythm of departure and
return that articulates a process of formation. This process of formation is growth. In a
certain respect, growth has its own proper and delimited place in Hegel’s account, as we
43
saw above: growth is the first process of the plant, distinct from the other two processes of
nutrition and reproduction, and exhibits in miniature the problematic of ideal unity that
Hegel takes to be characteristic of plant life. This is because growth recapitulates parts
which are indifferent to one another and appear as wholes in their own right. In growth, he
summarizes, “the gathering of self-preservation into unity is not unification of the
individual with itself, but the production of a new plant-individual.”⁶3 The growth of the
plant is here seen as self-preservation which does not achieve the unification of
hierarchically differentiated parts which characterizes animal life, but rather collapses into
simple recapitulation of superficially related wholes.
Hegel therefore understands the difference between animal and plant growth is a Growth is equivocal in Hegel.
difference of degree: namely, the degree of deficiency plants exhibit in the particular
character of their (animal) growth. I suggest, however, that there is at the same time in
Hegel’s text an account of another kind of (vegetal) growth. “Growth” would therefore be
an equivocal, rather than univocal, term in Hegel’s philosophy of nature. The qualitative
difference between these two varieties of growth takes three forms.
First, insofar as plant growth ismultiplicative, it is not subordinate to the schema of Vegetal growth is multiplicative.
organs characteristic of animal life. In animals, growth preserves the dependent
relationships of organs and their specific organization within the whole throughout the
growth process. In this sense, “animal growth is merely a change in size.”⁶⁴ As it grows, an
animal such as a dog retains, for example, its quadruple arrangement of legs and double
arrangement of lungs in a relatively stable organization which increases in size throughout
the animal’s growth. By contrast, growth in plants means the continual production of new
organs (fig. 2).⁶⁵ To the extent that the new and additional parts formed in this process of
self-augmentation are independent, vegetal growth is reproductive in character. Neptune
⁶3 Hegel, 67.
⁶⁴ Hegel, 56.
⁶⁵ Hegel, 46. Fig. source: Parkinson, Acaena Anserinifolia, 1770.
44
Grass (Posidonia oceanica), an aquatic plant that forms extensive meadows in the
Mediterranean Sea, offers a striking example. As a flowering plant, it practices sexual
reproduction, but it also reproduces asexually through two systems of rhizomes, one
beneath and one above the sandy seafloor. Shoots of the plant will periodically break off,
spreading some distance from the parent and forming new plants genetically identical to
the parent. As parent and child continue to grow and spread, they are often brought into
close proximity again, and the two plants may grow together, fusing into one organism
again. One such colony of Neptune Grass has recently been estimated to be one hundred
thousand years or more in age.⁶⁶ Here the preservation of a self-identical and
hierarchically arranged organism is entirely absent; rather, the plant appears as nothing
other than a proliferative, multiplicative force. “The conservation of the plant,” Hegel says,
“is itself merely a self-multiplication.”⁶⁷ Thus, rather than appearing as a developmental
process governed by an organizational schema, vegetal growth appears as the process of the
plant itself.
Second, insofar as plant growth is indeterminate, it occurs without reference to a Vegetal growth is indeterminate.
point of maturity at which increase gives over to reproduction.⁶⁸ Whereas the animal
“stops [growing] at a definite point of size,” producing its own self-maintenance, “the plant
grows without ceasing.”⁶⁹ In the animal, growth works to develop the individual organism
to the point of maturity at which point the process of increase is halted, digestion takes the
role of conservation, and reproductive functions predominate. In the plant, however, the
immediate work of digestion is growth as nodulation, which is the coming into being of
⁶⁶ Arnaud-Haond et al., “Implications of Extreme Life Span in Clonal Organisms.”
⁶⁷ Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 95.
⁶⁸ For more on the biological distinction between determine and indeterminate growth, see Bertalanffy,
“Principles and Theory of Growth” 206-207. According to Bertalanffy, fish occupy a middle position
between plants on the one hand and mammals, insects, etc. on the other: while they are characterized
by a fixed arrangement of organs, they nevertheless continually increase in size throughout their lives.
⁶⁹ Hegel, Hegel’s Aesthetics 136-137.
45
FIGURE 2. Acaena anserinifolia
46
another individual.⁷⁰ Hegel summarizes the process of specifically vegetal growth that he
takes to be the nature of the plant: “The plant assimilates the other being into itself as it
grows, but as self-multiplication, this assimilation is also a self-emergence. It is not the
individual coming to itself, it is a multiplication of individuality.”⁷1 Whereas in the animal,
growth is subordinated to organic maturity as a principle of identity in relation to which
growth occurs, in the plant, by contrast, growth appears as an autotelic principle.
Third, insofar as plant growth is comprehensive, it is not merely one component Vegetal growth is comprehensive.
process among many but expresses the process of vegetal life as such. As Hegel explains,
vegetal growth occurs as a process of gathering-production that does not unite the
individual with itself but rather gives rise to another.⁷2 But how are we to understand this
other? It, too, must be understood as the same process of gathering-production. In this
sense, “growth” becomes the name not for one process of the plant but for the whole
movement of plant life. This is precisely the difficulty Hegel identifies early in his study of
plants: the coincidence of nutrition and reproduction in the single process of growth.⁷3
“Strictly speaking,” Hegel admits, reproduction “should be regarded to an equal extent, or
even predominantly a digestive process,” for “digestion and procreation are the same.”
Individuation, reproduction, digestion, and nodulation are all equivalent in the single
process of growth.⁷⁴ Thus, whereas growth in animals can be understood as one among
many dependent, partial phenomena organized in relation to the animal creature, growth
in plants seems to capture something more comprehensive concerning vegetality as such.
Take for instance the Dodder plant (Cuscuta), a parasitic plant related to the morning glory
(fig. 3).⁷⁵ Upon germination, it immediately begins searching for a host plant. Its root-like
⁷⁰ Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 96.
⁷1 Hegel, 47.
⁷2 Hegel, 67, quoted above.
⁷3 Hegel, 66.
⁷⁴ Hegel, 96.
⁷⁵ Fig. source: Bergen, Elements of Botany 33.
47
organ is not functional, and the food reserves stored in the seed will sustain it for only a
week or two. Orienting itself by olfactory cues, it locates a suitable host and grows toward
it, wraps itself around it, and puts out small, thorn-like haustoria that penetrate the host,
establishing physiological and biochemical connections with the host’s vascular tissues.
These parasitic connections provide the water and nutrients on which the Dodder depends
almost exclusively throughout its life. As it grows, new stems form similar connections
with other plants, and these connections have been shown to involve lateral gene transfer
between hosts. A single Dodder, which may maintain a contiguous network with hundreds
of hosts of entirely different species, can attain seven and a half kilometers of stem length.⁷⁶
In both itself and the host plants, the Dodder’s growth is a continual deformation or
transformation of identity in which growth, nutrition, and reproduction are conflated at
the genetic, molecular, metabolic, and morphological levels. “Implicitly,” Hegel suggests,
growth “is already the plant, the whole tree etc., in miniature.”⁷⁷ From this perspective, the
plant is nothing but a certain manner of growth activity. But this means that the properly
phytological measure of unity is not, contraHegel, the ideality of the animal organism and
the relation of organs which compose it. Rather, the foliar theory of plants already suggests
a different approach: the leaf is not the name for an organ per se or one process among
others; rather, “the foliage is the pure process of the plant” as such.⁷⁸
Whereas nutrition in the animal assimilates another body in order to preserve Vegetal identity consists in rhythmic
expansion without return.
itself, the plant assimilates the other being as part of its growth, such that “this assimilation
is also a self-emergence.”⁷⁹ Hegel is critical of this self-emergence because it results in “a
mutually indifferent and separated plurality”: unlike animals, “the substance from which
⁷⁶ Costea, “Cuscuta.”
⁷⁷ Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 68.
⁷⁸ Hegel, 75.
⁷⁹ Hegel, 47.
48
FIGURE 3. Dodder growing on Golden-Rod with haustoria (“A”).
49
they [plants] proceed is not a common essence.”⁸⁰ This is the case, however, because on
Hegel’s own terms the essence of the plant resides not in a substance from which growth
proceeds but in vegetal self-emergence itself. Unlike the animal, the plant “produces itself
in externality” and “grows entirely out of itself.”⁸1 It is the circulation of growth, the
increase and diminution which moves through plant, that forms the principle of vegetal
identity.⁸2 Although Hegel does not use the term, this is the characteristic of plant life that
the Greeks call ὕβρις: the tendency of plant life to compose itself in excess of its own limits.
Hegel describes the movement of this growth geometrically in terms of rhythmic, linear
extension. The point “constitutes the type of the whole plant,” which “puts out threads,
forms itself into a line” before checking itself and constituting a new node.⁸3 Note that
plant growth is not simply endless outward movement, for it also entails a certain
periodicity by which it checks itself and continues.⁸⁴ “You can call this magnetism if you
like,” he comments, “but it lacks polar opposition.”⁸⁵ That is, linear extension is rhythmic
but asymmetrical, casting itself out of itself with arrest but without return.
“It is because the plant is alive,” Hegel ventures, “that this tremulation of vitality
within itself, this restlessness of time, is one of its features.”⁸⁶ This is the closest the
philosopher comes to thinking vegetal life on its own terms. Growth is cast in terms of the
living of a plant-life and belongs fundamentally to this life. Growth is a “tremulation,” a
manner of movement quamovement, and it again belongs to life, vitality. This is why
growth is understood temporally, as a mode “of time.” Finally, it is a restlessness: an
⁸⁰ Hegel, 47.
⁸1 Hegel, 47.
⁸2 Hegel, 77.
⁸3 Hegel, 55.
⁸⁴ Hegel, 91.
⁸⁵ Hegel, 55.
⁸⁶ Hegel, 76.
50
indeterminate movement, defined by its insatiate or self-surpassing tendency toward
perpetuation of movement.
§3.3. Conclusion
The discourse on growth remains a marginal discourse within Hegel’s Encyclopedia, The plant exists in excess to itself.
appearing only in scattered passages. In its primary aims, Hegel’s philosophy of nature
cannot assimilate a form of life which diverges from animal life and produces itself in
externality. At times, these two congeal in one and the same passage:
The process of self-preservation is the winning of self, self-satisfaction, the
attainment of sentience. The plant’s self is external to it however, so that it
tends rather to be drawn out of itself as it strives towards it. Consequently, its
return into itself is a perpetual egression, and vice versa. The plant multiplies
itself in order to preserve itself.⁸⁷
Here the categories of thought are determined by the dominant thrust of the Hegelian
project: the question concerns a self which is won in a process of self-preservation and
return. Yet these terms are badly suited to the movements of plant life, for the striving of
the plant is always beyond itself. If we were to insist—as Hegel here does—on interpreting
this as a striving for a “self,” we would have to say that its self is external to itself, so that its
striving is not really an attempt to win itself at all, but rather appears as a tendency to be
drawn out of itself. Since there is nothing other than the plant responsible for this “being
drawn,” we must say that the plant is this tendency: the being of the plant is growth as
“perpetual egression.” For Hegel, this must be systematized as a deficiency. “If the plant
broke off its relation to that external to it,” he speculates, “it would exist as a subjective
being, and so establish its self-relatedness.”⁸⁸ The import of his analysis, however, is rather
⁸⁷ Hegel, 48.
⁸⁸ Hegel, 50.
51
that the plant appears as a kind of life for which the relation to the external is its
self-relatedness, because the “self ” in question is nothing but a particular activity of
composition in excess of itself. When Hegel observes that the plant “develops outwards
generally,” in distinction from the animal, and that its individuality is accomplished
“through the perennial positing of a fresh individual,” we can hear in these interpretations
not a dismissal of the plant on the basis of a zoological measure but rather a fidelity to the
movement of growth in plants.
The problem for such a way of thinking is to establish a limit from which to Life requires a limit; for Hegel, this is
the animal.
understand the movement of life in the plant. If plants are understood in terms of growth,
then the life of plants appears as a kind of “bad infinity,” endless proliferation without
recuperation.⁸⁹ In its “continual multiplication of itself,” the plant lacks the “ideal unity”
which would give it a properly determinate existence.⁹⁰ Hegel therefore situates the
delimitation of plant life in the animal, which then gives shape to his zoological discourse
on plants: the animal is the principle of the finitude of the plant.
At the same time, Hegel also offers an indication, however slight, of another Hegel hints at an internal limit.
possibility when he mentions the “magnetism” or “tremulation” that gives to the linear
extension of the plant an internal rhythm and proportion. As I explain in the following
chapter, Goethe—who, because he is a Spinozist, has a quite different relation to the
problem of the limit—is able to more adequately develop this concept of an internal
rhythm of life.
⁸⁹ Consider Jeffrey T. Nealon’s passing comment concerning the role of plants in Hegel’s thinking: “growth
yes, emergence yes, but a kind of undifferentiated and uncontrolled growth that is finally anathema to the
progress of spirit or law” (Nealon, Plant Theory 68).
⁹⁰ Hegel, Hegel’s Aesthetics 137. One might wonder about the interpretation of unity in question. Hegel does
not, for example, reproach a flock of birds for having only “parts” rather than “members” and therefore
failing to achieve “ideal unity,” for he rightly recognizes that the locus of unity is to be found elsewhere. If
the essence of the plant is growth, then the locus of unity should be sought there, not among the organic
detritus. This is precisely what Goethe does.
52
Hegel’s botany is significant, then, for two reasons. First, it reveals an internal divergence in
Hegel’s thought concerning the duplicity of growth, which must be zoological in character
by virtue of its place in the Hegelian system but becomes vegetal in character by virtue of
Hegel’s fidelity to the phenomenon of plants. This duplicity, in turn, reveals an
equivocation in the crucial concept of life. In working out the logical concept of life that
organizes the Encyclopedia (including the philosophy of nature), Hegel must depend upon
a vegetal concept of life that does not answer to the reciprocal relation of whole and
members that defines his concept of logical life. For this reason, vegetal life also requires an
alternative theory of identity and difference than that which predominates in his
philosophy (as I explain above). At the same time, it is precisely because plant life is not
reducible to animal life that plants occupy their position in Hegel’s thinking. In order to
move from physics to zoology, the Encyclopedia requires a kind of life that is essentially
non-zoological. Plants are the indispensible term that bridges the logic-physics series with
the animal-spirit series in its very inability to be reduced to either series. Because of the
centrality of these concepts—growth, life, identity, difference—to Hegel’s philosophical
project, their necessary vegetal deformation indicates the coordinates of a far-reaching
“other side” of Hegelian philosophy that is immanent to its development.⁹1
Second, Hegel’s botany is significant insofar as it reveals something essential
concerning plants. To Hegel’s complaint that the confusion of growth, nutrition, and
reproduction constitutes a difficulty for any study of vegetal life, we agree: it is precisely
this coincidence, contra animal existence, that first establishes life in plants as a site of its
own challenging study. Although he is unable to sustain such a study, Hegel’s text brings to
light the importance of growth as the essence of plant life. In contrast to the animal, for
which growth is a partial and dependent process, the plant exhibits a growth process that is
comprehensive in scope, encompassing all the distinctive activities of vegetal existence.
⁹1 Rereading the whole Hegelian corpus from this perspective would be an exciting venture, but would fall far
beyond the scope of this essay.
53
From one perspective, the indeterminate growth of plants appears monstrous: it pours
forth without limit. In this respect, it differs from the animal, for which “maturity”
designates the determination of “tame” growth which does not relate to external conditions
and is subordinate to the organism understood as an integrated whole. After more careful
consideration, however, it becomes evident that growth in plants is not simply infinite
extension; rather, it possesses an internal rhythm or proportionality.
In this sense, the difficulty of thinking through plant life appears in Hegel’s text as a
series of tensions: the tension between zoological and phytological discourse, the tension
between preservation and productivity, and the tension between extension and arrest.
Ultimately, the questions which Hegel raises and develops—almost in spite of
himself—concern the fact that “the plant transcends itself by constant nodulation.”⁹2 The
next chapter turns to Goethe’s attempt to develop a more precise account of this power of
self-transcendence in plants.⁹3
⁹2 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 92, emphasis added.
⁹3 Fig. 4: Parkinson, Lepidium Bidentatum, 1769; fig. 5: Parkinson,Macrocystis Pyriferus, 1769.
54
FIGURE 4. Lepidium bidentatum
55
FIGURE 5. Macrocystis pyriferus
56
CHAPTER IV
INTENSIFICATION AS LIMIT
But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree
I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It. The power of
exclusiveness has seized me. This does not require me to forego any of the
modes of contemplation. There is nothing that I must not see in order to see,
and there is no knowledge that I must forget. Rather is everything, picture and
movement, species and instance, law and number included and inseparably
fused. Whatever belongs to the tree is included: its form and its mechanics, its
colors and its chemistry, its conversation with the elements and its conversation
with the stars—all this in its entirety. The tree is no impression, no play of my
imagination, no aspect of a mood; it confronts me bodily and has to deal with
me as I must deal with it—only differently. One should not try to dilute the
meaning of the relation: relation is reciprocity. Does the tree then have
consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking
that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the
indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the
tree itself.
Martin Buber
There are few works in the history of philosophy as attuned to the specificity of plant life as
Goethe’s botanical studies, particularly the Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of
Plants.1 According to Hegel, this text “marks the beginning of a rational conception of the
nature of the plant, for it has forced attention away from from a concern with mere details,
to a recognition of the unity of a plant-life.”2 There is both an element of truth and one of
falsehood in this praise: Goethe’s approach is indeed unique by virtue of its attempt to
develop a rational conception of “a plant-life,” but this entails an appreciation—rather than
depreciation—of detail. When Hegel dismisses the play of differences between the parts of
1 Epigraph source: Buber, I andThou 58-59.
2 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 1970 54.
57
the plant as “merely a superficial metamorphosis,” he has interpreted “metamorphosis” in
radically non-Goethean terms.3 Hegel summarizes theMetamorphosis:
Goethe sets out to show however, that in all these different parts of the plant
there is a simple basic life which is self-contained and enduring, and that all its
forms are nothing more than the exterior transformations of the identity of
one and the same primary essence.⁴
It would be more in keeping with a Goethean spirit to say that the forms of the plant are
“metamorphoses,” rather than exterior transformations of identity. For the
poet-philosopher, the fundamental process of metamorphosis is the unity of plant-life,
which manifests itself only in and through the details of its form and activity. In what
Hegel passes over as a “simple phenomenon of contraction and dilation,” Goethe finds the
essential rhythm at the heart of metamorphosis.⁵ What Hegel dismisses as “a fleeting
breath of forms, which does not attain to qualitative and fundamental difference, but is
merely a metamorphosis of an ideal nature within the material being of the plant”
constitutes for Goethe the entire problematic of plant life.⁶ Nevertheless, Hegel
understands the fundamental impetus of Goethe’s thought: what Goethe aims for—and
what Hegel does not—is the understanding that there is a “simple basic life,” proper to the
plant, which is found in its different parts, apart from any integration into a whole.
Like Hegel, Goethe observes that the distinction between growth and reproduction
is unstable in the plant. The fact that modifying one and the same condition (such as the
frequency of watering) can induce growth at one time and reproduction at another shows
that the force expressed in either case is the same.⁷ For Goethe, however, this instability
3 Hegel, 45.
⁴ Hegel, 58-59.
⁵ Hegel, 53.
⁶ Hegel, 59.
⁷ Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 §131. Sections refer to the numbered paragraphs of the German text.
58
becomes the starting point for an inquiry into the specificity of vegetal life. After careful
observation, he contends that the instability characterizes other distinctions regarding
plant appearances. “Anyone who has paid even a little attention to plant growth,” he
observes, “will readily see that certain external parts of the plant undergo frequent change
and take on the shape of the adjacent parts—sometimes fully, sometimes more, and
sometimes less.”⁸ A double flower is sometimes formed out of a single flower, for example,
when petals develop in the place of stamens and anthers.⁹ For Goethe’s thinking, this
means that there is an inner relationship between the various vital forms taken by the plant
by virtue of which each can be seen as modalities of the other. Thus, in the same way that
growth and reproduction can be viewed as modifications of one another, the external parts
of the plant—leaves, petals, seeds, etc.—can be likewise viewed as the various
manifestations of a basic organ. “The different plant parts with their apparent variety of
form are nonetheless identical in their inner essence,” he summarizes.1⁰
Goethe’s task, then, is to detail the nature of plant life such that its various forms
can be understood as transformations of a common structure. He names the process
whereby the various parts of the plant develop out of one another, producing one part
through another and a variety of forms through the modification of a single organ, “the
metamorphosis of plants” and proposes to undertake a study of the laws of that
metamorphosis.11 Whereas for Hegel “metamorphosis” named only the failure of the
various parts of the plant to differentiate themselves in a hierarchy, it names for Goethe the
entire process of plant growth/reproduction.
In this chapter, I first discuss Goethe’s Spinozist approach to understanding living
things, the importance he places on plants, and his interpretation of vegetal life in terms of
⁸ Goethe, §1.
⁹ Goethe, §2.
1⁰ Goethe, §60.
11 Goethe, §§4-4.
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a “primordial plant process” or Urpflanze. The second section explains Goethe’s emphasis
on observation and understanding plants as phenomena. I then walk through his synopsis
of the annual plant, which exhibits the metamorphic character of the plant. The fourth
section develops the concept of metamorphic growth that Goethe takes to be the essence of
plant life, highlighting both its dynamic striving (“intensification”) and its inner limit or
boundary (“polarity”). I conclude by discussing three limitations of Goethe’s engagement
with plant life: his fruitful but abortive conception of vegetal temporality, his disregard for
the issue of nutrition, and his overemphasis on unity. These limitation prepare for the
discussion of Nietzsche’s philosophy in Chapter V.
§4.1. Goethe’s Spinozism
Goethe’s work is a direct response to Linnæus, the father of modern taxonomy, and his Goethe rejects taxonomy.
debt to the great naturalist is evident: in addition to dealing explicitly with Linnæus’
theories, theMetamorphosis follows precisely the typographical organization into one
hundred twenty-three numbered sections employed by the Swedish botanist. In Linnæus’
taxonomic method, the plant is defined and identified according to a logic of attribute and
variation. The plant is understood as a collection of attributes (e.g., the standard number of
petals, the shape of the leaves, etc.) and the methodological challenge is to ascertain which
attributes are taxonomically relevant to the constitution of the system of classification. The
organs of the plant, then, are its identical determinates, and each species constitutes a fixed
class within the system.12 In the case of Linnæus’ system, the quantification of reproductive
organs is particularly definitive. Although Goethe was initially enamored with Linnæus
12 It should be noted, however, that contrary to his early proclamation, “unitas in omni specie ordinem ducit”
(“the invariability of species is the condition for order”), Linnæus’ work on hybridization later brought him
to view species as unfixed.
60
(“carrying the Swedish botanist’s text with him at all times like a Bible”13), the German
philosopher came to view this system of classification as completely arbitrary in nature.
“I confess,” Goethe reflects, “that next to Shakespeare and Spinoza it was Linnæus Goethe is inspired by Spinoza's scientia
intuitiva.
who had the greatest effect on me precisely because he provoked my disagreement.”1⁴ More
important than his reaction against Linnæus, then, is his fascination with Spinoza’s Ethics,
which he encounters just as he is beginning his studies of the life of plants, “in whose
profound and detailed study no one encourages us as much as Spinoza.”1⁵ In a letter
written just before his departure for Italy, Goethe emphasizes what he found captivating
about Spinoza’s philosophy:
I place stock in seeing, and when Spinoza says of scientia intuitiva: Hoc
cognoscendi genus procedit ab adaequata idea essentiae formalis quorundam
Dei attributorum ad adaequatam cognitionem essentiae rerum, those few words
give me the courage to devote my whole life to the contemplation of things.1⁶
Goethe’s attraction to Spinozist philosophy is based on the value the German places on
“seeing” and the convinction that it is possible to “see” the essence of things.1⁷ For Spinoza,
there are three kinds of knowledge. The first kind comes from sense perception and
concerns the ways bodies make impressions upon us. The second kind is a rational
knowledge that moves by deduction and derivation. For example, learning about the three
types of knowledge by following the course of definitions, axioms, and propositions laid
out in Spinoza’s Ethics would itself be an example of the second type of knowledge. The
13 Amrine, “Goethean Intuitions,” 2011 37.
1⁴ Quoted in Förster, The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy, 2012 92. I do not pursue the question of
Shakespeare’s influence.
1⁵ Quoted in Förster, 93-94.
1⁶ “This kind of cognition proceeds from the adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God
to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things” (Spinoza, Complete Works: Ethics, II, Pr.40, Sch.2).
Quoted in Förster,The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy, 2012 94. Emphasis original.
1⁷ For the development of this point, see page 66 and following, below.
61
third type of knowledge, however, is an intuitive, rational knowledge that proceeds
immediately from essence to properties. Spinoza gives the mathematical example of
someone who has not merely memorized tables of proportions (the first kind of
knowledge) or followed Euclid’s demonstrations concerning the laws of mean proportion
(the second kind of knowledge) but rather when given a series of numbers such as “2, 3; 4,
x” immediately grasps that the number “6” completes the proportion.1⁸
While Spinoza largely confines himself to the realm of mathematics and geometry, Plants are the key to developing a
scientia intuitiva of nature.
Goethe is fascinated with the idea of a scientia intuitiva of the natural world.1⁹ Spinoza’s
three types of knowledge are not strictly separate orders; rather, each finds its genesis in the
previous kind.2⁰ Ultimately, for Spinoza, scientia intuitivamust begin in the first kind of
knowledge—in the impression that things make upon one’s senses and in the way one
cultivates a receptivity to those impressions. This is the question which fascinates Goethe:
granting that the goal of the scientia intuitiva is to proceed immediately from essence to
property, how might one come to grasp the essence of a thing to begin with, particularly in
the case of living things?21 It is in response to this question that he turns to plants: here,
perhaps, in what appears as the simplest and easiest to study of living things, it may be
possible to develop a genuinely scientific knowledge of nature.
Goethe’s way of thinking is also genetic in a second sense, for the subject matter of The plant is a generative process.
his science is the generation of the plant. The scientia intuitiva is concerned with the
coming-to-be of the organism, with its growth. Here, too, Goethe is inspired directly by
1⁸ One is reminded of many stories of mathematical geniuses who were known for such immediate
understanding. G.H. Hardy tells of visiting the sick Ramanujan in the hospital and remarking that the
number of the taxicab—1729—seemed “rather a dull number.” Ramanujan is said to have replied that it is
a very interesting number, for it is the smallest expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.
See Hardy, AMathematician’s Apology 37.
1⁹ Although Spinoza does not venture to address this question, he nevertheless declares it “a matter of little
importance when it is a question of figures,” but “a matter of prime importance when it is a question of
physical and real beings.” Spinoza, Complete Works 26 (TIE par. 95).
2⁰ I develop this point in the context of aesthetics in Kerr, “Spinoza,” 2020.
21 See Amrine, “Goethean Intuitions,” 2011 esp. 38.
62
Spinoza, who insists that a definition must explain the generative essence of things, rather
than their properties only. To define a circle as a figure whose points are equidistant from
the center is to merely traffic in properties; instead, the circle must be defined genetically,
as the figure described by a line segment with one fixed and one mobile endpoint.22 But
“genetic” here indicates an ontological, rather than chronological, priority. The second
definition of a circle is not superior because it is how a geometer happened to produce this
or that circle; rather, it is superior because it grasps and explains the dynamic essence of
the circle (from which its properties can then be explicated). In the case of the organism,
the task is to grasp the organism as natura naturans (“nature naturing”) rather than natura
naturata (“nature natured”), and it is in this sense that Goethe’s method emphasizes
creation and progression. He aims to understand the dynamic essence of things that can be
observed in the steps and stages of its development. It is from this perspective that “the
different plant parts with their apparent variety of forms are nonetheless identical in their
inner essence.”23
The task of Goethe’s project is therefore not merely to discern features common to One must perceive not external
features but transitional movements.
various plant organs. Rather, it involves the more subtle and radical attempt to perceive the
mobile transitions between the forms, the process of “repeating, recreating, in infinite
variety” through which “nature produces one part through another, creating a great variety
of forms.”2⁴ It is this process, Goethe stresses, that he means by the term, “the
metamorphosis of plants.”2⁵ The botanical exemplars on which he relies are therefore
“transitional forms” precisely in the sense that they are privileged moments in which the
transitions take on form, manifesting themselves rather than remaining hidden.2⁶ The idea
22 Spinoza, Complete Works 25-26.
23 Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 §60.
2⁴ Goethe, 2, §4.
2⁵ Goethe, §4 (emphasis original).
2⁶ Goethe, §58.
63
of “metamorphosis,” in other words, does not refer to the fact that various plant organs
resemble one another. Rather, it signifies the transitional essence of the plant itself:
[My approach] forces me to consider all natural phenomena in a certain
developmental sequence and attentively to follow the transitions forwards and
backwards. For only in this way do I finally arrive at the living view of the
whole from which a concept is formed that soon will merge with the idea
along an ascending line.”2⁷
Beginning with (a) a sequence of forms, Goethe turns his attention to (b) the relation
between these forms, which he interprets developmentally as part of a coherent impulse.
This allows him to fix his attention on (c) the transitions between the forms and to generate
(d) a lebendige Übersicht (“living view of the whole”) from which will emerge (e) a concept.
This lebendige Übersicht is another name for the Urpflanze: not the Linnæan external
representation of fixed features but a view of the thing which grasps it as a living whole.
Only by coming to apprehend this transitional movement in which plant life consists,
Goethe believes, could we achieve a knowledge of the essence on the basis of which a
scientia intuitiva would be possible.
§4.2. Delicate Empiricism
Goethe’s relentless search for the archetypal origin therefore paradoxically implies a The transitional essence of the plant is
the leaf.
Spinozist mode of thinking, which rationally intuits the generative essence of the plant on
the basis of a sensual education whose beginnings are always shrouded in the singular
circumstances of perceptive experience.2⁸ Fittingly, then, it is through the observations he
undertakes during his Italian journey (1786-1788)—just following his discovery of
2⁷ From “Wolkengestalt nach Howard,” quoted in Förster, The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy, 2012 276
(emphasis original).
2⁸ For a related analysis of the relation between Hegel and Spinoza on the question of beginnings, see
Macherey, Hegel or Spinoza 13-32.
64
Spinoza’s Ethics—that he develops the idea of an Urpflanze, the primordial ancestor of all
plants.2⁹ In 1786, he recounts that wandering amidst unfamiliar vegetation has dislodged
his absorption with particular plants and given him the idea that “perhaps all plant forms
can be derived from one plant.”3⁰ Whereas the Linnæan classification schema dealt with
external characteristics, Goethe’s incipient conception of plant life aims to move from the
facts of natura naturata to the generative unity of natura naturans. In April 1787, he insists
that his Urpflanze should be responsible not only for the genesis of the diversity of plant
life but also for the genesis of recognition. “How else would I recognize this or that form as
being a plant,” he asks, “if they were not all constructed according to one model?”31 The
Urpflanze is therefore not only a biological ancestor of all existing plants but a principle of
knowledge concerning the same: the philogenetic essence of plant life, a living vegetal
ἀρχή (originary principle). By May 1787, however, Goethe has moved away from thinking
of the Urpflanze as an actual plant. “The primordial plant is turning out to be the most
marvelous creation in the world,” he muses, “and nature itself will envy me because of it.”32
Years later, in a letter to von Esenbeck, Goethe reflects that he “searched for the Urpflanze,
unconscious of the fact that I was looking for the idea, the concept through which we can
form a plant for ourselves.”33 When Goethe reinterprets the Urpflanze as an idea, he
remains concerned with primordiality, “but less with a plant than a process,” as Mitchell
explains. “He no longer seeks an Urpflanze, but an Urprozesse.”3⁴ It is during this time that
Goethe shifts toward the foliar theory that characterizes hisMetamorphosis of Plants and
which inspires Hegel’s Encyclopedia. “It had become apparent to me,” Goethe reflects
2⁹ On this point, I am indebted to Andrew Mitchell’s excellent reconstruction of the trajectory of Goethe’s
thinking between 1786 and 1789. See Mitchell, “The Botany of Romanticism” 316-318.
3⁰ Goethe, Italian Journey, 1989 53-54.
31 Goethe, 214.
32 Goethe, 256.
33 Quoted in Förster, “Goethe’s Spinozism,” 2012 89.
3⁴ Mitchell, “The Botany of Romanticism” 317 (sic erat scriptum).
65
concerning this transition, “that in the plant organ we ordinarily call the leaf a true Proteus
is concealed, who can hide and reveal himself in all formations. From top to bottom, a
plant is all leaf.”3⁵ The following year, Goethe completes and publishes theMetamorphosis.
In order to approach vegetal life in terms of an Urpflanze process, Goethe suggests Theories emerge from phenomena
through disciplined observation.
a philosophical method that stresses careful, continuous observation of the various stages
of metamorphic development coupled with the practice of uniting those observations in
the imagination. Fully convinced that disciplined observation is the primary mode of
scientific inquiry, he often criticizes the typical methods of science for speculating beyond
the phenomena.3⁶ This discipline, he believes, must be acquired through practice. During
his Italian journeys, Goethe develops a technique to refine his vision in stages. The
philosopher begins by sketching plants as he observes them. Once he is satisfied with the
accuracy of his vision, he begins sketching plants after having observed them (for example,
by turning away), then comparing his sketches to the plants. Gradually, the interval of time
can be lengthened (by observing a plant one morning, for example, then sketching from
memory the next morning). By comparing his sketches to the specimen at each stage of the
process, he is able to slowly develop an ability to maintain a precise mental image of the
phenomenon. Through this ability, it becomes possible to “observe” the various stages of
plant development at the same time.3⁷ Then, beginning with a series of phenomena—a
series of stem leaves that display different stages of metamorphic development, for
example—he attends to the specificity of the phenomena and their proximate relations.
The movement of seeing shifts both backwards and forwards between them meticulously,
gradually coming to grasp the patterns and structures displayed in common. Finally,
perception is able to move beyond the commonalities to the transitions between them:
3⁵ Goethe, Italian Journey, 1989 299.
3⁶ Brady, “The Idea in Nature” 84.
3⁷ Goethe’s practice is therefore related to the modern technology of time-lapse photography.
66
If I look at the created object, inquire into its creation, and follow this process
back as far as I can, I will find a series of steps. Since these are not actually
seen together before me, I must visualize them in my memory so that they
form a certain ideal whole. At first I will tend to think in terms of steps, but
nature leaves no gaps, and thus, in the end, I will have to see this progression
of uninterrupted activity as a whole. I can do so by dissolving the particular
without destroying the impression itself.3⁸
In this way, Goethe believes it possible to come slowly to the knowledge of an “ideal
whole,” the point of convergence of the series of phenomena which is not identical with
any particular member of the series. This is the archetypical, genetic process of the plant:
the Urpflanze, or more generally the Urphänomen.
Goethe’s “delicate empiricism” is therefore a response to the specific nature of living This method responds to the essence
of life in general and plants in
creatures and their paradigmatic case, plants. It is because nature is essentially natura particular.
naturans that the philosopher must cultivate the ability to observe the Urphänomen in and
through the procession of momentary forms. The aim of Goethe’s procedure is not to
hypothesize a reality beyond what is observed, but to hone the practice of attentive
observation until he is able to grasp the essential structures of living things. “Seek nothing
behind the phenomena,” he admonishes: “they are themselves the theory.”3⁹ The
theory—understood as the conceptual “view” of the subject matter—differs from the
phenomenon only insofar as it gathers together the diverse moments of phenomenal
appearance and grasps the life which shows itself throughout.
This is why the element of strict empirical observation is so crucial for Goethe. In
fact, he used his influence to add a stipulation to the contract for the director of the
Botanical Garden of Jena that required plants to be grown not where the environmental
3⁸ Goethe, Scientific Studies, 1988 75. See also Amrine, “Metamorphosis of the Scientist,” 1998 37.
3⁹ Quoted in Hensel, “Goethe, Science, and Sensory Experience” 75.
67
conditions are most suitable for them but instead where they must stand in order to
systematically manifest inner relationship between the metamorphic variations of their
organs.⁴⁰ The lebendige Übersicht is really a seeing; theUrphänomen is really a phenomenon.
When Goethe once explained his idea to Schiller, the latter objected: “that is not an
observation from experience; that is an idea.” “Then I may rejoice,” Goethe retorted, “that I
have ideas without knowing it, and can see them with my own eyes.”⁴1 TheMetamorphosis
of Plants is designed as a handbook for so learning to see. By highlighting examples in
which the steps between forms almost disappear and become fluid, Goethe endeavors to
educate our vision to see transition.⁴2 The fruits of this approach are best exhibited by
means of a digression through Goethe’s synopsis of the annual plant, which highlights the
metamorphic relationship between the plants’s various parts and stages of growth.
§4.3. Synopsis of the Plant
Goethe begins his account of the plant with the embryological leaf structure, the cotyledon Cotyledons
(see fig. 6).⁴3 In some plants, these appear largely unformed and having little resemblance
to a leaf, while in other plants they are more obviously leaf-like in shape. As they develop,
they take on clear foliar characteristics and become the first stem leaves.⁴⁴ The leaf stalk, Stem leaves
too, can be viewed as itself a leaf form, and in some plants (such as those within the orange
family) explicitly take the appearance of a small leaf.⁴⁵ The stem leaves undergo a process
of differentiation, articulating growth along the ribs. The date palm, for example, begins
with a simple leaf that is then divided along the ribs to form a complex leaf composed of
⁴⁰ I am grateful to Förster,The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy, 2012 97 for this anecdote.
⁴1 This anecdote is recounted in Brady, “The Idea in Nature” 96.
⁴2 See the helpful description in Amrine, “Goethean Intuitions,” 2011 47.
⁴3 Fig. source: Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 7 (labels added).
⁴⁴ Goethe, §§12-14.
⁴⁵ Goethe, §§21-22.
68
many branches. In certain semi-aquatic plants, such as the water buttercup, the underwater
leaves consist almost entirely of threadlike ribs, whereas the aerial leaves form a single,
connected surface, and those leaves which develop near the surface of the water display a
range of characteristics between those extremes.⁴⁶ Stem leaves continue to develop until
they reach a point of maximal size and form, at which point the transition to flowering Flowers
begins. As we approach the flower, “nature does not create a new organ,” Goethe says; “it
merely gathers and modifies the organs we are already familiar with.”⁴⁷ In some plants this
process occurs suddenly, but in those plants in which it occurs more slowly the leaves
display a kind of regression, growing smaller and losing external divisions.⁴⁸ The stem,
often extending itself rapidly above the last leaf node, grows a cluster of leaves. Instead of
alternating, as is the typical case with stem leaves, this cluster gathers in a whorl around the
stem (as do the cotyledons) and forms the calyx. In certain cases, these leaves are called Calyxes
folia floralia (flower leaves). In other cases, these transitional forms between leaf and petal
are known as bracts, which may closely resemble stem leaves (e.g., in the hay rattle) or look
much more like colorful petals (e.g., in the various bougainvillea).⁴⁹ Some calyxes consist
of a whorl of leaves that grow together, fused into a single structure known as a single-leaf
calyx; the sunflower, marigold, and many other composite flowers offer examples.
The formation of the corolla follows that of the calyx, which in many cases had Corollas
introduced at its tip, edge, or other extremity the displays of color that are characteristic of
most flowers. In the corolla, that process is given free rein. Whereas the sepals of the calyx
involved a diminution of the leaf, the petals are usually much larger. Again, Goethe notes
many transitional forms. The carnation and calliopsis, for example, often develop a double
calyx, the exterior being green and the interior displaying the colors and structures of the
⁴⁶ Goethe, §§20, 25.
⁴⁷ Goethe, §§46-38.
⁴⁸ Goethe, §§28-29.
⁴⁹ Goethe, §§41-32, 34.
69
FIGURE 6. Annual Plant
70
true petals. In some plants, the transition is even more gradual, with stem leaves prior to
the calyx beginning to shift colors toward the eventual flower tones. In other cases, the
calyx is skipped entirely and stem leaves turn directly into petals. Tulips exhibit this
phenomenon, and sometimes display leaves that are divided in two: half of the organ is
green and is attached to the stem like a stem leaf, and half is colorful and forms part of the
corolla.⁵⁰ Stamens are formed from petals in a similar way. The canna lily’s petal, for Stamens
example, merely contracts at its edge and an anther appears, the petal standing in for the
more typical filament. The metamorphic relation between petals and stamens is
particularly striking in doubled flowers, such as those of the rose and poppy.⁵1 In other
plants, nectaries provide an intermediate step between the two (although extrafloral Nectaries
nectaries sometimes appear, as well). These can closely resemble stamens (as in the genus
Parnassia) or they can be quite similar to petals (as they are in the genus Pentapetes, where
they alternate with stamens in a whorl, and in the various plants in which they form the
petals of a secondary corolla). In some flowers, such as the columbine, nectaries form as
depressions in the petals themselves. In papilionaceous flowers, such as the sweet pea, the
petals gradually contract into nectaries and display the transitional forms.⁵2 Goethe Pistils
explains the female parts of the flower in many of the same ways and considers their
metamorphosis closely related to that of the stamens. In the iris, the stigma takes the form
of a flower leaf, and in the pitcher plant and crocus, it is composed of several leaves. The
Persian buttercup gives an impressive example: in a movement of retrogressive
metamorphosis, the styles and stigma change back into true petals to form a double
flower.⁵3
⁵⁰ Goethe, §§40-44.
⁵1 Goethe, §§46-48.
⁵2 Goethe, §§51, 54-56, 58.
⁵3 Goethe, §§67, 69, 71-72.
71
Finally, Goethe considers fruits and seeds. Here, again, he endeavors to Fruits and seeds
demonstrate through transitional forms the metamorphic relationships between the
various parts, in this case the “fruitfulness hidden in a leaf.”⁵⁴ Thus in the European linden,
small stalks will emerge from the midrib of stem leaves and form flowers and fruit, and in
the butcher’s broom, the flower and fruit form directly at the center of the leaf. Ferns are
perhaps most exemplary of the fruitfulness of stem leaves, each leaf developing spores in
huge quantities.⁵⁵ That fruit structures can themselves be viewed as modified leaves is
exhibited clearly in pods (single, folded leaves with edges grown together); husks and
compound seed vessels show similar patterns. Conversely, in the flowers called pinks, fruit
capsules are often retrogressively changed back into leaves and sometimes even
transformed into true calyxes.⁵⁶ The seed transforms leaves into its outer covering, as is
particularly visible in the winged seeds (such as the maple, elm, ash, etc.), and in less
differentiated plants, the seed is indistinguishable from the nodal eyes from which all leaf
structures emerge. In most cases, leaves eventually lose their recognizable form as they
metamorphose to conform to the seed’s shape. With this final transition, Goethe has led us
to the inner leaf structure of the cotyledon with which we began.⁵⁷
Through this analysis, Goethe details the successive sequences of metamorphic
transformation that the plant undergoes in its process of development. He identifies a
continuous movement from cotyledon through stem leaf and sepal to petal and beyond in
such a way that it is impossible to say where one organ ends and another begins. On this
basis, he endeavors to demonstrate that the variety of plant forms emerge through the
modification of the single organ.
⁵⁴ Goethe, §76.
⁵⁵ Goethe, §§76-77.
⁵⁶ Goethe, §§78, 75.
⁵⁷ Goethe, §§82-83, 92.
72
By refusing to view the distinct articulation of various organs as fundamental to
plant life and instead insisting upon the underlying unity of their apparent diversity,
Goethe’s foliar theory of plants undermines the taxonomic method exemplified by
Linnæus. No longer can individual organic attributes (e.g., a standard number of petals) or
momentary organic articulations (e.g., the reproductive organs) serve as the basis for an
understanding of plant life. Rather, by understanding the vital activities and external parts
of the plant as metamorphic variations, Goethe brings the dynamic dimension of plant life
to the forefront of his analysis. What appears as distinct under instantaneous observation
(e.g., disparate organs) exhibits inner connections when observed diachronically. The life
of plants is a procession of forms whose integrity resides in that procession itself; plant
morphology must be understood in terms of its specific metamorphic temporality. As
Goethe observes, “We have investigated the outer expression of the forces by which the
plant gradually transforms one and the same organ, but without any pretense of
uncovering the basic impulses behind the natural phenomena.”⁵⁸ Interpreting vegetal
existence as a continual process of self-transformation makes necessary an account of the
underlying impetus of such transfigurations.
§4.4. Intensity and Limit
“The more we understand particular things, the more we understand God,” Spinoza says.⁵⁹
Goethe agrees, convinced that the Urphänomen is to be found in the plants themselves,
through a “delicate empiricism” that stresses rigorous observation. The task, in Goethe’s
own words, is to “pursue the phenomena all the way to their original sources, to the point
at which they merely appear and are and where there is nothing left in them to explain.”⁶⁰
⁵⁸ Goethe, §84.
⁵⁹ Spinoza, Complete Works: Ethics, V, Pr.24.
⁶⁰ Goethe,Theory of Colours, 1840 lviii. The translation follows Förster,The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy,
2012 370.
73
What, then, is the specific essence of vegetal life which Goethe believes can be seen through
a disciplined observation of the superficial metamorphoses of the parts of the plant?
If it is true that “from first to last, the plant is nothing but leaf,”⁶1 this is because the "Leaf" names the pure process of
growth and reproduction.
term “leaf ” has shifted to name the specific transitional essence of vegetal life, the
characteristic mode or manner of growth. “We would obviously need a general term to
describe this organ that metamorphosed into such a variety of forms, a term descriptive of
the standard against which to compare the various manifestations of its form,” Goethe
muses.⁶2 In some sense, the choice is arbitrary: the stamen could be seen as a modified
petal or the petal as a modified stamen, for example.⁶3 In experiential terms, however, the
leaf appears a particularly suitable term for the “true Proteus who can hide or reveal
himself in all vegetal forms.”⁶⁴ Indeed, Goethe sometimes refers not to the leaf as such but
to the “fruitfulness hidden in a leaf.”⁶⁵ He instructs us, for example, to recognize the leaf in
seed vessels, “regardless of their manifold formations.” In this context, the leaf is not the
form, but is recognized regardless of the form; we are not surprised to find the leaf referred
to as a “process” a few lines later.⁶⁶ The leaf is “masked” and hidden in the various forms of
the plant (including leaves), Goethe claims, such that we must learn “how to follow it
carefully through all its transitions”⁶⁷ in order to discern it:
Thus we have sought to follow as carefully as possible in the footsteps of
nature. We have accompanied the outer form of the plant through all its
transformations, from the seed to the formation of a new seed; we have
investigated the outer expression of the forces by which the plant gradually
⁶1 Goethe, Italian Journey: 1786-1788, 1970 366.
⁶2 Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 §120.
⁶3 Goethe, §§120-121.
⁶⁴ Goethe, Italian Journey: 1786-1788, 1970 366. Quoted in Miller, “Introduction,” 2009 xvii.
⁶⁵ Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 §76.
⁶⁶ Goethe, §78.
⁶⁷ Goethe, §79.
74
transforms one and the same organ, but without any pretense of uncovering
the basic impulses behind the natural phenomena.⁶⁸
By attending as carefully as possible to the transitions evident in the outer form of the
plant, Goethe’s inquiry seeks to discern something that is neither identical with those
forms nor some “basic impulse” that would be behind and other than those forms. Instead,
his inquiry attempts to bring into view something else: the transitioning which belongs to
the plant as such, a force or process which adheres to the unfurling of vegetal life and is
manifest in the outer modifications of this or that organ but belongs to the plant as to one
and the same organ, the “pure leaf ” which constitutes the movement of growth. As the
synopsis of the annual plant shows, this force appears equally in those parts of the plant
that are typically considered “reproductive” and those which are not. For Goethe (as for
Hegel), “growth” does not name a different process than reproduction; rather, growth is
already “a kind of reproduction.” For this reason, “the power shown in gradual vegetative
growth is closely related to the power suddenly displayed in major reproduction.”⁶⁹ The
leaf, then, names this movement of growth/reproduction in which the forms of the plant
metamorphose.
Goethe’s favorite examples of the metamorphosis of plants are the proliferous rose Examples: proliferous rose and
carnation
and carnation, two rare botanical phenomena. In the proliferous rose, the calyx and corolla
appear as usual, but instead of forming the seed vessel in the center, the stem continues to
grow, putting forth petals and sometimes anthers. Soon thorns reappear and stem leaves
emerge, and rosebuds once again develop at the extremities of growth (fig. 7).⁷⁰ The
proliferous carnation is similar: here the flower forms perfectly and the seed capsule
develops, but then stalks appear from the sides of the corolla and four new flowers grow,
⁶⁸ Goethe, §84.
⁶⁹ Goethe, §113. See also §63 and §86. In §§94-102, for example, he alternates between the term “growth” and
“reproduction” almost arbitrarily.
⁷⁰ Goethe, §103. Fig. source: Goethe, 94.
75
complete with fruit capsules.⁷1 Although the growth process usually terminates at the
flower in the formation of the seed, in these two examples the metamorphoses continue
toward further developments, producing stems and stem leaves before transitioning again
to the flower structures. These phenomena therefore vividly exhibit the proliferative
element of growth and its indistinction from reproduction. To take a taxonomic
approach—to number and classify the reproductive parts, for example—would here be to
entirely miss the essentially prodigalmovement of the plant as it surges forth:
Gaze on them as they grow, see how the plant
Burgeons by stages into flower and fruit, […]
As nature welds her ring of ageless power,
Joining another cycle to the last,
Flinging the chain unto the end of time—
The whole reflected in each separate part.⁷2
The rose—already a heady flower, too be sure—becomes for Goethe intoxicating in its
proliferative aspect. Here, he sees before his eyes the extravagance of plant growth and its
impulse to self-transcendence.
At the same time, Goethe maintains, the extravagant proliferation of vegetal growth Vegetal growth also requires a limit.
is not simply unbounded prodigality:
Turn now your eyes again, love, to the teeming
Profusion. See its bafflement dispelled.
Each plant heralds now the iron laws.⁷3
The same practice of delicate observation by which Goethe discerns the profusion of plant
growth also delivers to his eye the “iron laws” that structure that growth. “Nature precludes
⁷1 Goethe, §105.
⁷2 Goethe, 1 (lines 9-10), 3 (lines 10-13).
⁷3 Goethe, 3, lines 14-16 (translation modified).
76
FIGURE 7. Proliferous Rose. Watercolor commissioned by Goethe.
77
the possibility of growth in endless stages,” he declares firmly.⁷⁴ As Joan Steigerwald has
noted, Goethe’s position here arises from a concern for “how a boundary is set to nature’s
structural range through the laws of metamorphosis,” since the permissible forms become
infinite unless “opposed by a tendency to fixed, definite forms.”⁷⁵ In other words, since
plant life evidently does not exhibit an indefinite array of forms, how can the tendency
which limits and defines its fecundity be understood? Whereas Hegel attempts to situate
the delimitation of plant growth in the subordination of parts to an ideal whole, however,
Goethe’s “iron law” will not so betray the vegetal focus of hisMetamorphosis.
According to Goethe, the process of plant life is governed by a movement of Plant life is intensification through
polarity.
intensification, “a state of ever-striving ascent,” which is articulated according to a structure
of polarity, “a state of constant attraction and repulsion.”⁷⁶ Intensification, understood as
the mode of striving proper to plants, involves the rarification of sap and the growth of
increasingly specialized and colorful forms. This intensive process is articulated according
to two polarities. First, the plant develops according to its opposed gravitropic and
heliotropic tendencies.⁷⁷ This distinction is coupled with a second: the polarity of
expansion and contraction.⁷⁸ It is through the rhythmic interplay of these polarities that
the various metamorphoses of the plant exhibit an intensive, striving movement, from the
⁷⁴ Goethe, §106.
⁷⁵ Steigerwald, “Goethe’s Morphology”, 299. For Steigerwald’s biographical analysis, this fits (or justifies) a
broader pattern of psychological anxiety over the relation between discipline and chaos in Goethe’s art,
science, and politics.
⁷⁶ Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 xix-xx. The quotation comes from a letter to Müller (May 24, 1828). Polarity
is a universal principle of nature, exhibited in such varied manifestations as light/darkness, subject/object,
left/right, and inhalation/exhalation (See Tantillo, The Will to Create 13, 18). The morphogenesis of plant
living, articulated according to intensification and polarity, therefore expresses a basic element of nature as
such.
⁷⁷ Goethe observes, in a note dated from 1819, that “the seed already contains the organs which will divide the
plant into two parts: those with a decided tendency to grow into the earth, seeking moisture and darkness,
and those with a need to grow up into the light and air.” Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 104n13.
⁷⁸ Goethe, §102.
78
relatively crude and simple forms of the stem leaves through the more articulated and
colorful petals to the specialized reproductive organs.
It is the polarity of expansion and contraction, rather than that of gravitropism and Expansion and contraction is the key
polarity.
heliotropism, that forms the focal point of Goethe’s analysis. In more precise terms, he sees
the complementary terms of the polarity as expansion on the one hand and contraction,⁷⁹
compaction, and anastomosis on the other.⁸⁰ In its restricted sense, contraction refers both Contraction
to the concentrated form of certain plant formations (such as the calyx, stamen, and seed)
and to the total comportment of the plant at its different stages of growth. “A vegetating
plant expands to some extent, developing a stalk or stem; the intervals between nodes are
usually perceptible, and its leaves spread out on all sides,” Goethe explains. “A blossoming
plant, on the other hand, shows a contraction of all its parts; the dimensions of length and
breadth are canceled out, as it were; all its organs develop in a highly concentrated state
and lie next to one another.”⁸1 In similar fashion, compaction refers to the gathering of Compaction
organs in certain characteristic proportions around a center (such as the rose’s habit of
gathering petals in multiples of five).⁸2 Finally anastomosis refers to the recombination of Anastomosis
parts of the plant that had grown apart, such as when certain divergent leaf veins grow
together again or the specialized male and female organs, the filaments and anthers, are
each able to undergo physical anastomosis and fuse together again.⁸3 Goethe also
emphasizes the properly creative anastomosis carried out by the sexual organs through the
production of the fruit and seed. In all three cases—contraction, compaction, and
anastomosis—the expansive element of growth finds a check and counterpart. Its elements
taken together, this polarity constitutes “the life of nature; this is the eternal systole and
⁷⁹ Goethe uses “contraction” in two ways: first, as one of three moments alongside compaction and
anastomosis; second, as a term for all three of these moments in contrast to expansion.
⁸⁰ Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 §102.
⁸1 Goethe, §114.
⁸2 Goethe, §115.
⁸3 Goethe, §66.
79
diastole, the eternal collapsion and expansion, the inspiration and expiration of the
world.”⁸⁴ By virtue of this structure of polarity, intensification achieves its most complex,
creative, and unique forms. In the life of the plant, expansion and contraction occurs in six
primary stages: stem (expansion), calyx (contraction), leaves (expansion), reproductive
parts (contraction), fruit (expansion), and seed (contraction).⁸⁵
§4.5. Conclusion
But what exactly is expanding and contracting, according to Goethe? Here, we reach the Intensification, expansion, and
contraction are a single force.
limit of his published work, for he leaves no explicit discussion of this point. Nevertheless,
there are sufficient indications in his corpus to continue his inquiry. In order to approach
the question, we must clarify three points. First, it is not any particular part of the plant
that expands and contracts. For Goethe, the plant does not consist in its parts; rather, his
philosophical botany focuses on the living, transitional movement that constitutes the
essence of the vegetal. Second, although the structures of polarity offer a limit to the
metamorphic growth of the plant, this polarity is nevertheless not something other than or
external to that dynamic essence itself. The “iron laws” of plant morphology do not
constitute a theory of something that lies “behind” the plant; rather, they are found within
the plant’s own movements. Finally, the subject of expansion and contraction cannot be
identified with any single aspect of the plant’s dynamic unfurling.⁸⁶ This is because the
determination that defines the movement of growth belongs neither to one side of the
⁸⁴ Goethe,Theory of Colours, 1840 294 (§739).
⁸⁵ Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 §73.
⁸⁶ Here Frederick Amrine makes an instructive misstep by interpreting anastomosis as the most ontologically
fundamental aspect of plant life. He rightly stresses the importance for Goethe of anastomosis, explaining
that Goethe sees there “enacted, displayed synthesis, natura naturans made visible” (Amrine, “Goethean
Intuitions,” 2011 48). But while it is true that Goethe privileges anastomosis, he does so for primarily
methodological reasons: anastomosis is a moment of extreme fluidity when the usual “steps” between the
various plant forms no longer constitutes a barrier to observation of the transitions. For Goethe, contra
Amrine, natura naturans—the leaf, the power of growth—could never be identified with a single element
of the polarity between expansion and contraction.
80
polarity nor yet to both, but rather to the difference between them. It is the transitions
between expansion and contraction, their rhythmic oscillation, that constitutes the
determinate character of growth in plants. Furthermore, because polarity is a
determination of intensification, the essence of plant life cannot be simply identified with
polarity (viz., the transitional difference between expansion and contraction), either.
Rather, the limit (polarity) is not something other than the striving it delimits; rather, the
limit belongs to the movement of that striving (intensification).
Goethe admits that his ideas concerning intensification and polarity are imprecise.
“In the progressive modification of the parts of the plant, one single force is at work which
can only improperly be called expansion and contraction,” he suggests. “The force
contracts, expands, develops, transforms, connects, separates.”⁸⁷ The impropriety of the
term “expansion and contraction” has its counterpart in the impropriety of the term “leaf ”
for the same force. The difficulty, in other words, consists in the polyvalent essence of
vegetal life, in which a single force appears as nothing other than its plural activities. In my
view, this problem marks the limitation of Goethe’s philosophical botany. Although his
conception of unity is far more appropriate to the occurrence of vegetal life than is Hegel’s,
it nevertheless prevents him from adequately accounting for the multiplicitous character of
the plant. More precisely, Goethe’s emphasis on unity prevents him from recognizing that
the vital import of his analysis occurs in a different register than that defined by the
relation of unity and multiplicity on which he remains focused.⁸⁸ “For the present,
however,” he instructs his reader, “we must be satisfied with learning to relate these
manifestations both forward and backward.”⁸⁹
⁸⁷ Quoted in Förster,The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy, 2012 273n13 (emphasis added).
⁸⁸ See also page 84.
⁸⁹ Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 §120.
81
Both forward and backward—with this phrase, so often repeated in his botanical Vegetal life is a rhythmic, restless
temporality.
writings,⁹⁰ Goethe indicates the implicit importance of temporality to his thinking. To
understand what plants are means to understand how they are. Given the metamorphosis
of plants, however, this temporality cannot be simply linear. Although this fact has led
some commentators to suggest that Goethe’s Urphänomen is non-temporal,⁹1 Goethe
himself asserts that the dynamic essence of plant life consists in a confluence of successive
intensification (vegetative growth) and simultaneous intensification (flowering, fruiting).⁹2
Plant growth does not “progress” (in a strong sense) from one form to another; rather, it
oscillates around rhythmic expansions and contractions. These oscillations mark an
intensification: not a directional ascent in the life of the plant, but a primordial restlessness
or striving by which the plant continually outstrips itself from form to form. Let us return
to the examples of the proliferative rose and carnation: from the midst of the exquisitely
unfurled blossom the stem emerges once more, putting forth thorns and stem leaves and
recapitulating the development of the flower a second time. Contrary to the way Goethe
sometimes speaks of intensification, this prodigal reassertion of the stem and leaves is not a
“refinement” or “purification” of the blossom. We might say that here Goethe offers a
self-corrective, a counter to his tendency to speak of the ascendance of the plant to its
blossoming apex: in the end, intensification refers not to a linear progression but rather to
a rhythmic restlessness, not directional ascent but bivalent force surpassing itself “both
forward and backward.”
Here we might recall Hegel’s description of plant life as a “tremulation of vitality
within itself ” and a “restlessness of time.”⁹3 Through his more rigorous engagement with
plants as phenomena, Goethe is able to go further than Hegel, offering the first intimations
⁹⁰ See Amrine, “Goethean Intuitions,” 2011 44ff.
⁹1 See for example Amrine, 44-46.
⁹2 Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 §114.
⁹3 See page 50.
82
of a specifically vegetal form of temporality: neither linear nor cyclical but rather intensive;
essentially plural, yet rhythmically coherent.⁹⁴ Like Hegel’s, however, Goethe’s incipient
concept of vegetal temporality remains undeveloped. The attempt to adequately conceive
the temporal unity of simultaneous and successive metamorphic development, he says,
“seems to drive us to a kind of madness.”⁹⁵ Goethe recognized this limitation, ultimately
declaring his treatment on plants a failure; he abandoned his second attempt after writing
the introduction. In the end, his carefully cultivated habits of observation were unable to
grant him the vision for which he searched: to see the temporal difference that holds
together the polarities which belong to and delimit the intensive movements of the
metamorphosis of plants.
Discussing the Spinozist legacy in Goethe’s botanical thinking, Hans Jonas offers an Goethe neglects nutrition and
overemphasizes unity.
instructive analogy: just as the permanence of a flame consists only in a process that is
being continually reconstituted with different materials, so the identity of the plant must be
conceived as the continuity of process across time, which is signified by the conatus or
persistent striving that belongs to each plant.⁹⁶ The analogy emphasizes both the temporal
character of the plant and its intensive, striving activity. However, the analogy also betrays
a fundamental limitation of Goethe’s thinking.⁹⁷ Goethe—like Spinoza before him—is a
decidedly optical thinker, but his stress on vision also entails a blind spot.⁹⁸ As he carefully
catalogs and explains the various visible forms of the plant, Goethe appears persistently
heedless to the invisible phenomenon of nutrition. Despite occasional comments about the
⁹⁴ This sense of vegetal temporality remains an important theme throughout this essay, as I indicate most fully
in the conclusion.
⁹⁵ Quoted in Förster,The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy, 2012 258.
⁹⁶ Jonas, “Spinoza and theTheory of Organism” 47.
⁹⁷ As we will see in Chapter VII, Jonas is much closer to Aristotle on this point than he is to Goethe. It is no
coincidence that Aristotle, too, employs the analogy of a flame in his discussion of plants.
⁹⁸ ForGoethe, Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge is a visual knowledge—apoint he did not takemetaphorically.
This “optocentrism” (cf. Lange, “Goethe and Spinoza,” 2011 22-23), evident throughout theMetamorphosis,
is also poignantly reflected in his second scientific project, theTheory of Colors.
83
movement of sap through the plant or the effects of watering on the development of the
flowers, the idea that growth is fundamentally nutritive—that to be conceived adequately,
plant life must be conceived metabolically—does not occur to the philosopher. As later
chapters of this essay show, this is a crucial omission.⁹⁹
This limitation is related to another: perhaps his talk of “iron laws” overstates his
point, but there is nevertheless an element of Goethe’s thinking that wants to pass away
from the plant at precisely the crucial moment, taking refuge in a “law” which would
belong to “nature.” While he abandons the unity of substance and the subordination of
parts to the whole which characterizes Hegel’s account in favor of an Urphänomen
understood as a metamorphic process, there remains a tendency to interpret this process
as something self-identical.1⁰⁰ Goethe places much more emphasis on the structures of
polarity in plant life, for example, than on the profligate striving that he names under the
term “intensification” (and which I discuss in terms of vegetal ὕβρις).
At the same time, Goethe is aware of these limitations. Goethe’s enduring
sensitivity to plant life is due in large part to his dogged insistence “that my thinking is not
separate from objects; that the elements of the object, the perceptions of the object, flow
into my thinking and are fully permeated by it; that my perception itself is a thinking, and
my thinking is a perception.”1⁰1 In other words, the achievements of Goethe’s botanical
philosophy can be credited to his tenacious absorption in vegetal life as a phenomenon.
Through his valorization of the proliferous rose and carnation, for example, he resists his
countervailing tendency to think of intensification as progression and thereby subordinate
it to an ideal unity. “No living thing is a single individual, but rather a plurality,” he
reminds himself on one occasion. Even when a plant “appears to us as an individual, it still
⁹⁹ See especially chapters V and VII.
1⁰⁰This is a tendency that Hegel attributes to Spinoza’s obsession with light. See Hegel, Lectures on the History
of Philosophy, 1995 253.
1⁰1 Goethe, Scientific Studies, 1988 36.
84
remains a collection of living, self-sufficient beings” which only in “their idea, their basic
tendency, are identical.”1⁰2 This struggle over the question of unity therefore remains an
unresolved subtext throughout theMetamorphosis.
Ultimately, by refusing the distinct articulation of various organs as fundamental to plant
life, Goethe’s foliar theory sets itself the task of tracing the developments and modifications
of foliar organisms in order to discover the structure of their transformations. To the
extent that the plant is metamorphic, vegetal existence must be thought from the
standpoint of growth, conceived in terms of the dynamic essence of plant living. Seeking
“nothing behind the phenomena,” one must attend to the hidden transitions between the
various morphological configurations of the plant, discerning the foliar movement that
gives birth to the momentary forms. The metamorphosis of plants then appears as an
intensive striving or force which is always exceeding itself. This movement of growth is
“eternally creating new forms with an unstoppable and prodigious fecundity.”1⁰3 And yet,
this creativity is not boundless but rather determinate, articulated according to a rhythmic,
temporal interplay of expansion and contraction. With this thought, Goethe writes in a
letter from his travels in Italy, “I believe I have come very close to the truth about the how
of the organism.”1⁰⁴
In the next chapter, this Goethean spirit finds its precise counterpart in Nietzsche,
for whom the growth of plants consists in a nutritive multiplicity of force.1⁰⁵
1⁰2 Quoted in Förster,The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy, 2012 274n15.
1⁰3 Lange, “Goethe and Spinoza,” 2011 23. On this theme, see Tantillo,TheWill to Create.
1⁰⁴ Goethe, Italian Journey: 1786-1788, 1970 379 (emphasis added).
1⁰⁵ Fig. 8: Parkinson, Aechmea, n.d; fig. 9: Parkinson, Barringtonia Asiatica, n.d.
85
FIGURE 8. Aechmea
86
FIGURE 9. Barringtonia asiatica
87
Part II
88
CHAPTER V
FORCE AND ὝΒΡΙΣ
And this secret life itself spoke to me: “Behold,” it said, “I am that which must
always overcome itself.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Life . . . that dark, driving power that insatiably thirsts for itself.
Friedrich Nietzsche
As Nietzsche’s late thinking turns toward questions concerning life, he becomes
increasingly captivated by plants.1 Unlike Hegel and Goethe, he does not pursue botany as
a philosophical pursuit in its own right. Like them, however, he sees in vegetal life an
exemplary case of the activities which characterize life as such. For Nietzsche—as for the
other figures in this study—the plant stands at the origin of the inquiry concerning living
creatures, including human beings. As early as Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche christens
“man” a type of plant (an appellation he repeats on more than one occasion in his
notebooks2) when indicating the extent to which the human “life will” involves an
“unconditional power will.”3 Against any temptation to interpret this “power will”—later
1 Epigraph sources: Nietzsche, Zarathustra, 2006 89; Nietzsche, Nietzsche, 1997 76.
2 See, e.g., Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 34[74], 37[8]. I make use of the standard translations whenever
possible, especially the recent series from Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Where the
translations are modified, it is noted in the apparatus. I have consulted the Digital Critical Edition of
Nietzsche’s Works and Letters (Digitale Kritische Gesamtausgabe Werke und Briefe), or eKGWB, edited by
Paolo D’Iorio (2009–) and available at www.nietzschesource.org/eKGWB. For unpublished notes that are
not included in the Cambridge editions, I refer to the Digital Critical Edition directly according to the
standard convention (e.g., “eKGWB/NF-1876 23[9]”). For those fragments included in Kaufman’s classic
collection, The Will to Power, I often take recourse to his translation and cite accordingly. Throughout, I
use standard section numbers (and sub-section numbers) when applicable.
3 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 2001 §44.
89
called a “will to power”⁴—anthropocentrically, Nietzsche insists on an identification
between the will to power and life: “Only where life is, is there also will; but not will to life,
instead—thus I teach you—will to power!”⁵ He does not conceive of this life as specifically
human; rather, rejecting any “cardinal distinction” between humans, animals, and plants,
Nietzsche insists upon that vegetal element of life that is common to all three.⁶ It is
therefore by virtue of identifying humans with plants that Nietzsche understands the will
to power as constitutive of human existence.⁷ But why should the will to power—“the
innermost essence of being,” in Nietzsche’s thinking⁸—be conceived in vegetal terms? In
the life of plants, Nietzsche sees most vividly what he also takes to be true of other living
creatures.⁹ In humans and other animals, a panoply of drives and functions must be traced
⁴ The reception of Nietzsche’s late doctrine of the “will to power” has been exceptionally varied. To name
only a few examples: Walter Kaufmann argues for the primacy of self-control in the interpretation of the
will to power; John Richardson draws a distinction between “mastery” and “tyranny,” emphasizing the
former; Maudemarie Clark reinterprets power as capacity and potential; Bernard Reginster sees the will to
power as a second-order desire to overcome resistance in the pursuit of first-order desires; Gregory Moore
sees in Nietzsche’s doctrine a bald repetition of 19th century biologism and eugenics; and Karl Löwith has
simply pronounced Nietzsche’s thinking on this point altogether superfluous. See Kaufmann, Nietzsche;
Richardson, Nietzsche’s System; Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy; Reginster, Affirmation of Life;
Moore, Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor; Lowith, Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the
Same. It should be no surprise that such a far-reaching andmultifaceted aspect ofNietzsche’s text has invited
a rich panoply of readings. Taken as a whole, however, the literature ignores what might appear a minor
detail: the will to power is a vegetal force in Nietzsche’s thinking. While a reconstruction of Nietzsche’s
doctrine would take this study far afield, this section is devoted to extracting Nietzsche’s conception of the
vegetal through a consideration of the specifically vegetal aspect of the will to power. For two excellent
(though somewhat different) interpretations of the will to power, see McNeill, “The Secret of Life,” 2013
and Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 1983 (esp. 39-72).
⁵ Nietzsche, Zarathustra, 2006. II, 12. Compare: “life, as the form of being that is best known to us,
is specifically a will to the accumulation of force: this is the lever of all the processes of life,” for life
“is essentially a striving for more power: striving is nothing other than striving for power” (Nietzsche,
Notebooks, 2003 14[82]); “life is precisely will to power,” which “is just the will of life” (Nietzsche, Beyond
Good and Evil, 2001 §259); “The will to power as life” (Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 14[174]). In these
quotations and throughout this chapter, emphasis is original unless otherwise noted.
⁶ Nietzsche, Nietzsche, 1997 112; cf. Nietzsche, Zarathustra, 2006. I, 1[3].
⁷ E.g., “great question: where the plant called ‘man’ has grown most magnificently up to now” (Nietzsche,
Notebooks, 2003 34[74]; see also 37[8]).
⁸ Nietzsche, 14[82]. Translation modified.
⁹ On the extent to which Nietzsche’s philosophy in this respect constitutes a “phenomenology,” see McNeill,
“The Secret of Life,” 2013.
90
back to the originary will to power; in the plant, the will to power remains more evidently
dominant.1⁰
Like Goethe, Nietzsche sees in vegetal life a constitutive movement of striving, but
he specifies the character of this striving differently. “Life,” in his view, “is specifically a will
to the accumulation of force” which “strives after a maximal feeling of power.”11 While this
movement involves ascending stages of increasing complexity, the intensification that
belongs to plant life is for Nietzsche most fundamentally a process of the maximization of
force: “essentially a striving for more power.”12 Nietzsche therefore recognizes what Goethe
identifies as an intensive movement toward greater complexity, but he views this as a
consequence of the essential tendency toward the increase in power.
In this chapter, I trace the vegetal aspects of Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to
power and its connection to his much earlier writings on the Greeks. In the first section, I
highlight three aspects of Nietzsche’s account of the will to power that I interpret as central
to his understanding of vegetality: (1) it is opposed to any notion of self-preservation, (2) it
is a modality of growth, and (3) it reveals life as a multiplicity. I also raise the issue of unity:
what is the sense of “self ” that must be operative in Nietzsche’s theory of
“self-overcoming?” Turning next toward Nietzsche’s earlier writings, I suggest that his later
concept of the will to power elaborates a concept of ὕβρις that Nietzsche develops in his
early interpretation of the Greeks. The second section of the chapter involves a survey of
contemporary and ancient understandings of ὕβρις, especially in relation to vegetal life,
and therefore begins an explicit discussion of the concept of ὕβρις that I introduce in
earlier chapters. In terms of the broader project of the essay, this chapter marks a transition
1⁰ Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 36[31].
11 Nietzsche, Will to Power, 1968 §689. For a discussion of the anthropomorphic character of this language,
see page 93.
12 Nietzsche, §689.
91
from the Hegelian and Goethean preoccupation with the relation between unity and
difference to the Greek focus on questions of growth and limit.
§5.1. TheWill to Flower
§5.1.1. Against Preservation
For Nietzsche, life does not aim at preservation. Whether it comes in the guise of a Plants show that life is not
self‐preservative.
Darwinian obsession with survival or the complacency of an utilitarian self-satisfaction, he
rejects the preservationist conception that reduces the activity of living to self-coincident
identity. Living things do not primarily seek to maintain themselves; the activities of life do
not surge forth in order to return to themselves. Rather, life is an activity which strives to
become somethingmore. “Nothing wants to preserve itself,” Nietzsche declares
emphatically; “everything is to be added up and accumulated.”13 As evidence for this
perspective, he turns to the manifest prodigality of growth in plants. “For what do the trees
in a jungle fight each other?” he asks. “For power.”1⁴ The dense cacophony of vegetal
growth exhibits the non-preservative character of the activity of life. From this standpoint,
an orientation toward self-preservation appears as “a sign of distress, of a limitation of the
truly basic life-instinct, which aims at the expansion of power and in so doing often enough
risks and sacrifices self-preservation.”1⁵ The gardener who thins and props up the branches
of fruit trees, for example, knows this lesson well: left to its own devices, the tree will pour
forth such an abundance of growth that the branches, unable to bear their own weight, will
break off and die. Thus, “where there is perishing and the falling of leaves, behold, there life
sacrifices itself—for the sake of power!”1⁶
13 Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 14[82]. Compare eKGWB/NF-1876 23[9]: “Why assume an instinct for self-
preservation at all?”
1⁴ Nietzsche, 1[111].
1⁵ Nietzsche, Gay Science, 2001 §349. The context here is human beings.
1⁶ Nietzsche, Zarathustra, 2006 89.
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In more precise terms, Nietzsche rejects the idea that there is any “self ” to be Life an activity without an actor.
preserved. Life is an activity whose existence is only its manner of occurrence: Nietzsche
wants to understand “processes as ‘beings,’ ” refusing to posit a substratum that bears up
the activities we ordinarily attribute to actors.1⁷ He affirms only the deed, rejecting the
mythology of the “doer” behind the deed. Upon observing a flash of lightning, he suggests
in the Genealogy, it would be a mistake to posit a “doer” (lightning) that does a deed
(flashes). Rather, what we call “lightning” is in truth nothing other than the flashing. The
error can be generalized: “There is no ‘being’ behind the deed, its effect and what becomes
of it; ‘the doer’ is invented as an afterthought,— the doing is everything,” he concludes.1⁸
For this reason, the “will” that appears in the “will to power” should not be understood in a The language of will is does not imply
an agent.
substantive sense, as though there were first an agent with a faculty of will that then
affirmed power as the object of her will. We must be cautious about Nietzsche’s frequent
recourse to the vocabulary of subjectivity, for it would be a great mistake to understand the
invocation of the “will to power,” “feeling of power,” “striving for more power,” and the like
as indications of a humanistic or subjective interpretation of life.1⁹ “But who feels pleasure?
But who wills power?” Nietzche asks. “Absurd question, if the essence is itself will to power
and thus feeling pleasure and unpleasure.”2⁰ “Will to power,” “pleasure,” and “unpleasure”
are here radically non-anthropocentric concepts, much closer to the domain of physics
than that of subject psychology. Nietzsche explains the motivation for his terminology by
contrasting it with the more typical term “force”:
The victorious concept ‘force,’ by means of which our physicists have created
God and the world, still needs to be completed: an inner will must be ascribed
1⁷ Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 36[21].
1⁸ Nietzsche, Genealogy, 2006. First Essay, §13.
1⁹ For a lucid and detailed exposition of this point, see Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 1983 chapter 2, to
which I am indebted.
2⁰ Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 14[80] (final emphasis added).
93
to it, which I designate as ‘will to power,’ i.e., as an insatiable desire to manifest
power; or as the employment and exercise of power, as a creative drive, etc.
Physicists cannot eradicate ‘action at a distance’ from their principles; nor can
they eradicate a repellent force (or an attracting one). There is nothing for it:
one is obliged to understand all motion, all ‘appearances,’ all ‘laws,’ only as
symptoms of an inner event.21
It is therefore against the mechanistic interpretation of the world implied in the concept of
“force” that Nietzsche opposes the concept of “will” and its affective correlates (repellent
and attractive forces). “Will” and “striving” name the internal genesis of what the concept
of force understands only as an external quantity.22 Likewise, the “feeling of power”
indicates not a subjective experience but rather the simple affectivity which belongs to this
internal element.23 Ultimately, the “will to power” indicates only the manner in which
life—understood as a process, a “doing”—occurs.2⁴
21 Nietzsche,Will to Power, 1968 §619.
22 “This is what the will to power is: the genealogical element of force, both differential and genetic. The will
to power is the element from which derive both the quantitative difference of related forces and the quality
that devolves into each force in this relation. The will to power here reveals its nature as the principle of the
synthesis of forces. […] We should not be surprised by the word ‘will’: which one apart from the will is
capable of serving as the principle of a synthesis of forces by determining the relation of force with forces?
[…] The will to power is thus added to force, but as the differential and genetic element, as the internal
element of its production. It is in no way anthropomorphic” (Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 1983 50-
51).
23 “The relationship between forces in each case is determined to the extent that each force is affected by other,
inferior or superior, forces. It follows that will to power is manifested as a capacity for being affected. This
capacity is not an abstract possibility, it is necessarily fulfilled and actualized at each moment by the other
forces to which a given force relates. […]The capacity for being affected is not necessarily a passivity but an
affectivity, a sensibility, a sensation. It is in this sense that Nietzsche, even before elaborating the concept of
the will to power and giving it its full significance, was already speaking of a feeling of power. Before treating
power as a matter of will he treated it as a matter of feeling and sensibility. […]This is why Nietzsche always
says that the will to power is ‘the primitive affective form’ from which all other feelings derive (VP II 42)”
(Deleuze, 62).
2⁴ Daniela Vallega-Neu puts the point well: “When he calls these will to power, we should not take these
as expressions that name an essence—that is, ‘something’ that would be the ground of the world. Each
‘something’ is already a representation. ‘Will to power’ rather names the ‘how’ of occurrences of life, the
play of forces that animate life.” And again, “In response to Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche, scholars
have again and again pointed out that will to power is not ametaphysical concept that designates the essence
of life. Will to power is not simply another name for Schopenhauer’s metaphysical will but rather designates
94
Nietzsche therefore embarks upon a series of experiments in articulating this Life is struggle for struggle's sake.
interpretation of life as pure activity. Life is “striving and tension,” he affirms, but not a
striving of anything—other than the striving.2⁵ His challenge is to articulate a kind of
activity that neither (a) belongs to any “doer” nor (b) is understood in terms of
homeostasis or self-maintenance. The task of life is simply “spinning on the chain of life,”
he ventures, but precisely “in such a way that the thread grows ever more powerful.”2⁶ This
means that there is nothing apart from life that life serves; life is simply the activity of life.
At the same time, however, life does not close in upon itself in a stable, self-coincident
equilibrium. Instead, life must be understood as a process of growing power. Elsewhere, he
suggests that “life should be defined as an enduring form of the process of testing force.”2⁷
That is, life is a force that exists only in being active and deploying itself: it is “struggle for
struggle’s sake.”2⁸ As the lightning is nothing but the activity of flashing—a testing of a
degree of luminous force which splits the night sky—so also the trees of the jungle are
nothing but the activity of vegetating—a testing of a degree of proliferative force which
reaches through the canopy.2⁹
For Nietzsche, then, the proliferative force of vegetal life exhibits the extravagance Plant life is excess and abundance.
of nature as such, whose economy is not one of privation but rather abundance: “nature
seems bent on squandering.” His model for this extravagance is the observable life of
plants, whose growth “achieves its aims in a broad and ponderous manner: and in doing so
ways in which life occurs. Thus, it is always particularized and includes an impenetrable complexity that
exceeds intellectual grasp.” See Vallega-Neu, The Bodily Dimension in Thinking 28, 34; see also McNeill,
“The Secret of Life,” 2013, esp. 179. Compare Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 14[79] and 6[14].
2⁵ Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 11[111].
2⁶ Nietzsche,Will to Power, 1968 §674.
2⁷ Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 36[22].
2⁸ “When two organic beings collide, if there were only struggle for existence or for food: then what? There
must be struggle for struggle’s sake” (eKGWB/NF-1884 26[276].
2⁹ Although the distance between this conception of life as a specific style of self-surpassing and the Hegelian
conception of self-identity through negation could not be greater, Nietzsche’s approach nevertheless
resonates with Hegel’s “secondary” discourse concerning growth, discussed in Chapter III.
95
it sacrifices much too much energy.”3⁰ To his contemporaries, who were enamored with
conditions of scarcity, Nietzsche responds that such circumstances are atypical:
In nature, it is not distress which rules, but rather abundance, squandering —
even to the point of absurdity. The struggle for survival is only an exception, a
temporary restriction of the will to life; the great and small struggle revolves
everywhere around preponderance, around growth and expansion, around
power and in accordance with the will to power, which is simply the will to
life.31
The overall condition of life is not a state of need, a state of hunger, but rather
abundance, opulence, even absurd squandering. Where there is a struggle, it is
a struggle for power.32
The common cattail (Typha latifolia, fig. 10), for example, is a wetland plant which grows
throughout most of the world.33 The plant spreads rhizomatically, forming sprawling,
interconnected colonies in shallow waterways. The plant also reproduces sexually: each of
the fuzzy, brown “spikes” which give the cattail its name and characteristic shape may
contain up to a million tiny seeds which are released high into the atmosphere and have
been shown to cross mountain ranges. An acre of wetland may produce over a trillion
cattail seeds in a season. Nor is the cattail unique in this respect: a single orchid flower, for
example, may also produce close to a million seeds.3⁴ For Nietzsche, such plants are
emblematic of the sheer prodigality and opulence of life.
3⁰ Nietzsche, Nietzsche, 1997 177, speaking of “sowing and planting.”
31 Nietzsche, Gay Science, 2001 §349.
32 Nietzsche, Anti-Christ and Other Writings, 2005 199 (Twilight X.14).
33 Fig. source: Rockman, Broadleaf Cattail (Typha Latifolia).
3⁴ Armstrong, “Wind Dispersal Of Seeds,” 1999.
96
FIGURE 10. Common Cattail
97
§5.1.2. Growth
Through the idea of the “will to power,” Nietzsche rejects the theory of the substantial Plant life is pure growth.
“doer” and its self-preservation in favor of an affirmation of the prodigal, expansive
character of life. The essentially proliferative character of life is set into sharp relief by
plants, which he sees as a corrective to prior attempts to understand life primarily with
respect to animals.3⁵ In this respect, Nietzsche is influenced by the biologist William
Rolph, whose work replaces the primacy of self-preservation with the function of growth.
According to Rolph, all organic functions, including nutrition and reproduction, could be
understood on the basis of growth as a fundamental activity.3⁶ For Nietzsche, growth is
primary even in apparently preservative activities, such as nutrition. Contrary to the ideas
of his contemporaries, he insists that “hunger cannot be taken as the primummobile.”3⁷
Rather, nutrition must either (a) be considered “merely a subsequent phenomenon, a
practical application of that original will to become stronger,”3⁸ or (b) be reinterpreted in
terms of the will to power, such that nutrition is not a matter of “hunger” or
self-preservation at all.3⁹ In either case, growth remains primary. Furthermore, Nietzsche
is careful to distance himself from the Darwinian temptation to subordinate the growth of
the individual to self-preservation of the species. To the contrary, Nietzsche says that
growth is the primum mobile at both levels:
All that happens, all movement, all becoming as a determining of relations of
degree and force, as a struggle…The ‘well-being of the individual’ is just as
imaginary as the ‘well-being of the species’: the former is not sacrificed to the
latter; regarded from a distance, the species is something quite as fluid as the
3⁵ Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 11[111].
3⁶ Moore, Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor 47-48.
3⁷ Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 14[174].
3⁸ Nietzsche, 14[174].
3⁹ See page 108 and following, below.
98
individual. The ‘preservation of the species’ is only a consequence of the growth
of the species, i.e., of overcoming the species on the path to a stronger type.⁴⁰
According to this Nietzschean vision, life is contest (in Greek, ἀγών) and striving to excel.
The economy of forces which characterize life is therefore an economy not of scarcity but
of excess: life exhibits “immense ruin alongside magnificent, multifarious, jungle-like
upwards growth.”⁴1 From this perspective, life just is growth. “To have and to want to have
more—growth, in one word—that is life itself,” Nietzsche concludes.⁴2
In certain plants, the appearance of such growth becomes striking: Example: Sipó Matador
In the same way, the sun-seeking, Javanese climbing plant called the sipo
matador [fig. 11]will wrap its arms around an oak tree so often and for such a
long time that finally, high above the oak, although still supported by it, the
plant will be able to unfold its highest crown of foliage and show its happiness
in the full, clear light.⁴3
Nietzsche here echoes the description in Henry Walter Bates’ work, A Naturalist on the
River Amazons (1863), but with a very different accent:
There is one kind of parasitic tree, very common near Pará, which exhibits this
feature in a very prominent manner. It is called the Sipó Matador, or the
Murderer Liana. It belongs to the fig order, and has been described and
figured by Von Martius in the Atlas to Spiz and Martius’s Travels. I observed
many specimens. The base of its stem would be unable to bear the weight of
⁴⁰ Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 9[91].
⁴1 Nietzsche, 35[20].
⁴2 Nietzsche,Will to Power, 1968 §125. Compare: “life itself is not ameans to something; it is merely a growth-
form of power” (Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 16[12]); “life ought to be a growth of power” (Nietzsche,
Notebooks, 2003 14[101]).
⁴3 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 2001 §258. Fig. source: Sproule, Strangler Fig.
99
the upper growth; it is obliged, therefore, to support itself on a tree of another
species. In this it is not essentially different from other climbing trees and
plants, but the way the matador sets about it is peculiar, and produces certainly
a disagreeable impression. It springs up close to the tree on which it intends to
fix itself, and the wood of its stem grows by spreading itself like a plastic
mould over one side of the trunk of its supporter. It then puts forth, from each
side, an arm-like branch, which grows rapidly, and looks as though a stream of
sap were flowing and hardening as it went. This adheres closely to the trunk of
the victim and the two arms meet on the opposite side and blend together.
These arms are put forth at somewhat regular intervals in mounting upwards,
and the victim, when its strangler is full-grown, becomes tightly clasped by a
number of inflexible rings. These rings gradually grow larger as the Murderer
flourishes, rearing its crown of foliage to the sky mingled with that of its
neighbor, and in course of time they kill it by stopping the flow of its sap. The
strange spectacle then remains of the selfish parasite clasping in its arms the
lifeless and decaying body of its victim, which had been a help to its own
growth. Its ends have been served—it has flowered and fruited, reproduced
and disseminated its kind; and now, when the dead trunk moulders away, its
own end approaches; its support is gone, and itself also falls.⁴⁴
In the Matador, vegetal life appears as vector of force that wills nothing but its own
unfurling: growth is here a stunning prodigality without recuperation.
In this respect, Nietzsche speaks of the “ambiguity of the world as a question of
force, which looks at all things from the perspective of its/their growth.”⁴⁵ Understood in
Nietzschean terms, there is no difference between the growth of force and the growth of
⁴⁴ Bates,The Naturalist on the River Amazons 53-54.
⁴⁵ Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 2[128].
100
FIGURE 11. Strangler Fig
101
things, because living things are understood as force. Growth does not serve the interests of
any broader organism or species; rather, in Nietzsche’s words, “growth itself is a craving to
be more,” and nothing else.⁴⁶
§5.1.3. Multiplicity
The will to power is not any form of self-preseveration; rather, it is growth as an activity of Growth is multiplicative.
increase and self-surpassing. This activity is emblematically manifest in vegetal life,
especially in such plants as the Matador. For Nietzsche, vegetal life also exemplifies a third
aspect of growth as the will to power, namely, itsmultiplicative character:
To understand what life is, what kind of striving and tension life is, the formula
must be applicable to trees and plants as well as to animals. “What does the
plant strive for?”—but here we’ve already fabricated a false unity that does not
exist: the fact of a millionfold growth, with initiatives of its own and half its
own, is hidden and denied if we begin by positing a crude unity “plant.”⁴⁷
Plants are particularly important for Nietzsche as a corrective: whereas in the animal
growth can more readily be mistaken for a kind of unity, in the plant growth appears in its
properly multiplicative aspect. As Hegel and Goethe recognize, growth in plants is a
process that is not subordinated to an external demand for unity.⁴⁸ Vegetal life reveals a
kind of growth that is not a component process integrated within a larger organism; rather,
this kind of growth just is the organism—or, rather, there is no “organism,” conceived as a
unity gathering the various growth-processes in a unitary direction. Instead, Nietzsche
conceives of “life” as the dispersed play of growth, a multiplicity of impulses in tension
with one another, each striving toward its own maximization: the plant is a site of struggle.
⁴⁶ Nietzsche, 2[157].
⁴⁷ Nietzsche, 11[111].
⁴⁸ See page 44 and following, above.
102
What is it that struggles? Here Nietzsche follows Goethe in insisting upon the Each living being is a plurality.
radical multiplicity of vegetal growth (and, more broadly, of life as the will to power).
“Every living thing is not a single thing, but a plurality,” Goethe says in a passage that
Nietzsche marked in his own copy. “Even insofar as it appears to us as an individual, it still
remains a collection of living independent beings.”⁴⁹ The plant is a collection of living
beings: independent impulses of growth that compose, at least for the moment, that which
we call this or that plant. Crucially, these living beings are themselves such collections:
ultimately, the “smallest” individuals are not atoms but rather also vectors of growth/force.
“Even those smallest living beings which constitute our body (more correctly: for whose
interaction the thing we call ‘body’ is the best simile) are not soul-atoms, but rather
something growing, struggling, reproducing and dying off again,” Nietzsche reflects.
“Their number alters unsteadily, and our living, like all living, is at once an incessant
dying.”⁵⁰ Accordingly, these “continual transitions do no permit us to speak of the
‘individual,’ etc.; the ‘number’ of beings is itself in flux.”⁵1 Even at the most elementary
levels, Nietzsche asks us to see the movements of life as pure activity, a field of deeds
without “doers,” a multiplicity of force, a thousandfold growing and withering.
Unity, therefore, cannot be found in the composition of forces. There are no atomic The purposes of a living being are also
plural.
individuals, for example, to ground the play of growth. Likewise, Nietzsche will not allow
unity to be found in the purpose of the organism. To the contrary, he observes in plants
that healthy growth exhibits the opposite tendency: “as it grows, it splits into two and
more.”⁵2 A healthy plant does not work together toward a common, integrated end; rather,
it diverges toward increasingly diverse ends. The point generalizes: “the more there is an
⁴⁹ The passage is quoted and marked in Nietzsche’s copy of Lange,History of Materialism, 1881 38. Cf. Stack,
Lange and Nietzsche 168; see also Moore, Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor 35. Cf. page 84.
⁵⁰ Nietzsche, Notebooks, 2003 37[4].
⁵1 Nietzsche, 36[23].
⁵2 Nietzsche, 36[21].
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urge to variety, differentiation, inner fragmentation, the more force is present.”⁵3 Properly
conceived, “purposes” and “goals” could only be understood as expressions of the will to
power. But since “willing in general amounts to willing more strength, willing growth,”
such aims will not gather force towards a unity but will rather express the fundamentally
multiplicative character of growth.⁵⁴
Life is therefore neither a river delta which flows in myriad ways from a unitary Life is more like an ocean than river.
spring, nor a river basin which gathers tributaries toward a unitary mouth. In Nietzsche’s
copy of Jean-Marie Guyau’s Esquisse d’une morale sans obligation ni sanction, an annotated
passage suggests a much different image:
We believe that nature has a purpose, that she is going somewhere; it is that we
do not understand her. We take her for a river that flows towards its mouth
and will one day arrive there, but nature is an ocean. To give nature a purpose
would be to shrink her, because a purpose is an end. What is immense has no
purpose. The ocean does not work, does not produce; it is restless. It does not
⁵3 Nietzsche, 36[21].
⁵⁴ Nietzsche, 11[96]. Nietzsche makes a similar point in a striking passage from the Genealogy of Morality:
“But every purpose and use is just a sign that the will to power has achieved mastery over something less
powerful, and has impressed upon it its own idea of a use function; and the whole history of a ‘thing,’ an
organ, a tradition can to this extent be a continuous chain of signs, continually revealing new interpretations
and adaptations, the causes of which need not be connected even amongst themselves, but rather sometimes
just follow and replace one another at random. The ‘development’ of a thing, a tradition, an organ is
therefore certainly not progressus toward a goal, still less is it a logical progressus, taking the shortest route
with least expenditure of energy and cost, — instead it is a succession of more or less profound, more
or less mutually independent processes of subjugation exacted on the thing, added to this the resistances
encountered every time, the attempted transformations for the purpose of defence and reaction, and the
results, too, of successful countermeasures. The form is fluid, the ‘meaning’ even more so . . . It is no
different inside any individual organism: every time the whole grows appreciably, the ‘meaning’ of the
individual organs shifts, — sometimes the partial destruction of organs, the reduction in their number
(for example, by the destruction of intermediary parts) can be a sign of increasing vigour and perfection.
To speak plainly: even the partial reduction in usefulness, decay and degeneration, loss of meaning and
functional purpose, in short death, make up the conditions of true progressus: always appearing, as it does,
in the form of the will and way to greater power and always emerging victorious at the cost of countless
smaller forces” Nietzsche, Genealogy, 2006. II.12. The promising study of vegetal ὕβρις as a hermeneutical
principle is outside the scope of this essay.
104
give life but contains it—or, rather, it gives and takes it away with the same
indifference. It is the great, eternal swell that rocks beings.⁵⁵
Life, conceived in terms of a multiplicative, vegetal growth—that is, as the will to power—is
a vector field of forces, a restless ocean of struggling impulses.
Wolffia microscopica is the world’s smallest flowering plant, roughly the size of two Example: Wolffia microscopica
normal grains of table salt; it would take around five thousand flowers to fill a thimble. The
rootless plant floats on the surface of water, where it appears as a grainy film, and holds a
tiny flower in a depression on its upper surface. The plant is also one of the most rapidly
reproducing plants in the world, with each generation able to give rise to the next in as few
as thirty hours. Left unchecked and sufficiently nourished, a single plant could therefore
theoretically produce in just four months a number of plants whose spherical
volume—despite each plant’s miniature size—would be roughly equal to that of the earth.⁵⁶
In the words of Zarathustra, the will to power is an “unexhausted, procreative will of life.”⁵⁷
§5.1.4. A Common Modality
Nietzsche bids us understand the movements of plant life as an assemblage of sites whose Multiplicity requires determination.
spheres of power are constantly contracting, expanding, and shifting: vegetal life as a
multiplicity of force. For Hegel, determination occurs through a process of negation in
which unity is achieved through the differentiation of parts subordinate to a whole. The
growth of the animal (with its fixed arrangment of organs) typifies this process of
determination; the inadequacy of the plant’s “indeterminate” growth belies it.⁵⁸ For
Goethe, determination occurs through the rhythmic oscilliations of contraction and
⁵⁵ See Fouillée, “Note Sur Nietzsche Et Lange”.
⁵⁶ Armstrong, “World’s Smallest Flowering Plant,” 1996.
⁵⁷ Nietzsche, Zarathustra, 2006 88.
⁵⁸ See page 34 and following, above.
105
expansion which he calls polarity.⁵⁹ For Nietzsche, by contrast, identity occurs through
differentiation as such: the vegetal model is paradigmatic of a multiplicative growth which
continues multiplying as it grows. To conceive of determination in these terms, however,
remains inadequate, for it does not account for the element of consistency which living
beings exhibit. Unless Nietzsche can give an account of the affinities of power which relate
certain forces with one another (and not with others), his play of forces will in the end
amount to a homogenous, undifferentiated field.
The first step toward the solution is to recognize that the agonistic growth activities Life involves a coordination of forces.
of life do not entail universal hostility. To the contrary, they often involve coordination:
My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and
to extend its force (—its will to power:) and to thrust back all that resists its
extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other
bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement (“union”) with those of them
that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power.
And the process goes on—⁶⁰
A process of force maximization runs up against other such processes. These forces may
repel and struggle with one another, or they may coordinate themselves to one another and
join forces in alliance. As these interactions occur, an assemblage of forces grows, each of
the parts having relative and shifting degrees of autonomy. In this way, Nietzsche explains
the manifold structure of plant life: each part of the plant, understood as an expression of
forces operating in a certain harmony, exists in relative tension with other parts as it is
simultaneously gathered together into a common mode. In some cases, the centripetal
force of the assemblage emerges as a dominant factor due to “the victory of predominance
⁵⁹ See page 79 and following, above.
⁶⁰ Nietzsche,Will to Power, 1968 §636.
106
of individual parts, to an atrophy, a ‘becoming organ’ of other parts.”⁶1 The plants that are
most specialized and organized, including carnivorous plants such as the well-known
Venus flytrap, exhibit this pattern. The waterwheel plant, for example, is an underwater
carnivore with special, elaborate systems for detecting nearby objects, differentiating
between prey and debris, rapidly closing its trap around victims, raising and lowering
flowers above and below the surface of the water for pollination and seed production, etc.⁶2
In other cases, the growth of the assemblage outstrips its centripetal tendencies and it splits
into multiple sites or centers of power.⁶3 It is Goethe’s movement of expansion and
contraction understood in this way—as the expansion and contraction of vectors of power
and territories of the deployment of forces constantly repelling, coordinating,
incorporating, and dividing—that gives rise to richness and complexity in plant living.
Taken as a whole, however, such shifting coordinations of force are insufficient to Self‐surpassing requires a concept of
"self."
account for the central feature of life understood as the will to power. So articulated, the
Nietzschean vision would still “fail to appreciate the distinguishing mark of life itself,” as
William McNeill puts it.⁶⁴ This is because the distinguishing mark of life, according to
Nietzsche’s way of thinking, consists in its self-overcoming character. To speak of an
“unexhausted, procreative” growth of living beings refers to the self -exceeding movement
of life. But does not this relation—as a special instance of coordination and tension of
forces—require something like a “self ” or unity that belongs to life? Does Nietzsche’s
concept of the will to power not, ultimately, require a “will?” In some sense, we must admit
this to be true: self-overcoming, as it occurs in the “unexhausted, procreative” growth of
living beings, requires a relation of the living being to itself. The crucial point, however, is
⁶1 Nietzsche, §647.
⁶2 Breckpot, “Aldrovanda Vesiculosa.”
⁶3 Cf. Nietzsche,Will to Power, 1968 §654.
⁶⁴ McNeill, “The Secret of Life,” 2013 188f. Nietzsche recognizes this in a notebook entry that repudiates any
account of life attempted on the basis of merely quantitative differences of force (Nietzsche,Notebooks, 2003
2[157]).
107
that “living being” here no longer names an “entity” in the substantive sense, for living
beings are never simply given. Rather, a living being, qua living, is an activity of growth
which constantly exceeds itself. According to Nietzsche’s insight, then, there is not first a
“self ” which must then be overcome. Instead, there is a movement of force which occurs as
a relation of difference whereby it becomes possible to retrospectively speak of a “self ” and
its “overcoming.”
This relation—in which the living being appears and is constituted as Nutrition is the activity of
self‐surpassing.
self-overcoming—is called nutrition:
A multiplicity of forces, connected by a common mode of nutrition, we call
life. To this mode of nutrition, as a means of making it possible, belong […]
(1) a resistance to all other forces; (2) an adjustment of the same according to
form and rhythm; (3) an estimate in regard to assimilation or excretion.⁶⁵
It is clear from the foregoing analysis that Nietzsche nutrition, understood as the “common
mode” of a life, should not be confused with an activity of self-preservation.⁶⁶ Rather,
nutrition is a process of increase through the incorporation of force. It is themeans of
intensification, themode in which various forces are brought into connection with one
another. For this reason, nourishment has an ambivalent relation to growth: often,
frequent nourishment hampers the intensive development of the plant, whereas scant
nourishment accelerates it.⁶⁷ Entering into composition with an excess of force can
overwhelm the plant, which discharges its excess energy via growth. The consequent
inhibition of flowering is thus a result of what Nietzsche calls a “crumbling that supervenes
when the ruling cells are incapable of organizing that which has been appropriated.”⁶⁸
⁶⁵ Nietzsche,Will to Power, 1968 §641.
⁶⁶ See page 98.
⁶⁷ See for example the remarks in Goethe,Metamorphosis, 2009 §30.
⁶⁸ Nietzsche,Will to Power, 1968 §660.
108
Inversely, the provision of scant resources makes necessary a “maximal economy in use, so
the only reality is the will to grow stronger of every center of force.”⁶⁹ This ambivalence
(which appears again in the discussion of κόρος beginning on page 114) exhibits the
delicate tension in which the nutritive growth consists. This tension constitutes the
distinctive relation of forces that is most characteristic of life and expresses its growing,
self-exceeding impulse as the elementary form of the will to power.
In this sense, the activity of nutrition is ultimately structured according to a Nutrition requires an impossible
measure.
complex sense of measure. Nutrition requires a finely calibrated relation of forces in
tension between surfeit and scarcity that is conducive to the plant’s flourishing. Insofar as
the plant (understood as will to power, viz., as vegetative growth) is this relation, however,
the flourishing which belongs to the activity of nutrition must be defined according to a
self-surpassing measure. In other words, nutrition involves increase, but this increase is
measured in relation to the essence of plant life, which is nothing other than that process of
increase. For Aristotle, as we will see in the next chapter, this process is characterized as a
striving for something unattainable, “reaching for the divine.”⁷⁰ Nietzsche similarly
declares this movement to be an impossible “desire to incorporate everything.”⁷1 For the
German thinker, the proliferative movement of plant life involves the deployment of a
restless force which does not establish and maintain for itself limits but rather expends
itself, establishing the limits it surpasses only as the retrospective traces of its deployment.
For the moment, this suggestive sketch must suffice, for Nietzsche nowhere
develops his concept of nutrition in detail.⁷2 But whereas the Nietzsche of the late
notebooks prefers to speak of the will to power, the young Nietzsche sees this movement of
life—of which plants are an exemplary case—in terms of the Greek concept of ὕβρις. It is
⁶⁹ Nietzsche, §689.
⁷⁰ See page 142.
⁷1 Nietzsche,Will to Power, 1968 §657.
⁷2 This essay returns to the issue of nutrition in chapters VII and VIII.
109
through an exploration of this concept, then, that we may develop a better understanding
of Nietzsche’s encounter with the “unexhausted, procreative will of life” and its nutritive
determination. In so doing, this essay will also begin to shift its frame of reference from
modern German philosophy to ancient Greek thought.
§5.2. ὕβρις
The relation between life and ὕβρις appears most clearly in Nietzsche’s neglected early
essay, “Homer’s Contest.”⁷3 The essay begins with the question of what “separatesman from
nature and is his mark of distinction.” In truth, he suggests, no such distinction exists.
Rather, the question more accurately concerns how the human being comes to be
constituted within nature in a nevertheless distinctive manner. The Greeks, as “the most
humane people of ancient time,” are the focal point of his explorations of this question.⁷⁴
To the earliest Greeks, life appears as a “purely material fusion,” a continual “night Life appears as strife, but in two forms.
and horror” of mere cruelty. In this guise, life is experienced as relentless combat in which
“the cruelty of the victory is the pinnacle of life’s jubilation.”⁷⁵ In other words, life was
experienced as the indifference of pure will to power: the unremitting struggle of all things
to exceed themselves, continually growing and dying. According to Nietzsche, the response
to such a life that is most typical of ancient peoples is to be overcome with “nausea at
existence” and see life as “a punishment to be discharged by serving one’s time.”⁷⁶ By
contrast, the response that gives birth to Hellenic civilization, typified by Homer and
Hesiod, is the affirmation of life on its own terms: to acknowledge that life is a “terrible
⁷3 Nietzsche, “Homer’s Competition,” 1997.
⁷⁴ Nietzsche, 177. It should be evident from my reading that my interest in Nietzsche’s essay is primarily
conceptual, not historical. That is, I am less concerned with the accuracy of Nietzsche’s reconstruction of
Greek life understood in historical terms than I am in the conceptual work that his reconstruction makes
possible.
⁷⁵ Nietzsche, 177-178.
⁷⁶ Nietzsche, 178-179.
110
impulse” yet “regard it as justified.”⁷⁷ Nietzsche sees the first line of Hesiod’sWorks and
Days as an important articulation of this affirmative posture: “There are two Eris-goddesses
on earth.”⁷⁸ Life, that is to say, is indeed strife, but in a twofold aspect. One type of strife is
mere hostility and “struggle-to-the-death,” which is incompatible with human flourishing.
Under a different aspect, however, this “terrible impulse” can appear as that envy and
jealously which goads men to “the action of the contest.”⁷⁹ The particular insight that gives
birth to Greek civilization is therefore the understanding that the striving character of life
can be affirmed as soon as one recognizes it as equivocal: life’s “terrible impulse” takes
many shapes. To use the terminology of Nietzsche’s later work, there are—from the human
perspective—broadly two kinds of the will to power, viz., those kinds in which the growth
of force is incompatible with human existence and those in which it is not. The latter type
of the will to power is the struggle of which the contest (ἀγών⁸⁰) is especially emblematic.
When force has a territory for its deployment—in the case of the human, for The limit of force intensifies its
growth.
example, the field of contest and battle—it is stimulated toward a maximum power. By
delimiting the countours of life’s impulse, the contest intensifies its force. By contrast,
without an opponent—with no struggle to give shape to force—it becomes mere surfeit
and destruction.⁸1 Nietzsche therefore understands the ancient practice of ostracism as a
stimulant to the life of the community: the preeminent individual is removed from society
in order to increase the competition and “renew the tournament of forces.”⁸2 Without
ostricism, in other words, the contest would dry up, its forces would dissipate, and the
other, destructive Eris-goddess would prevail. The contest between forces is a limit which
⁷⁷ Nietzsche, 179.
⁷⁸ Nietzsche, 179. He takes this to be the original beginning of the text.
⁷⁹ Nietzsche, 180.
⁸⁰ AlthoughNietzsche does notmake the point, the double sense of ἀγών (contest/struggle, but also assembly)
and its relation to ἀγείρω (to gather) and ἀγορά (marketplace) is consonant with his broader argument.
⁸1 Nietzsche, “Homer’s Competition,” 1997 183.
⁸2 Nietzsche, 181.
111
gives to force a determinate character. In the contest, the “terrible impulse” of life no longer
manifests as a “boundless and indeterminate ambition” but instead relates in certain
precise ways to the growth of the city.⁸3 If force exists only in its deployment, its “limit”
marks not so much an impasse or obstacle for the activity of force but rather the originary
cusp of its growth.
According to Nietzsche’s interpretation, then, Hellenic life constitutes itself through Life constitutes itself through
self‐delimitation.
the contest (ἀγών). That is, Greek civilization is born precisely as that form of human
life-impulse (will to power) that occurs in the struggle whereby a tension occurs between
two or more activities of force such that each is able to exceed itself (grow).⁸⁴ Such
self-exceeding is possible only where there is a limit or cusp that is not prior to growth but
is instead its other side (as the convex line is to the concave). In the context of Nietzsche’s
interpretation of the birth of the Hellenic world, this limit or measure is the contest, and it
is specifically human—indeed, as that by which the human emerges within nature as
nevertheless distinctive, it is what answers to the original question of the essay. The contest
marks the limit of force (that is, its origin and determination as a manner of growth) that is
the characteristic mark of the human being (the Greek, in this case) understood as a
specific kind of natural activity.
When the immensely glorious hero exceeds the limit which constitutes Greek life, ὕβρις refers to this activity of life
apart from its specifically human
excelling all others in the contest, he or she does not for that reason lose all sense of limit. determination.
To the contrary, this would be impossible, since the limit is the correlate of the activity of
force as growth, which is characteristic of all life. After all, the hero still belongs to the
living. Instead, he or she leaves the particular kind of limit that pertains to prosaic Greek
existence and becomes situated in relation to another kind of life. Insofar as the Greeks
⁸3 In this respect, Nietzsche contrasts the consquently freer Greek with the “modern man” who “is crossed
everywhere by the infinite” (Nietzsche, 181-182).
⁸⁴ The prior, dark ages of cruelty, by contrast, are characterized by forms of human life-impulse that occur
in different contexts, namely, ones in which the human life-impulse is overwhelmed by life-impulses
antagonistic to human existence.
112
conceived only two Eris-goddesses, this “other kind” refers only to “everything else,” i.e.,
whatever does properly belong to Greek life.⁸⁵ The excessively decorated hero therefore
enters into an “anonymous” or inhuman life: that broad current of growing force that is
called by the name φύσις. Caught up in the grip of such a will to power, he or she
paradigmatically provokes the envy of the gods—“he has only the gods near him
now”—and is ruined.⁸⁶ According to Nietzsche, the name for such a state—that is, the
name for a will to power which is determined not in relation to the contest but rather in
relation to the movement of life qua life, and therefore to divinities and elemental
forces—is ὕβρις.⁸⁷ In “The Greek State,” an early essay from the same period as “Homer’s
Contest,” he frames this impulse in specifically vegetal terms that portend the later
notebooks: “what can we find, in the toil and moil of all the millions,” he asks, other than
the “all-powerful drive which makes stunted plants push their roots into arid rocks!”⁸⁸
Nietzsche therefore understands ὕβρις in terms of the unbounded, “terrible
impulse” of life: the play of surfeit (κόρος) at the heart of the coming to be and passing
away of things (φύσις) antecedent to or apart from the limits of the human.⁸⁹ Just as he
does not develop his concept of nutrition, however, Nietzsche does not develop this
concept of ὕβρις. Without leaving the German thinker behind entirely, then, the rest of this
chapter focuses on the Greek sense of ὕβρις and its particular relation to plant life.⁹⁰
⁸⁵ In this context, Greek life primarily means the life of the πόλις.
⁸⁶ Nietzsche, “Homer’s Competition,” 1997 183.
⁸⁷ Nietzsche, 183.
⁸⁸ Nietzsche, “The Greek State,” 1997 167.
⁸⁹ Compare page 8 and following, above.
⁹⁰ In what follows, my primary aim will be to elaborate a Greek—rather than Nietzschean—understanding of
ὕβρις that is nevertheless sympathetic to the Nietzschean vision.
113
§5.2.1. ὕβρις in Heraclitus
Nietzsche’s own interest in ὕβρις, appears to have been inspired largely by the pre-Socratic
philosophers, especially Heraclitus. “That dangerous word hybris,” he says, “is indeed the
touchstone for every Heraclitan.”⁹1 While speculation concerning the details of the scant
Heraclitean cosmology is difficult, Nietzsche believes the fragments give sufficient reason
for thinking that ὕβρις is a key element of cosmic creativity, especially in connection with
κόρος (satiety):
The period in which the world hurries toward the conflagration and dissolves
into pure fire Heraclitus characterizes, with notable emphasis, as a desire, a
want, or lack; the full consumption in fire he calls satiety. It remains for us to
ask how he interpreted and what he might have called the newly awakened
impulse toward cosmic formation, the new outpouring into the forms of
plurality. The Greek proverb ‘Satiety gives birth to hybris’ seems to come to
our aid here, and indeed one may ask, for a moment, if Heraclitus did not
perhaps derive the return to the many from hybris.⁹2
And yet the word ὕβρις appears in only a single fragment:
ὕβριν χρὴ σβεννύναι μᾶλλον ἢ πυρκαῖήν⁹3
This fragment is typically translated as a cautionary moral maxim:
Arrogant pride ought to be extinguished even more urgently than fire.
⁹1 Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, 1962 61. For an excellent essay contextualizing this
early work, see Kirkland, “Nietzsche and Drawing Near to the Personalities of the Pre-Platonic Greeks”.
⁹2 Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, 1962 60.
⁹3 DK 43. I follow theGreek edition of the texts in Kahn,TheArt andThought of Heraclitus; translations aremy
own. I refer to fragments according to theDKordering, which has the advantage of beingwidely recognized.
Its arbitrary composition is, furthermore, an advantage for my purposes, for it avoids prejudicing the
interpretation along the lines of contemporary arrangements.
114
To modern ears, the fragment is unremarkable. So long as ὕβρις is understood in the
moralistic sense as an arrogant pride (cf. page 13), the meaning appears straightforward:
such pride is exceedingly dangerous and must be quenched before it gets out of control.
Our ongoing reevaluation of the meaning of ὕβρις, however, casts suspicion on this Moralistic interpretations contradict
the corpus.
interpretation. Moreover, fire is an important cosmic principle in Heraclitus’ thought. In
his commentary, Charles Kahn recognizes (without any apparent hesitation) that such an
interpretation would make this “the only fragment where fire is presented in negative
terms, as a purely destructive force.” In fact, he seems pleased that his interpretation also
requires that Heraclitus “implicitly qualifies his praise for the principle of war and
conflict.”⁹⁴ In other words, this interpretation puts the fragment at odds with the rest of
Heraclitus’ corpus on the subjects of both fire and strife, with which the fragment is
intertwined.
Heraclitus is well-known as the philosopher of movement, and this is because he is Strife is the principle of life (soul).
a philosopher of life, understood in terms of soul.⁹⁵ “The soul is the originary principle, the
rising vapor out of which other things condense,” he says. “It is always flowing.”⁹⁶ Like
Nietzsche, however, Heraclitus understands the activity of life as a struggle of forces in
tension. He is opposed to all those who “would that strife [ἔρις] might vanish from among
gods and men,” for strife is what brings living things into being:⁹⁷
One must perceive that war is common to the things that exist, and strife is
fitting, and that all things come into being and are disposed according to
strife.⁹⁸
⁹⁴ Kahn, 241.
⁹⁵ Heraclitus does not use the term ζωή; instead, he speaks of ψυχή. βίος appears twice (DK 48, 62) as the
counterpart of death.
⁹⁶ DK A15.
⁹⁷ DK A22.
⁹⁸ DK 80. Reading δίκη as “customary,” though not in a specifically human sense, i.e., “the way,” “the normal
course of nature” (Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon). Also reading the manuscript’s “χρεώμενα”
instead of the editorial “χρεών” (c.f. Kahn,The Art andThought of Heraclitus 66).
115
The counter-thrust brings together, and from what is at variance comes
beautiful attunement, and all things come to be according to strife.⁹⁹
Strife therefore appears as the basic character of existence. Such strife is not merely external
to things; rather, things are constituted by an inward struggle of forces in tension with one
another. “A thing agrees with itself by being at variance with itself; it is a concord [ἁρμονία]
turning back on itself, like that of the bow and the lyre,” he says.1⁰⁰ Strife is therefore the
basic principle of life—“the name of the bow is life”1⁰1—and of the living cosmos.
In light of the centrality of strife to his conception of life, Heraclitus is able to give a Soul is self‐increase.
precise characterization of the soul:
This is the definition of soul: increasing itself.1⁰2
Strife is therefore not oriented toward self-preservation, but instead indicates the tension
that pertains to the increase of force in relation to itself. As Nietzsche perceives (page 114),
this self-increase or overflowing fullness, which Heraclitus elsewhere calls κόρος (satiety,
surfeit), is closely associated in Greek thinking with ὕβρις—so much so that the two often
seem interchangeable.1⁰3 Fire, which appears in many shapes and whose nature is to
increase and intensify when sated, is therefore a suitable figure for the essential movement
of the cosmos.1⁰⁴ For Heraclitus, fire is also a figure of self-determination. “No one of gods
or men” has made (ποιέω) the cosmos, he says. To the contrary, it is alive, an “ever-living
⁹⁹ DK 8.
1⁰⁰ DK 51
1⁰1 DK 48
1⁰2 DK 115; cf. DK 45.
1⁰3 Cf. Kahn,The Art andThought of Heraclitus 276, commenting on DK 65: “In Greek koros ‘satiety’ suggests
hybris.” In the common conjunction ὄλβος—κόρος/ὕβρις—ἄτη, the two appear to be almost equivalent (see
Doyle, “Ὄλβος, Κόρος, Ὕβρις and Ἄτη from Hesiod to Aeschylus,” 1970). It is typically unclear which—
if either—comes first (see Michelini, “Ὕβρις and Plants” 36n5). As we will see below (page 119), this
association is particular pronounced in the case of plant life. Regarding the relation between the abundance
of good things and ὕβρις in a very different context, see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1934 1124a29.
1⁰⁴ DK 67; see also DK 111.
116
fire” (πῦρ ἀείζωον), kindling and going out according to its own, internal measure.1⁰⁵ By
identifying the cosmos with fire, Heraclitus asserts its independence from any external
measure. The cosmos, like the soul, is self -increasing fire. Furthermore, like the burning
sun of which Heraclitus also frequently speaks, fire is not merely a light but also a source of
warmth and nourishment, holding away the winter chill, causing crops to grow, and
making food of plants and animals. Fire is “importunity and surfeit” which “will
distinguish and compel all things.”1⁰⁶ In its self-exceeding, oversaturated display of force,
fire gives impetus to all that exists, ordering the coming to be and passing away of things.
In light of Heraclitus’ conception of life in terms of strife, self-overflowing, and fire, ὕβρις must have an inner limit.
we can revisit the fragment that mentions ὕβρις explicitly, offering a somewhat different
interpretation:
ὕβριν χρὴ σβεννύναι μᾶλλον ἢ πυρκαιήν.1⁰⁷
There is a necessity that quells ὕβρις even more than fire.
The fragment speaks of the limits of both ὕβρις and fire understood as cosmic principles:
both must be checked or quelled (σβεννύναι) according to necessity (χρὴ), the former
more so than the latter. Although fire grows voraciously, it is not simply boundless. Rather,
it possesses a measure or limit according to which it kindles and is quelled. Such a limit,
arising from the necessity of its essence, is not an extremity beyond which nothing is
possible. Rather, it is the rhythmic movement of expansion and contraction which belongs
to the activity of fire and grants that activity its character (“in measures kindling and in
measures going out”1⁰⁸). These “πυρὸς τροπαὶ”—“reversals” or “turnings” of fire, in
1⁰⁵ DK 30.
1⁰⁶ DK 65 and 66.
1⁰⁷ DK 43.
1⁰⁸ DK 30.
117
Heraclitus’ words—mark the necessary delineations of fire as a determinate activity.1⁰⁹
What, then, is ὕβρις? Understood in terms of its close connection with κόρος, ὕβρις
indicates life in its essential activity of “increasing itself.” And yet, the activity of life is not
simply boundless extension, either. It also involves a limit arising from the necessity of its
own nature—even more so than fire.
While the record of Heraclitus’ thinking remains fragmentary, it is possible to
understand ὕβρις as an ontological concept in his philosophical outlook which is related to
questions concerning life, growth, and the limits that pertain to the movements of φύσις.
There is an important aspect of ὕβρις, however, on which Heraclitus remains silent: its
vegetal character.
§5.2.2. Vegetal ὕβρις
Among the most illuminating passages concerning ὕβρις are those in which the Greeks ὕβρις is strongly associated with
plants.
speak of the ὕβρις of plants.11⁰ Because of their removal from questions of social
prerogatives, such passages offer a particularly fruitful insight into a more originary sense
of ὕβρις, conceived from within the movement of life.111 According to Ann Michelini’s
research, the vegetal character of ὕβρις is reflected in “a strong association in everday
prosaic terminology between human ὑβρίζοντες and ὑβρίζοντα δένδρα” in the classical
period.112 Even where ὕβρις belongs clearly to human beings, she points out, Greek
authors take frequent recourse to a horticultural vocabulary, as if even in these contexts
1⁰⁹ DK 31A; see also DK 90 and, especially, DK A5, where “necessity” indicates the ordering of the changes of
the cosmos.
11⁰ For an overview of contemporary scholarship on ὕβρις, see pages 12 and following.
111 See Michelini, “Ὕβρις and Plants” 36-37. It is significant in this respect that ὕβρις was taken by the Greeks
to affect social groups as well as individuals.
112Michelini, 43.
118
ὕβρις retains something of the inhuman: “For ὕβρις, blossoming,” Aeschylus writes, “has
ripened a growth of delusion.”113
Certain plants are noteworthy in this respect for their tendency to become Examples
exceptionally hubristic under the right circumstances. Aristotle points to the example of
grape vines, which “go all to leaf, becoming excessively hubristic on account of receiving
[too much] nourishment,” andTheophrastus adds that the vine also needs regular pruning
to encourage fruitfulness.11⁴ For Theophrastus, the almond tree is especially prone to
manifestations of too much ὕβρις (fig. 1211⁵):
The best land for all trees is loose, light, and damp, since such land offers good
nourishment and makes them grow rapidly, except for trees of such strength
that they become full of nutriment [πλῆθος τροφῆς] and excessively hubristic,
like the almond.11⁶
In both cases, the ὕβρις of a plant appears prominently when the plant receives excessive
nourishment. The close relationship between ὕβρις and κόρος emphasizes this point:
although wide in its metaphorical applications, κόρος has the concrete primary sense of
having enough (or too much) to eat. We might say that ὕβρις/κόρος indicates an
oversaturation of force, the condition of the plant that has accumulated an intensive degree
of power. AsTheophrastus says, this is a function of the “strength” of the particular plant.
Thus, the suitability of the environment for the plant depends upon its own strength of
growth:
113 Aeschylus, Persians; Seven Against Thebes; Suppliants; Prometheus Bound, 2009 Persians 821-8.
11⁴ Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 2000 725b34-35; 2.7.2; Cf. Theophrastus, De Causis Plantarum, 1976
3.15.4. Cf. Michelini, “Ὕβρις and Plants” 36-37n7 concerningTheophrastus’ sources: “BothTheophrastus’
botanical works draw upon a number of earlier works, among which are technical treatises by authors
such as Androtion, the oral reports of gardeners and farmers, and earlier generalizations by such obscure
φυσιολόγοι as the Sybarite Menestor.”
11⁵ Fig. source: van Gogh, Almond Blossom.
11⁶Theophrastus, De Causis Plantarum, 1976 3.6.8.
119
FIGURE 12. Almond Blossom
120
The countryside can be good for a plant in two ways: either with respect to the
suitability of its nature or with respect to the coordination of its might and
power. For example, lean soil accords with almond trees, for when the soil is
deep and rich the trees become excessively hubristic and fruitless through
good nourishment [τὴν εὐτροφίαν].11⁷
In Nietzschean terms, the issue concerns the particular coordination of forces (might,
power) that characterize a particular living thing and its interaction with the nourishment
that is incorporated into the assemblage. When these combinations of force become
particularly intense, yet remain fundamentally compatible with the flourishing of the plant
in question, the ὕβρις of the plant intensifies and it becomes fruitless. The fig tree, for
example, “grows more vigorously if it is watered, but then its fruit is inferior.”11⁸ Likewise
with lupine in rich soil, which “fails to bear, going wood-mad [ὑλομανῶν] and excessively
hubristic.”11⁹
This does not mean that the especially hubristic plant ceases to grow. To the ὕβρις suggests bare growth, apart
from human concern.
contrary, such a plant is fruitless but fecund, proliferating madly.12⁰ It would be more
correct to say that the procreative growth of the hubristic plant occurs so intensely that the
plant ceases to produce fruit fitting for human consumption. As the decorated hero is
seized by ὕβρις in the precise moment that he stands within the broader currents of force
that characterize life apart from its restriction to the contest and πόλις, so also the plant
becomes particularly hubristic in the moment it ceases to bear the fruit which sustains the
πόλις and instead simply grows: the prodigality of the plant manifests its ὕβρις.
11⁷Theophrastus, 2.16.8.
11⁸Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, 1999 2.7.1; see also the discussion of remedies at 2.7.5 and various
diseases of over-nurture at 4.14.6 andTheophrastus, De Causis Plantarum, 1976 5.9.10-13.
11⁹Theophrastus, De Causis Plantarum, 1976 3.1.5.
12⁰ “Offspring, in fact, are seldom treated as the fruit of the parent tree in Greek; children are far more likely to
be called off-shoots or branches” (Michelini, “Ὕβρις and Plants” 40).
121
In Euripides, ὕβρις belongs to the exuberant movement of natural growth and
decay exemplified by the bacchic wand or “thyrsus,” a branch of the god’s sacred tree
wound with wild vines:
Consecrate yourselves to Bacchus,
with stems of oak or fir,
dress yourselves in dappled fawn skins,
trimmed with white sheep’s wool.
As you wave your thyrsus,
revere the ὕβρις it contains:
all the earth will dance at once.121
Before becoming known predominantly as a wine-god, Dionysus was known to the Greeks
as Lord of Trees, Blossom-Bringer, and Abundance of Life.122 Here ὕβρις is associated with
the inner character of the plant insofar as that plant is sacred—i.e., removed from the
profane demands of human consumption. The plant is hubristic insofar as it belongs to the
god of blossoming and abundance (not, for example, to the economy of grain and harvest).
Rather, it belongs to a living movement—a dance—that pertains to “all the earth.”
ὕβρις can therefore be said to be “excessive” in two senses. In one sense, it is ὕβρις is excessive in two ways.
excessive from the perspective of the gardener, for whom fruitless growth exceeds the
purposes for which the tree has been planted and nurtured.123 In another sense, from the
121 Dodds, Euripedes ll. 109-115.
122 “To the Greeks of the classical age Dionysus was not solely, or evenmainly, the god of wine. Plutarch tells us
asmuch, confirming it with a quotation fromPindar, and the god’s cult titles confirm it also: he is Δενδρίτης
or Ἔνδενδρος, the Power in the tree; he is Ἄνθιος the blossom-bringer, Κάρπιος the fruit-bringer, Φλεύς or
Φλέως, the abundance of life. His domain is, in Plutarch’s words, the whole of the ὑγρὰ φύσις—not only the
liquid fire in the grape, but the sap thrusting in a young tree, the blood pounding in the veins of a young
animal, all themysterious and uncontrollable tides that ebb and flow in the life of nature. Our oldest witness,
Homer, nowhere explicitly refers to him as a wine god; and it may well be that his association with certain
wild plants, such as the fir and the ivy, and with certain wild animals, is in fact older than his association
with wine” (Dodds, xi-xii). For these themes in connection with the passage just quoted, see Dodds, 80-82.
123Michelini herself ultimately adopts this perspective when she interprets ὕβρις as putting “self-
aggrandizement before the performance of the social role assigned to it” (Michelini, “Ὕβρις and Plants”
122
perspective of its own growth, the plant is excessive because it has become an intensified
activity of self-exceeding. In Nietzschean terms, vegetal ὕβρις is excessive because it is
joyful.
The fecundity of ὕβρις appears in the poets, where it sometimes marks the ὕβρις gives birth to ὕβρις
inexorable growth of insolence towards blindness and disaster:
The stalk of ὕβρις grows anew.12⁴
But what grows? What is exceeded? In this passage from Aeschylus’, ὕβρις appears as
re-growth—a generation that recapitulates itself with a force that is difficult to dissipate. In
another passage, Aeschylus’ chorus puts the point precisely:
Prior ὕβρις loves to birth new ὕβρις.12⁵
ὕβρις is not, therefore, the name for a temporary overflow or aberration of life. On the
contrary, its excessive movement occurs from ὕβρις to ὕβρις—or, more precisely, ὕβρις is
an activity of relation, structured according to excess, in which the relata are not external
to the relation itself. When we say that the grape vine has gone wood-mad, the prior
“tame” vine and the later “unruly” vine are themselves nothing but other moments of the
ὕβρις relation that is characteristic of plant life as such.12⁶ In this sense, the question of
hybris in the plant comes to be situated within the broader context of φύσις and the
question of growth.
38-39). To be more precise, however, we would have to recognize the gardener herself as an activity of
ὕβρις and will to power and see her perspective—as well as her habit of preemtively consolidating vegetal
forces through pruning—as activities of interpretation in the Nietzschean sense (see the passage from the
Genealogy quoted on page 104).
12⁴ Aeschylus, Persians; Seven Against Thebes; Suppliants; Prometheus Bound, 2009 Suppliants 104ff.
12⁵ Or “engender, bear” (τίκτειν). Aeschylus, Aeschylus, II, Oresteia, 2009 Agamemnon 764.
12⁶That these other moments are relations does not, of course, imply that they are posterior to their relata—
which latter are also ὕβρις relations, etc.
123
Nietzsche’s youthful intuition appears justified: the concept of ὕβρις speaks to the joyful
blossoming forth of all that comes to be and passes away according to φύσις. By conceiving
vegetal life in terms of ὕβρις and the “will to the accumulation of force,” Nietzsche is able to
abandon the insistence upon unity that characterizes Hegel and Goethe’s approaches to
living things. Whereas these philosophers understand the unity of the plant as central,
Nieztsche’s “plant” is a crude fiction masking a multiplicity of growth, a ravenously
unbounded vegetal exuberance. In this sense, plants are for Nietzsche an emblematic form
of that “terrible impulse” of ὕβρις that belongs to life as such.
And yet, Nietzsche’s interpretation of ὕβρις remains hampered by his resistance to
the errors of his predecessors, who insist upon the unity of the organism. In his fervent
insistence upon multiplicity, Nietzsche’s account of ὕβρις becomes enmeshed in a theory of
expenditure that is ultimately unable to take account of the particular type of “self ” that is
involved in self-overcoming—the limit or measure that also belongs to plant life. When he
defines life as “a multiplicity of forces, connected by a common mode of nutrition,” it must
be said that he is much abler to account for the multiplicity of forces than he is their
common mode.12⁷
For Nietzsche, as for Hegel and Goethe, the question concerning vegetal life comes
to be articulated in terms of unity and difference. For each philosopher, as we have seen, the
most important aspects of their thinking resist this articulation, but remain
underdeveloped. In the Greeks, we are beginning to see a different approach: while
remaining sensitive to the importance of unity and multiplicity, the Greek understanding
of ὕβρις resituates the question concerning plants in terms of excess and limit. The relation
between fire and vegetal life that appeared in Heraclitus’ discussion of their “quelling” and
measure, for example, is a central image in Aristotle’s understanding of the limit and
proportion which belongs to the hubristic activity of the nutritive, vegetal activity of
12⁷ Nietzsche,Will to Power, 1968 §641, quoted on page 108.
124
soul.12⁸ Because of this different concern, nutrition has a more central role in the Greek
conception of plant life than it does in Hegel, Goethe, or Nietzsche.
The remainder of this essay focuses on Greek philosophy, exploring the ὕβρις of
plant life in terms of excess and limit, the broad movement of φύσις, and the activity of
nutrition. The next chapter begins with Aristotle, who remains sensitive to the hubristic
character of plant life while providing a much more robust account of vegetal nutrition as
the modality of growth.12⁹
12⁸ See Chapter VIII.
12⁹ Fig. 13: Parkinson, Cucumis Mello Var. Agrestis, 1769; fig. 14: Parkinson, Lygodium Volubile, n.d.
125
FIGURE 13. Cucumis mello
126
FIGURE 14. Lygodium volubile
127
Part III
128
CHAPTER VI
BETWEEN ΦΎΣΙΣ AND ΖΩΉ
Yet what about the plant? Here already we are uncertain.
Martin Heidegger
In Nature, the plant is the most natural thing. It is natural life.
Jacques Derrida
When Aristotle sets out in On the Soul to discern and articulate the originary principle of
living things, he reproaches his predecessors for ignoring vegetal life.1 To their
identification of life with perception and locomotion, he objects by way of counterexample,
for the plant has neither yet is alive. Plants therefore exercise a pivotal role in the
development of Aristotle’s line of inquiry into living being, setting the study upon its
proper path. Plants bring clarity to the inquiry by presenting life in its simplicity. The very
minimalism of plant life, however, also makes it enigmatic: is vegetal life toomeager to be
that “through which living belongs to all things?”2 For Aristotle, as for Hegel, plants
partake in a partial kind of soul.3 Thus, the same bareness of vegetal life that grants it a
methodological privilege also entails a deficiency of being. In its vegetal mode, life both
appears with an instructive simplicity and simultaneously recedes into occlusion.
1 A much earlier version of this chapter’s thesis appears in Kerr, “Phytology, Between φύσις and ζωή,” 2019.
Among the sources that I have fruitfully consulted for this chapter and the next but have not quoted directly,
I make special mention of Baracchi, Aristotle’s Ethics as First Philosophy, 2011, Gotthelf and Lennox,
Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, Klein, “Aristotle, an Introduction”, Lennox and Bolton, “Being,
Nature, and Life in Aristotle”, McNeill,The Time of Life, 2006, Nussbaum and Rorty, Essays on Aristotle’s De
Anima, and Owens, Aristotle: Collected Papers, 1981. Epigraph sources: Heidegger, Fundamental Concepts,
1995 62, Derrida, Of Grammatology 148.
2 Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 415a35.
3 “τὸ τοιοῦτον μόριον τῆς ψυχῆς.” Aristotle, 413b8.
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In Aristotle, plant life grants access to the being of the living but for precisely this
reason is difficult to apprehend in its specificity and remains itself eclipsed. On the one
hand, Aristotle wants to account for a non-zoological life; on the other hand, his account
remains subservient to and enmeshed within the zoological categories that such an
account would serve. In this chapter, I attempt to trace the ambivalence involved in
Aristotle’s account of plant life, focusing especially on the opening chapters of his text and
the account of striving in book III, chapters 9-10.⁴ On the basis of my analysis, I interpret
this ambivalence toward plants as the attempt to articulate a fundamentally different kind
of soul than the sensitive soul with which his text is largely concerned: a phytological form
of life that has more in common with φύσις than with animal life (ζωή). Phytology would
then be the vegetal pivot which for Aristotle holds φύσις and ζωή together in their
difference.⁵
The first section of this chapter situates the role of plants in Aristotle’s inquiry. This
inquiry has a twofold aim of revealing the truth of both the soul and of φύσις. As the form
of life which responds most adequately to this demand, vegetal life comes to the forefront
of Aristotle’s approach. At the same time, as I discuss in the second section of the chapter,
Aristotle views vegetal life as deficient; his account is oriented primarily toward animal life.
In the third section, I trace the way in which this ambivalence concerning plants plays out
in the case of particular activities of the soul, especially striving and imagination. Finally,
the fourth section interprets this ambivalence as productive in relation to the twofold aim
of Aristotle’s inquiry. Aristotle’s ambivalence concerning plants, in other words, responds
to the ambivalent character of life itself.⁶
⁴ I am grateful to the faculty and participants at the 2018 Collegium Phaenomenologicum for the many
conversations concerning ὄρεξις in plants that inspired this chapter.
⁵ For a broader discussion of the twofold character of φύσις, see Brogan, Heidegger and Aristotle, especially
ch. 2-3.
⁶ In general, Aristotle’s method is to let things speak. See Owens, Doctrine of Being, 1978 129-131: “Things
are directly known and studied”; “Things are in some ways the same, in some ways different. If a different
term were used every time the definition differed, all danger of confusion would vanish. So too would be
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§6.1. Vegetal Beginnings
Aristotle begins On the Soul⁷ with an invocation of what is beautiful and worthy. While Inquiry into soul reveals the twofold
character of life.
exacting and difficult to a superlative degree, the inquiry into the soul is also beautiful,
worthy, and wonderous. Despite the difficulty of taking hold of the soul, it nevertheless
belongs among the first things by virtue of its way of bearing up understanding. Such an
understanding has a twofold aim: it not only illuminates the soul itself as a principle of life
but also illuminates all things according to that truth which belongs to φύσις. It is with
these considerations that Aristotle begins the text and simultaneously poses the problem of
how to begin:
Beautiful and worthy things bear up understanding, and one more than
another according as it is either more exacting or better and more wonderous.
Because it is both of these, we would with good reason situate inquiry
concerning the soul in what is first. Coming to know it seems to gather
together all things toward truth, and to do so greatly, and most of all toward
the truth of φύσις. For it is something like a principle [ἀρχή] of animals.⁸ So
we seek to contemplate and to come to know both φύσις and the distinct being
of it, and then as much as comes along with it (some of which seem to be
affections of the soul itself and others to belong to animals because of the
soul). But to take hold of anything trustworthy about it is themost difficult of
all things in every way. […]There will yet be a great deal of puzzling and
lost in the expression the unity and interrelations that groups of things have among themselves. The term
would be made technically precise and definite. But it would thereby shut out of its air-tight compartment
much of the indefinable richness contained in things.”
⁷ I refer to Mark Shiffman’s excellent translation of On the Soul (Aristotle, De Anima, 2011) and to the Loeb
Classical Library translations of other Aristotelian texts. The translations are frequently modified following
the Oxford Classical Texts edition of the Greek.
⁸ Or “living things.” I discuss the ambiguity on page 147.
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wandering about for the proper starting points of the inquiry. For different
beginnings [ἀρχαί] belong to different things.⁹
On the one hand, Aristotle’s thinking inquires into the soul as the animating principle of
animal life. In many ways, On the Soul is a book about sensation (αἴσθησις), which is the
characteristic activity of animals, and its various correlates.1⁰ After the doxography and
general definitions, the account of sensation occupies roughly two thirds of the remaining
text.11 The evident activity of animals is in large part to perceive (perhaps something
edible, beautiful, etc.), desire what they perceive, and travel to it; this is the characteristic
zoological activity with which the text’s account of perception is primarily concerned as it
builds toward an initial account of noetic activities. On the other hand, the inquiry into the
distinct being of the soul is at the same time an inquiry concerning φύσις. According to
Aristotle, this is because φύσις is a principle (ἀρχή) of animal life in some way. What does
this mean? To a first approximation, the observation concerns movement: insofar as the
soul is a principle of movement, it is related to φύσις as “the distinct being of things having
a principle of movement in themselves as such.”12 For Aristotle, however, the point is
stronger. The inquiry into the soul reveals a twofold character of life and discloses a
fundamental relation between vegetal life and φύσις. In its relation to the soul, the truth of
φύσις appears as “something like” a principle of life.13
What, then, is the status of this originary principle of the soul, which is not exactly The originary principle should hold
together φύσις and ζωή in their
an ἀρχή but rather “something like” one? To establish an originary principle from which an difference.
⁹ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 402a1-11, 21-23 (emphasis added). Although most translators naturally read
“αὐτῆς” at 402a8 with both “φύσιν” and “οὐσίαν,” I read it only with the latter. This makes better sense of
the conceptual structure of the passage, which concerns on the one hand the truth of φύσις (402a6) and on
the other hand the “τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ τὸ τί ἐστι” of the soul (402a13).
1⁰ I use “sensation” and “perception” equivalently.
11 Bymy count, the doxography occupies roughly five Bekker pages, the general definitions two, nutrition one,
perception more than seven, and intellect just over two.
12 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 2003 1015a14-16. For some difficulties with this simple connection, see Aristotle,
De Anima, 1979 405b30-406b15, discussed in Chapter VII.
13 “ἔστι γὰρ οἷον ἀρχὴ,” Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 402a7.
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inquiry into these things can proceed, Aristotle declares, will require a great deal of
puzzlement and wandering. This puzzlement in finding an originary principle for his
inquiry is entangled in the task of the inquiry itself, namely, to find the originary principle
of the soul. Thus, the litany of perplexities (ἀπορίαι) with which Aristotle initiates his study
concerns both the inquiry and the soul.1⁴ To find an origin for the inquiry would be to find
a phenomenon that can hold together the twofold aim of the inquiry as an investigation
concerning both φύσις and the zoological activities of the soul. Such a phenomenon, as we
will see, will be “something like” an origin for both φύσις and animal life (ζωή). The
problem of securing an origin for the inquiry and soul together therefore means: what is
the originary principle in living things that holds φύσις and ζωή in relation without
collapsing them into identity?
In the early portions of his text, Aristotle proceeds by declaring a series of new Plants correct the inquiry into the soul.
beginnings to the inquiry, each culminating in a difficulty which arises from the twofold
character of the study of the soul. Aristotle first turns toward the opinions of his
predecessors, declaring that the inquiry ought to begin with prior opinions about what
belongs to the soul “according to φύσις.”1⁵ Some of these predecessors looked for the
principle of the soul by attending to φύσις, identifying the soul with the elements (fire, air,
etc.). Most looked for the principle of the soul by attending to animal life, identifying the
soul with perception and locomotion, and “it is pretty much these two thoughts that we
have inherited from our forebears concerning soul,” as Aristotle concludes, for these men
“suppose soul to be what gives motion to animals.”1⁶ Soul does, of course, give motion to
animals, but this observation remains only on the zoological side of the inquiry. In their
own fashion, both those who emphasize φύσις and those who emphasize animal life deny
the twofold character of the inquiry into the soul by deciding it in one direction or the
1⁴ Aristotle, 402a13-403b19.
1⁵ Aristotle, 403b25-26.
1⁶ Aristotle, 403b27-28, 404a8-9.
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other. Here Aristotle introduces the corrective that will become the linchpin of his analysis:
the soul of plants. Plants redress inherited opinions through their inability to be resolved
either on the side of φύσις simply or on the side of animal life.1⁷ Plants, as we will see,
appear as a hybrid form of life, relating φύσις and animal life (ζωή) together in their
difference. The doxography therefore ends in the realization that the inquiry into the soul
will have to begin with vegetal life, for only here do we find an originary principle that is
common to both plants and animals.
§6.2. Between Plant and Animal
In light of the centrality of vegetal life, Aristotle’s initial tension between the inquiry into Aristotle's series of beginnings moves
further towards plants.
φύσις and the inquiry into the zoological activities of the soul undergoes a shift: the
philosopher becomes increasingly concerned with the tension between the soul of plants
(φυτά) and that of animals (ζῷα). On the one hand, animal life is manifestly associated
with soul. “Life is found in animals and plants,” observes the pseudo-Aristotelian author of
De Plantis in a spirit consonant with his authorial pretensions. “But in animals it is
apparent and obvious, whereas in plants it is hidden [κεκρυμμένη] and not manifest.”1⁸ On
the other hand, the terms of Aristotle’s inquiry—especially the doxography—reveal the
importance of vegetal life. For this reason, Aristotle comes at the soul “again as if from the
beginning,” starting from the question of what is most common to all soul.1⁹ While this
new approach remains with plant life throughout, it nevertheless does so abstractly, in the
end offering only a “sketch that traces the outlines around the soul.”2⁰ This is because the
account of what is most common—in which we find the famous definition of the soul as
1⁷ See Aristotle, 410b20-411a2 and 411b19-24.
1⁸ Aristotle,Minor Works, 1936 815a10-14. Quoted on page 8.
1⁹ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 411b28-412a4.
2⁰ Aristotle, 413a10.
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“the first actuality of an organized natural body”21—ends up articulating only that the soul
is and fails to bring to light its generative, originary principle. Aristotle therefore takes up
yet another beginning for his inquiry, beginning from the phenomena themselves, those
things that “are more readily apparent but unclear.”22 By this point, in keeping with the
trajectory of this series of beginnings, the phenomena in question are primarily plants; in
them, the originary principle (ἀρχή) of the soul comes to light. This is a principle of
nourishing, growing, and withering, and it is only “due to this principle [ἀρχή] that life
belongs to living things.”23 This prepares the way for Aristotle’s final beginning which,
starting from the vegetal soul as an originary principle, carries his analysis through to the
end of the text.2⁴
This trajectory, which moves from the twofold aim of the Aristotelian inquiry Yet plants are of secondary
importance to Aristotle.
toward the vegetal beginning that finally secures a starting point for Aristotle’s account,
gives pride of place to plant life.2⁵ And yet, that vegetal beginning is forgotten almost as
quickly as it is established. After a single chapter concerning the nutritive soul, Aristotle
proceeds to devote twenty to the zoological activities (primarily perception and thought)
with hardly a backward glance. In this sense, the account of the nutritive soul, which
pertains especially to plants, exists only en route to the sensitive soul which forms the
central focus of the text. On the Soul is a zoology text, the main focus of which is to
articulate the activities of the living animal. At the same time, however, to give an adequate
account of sensation requires a prior account of an insensitive form of life, a movement of
growth and reproduction which surges forth and withers away of its own accord:
21 Aristotle, 412b5-6.
22 Aristotle, 413a11-13.
23 Aristotle, 413a26-413b3.
2⁴ Aristotle, 415a16-435b26.
2⁵ I consider each of these moments in greater detail later in this chapter and, especially, in Chapter VII.
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But if one is to say what each of them is—the noetic, the perceptive, or the
nutritive—then one must rather primarily say what thinking is and what
perceiving is. […] But first one must speak of nutrition and reproduction; for
the nutritive soul belongs already to all the others and is the first and most
common potency of soul, through which living belongs to all things.2⁶
In the account of the soul, sensation and thinking are primary in the order of importance,
but nutrition is first in the order of inquiry. The discourse concerning the vegetal is a
necessary propaedeutic for an account to which it is ultimately secondary. It is in this spirit
that Aristotle is able to remark offhandedly in his later treatment of sensation that “the soul
is demarcated mainly by two distinctive features: (1) motion with respect to place and (2)
thinking, judging, and perceiving.”2⁷ What is first (nutrition) has here entirely vanished
into what is primary (sensation). Nutritive life is hidden in the inquiry into life, appearing
only in a privative relation to life in general and its full paradigm, the human animal.2⁸
The aim of Aristotle’s study is the truth concerning animals and—in fact, most of
all—the truth concerning φύσις (see page 131). If the inquiry into the soul is what first
discloses the truth concerning φύσις, it is plant life in particular that situates the soul
within the movement of φύσις and constitutes the keystone of this disclosure.
Nevertheless, the vegetal soul discloses the truth of φύσις as a principle of zoological life.
Although Aristotle’s account must take account of the nutritive soul, it is driven by a
zoological aim and conceptual logic. In Homer, φύσις shows itself under the guise of the
plant which bears and secures the difference between animal and human only through its
uprooting and disappearance (see page 8). In Aristotle, similarly, the truth of φύσις
2⁶ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 415a17-24.
2⁷ Aristotle, 427a18-19.
2⁸ Although none are extant, Aristotle is often thought to have composed separate treatises on plants and
nutrition (although the existence of the latter is somewhat more doubtful).
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appears through the activities of nutritive growth that must ultimately escape the account,
even while leaving their mark upon it.
§6.3. Two Sites of Ambivalence
For Aristotle, the most striking feature of plants is that they lack: they lack striving, Plants have a deficient form of soul.
perception, locomotion, imagination, and thought. “In some living beings all of the
potencies of soul that have been mentioned are present, in others a few, and in some only
one,” he observes. “In plants the nutritive alone is present.”2⁹ Whereas animals possess the
various potencies of soul in different combination, plants do not. Instead, plants have a
“partial kind of soul.”3⁰ We should not, however, understand by this the simple claim that
plants have one part of soul among others, just as animals would then also have one (or
more) parts of the soul. Aristotle never makes a similar claim about animals and is
generally reluctant to speak of “parts” of the soul without distancing himself from such
language.31 Instead, we should understand that plants are noteworthy for having a kind of
soul that is in some sense “partial,” that is, deficient: plants appear as a nascent, germinal
form of life.
And yet, plants nevertheless live and move in complex ways: they turn toward the Growth is definitive of vegetal life.
light, modulate the unfurling of their blossoms according to the time of day, seek out
nutritious soil, etc.32 Most importantly for Aristotle, plants grow. Growth is the movement
most proper to nourishment, and it is on this basis that “all plants appear to live, since they
clearly have within themselves a potency and principle [ἀρχή] through which they
continue growing and withering.” Plants grow “in both and indeed all directions” because
2⁹ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 414a29-414b1. See also 432b15f, 413a34-35, 415a2, and Aristotle, Parts of
Animals, 1937 641b8.
3⁰ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 413b8.
31 See for example Aristotle, 402b1-17, 411b5-13, 413b11-414a1, 432a22-432b7.
32 Which of these phenomena—and which others—might Aristotle have discussed in his lost treatise on
plants? We do not know.
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they “live toward their ends.” In the case of plants, such growth is definitive, for “no other
potency of soul occurs in them”: no perception, striving, local motion, or thought.33 Thus
the partiality of the plant soul—its restriction to nutritive growth—serves not only as a
mark of deficiency but also as an intensifier: unlike animals, which grow in accordance
with a fixed arrangement of organs, plants proliferate in many different directions; unlike
animals, which generally cease growing at the point of maturity, plants continue growing
and withering. In this respect, Aristotle’s interpretation of vegetal life is closely akin to
those of Goethe, Hegel, and Nietzsche: the plant is pure growth.3⁴
In this intensive form, the phenomenon of vegetal growth introduces further
ambivalences into Aristotle’s account of life. In the previous section, we saw that nutritive
life has an ambivalent status in the beginning of Aristotle’s inquiry into the soul as the
originary principle (ἀρχή) of animal life. In virtue of the primacy of vegetal growth, this
ambivalence persists throughout Aristotle’s account, especially with respect to the activities
of striving (ὄρεξις) and imagination (φαντασία).
§6.3.1. Vegetal Striving
Once philosophy recognizes the essential character of growth for vegetal life it becomes Vegetal growth involves striving.
very difficult to maintain a separation of growth from the other activities of life, as I have
shown in previous chapters. The same is true for Aristotle. In particular, the question of
growth becomes entangled with the question of desire or striving (ὄρεξις). Insofar as it is
by growing “in both and indeed all directions” that plants “live toward their ends,” growth
33 Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 413a25-413b1.
3⁴ For background concerning Aristotle’s theory of growth as it relates specifically to “increase” as a change
in size, see Aristotle, “Generation and Corruption,” 1955. I.5 and the helpful commentary in Haas and
Mansfeld, Aristotle on Generation and Corruption, Book 1 171-193. As this essay has made clear, the issue
of growth in plants is important in part because vegetal growth is not merely an increase in size. See also
my discussion of nutritive growth in Chapter VII.
138
appears as a stretching or reaching toward that would have much in common with striving
(fig. 153⁵). As we will see, Aristotle is ambivalent on this point.
The striving aspect of vegetal growth appears implicitly in Aristotle’s general Striving belongs to the general
definition of the soul.
definition of the soul as the first actuality of an “ὀργανικόν [organized, organic,
instrumental] natural body.”3⁶ The connection with striving occurs in the word ὀργανικόν.
We usually hear ὄργανον (organ, instrumental part) in relation to ἔργον (work, deed): the
organ is the part that has a specialized place in the work of a whole, such as the leaves
whose proper work involves protecting the fruit. By growing in such and such a way, the
leaves shelter the fruit in its formation and ripening. In this sense, the organ exists toward
its end. So conceived, the “organized body” would be an instrumental body existing
toward its ends, without necessarily being one that strives. Aristotle, however, steers us
away from this interpretation, insisting that he is speaking neither of artifacts nor of
parts.3⁷ Rather, he speaks of a living body as ὀργανικόν—that is, as having its “source of
motion and rest within itself.”3⁸ Unlike an artifact or instrumental part which is moved by
another and is related to its end only in that sense, the body qua ὀργανικόν “lives toward”
its own end, moving according to its own tendencies: the plant grows and withers. To call
such a body “ὀργανικόν” draws attention to its self-moving propensity toward its end.
Again, then, should we not see in this ὀργανικόν body a kind of restlessness and a germ of
striving? In his etymological work, Robert Beekes finds confirmation of this connection in
the relation between ὀργανικόν and a cluster of words concerning organic movement:
ὀργή (a natural impulse), ὀργάω (to grow ripe, ready to bear, to swell), and ὀργάς (a fertile
3⁵ Fig. source: Parkinson, Epilobium Billardierianum, 1770.
3⁶ “σώματος φυσικοῦ ὀργανικοῦ.” Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 412b1-4.
3⁷ Aristotle, 412b12-28. Although he draws analogies to artifacts (such as axes) and parts (such as eyes), he is
careful to indicate the inadequacies of these analogies.
3⁸ Aristotle, 412b17-18.
139
FIGURE 15. Epilobium billardierianum
140
stretch of land).3⁹ It is no accident that these are originally botannical words, invoking a
series of resonances particularly well-suited to Aristotle’s discussion of the conative
element of the living body: as an ὀργανικόν body, the creature lives towards its ends. The
growth of plants is therefore particularly illustrative of such a striving (ὄρεξις) understood
as reaching and stretching out (ὀρέγω).
This is the spirit in which Aristotle discusses striving in book III, chapters 9-10: Striving is the cause of motion.
Movement is always for the sake of something and is either accompanied by
imagination or is striving [ὀρέξεώς ἐστιν]. For nothing is moved that is not
reaching out [ὀρεγόμενον] or fleeing, except by force. […] So then it is clear
that such a potency of the soul, what we have called striving [ὄρεξις], causes
motion.⁴⁰
Since self-movement is already a reaching out (ὀρεγόμενον), and since “it is the essence of
the soul to move itself,” striving belongs to the soul as such, including the soul of plants.⁴1
Indeed, in book III, chapter 9 Aristotle digresses concerning the relation between striving
and the various aspects of the soul. Striving is strange, he reflects, because it is not confined
to one aspect but is rather present in the nutritive, sensitive, and noetic powers alike.⁴2
But for what does the plant strive? “Every striving is for the sake of something,” its Striving usually takes an object, but
plant movement is indeterminate.
object (τὸ ὀρεκτόν).⁴3 Here the language of vegetal striving seems to falter. In the case of
3⁹ Beekes and Van Beek, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (corresponding entries, especially the entry for
ὄργια). Similar observations are made, although in a rather different connection, in Krell, Daimon Life 9.
⁴⁰ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 432b17-18, 433a32-33.
⁴1 “ἐστὶν ἡ οὐσία τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ κινεῖν ἑαυτήν.” Aristotle, 406a17.
⁴2 “εἰ δὲ τρία ἡ ψυχή, ἐν ἑκάστῳ ἔσται ὄρεξις.” Aristotle, 432b5-8. In this section of his text, Aristotle is
reflecting upon the Platonic division of the soul.
⁴3 “ἡ ὄρεξις ἕνεκά του πᾶσα.” Aristotle, 433a16. Martha Nussbaum explains the meaning of ὄρεξις as follows.
“1. It strongly implies directedness towards an object. It connotes, then, in the inner realm, not a vague state
of yearning or being affected, but a focusing on something, a pointing toward something. 2. It is activemore
than passive; it is a going for, a reaching after (whether bodily or psychic) as opposed to being overwhelmed,
or an empty being in need. Or rather, it indicates how wanting, which might be taken to be simply a
form of passivity, is at the same time active: instead of a pure passive being-affected, we have a complex
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animals, Aristotle tells a tidy story: locomotion occurs when, at the behest of striving’s
correlate object, striving works by means of parts such as joints to move the animal toward
its practical good. As he points out, however, this story requires sensation, which plants
lack.⁴⁴ Plants, by contrast, exhibit an indeterminate movement, one not oriented toward an
objective counterpart and terminus.⁴⁵ In sending roots into the earth and turning leaves
toward the light, plant growth exhibits a polarity that is oriented toward an elemental
register of the world rather than toward discrete objects.⁴⁶ What sense, then, can we make
of Aristotle’s invocation of vegetal striving?
As a natural ὀργανικόν body, a plant stretches, reaching out (ὀρέγω), growing and Vegetal striving is reproductive.
withering in all directions as long as it lives. It moves by a natural impulse (ὀργή) or
striving (ὄρεξις). As Aristotle reminds us, this movement of nutritive growth is also a
reproductive activity:⁴⁷ the plant grows ripe and its fruit swells (ὀργάω), the more so if it is
situated in fertile land (ὀργάς). In fact, among the various works of life, this nutritive work
is the one that most belongs to φύσις:
responsiveness that receives from the world and in turn focuses itself towards the world” (Nussbaum,
The Fragility of Goodness 274). Although it will become clear in what follows that this interpretation is
inadequate to themanifestation of ὄρεξις in plant life, this inadequacy is precisely the difficulty that Aristotle
addresses. Compare Hayes, “Being Ensouled” 334n10: “The only usage of orexis in the Pre-Aristotelian
Greek is located in the ethical fragments of Democritus,” in which context “The role of orexis is clearly
object-linked and preoccupied with wanting or willing.”
⁴⁴ For one place where this basic story is told, see Aristotle,De Anima, 1979 book III, chapter 9. If advances in
the science of botany have sincemade the idea of plant sensation attractive and even natural for themodern
mind, nevertheless the idea is not Aristotle’s.
⁴⁵ Are there exceptions, such as the movement of the Venus Flytrap closing around its prey? Aristotle does
not betray any awareness of such plant activities, so the difficult question of whether such movements have
more in common with animal locomotion than the more typical movements of the plant does not arise in
his existing texts.
⁴⁶ Note that the indeterminate character of these movements does not imply that they are crude or
unresponsive. Rather, it suggests only they respond to something other than discrete objects. On the finely
calibrated movements of plants, see the impressive Ceccarini et al., “Speed–Accuracy Trade-Off in Plants”,
which investigates “whether climbing plants scale movement velocity as a function of the difficulty to coil
a support” and shows that “plants are able to process the properties of the support before contact” and
“strategically modulate movement velocity according to task difficulty” (abstract).
⁴⁷ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 415a26.
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For among the works of living things, the one which most belongs to φύσις
[…] is to make another like itself—an animal an animal, a plant a plant—so as
to partake so far as it is able in the eternal and divine. All living things strive
[ὀρέγεται] for this and for the sake of this do whatever they do according to
φύσις.⁴⁸
Aristotle here places plants in explicit continuity with all forms of life with respect to their
activity of striving. In contrast to the object-oriented movement discussed throughout
book III, this type of striving—which we might call nutritive striving—is common to all
living things. With respect to their nutritive growth, living things strive not for any
determinately correlated object but for the continuance found in reproduction, a
participation in the eternal. Insofar as vegetal life just is this activity of growth understood
as nutritive striving, we should say that the plant strives for the perpetuation of striving
itself.⁴⁹
§6.3.2. Vegetal Imagination
Aristotle’s ambivalence about vegetal striving introduces a related ambivalence concerning Striving requires imagination.
imagination (φαντασία). In his explicit discussion of imagination (book III, chapter 3),
Aristotle presents imagination as something different than but related to thinking:
imagination is that whereby perceptions are gathered together and held present, even when
the perceived thing is absent.⁵⁰ An animal, for example, must be able to maintain some
unified perception of a thing in order to accomplish the movement from desire to
fulfillment that is characteristic of such activities as hunting prey. Memories, dreams, and
hallucinations also involve the imagination. He ends this discussion of imagination,
⁴⁸ Aristotle, 415a27-415b3.
⁴⁹ This theme appears in greater detail in Chapter VII, pages 176ff.
⁵⁰ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 427a17-429a9.
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however, with a hint that there is more to be said on the subject.⁵1 At the end of his analysis
of striving (book III, chapter 10), having discussed the striving movements of plants,
animals, and humans in various combinations, Aristotle offers a surprising conclusion:
“speaking generally then, as has been said, the living thing, as striving, is likewise able to
move itself, and it is not striving without imagination.”⁵2 Imagination, it turns out, belongs
to striving writ large.⁵3
Once again, however, there is a difficulty. For Aristotle, imagination is consistently Imagination also requires perception,
which plants lack.
associated with perception.⁵⁴ Since they do not have vision, plants cannot possess
imagination in its most zoologically proper sense. As in the case of striving, then, plants
must possess “something like” imagination. The philosopher himself admits that “the
question concerning imagination is obscure.”⁵⁵ Without attempting the difficult challenge
of giving a comprehensive account, I highlight two aspects of imagination that shed some
light on the question concerning imagination in plants.⁵⁶
First, imagination is involved in the retention of absent perceptible things.⁵⁷ To the Striving is imaginative because it
retains and distinguishes things.
extent that striving is “for the sake of ” something that is not already achieved, it would
seem to involve holding present in some fashion that which is not present, viz., that for
which striving strives. Second, Aristotle says that imagination is one of the comportments
⁵1 “So if imagination involves nothing else than we have stated,” etc. “Let this suffice about the nature and
cause of imagination”—that is, for now. Aristotle, 428b30-429a1, 429a8-9.
⁵2 Aristotle, 433b27-31.
⁵3 Ronald Polansky’s critical commentary on this passage puts the point starkly: “Phantasia is thus the
necessary and sufficient condition for desire” (“desire” is his translation of ὄρεξις). Polansky, Aristotle’s
De Anima 524.
⁵⁴ See for example Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 427a15, 428b11-16.
⁵⁵ Aristotle, 414b16.
⁵⁶ For a standard overview of the textual data and interpretive positions, see Rees, “Aristotle’s Treatment of
Phantasia”. For a recent attempt to render a systematic account of imagination, see Schofield, “Aristotle
on the Imagination”. In a telling footnote (p. 256n20), Schofield remarks that his carefully constructed
rendition of imagination “would not be true of animal imagination; but animal imagination is an obscure
corner of Aristotelian doctrine.” Plant imagination is presumably even more obscure.
⁵⁷ In this sense, imagination is related to memory. See for example the comments in On Memory and
Recollection, Aristotle, Aristotle, 1957 449b30-451a18.
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by which we distinguish (κρίνω) things.⁵⁸ Since striving involves something like a
selection, distinguishing that for the sake of which striving occurs, this would seem to
involve the imagination. In fact, Aristotle holds this power of distinguishing (along with
thinking and perceiving) to be one of the foremost distinctive features of the soul in
general.⁵⁹
Although Aristotle does not explain what the imagination of plants entails, we Plants possess an indeterminate
imagination.
might find a suggestion in his invocation of ants and bees as examples of notably
imaginative animals.⁶⁰ As the ant and bee retain the anthill and beehive and so return to
them, does not the flower similarly retain the sun through the dark night and turn east in
expectation of its rising? Plants, however, do not perceive. In animals, as we saw above,
striving is determinately related to an object. For this reason, animal imagination is
similarly objective: the animal retains the image of the predator or prey, distinguishes
between poisonous and healthful berries, etc. Aristotle stresses the etymological
connection between the words imagination (φα-ντασία) and light (φά-ος) as a way of
showing the special relationship between perception and imagination.⁶1 Insofar as vegetal
striving, by contrast, is indeterminate, vegetal imagination must be a type of indeterminate
imagination. Because they lack perception, plants cannot relate to the sun as to a discrete
object (τὸ ὀρεκτόν) of striving. In their heliotropic acitivites, however, plants nevertheless
exhibit an imaginative relation to light. As the flower turns during the night, it
distinguishes between the western time of sunset and the eastern time of sunrise, retaining
the heliotropic orientation of growth even in the absence of its solar pole. More generally,
the growth of plants distinguishes between gravitropic and heliotropic orientations,
⁵⁸ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 428a1-4.
⁵⁹ “Now the soul is demarcated mainly by two distinctive features, viz., (1) local motion and (2) thinking,
distinguishing, and perceiving.” Aristotle, 427a17-19. Cf. 432a15-17.
⁶⁰ Aristotle, 428a10-11, reading “δοκεῖ, οἷον μύρμηκι μὲν ἢ μελίττῃ ἢ σκώληκι δ᾽ οὔ” for “δοκεῖ δ᾽ οὔ, οἷον
μύρμηκι ἢ μελίττῃ ἢ σκώληκι.” See Aristotle, De Anima, 1976 462, Aristotle, Aristotle’s Psychology, 1976
263, and Ross, De Anima 286-287.
⁶1 Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 429a3-4.
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discriminates among light, water, and mineral gradients, etc. Vegetal imagination, then, is
a form of imagination that befits the indeterminate (non-objective) activity of vegetal
striving. Alongside Aristotle’s assertion of the relation between light and vision, then, we
might discern a sense in which plants, with their special relationship with the light, are
imaginative in a different, vegetal, manner.⁶2
§6.4. Phytology: Between φύσις and ζωή
I have spoken of Aristotle’s “ambivalence” in order to identify a productive tension in his Summary
account. From this perspective, the philosopher’s apparent discomfiture toward life in
plants is not a weakness but a strength, a sensitive response to the difficult position vegetal
life occupies. This ambivalence is expressed in three structural tendencies in the text. First,
he endeavors to bring plants together with “all the other animals.”⁶3 This, as we noted, is
one of the primary accomplishments of the doxography. As the exemplar of life (ζωή) in its
most basic form, the plant belongs to zoology. Plants grow, metabolize, reproduce, and
strive. Second, Aristotle is rightly adamant about keeping plants and animals separate.
This is because such activities as striving and imagination do not, properly speaking,
belong to nutritive life. To adequately grasp striving involves recognizing its close affinity
with perception and locomotion, as Aristotle often reminds us.⁶⁴ From a zoological
perspective, we cannot understand the movements of living creatures without invoking the
perception whereby they sense the object of their movement and the desire or fascination
⁶2 I note in passing another horizon that opens at this point: if we follow this line of inquiry, are we led
to something like a vegetal thinking (νόησις)? After all, Aristotle discerns a close relationship between
imagination and thought, although he does not explicate the relationship in great detail. “The object of
striving is the beginning of thought,” he observes, and imagination itself is “a sort of thinking” (“νόησίν
τινα,” Aristotle, 433a19-20, 433a11). We habitually underestimate the degree to which Aristotle sees a germ
or type of the human and divine capacities already in the plant; one wonders again what nuances the lost
treatise on plants might have contained. Perhaps it is significant that he begins his discussion of thinking
in On the Soul by quoting Empedocles’ claim that understanding “grows” (Aristotle, 427a23).
⁶3 “καὶ τοῖς φυτοῖς ὑπάρχει καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς ζῴοις.” Aristotle, 432a29-30.
⁶⁴ See for example Aristotle, 413b19-23, 431a8-14, 434a1-3.
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which gives to that movement its impetus. Imagination, suspended between perception
and thought, requires both in order to appear intelligible. Plants, by contrast, are insensible
and sessile. The work of nutrition—metabolism, growth, and reproduction—is simply not
driven by the process which moves from perception through striving and imagination to
the traveling movement that characterizes animal life. Therefore, to collapse the distinction
between the nutritive and sensitive activities into a facile sameness would be both textually
and phenomenologically faithless. Third, Aristotle recognizes that the vital activities of
nutritive life nevertheless exhibit something like the striving that is proper to the animal.
The movements of plants, whether aerial or subterranean, exhibit an orientation or polarity
that is something like an imaginative striving, although it cannot be understood in precisely
the same terms. Aristotle’s challenge is to articulate the proximity and difference involved
in this relation.
The repeated expression “something like” (τις) indicates the basic tension in Plants and animals are separated by an
asymptotic difference.
Aristotle’s phytology: in the very task of articulating the differences between plants and
animals, he brings plants and animals into increasing proximity. At each point of
zoological distinction, he must eventually admit a lack of distinction, for it turns out that
striving, imagination, etc. also belong to the vegetal. At the same time, this increasing
proximity appears asymptotic. That is, as the vegetal and animal are brought ever closer,
the impossibility of their eventual conjunction becomes more acute. Although striving, etc.
belongs to vegetal life, nevertheless it is not the same striving: a subtle but fundamental
difference persists, even if it is difficult to articulate. In this sense, Aristotle’s is a fruitful
ambivalence, giving articulation to the hidden and latent life in plants.
This basic Aristotelian ambivalence toward the vegetal is reflected in the terms for This difference is reflected in the word
ζωή.
“living thing” and “animal,” which are homonymous in the typical neuter (τὸ ζῷον). To
speak of “living things” refers paradigmatically to animals; inversely, speaking of animals
ambiguously includes plant life. Plants are a kind of life (ζωή) and living thing, but they are
147
not so in the full and proper sense of being animals (τὰ ζῷα). This difficulty, which already
appears beginning in the doxographic passages of On the Soul, is particularly pronounced
in the passages on striving and imagination (book III, chapters 9-10), where the nutritive
soul in general and plants in particular are mentioned frequently. In these passages, it is
often difficult to know whether the “living creatures” in question include plants or not.
Taking their name not from life (ζωή) but from φύσις, plants indicate a different life Plants are a different kind of life.
before or beneath life. In his discussion of longevity in certain plants, Aristotle makes the
point by saying that, with respect to φύσις, plants are separate and peculiar over and
against the animals (ἰδίαν πρὸς τὰ ζῷα).⁶⁵ The proximity between plants (φύτα) and
growing (φύομαι) simultaneously marks a difference vis-à-vis zoological life (ζωή). To
nutrition belongs a separate and peculiar kind of activity, a striving (and corresponding
imagination) understood as conation without terminus in an object. From this activity of
growth comes the name not only for the plant but also for the coming to be and passing
away of existing things (φύσις). Similarly, the word σύμφυτος (“natural,” but also “thickly
wooded”) refers literally to a togetherness (σύν) with vegetative growth.⁶⁶ In this sense, we
might identify on the one hand a life that is sensitive (ζωή) and on the other a life which
subsists in a conative movement of growth and decay (φύομαι/φύσις).
Aristotle’s repeated and precise formulation for this difficulty is the declaration that
“plants seem to live.”⁶⁷ Plants appear among and alongside the living without being
identical to them. And yet, an account of soul which follows φύσις must give pride of place
to the vegetal soul, for “this alone is common to both animals [ζῷα] and plants.”⁶⁸ Thus:
⁶⁵ “περὶ δὲ τοῦ πολυχρόνιον εἶναι τὴν τῶν δένδρων φύσιν δεῖ λαβεῖν τὴν αἰτίαν· ἔχει γὰρ ἰδίαν πρὸς τὰ ζῷα.”
Aristotle, “Length and Shortness,” 1957 467a11-12. The comment specifically concerns trees, since the
subject is longevity.
⁶⁶ Hence the common meaning “congenital” and the meaning “grown together” in some contexts.
⁶⁷ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 410b22, 411b28-29, 413a26. Emphasis added.
⁶⁸ Aristotle, 411b29-30.
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We seek to discern and to understand both the φύσις and distinct being of it,
and then also whatever comes along with it (and of these, some seem to be
affections belonging to the soul itself, others rather to come about in animals
[ζῷα] because of soul).⁶⁹
When Aristotle stresses the φύσις of the soul, we should hear especially that vegetal aspect
of the soul belonging to φύσις, to the realm of growth and decay. This vegetal aspect, in
turn, forms the beginning and principle of animal life. This, then, is the role of Aristotle’s
phytology in the structure of his text: plant life, which constitutes the origin of animal life,
is addressed first, followed by “whatever comes along with it”—namely, sensation, local
motion, intellect, etc. in animals (including human beings).
From a perspective which emphasizes the constitutive role of phytological life, the The distinction between zoology and
phytology is fundamental.
more fundamental distinction in On the Soul is not the oft-remarked tripartite division of
the soul into the nutritive, sensitive, and noetic activites. Rather, it is the delineation of the
sensitive (zoological) from the nutritive (phytological) forms of life. In fact, it is this
distinction that Aristotle stresses at each of the schematic pivots of his discussion: the
conclusion of the doxography; the final passage of book I; the beginning of the proper
account of soul in book II, chapter 2; the account of the relation of the parts of soul in book
II, chapter 3; and the final pages of the text.⁷⁰ We might say the distinction between plant
and animal life functions as a refrain which anchors the organizational hierarchy of
Aristotle’s account. The considerable diversity in animal powers (i.e., some animals are
stationary or lack various senses, human beings carry out noetic functions that other
animals do not, imagination works differently in different animals, etc.) is secondary
to—and in contrast with—the more important and reliable distinction between zoological
and phytological soul (notwithstanding the dependence of the former upon the latter).
⁶⁹ Aristotle, 402a8-11.
⁷⁰ Aristotle, 410b22; 411b28-30; 413a34-35; 414b1; 415a2; 434a25-29; 435b1-2.
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We are therefore in a position to say that the inquiry into the soul is twofold Plants bear the twofold character of
life.
precisely because the soul itself is twofold. Approached from without, in perspective of
Aristotle’s broader philosophy of nature, the inquiry into the soul is concerned both with
φύσις and with ζωή. Approached from within, in the perspective of the inquiry, this
duplicity is carried by vegetal life, a nascent form of life that holds together φύσις and ζωή
in their difference.
The twofold aim of Aristotle’s inquiry—to reveal the truth both of φύσις and of the Summary
activities of animal life—leads the philosopher to begin his investigations with the primacy
of plant life. As we have seen, the place of this originary form of life is marked by an
increasing ambivalence. On the one hand, plants offer the necessary corrective that sets the
twofold inquiry on its proper path. On the other hand, vegetal life appears primarily in
terms of its deficiency and the account passes over the vegetal in favor of the animal. This
ambivalent phytology continues to subtend Aristotle’s zoological philosophy, especially in
the cases of striving and imagination.
Although Aristotle’s explorations are fundamentally zoological in their concerns, Vegetal life has an asymmetrical
priority with respect to animal life.
he remains emphatically committed to the priority of the vegetal. There is no “oversoul”
that would encompass the vegetal and animal, he argues, just as there is no figure that
encompasses both triangles and rectangles. Whatever triangles and rectangles share is not
itself a figure: as different patterns, they have no pattern in common. Likewise, the
phytological and zoological souls are not instances of the same kind of soul. Instead, the
phytological soul persists implicitly in the zoological, Aristotle says, as the triangle persists
implicitly in the rectangle.⁷1 This is an asymmetrical relation: although we can
straightforwardly draw the diagonal to reveal the triangle implicit in the rectangle, there is
⁷1 Aristotle, 414b20-32.
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no way to reverse the operation, producing a rectangle from a triangle by adding a fourth
line. In the same way, Aristotle says, “the perceptive does not exist without the nutritive,
but the nutritive exists apart from the perceptive in plants.”⁷2 Thus, only the originary
principle (ἀρχή) of plants is common to all life.⁷3 Nutritive growth enacts an autonomy of
the living that is not shared by sensitive life.
What can we say, then, of the autonomous peculiarity of vegetal life? Aristotle Plant life is hubristic.
offers a brief but suggestive possibility for articulating the peculiar nature of plants at the
beginning of book III, chapter 11. Simple animals that possess only the sense of touch still
possess striving and imagination, he argues, but in an unusual sense: “perhaps,” he
ventures, “just as they are in motion indeterminately [ἀορίστως], so also they imagine and
strive indeterminately.”⁷⁴ Aristotle makes nothing of the point, but perhaps vegetal growth,
which moves “in all directions,” would be another case of indeterminate motion.⁷⁵ As we
saw mentioned earlier, Aristotle draws a contrast between animals, whose growth is fixed
in relation to a point of maturity, and plants, whose mode of growth means they are
“always being born anew.”⁷⁶ The striving growth of plants does not find a determining limit
in an object (τὸ ὀρεκτόν) but rather extends indefinitely.
In the Enquiry into Plants, Aristotle’s student, Theophrastus, continues the spirit of
his teacher. His study focuses on the “parts” of plants,⁷⁷ whereby he means whatever
“belongs to the plant’s own growing-forth,” including in this reckoning “even those things
⁷2 Aristotle, 415a2-3.
⁷3 Aristotle, 411b28-30.
⁷⁴ Aristotle, 434a4-6.
⁷⁵ Aristotle, 413a29.
⁷⁶ Aristotle, “Length and Shortness,” 1957 467a13.
⁷⁷ Theophrastus emphasizes that “part” does not mean the same thing for plants as it does for animals. “It is
a waste of time to take great pains to make comparisons where that is impossible,” he says of the relation
between plants and animals, “and in so doing we may lose sight also of our proper subject of inquiry”
(Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, 1999 1.1.4). Whereas the study of parts in animals proceeds by e.g.
dissection, the study of parts in plants is a study of the “form generally” (Theophrastus, 1.1.4.). The
proximity betweenTheophrastus and Goethe on this point is unmistakable.
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to which the plant gives birth.”⁷⁸ For Theophratus, then, the concept of “part” brings
together growth and reproduction. As a consequence of having “the power of growth in all
its parts, insofar as it has life in all its parts” the plant does not possesss a fixed arrangement
of organs; rather, “the multitude of parts will be indeterminate and always changing.”⁷⁹
Plants have an indeterminate character that results from the procreative movement by
which they constantly overflow themselves:
The plant is prodigal [πολύχουν] and manifold [ποικίλον], and so it is difficult
to describe according to the whole: in proof whereof there is nothing common
we could seize which would belong to all.⁸⁰
Because this prodigality (πολύ-χέω, literally “pouring forth much/many”) belongs to the
nature of plants, they are difficult to describe according to the whole. There is no part that
would serve as a unifying commonality, if only because the parts of the plant are essentially
proliferative.
Considered according to the whole, Theophrastus concludes, one can say only that
the plant is prodigal.⁸1 The conception of the plant as a vegetal pouring-forth approaches
Aristotle’s idea of vegetal life as striving to partake in the eternal and divine, and it is this
aspect of vegetal growth that Aristotle andTheophrastus call ὕβρις.⁸2 The ὕβρις of plant
life—its procreative and self-surpassing activity, its indeterminate and striving
growth—will be our point of departure as we move further into Aristotle’s account of
plants in the next chapter.
⁷⁸ Theophrastus, 1.1.2, 1.1.3.
⁷⁹ Theophrastus, 1.1.4, 1.1.2.
⁸⁰ Theophrastus, 1.1.10.
⁸1 Theophrastus, 1.2.3.
⁸2 Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 2000 725b35, concerning vines. Cf. Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants,
1999 2.7.6 (of almond trees), Theophrastus, De Causis Plantarum, 1976 2.16.8 and 3.1.5 (of lupine), and
Theophrastus, De Causis Plantarum, 1976 3.15.4 (of grape vines).
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In conclusion, Aristotle’s zoological psychology depends upon a phytology which
conditions his account but which remains resistant to the terms of zoological inquiry. If
life is hidden in plants, the life of plants is also hidden in Aristotle’s primarily zoological
account of the soul. This inclusion—precisely in the mode of the hidden condition by
which an account of animal life is possible—means that vegetal life becomes the
inarticulate fulcrum that constantly realizes the passage from φύσις to ζωή while
maintaining their difference. I have suggested that this inarticulation is not a shortcoming,
but rather follows the things themselves: plants grow, strive, and move, but they do so
indeterminately and unboundedly (ἀορίστως). Ultimately, Aristotle supplements this
analysis with a theory of limit: unlike the limitless growth of fire, Aristotle notes, those
things which come to be from φύσις have a limit (πέρας) and proportion (λόγος) of
growth.⁸3 This theme will be the focus of the next chapter, in which I discuss Aristotle’s
specific account of nutrition. The following chapter (Chapter VIII) turns to Plato’s Timaeus
in order to further develop the indeterminate striving of the plant—“itself somehow
twisting to and fro within itself around itself according to φύσις,” in Timaeus’ description.⁸⁴
⁸3 Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 416a16-18.
⁸⁴ Plato, Timaeus. Critias. Cleitophon. Menexenus. Epistles, 2005 77C. Fig. 16: Parkinson, Peperomia
Leptostachya, 1769; fig. 17: Parkinson, Polystichum Mohritides, n.d.
153
FIGURE 16. Peperomia leptostachya
154
FIGURE 17. Polystichum mohritides
155
CHAPTER VII
CONCERNING NOURISHMENT
The plant is ameasuring being.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The previous chapter focused on the role of plants in the broader framework of Aristotle’s
On the Soul.1 The inquiry into the soul, Aristotle says, reveals the twofold character of life.
For this reason, it requires an originary principle that would hold together φύσις and ζωή
in their difference. This principle is the vegetal soul: although it is a “partial” kind of soul,
it is that through which life belongs to all living things. On the one hand, then, plants are
living things like the animals (ζῷα) at which his account aims; on the other hand, plants
stand in a private relation to this life, having more in common with the growing life of
φύσις than with the sensate life of animals. This ambivalence appears in a pronounced way
in Aristotle’s discussions of striving (ὄρεξις) and imagination (φαντασία), each of which he
alternately denies and affirms of vegetal life. I highlighted the discomfitted vocabulary of
Aristotle’s botany: plants “seem to” live, having “something like” striving and imagination.2
Throughout that chapter’s discussion, I focused on growth as the characteristic activity of
plants, thereby emphasizing their namesake (φύομαι) and their proximity to φύσις.3 As
this essay has shown, however, vegetal growth is also a reproductive activity (chapters III
and IV) and a nutritive activity (chapters V and, in expectation, VIII). In Aristotle’s own
preferred vocabulary, the vegetal soul is primarily called θρεπτικόν, usually translated
“nutritive.”⁴
1 Epigraph source: Nietzsche, Early Notebooks, 2009 138.
2 For this vocabulary, see pages 148ff, 131ff, and 147ff.
3 See page 148.
⁴ See page 169.
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This chapter examines Aristotle’s specific account of this nutritive soul as it appears
in section II.4 of On the Soul. After the general introduction and doxography of Book I
(discussed in Chapter VI, Book II begins Aristotle’s own account of the soul. Chapter 1
begins “again as if from the beginning”⁵ with the general definition of the soul, which goes
through a number of iterations. At the end of Chapter 1, this definition—the soul as the
first actuality of an organized, natural body that has life as its potency—is called a sufficient
“sketch that traces the outlines around soul.”⁶ In Chapter 2, Aristotle begins again from
“another angle,” this time taking into account the generating cause.⁷ It is here he explicitly
identifies the vegetal potency for growing and withering as the originary principle of the
soul.⁸ Chapter 3 then considers, in a general way, the relation between this vegetal power
and the other activities of the soul (e.g., perception) and concludes that another beginning
is needed, namely, one that renders an account that begins from the particular activities in
question. Aristotle therefore begins Chapter 4 by declaring the primacy of growth,
nutrition, and reproduction, “for the θρεπτικόν soul belongs already to all the others: it is
the first and most common potency of soul, the one through which living belongs to all
things.”⁹ This is the task which occupies the rest of his chapter, after which the remainder
of Book II (chapters 6-12) considers perception.
I begin my treatment of II.4 in the middle of the section, considering two views of
nutritive growth that Aristotle rejects. In the first section of the chapter, I introduce
Aristotle’s idea that the vegetal soul is a proportion and distinguish this nutritive sense of
proportion from the perceptive proportionality that is characteristic of animal life. As
nutritive proportion, the soul is characterized by a limit, and the second section of the
⁵ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 412a4.
⁶ Aristotle, 413a10.
⁷ Aristotle, 413a11-16.
⁸ See especially Aristotle, 413a21-413b1.
⁹ Aristotle, 415a23-26.
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chapter takes up this concept in relation to both Aristotle and Heraclitus. The final section
addresses Aristotle’s account of nutrition on its own terms, highlighting the fact that the
single activity of growing, nourishing, and reproducing is an activity that essentially relates
to itself as its own object.
§7.1. Proportionality
Before discussing Aristotle’s own account as he develops it in section II.4, it will be helpful Nutrition and growth belong to the
soul as proportion.
to consider his rejection of two received opinions concerning the living activities of the
vegetal soul. These rejections appear in the middle of section II.4, as Aristotle considers the
close relationship between growth and nourishment. He first criticizes the views of
Empedocles, who explains the growth of plants by conceiving their soul as a specific
combination of elements: their earthy roots naturally grow earthward, and their fiery
leaves and blossoms naturally grow sunward. The problem with this view is
straightforward: if the life of the plant were in the elements, there would be nothing that
would hold these elements together, preventing them from separating. “What is it that
holds together the fire and earth that are tending in opposite directions?” Aristotle asks.
“For it will be separated out, if there is not going to be something preventing it,” but then
this principle that holds the elements together is the soul.1⁰ The soul cannot be identified
with the elements; rather, it must be a principle that holds them together. This
Empedoclean idea is related to one Aristotle rejects in the doxography, when he speaks of
those who “say that soul is some kind of attunement [ἁρμονία], since attunement is a blend
[κρᾶσις] and combination [σύνθεσις] of opposites, and the body is composed of
opposites.”11 According to such a view, the opposites (wet/dry, cold/hot) constitute an
attunement insofar as they are blended together in the body. This “blending” is not amere
1⁰ Aristotle, 415b28-416a8. Compare page 190f.
11 Aristotle, 407b30-32.
158
combination, but rather a consistent proportion, as in the ratio of water and wine in the
crater or the relative tuning of an instrument’s strings. Aristotle agrees with one aspect of
this view, for he affirms that the soul is a proportion (λόγος).12 He argues, however, that
the proportionality of the soul cannot consist in the proportion of the parts of the body.
Since there are many such ratios in the various parts of the body, the advocate of such a
view would be forced to conclude that there are as many souls as there are different
proportions in the body.13 Empedocles is correct in identifying the vegetal power of the
soul with a certain proportionality, but this proportion consists neither in the proportion
of the elements that compose the body nor in the proportions by which its various parts
stand in relation. Rather, the vegetal soul consists in a proportion that is also a principle
that holds together the elements in their characteristic combinations.
Aristotle contrasts the nutritive proportionality that is characteristic of vegetal life This nutritive proportion is unlike the
perceptive proportion.
with a perceptive proportionality that is characteristic of animal life. In the doxography,
Aristotle objects to those who argue that the soul must be made of the elements in order to
perceive things made of the elements. While it is true that the soul must be “like” things in
order to perceive them, Aristotle admits, what is perceived in things is not primarily their
elements; rather, the soul perceives the proportion of elements by virtue of which each
thing is a determinate thing.1⁴ Aristotle further clarifies that the proportionality on the
side of the creature does not belong to a part of the body (namely, the sensitive organ) but
to the perceptive power of the soul: this power, he says, “is some kind of proportion [λόγος
τις], and the power of the organ belongs to it.”1⁵ This is why excess sensation destroys the
12 Among other passages, one might note this occurring at the end of the series of general definitions given at
II.2 (Aristotle, 414a14, 414a26).
13 Aristotle, 408a5-24.
1⁴ Aristotle, 409b19-410a10.
1⁵ “The sense organ is that in which primarily this sort of power [to perceive] exists. In oneway, then, they [the
power and the organ] are the same thing, but their being is different. The sensing organ would be extended,
while certainly sensitivity and sense cannot be extended. Rather, the latter is some kind of proportion, and
the power of the organ belongs to it” (Aristotle, 424a26-28).
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organs, for “the proportion [λόγος] that is the perception is destroyed, just as the concord
[συμφωνία] and pitch of a lyre is destroyed when the strings are struck hard.”1⁶ The point is
not that an excess of sensation merely destroys the organ (although that may also happen),
but rather that it destroys the proportion of the sensitive soul. This perceptive proportion is
a mean (μεσότης: medium, middle) between extremes. As he points out, for example, we
do not perceive things that are exactly the same temperature as ourselves, for there is then
no difference involved.1⁷ On the other hand, a difference that is too great will destroy the
sense organ (as when one gazes directly at the sun) or even the whole creature (as when
one dies of exposure).1⁸ The sensitive mean articulates a “zone” within which it is possible
to perceive what is other than the creature. Perceptive receptivity requires a certain active
tension that allows the thing perceived to enter into relation with the receptive power as
something different than it without being overwhelmed and destroyed. No such receptive
tension would be required if perception were only the imposition of matter: one need not
appeal to the operation of a sensitive mean in order to explain the violent amputation of a
limb, for example.1⁹ What is perceived of things is not, Aristotle argues, their matter:
sensation receives things “not in virtue of what each of them is said to be, but insofar as it is
such-like, according to the proportion [λόγος].”2⁰ That is, it is not the concrete material
thing as such that sensation receives, but rather the proportion in virtue of which the thing
is what it is. The proportionality characteristic of the nutritive soul, by contrast, does not
occur according to such a “mean.”21 As we will see in his rejection of Heraclitean thinking,
Aristotle rather understands the nutritive proportion as a type of limit.
1⁶ Aristotle, 424a32-34.
1⁷ Aristotle, 424a1-11.
1⁸ Aristotle, 435b8-19.
1⁹ See Aristotle, 424b11-12.
2⁰ Aristotle, 424a23-25.
21 Aristotle, 424a34-424b3.
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Aside Do plants perceive?22 They certainly seem to: flowers follow the course of Plants do not perceive.
the sun, tendrils grow toward the light, roots seek out the most nourishing soil, etc. In
Aristotelian terms, we would say that the striving of plants seems to be closely related to a
kind of perception. “Being pleased or being pained is the being-at-work of the sensitive
mean [τῇ αἰσθητικῇ μεσότητι] in relation to the good or bad as such,” he explains. “In their
being-at-work, avoidance and striving [ὄρεξις] are this.”23 The activity of striving is already
the activity of a sensitive mean. In accordance with our earlier discussion, we might
suspect that this perception, like vegetal striving and imagination, is “indefinite” insofar as
it is not oriented toward a particular, determinate object. Near the end of the On the Soul,
Aristotle appears ambivalent on this point:
Sensation is not necessarily present in all living creatures [οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον ἐν
ἅπασι τοῖς ζῶσιν], since those whose body is simple cannot have the sense of
touch, without which nothing can be a living creature [οὔτε ἄνευ ταύτης οἵόν
τε οὐθὲν εἶναι ζῷον].2⁴
But a living creature must necessarily have sensation [τὸ δὲ ζῷον ἀναγκαῖον
αἴσθησιν ἔχειν].2⁵
Plants have no sensation, because they are earth.2⁶
22 I leave aside the question of the philosophical status of contemporary scientific advances. On the subject of
plant perception, see Runyon, “Volatile Chemical Cues GuideHost Location andHost Selection by Parasitic
Plants” and Gagliano et al., “Out of Sight but Not Out of Mind”. For a discussion of specifically optical
perception in plants, see Baluška and Mancuso, “Vision in Plants via Plant-Specific Ocelli?”.
23 Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 431a11-13.
2⁴ Aristotle, 434a27-30.
2⁵ Aristotle, 434a31.
2⁶ Aristotle, 435b1-2.
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Contextually, this rapid vacillation between affirming and denying the necessity of
sensation involves an implied qualification: sensation is not necessarily present in living
creatures as such, but it is coextensive with life in certain living creatures, etc. The passage
therefore recalls the ambiguous status of plants vis-à-vis life (ζωή) as such.2⁷ Ultimately,
however, Aristotle denies sensation to plants.2⁸ “Plants do not perceive, although they have
a partial kind of soul and are somehow affected by the things tangible to them [πάσχοντά
τι ὑπὸ τῶν ἁπτῶν] (for they get cold and warm),” he explains. “The cause is that they do
not have a mean [μεσότης], that is, the sort of originary principle [ἀρχή] that receives the
forms of things perceived, but are instead affected with the matter.”2⁹ Aristotle seems to be
reasoning from the phenomena: although plants are affected by e.g. light, their receptivity
to it does not exhibit a perceptive “mean” analogous to the occurrence of sensation in
animals.3⁰ The “indefinite” type of striving and imagination that Aristotle discusses can
have no analogue in perception, which requires a determinate perceptive mean.
2⁷ See page 147 and following, above.
2⁸ E.g., Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 424a33.
2⁹ Aristotle, 424a34-424b3.
3⁰ In the explicit terms of the account, the issue concerns the simplicity of plants. Although the vegetal soul
belongs to an “ὀργανικόν” (organized; cf. page 139) body, plants are “utterly simple” (παντελῶς ἁπλᾶ,
Aristotle, 412b1-2). To be “simple” in this sense, Aristotle explains, means to consist of a single element,
such as fire or air (Aristotle, 435a11-435b1). Because the various forms of perception depend upon touch,
he reasons, and because touch requires an earthy body, the body of the living creature cannot consist in
any single element besides earth. At the same time, however, it cannot be composed only of earth. “For
touch is a kind of mean between all the tangible qualities,” he explains, “and this is why we do not perceive
by means of bones or hairs or other such parts, because they are earth. And for this reason plants have no
sensation, because they are earth.” The idea here is that earth, which is cold and dry, could not of itself
account for the ability of touch to receive e.g. what is hot and wet. Aristotle continues: “Without touch,
no other sense can be present, and the sensitive organ is not simply earth nor any other single element”
(Aristotle, 435a23-435b4, cf. 414b8-9). Touch must therefore be conceived as a mean between the various
tangible qualities. Plants, being composed of earth, are therefore unable to touch and, consequently, unable
to perceive in general. In the doxography, Aristotle surveys those thinkers who believe the soul to consist
in the elements (Aristotle, 404b7-405b30, 409b19-411a25). The survey concluded, Aristotle remarks that
“each of the elements has found someone to award it the prize except earth; no one has spoken up for
it” (Aristotle, 405b8-9). For Aristotle, as we know, the soul is not a body at all but rather is of a body.
Nevertheless, he speaks up for the neglected element in his own way: it turns out that in the first (vegetal)
instance, soul belongs to a body that is simply earth. Once again, the simplicity of plants, by virtue of which
they offer the exemplary beginning for the inquiry into the soul, is amibalent.
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§7.2. πῦρ and πέρας
After rejecting the Empedoclean approach, Aristotle next criticizes the views of the The nutritive proportion is defined by
a limit.
Heracliteans, who identify the growth of plants with their nutritive activity and therefore
with a single element: namely, fire (πῦρ). Unlike the other elements, fire grows as it
consumes nutriment (fuel), so it would appear to be a principle of the sort needed to
account for the nutritive activity of the soul. But Aristotle also rejects this view, for there is
an important difference between fire and soul:
For the growth of fire is unlimited [ἄπειρον] as long as there is fuel; but of all
things that hold together by φύσις there is a limit [πέρας] and a proportion
[λόγος] of size and growth—and these things are of soul but not of fire, and of
proportion [λόγος] rather than of matter.31
Although it exhibits something like the power of nutritive growth, fire is unlimited. The
fire Aristotle has in mind is evidently something like a voracious forest fire that spreads
boundlessly, nourishing itself relentlessly in its expansion. The activity of the soul which is
manifest in growth and nutrition, by contrast (for “nothing withers or grows by φύσις
without nourishing itself ”32), is proportionate (fig. 1833). Aristotle here indicates a sense of
proportionality that is different than that which characterizes perception and is defined by
a mean. Rather, this sense of proportion belongs to the movements of φύσις insofar as
living things are held together by such movements. Furthermore, this sense of proportion
constitutes a limit by which those things which hold together by φύσις do so in a
determinate way.
31 Aristotle, 416a16-18.
32 Aristotle, 415b27-28.
33 Fig source: Parkinson, Dendrobium Involutum, 1769.
163
FIGURE 18. Dendrobium involutum
164
Aristotle’s contrary impulse notwithstanding, I turn to Heraclitus in order to Heraclitus' fire indicates a limit and
measure.
develop the sense of the limit and proportion here in question.3⁴ In the fragments which
have been preserved, the fire to which Heraclitus most often appeals is not the raging
inferno invoked by Aristotle but rather that brightest flame, the sun. The Ephesian’s
pyrophilosophy expresses a profound conception of proportion (or measure) in relation to
limit that has more in common with Aristotle than the Stagirite’s criticism might suggest:
The sun is overseer and sentinel of cycles, for determining the changes and
times which bring all things forth.3⁵
The sun will not transgress its measures.3⁶
The limits belonging to dawn and evening [ἐσπέρας] are Ursa Major and,
opposite Ursa Major, the boundary of luminous Zeus.3⁷
The sun is extinguished in old age, but rekindled again.3⁸
The sun is new every day.3⁹
Fire, returning in time, will distinguish and bind together all things.⁴⁰
The “was,” “is,” and “will be” are fire, the endlessly living, kindling in measures
and extinguishing in measures.”⁴1
3⁴ I do not argue that Aristotle misunderstands or misrepresents the Heracliteans or their founder.
Admittedly, the later philosopher’s treatment of his predecessors is sometimes opportunistic, but the
question of authenticity would be irrelevant to this essay. It will suffice in this context to note that Aristotle
knew the Ephesian philosopher as a near contemporary and founder of a living school, whereas we know
“Heraclitus” as the author of a few surviving fragments.
3⁵ DK 100.
3⁶ DK 94.
3⁷ DK 120.
3⁸ Quoted in Plato, Republic, 2013. VI, 498A (numbered XLVIIIB in Kahn,TheArt andThought of Heraclitus).
3⁹ DK 6.
⁴⁰ DK 66.
⁴1 DK 30. “Endlessly living” (ἀείζωον) could also be translated “boundlessly living” or “ever-living.”
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The sun gives light and growth, bringing forth the changes and times for all things (πάντα)
considered as growing-forth (φύσις).⁴2 These changes and times are not abstract
categories, but the sustaining fire that brings forth growth, nourishing things and granting
them endurance, allowing time to each thing. To the sun belong measures (μέτρα) which
are not external, such that they might be transgressed, but instead belong to its occurrence
essentially. These measures are limits, boundaries which mark the sphere of brightness in
which the celestial fire illuminates, between dawn and evening, the sphere of terrestrial
space and time even more than luminous Zeus.⁴3 The measures of the sun therefore
manifest (a) the course of the sun, its place among the heavenly bodies and gods, (b) the
cyclical time of the sun, its own internal rhythm of extinguishing and rekindling, and (c)
that luminous power that determines the changes and times in which all things grow: that
measure, in the fullest sense, in which things come to pass and therefore which
distinguishes and binds together all things. As rhythmic activity—ῥυθμίζειν, “to bring into
a measure of time or proportion”⁴⁴—fire appears as that which brings things forth in the
proper measure and proportion. Thus the sun always possesses a power of newness and
rekindling according to which the things of φύσις grow forth and wither away.⁴⁵ In its
rhythmic return, fire images the measure and proportion that first distinguishes and
therefore binds together all things. Thus fire indicates the perduring increase of life in
which occur the measured kindling and extinguishing of whatever grows and withers.
⁴2 “Ἥλιος is the clock of the world, the world-clock; not an instrument that indicates times, but that which
makes the seasons possible, which brings all. We cannot understand the seasons in the sense of fixed spells
of time or as stretches in homogenous time, but as the times of days and of years. These times of years are
not the lingering but the bringing.” Heidegger and Fink, Heraclitus Seminar 35. My reading of the sun/fire
fragments is indebted to this seminar, despite the very different set of concerns exemplified therein.
⁴3 This reading would be enriched with a discussion of lightning in Heraclitus, which also belongs to the
fragments concerning fire.
⁴⁴ Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon.
⁴⁵ Compare DK 1, in which the sense of proportionality that most properly belongs to life appears instead
in its fundamentally cosmic significance: “All things come to be according to this proportion,” which
“distinguishes each according to its φύσις.” In this fragment, Heraclitus plays on the ambiguity between the
cosmic proportionality and his own words—an important theme which is nevertheless beyond the scope
of this essay.
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This solar fire is one of the primary images through which Heraclitus’ thought For Heraclitus, the soul is a
self‐increasing proportion.
reaches us. In other fragments, however, these empyrean themes are developed more
explicitly in other terms, and it becomes clear that the figure of fire images a certain aspect
or dimension of being that manifests itself in the soul as the principle of living things. As
the light of the sun is not itself the things of φύσις but is instead that in or according to
which the things of φύσις grow and wither, so also the cosmos is not the simple sum of
whatever exists but rather—as proportion—the appearing-together and the
manifesting-arrangement of all things that are.⁴⁶ Likewise, life is not for Heraclitus this or
that living thing, but rather the proportion according to which the living thing appears as
living. Soul is not a thing behind the creature that constitutes its truth, but rather the
animation or life activity in which the being alive of the creature becomes manifest.⁴⁷ In
Chapter V, I discussed Heraclitus’ philosophy of life, focusing on the element of strife or
tension.⁴⁸ As we saw there, Heraclitus defines life in terms of self-increase:
The soul is a proportion increasing itself.⁴⁹
Like Aristotle, Heraclitus recognizes the voracious, expansive character of fire’s growth. At
the same time, however, it is not because the soul has no limit that it appears as boundless.
Rather, it is because the soul is a certain kind of limit: namely, a proportion which grows,
increasing itself. There is thus a certain boundlessness to life which belongs for Heraclitus
to its very sense of measure and proportionality.
⁴⁶ DK 30.
⁴⁷ In this connexion, Heraclitus is very close to the concept of χώρα introduced in Chapter VIII (see page
200ff). I noted earlier that “soul” is Heraclitus’ preferred way to speak of life (page 115).
⁴⁸ See page 115ff.
⁴⁹ DK 115, quoted on page 117. In that context, I translated λόγος as “definition”; we are now in a position to
translate it as “proportion.” Johnstone rejects this translation because it would be “difficult to see how
this ‘measure’—regardless of whether it is conceived of as a set proportion or as a set amount—could
‘increase itself,’ or what the point of this comment about augmentation might be” (Johnstone, “On ’Logos’
in Heraclitus” 18). To grasp the sense in which the activity of life is an activity of increase that occurs as a
proportion in relation to a limit is admittedly difficult, but in this difficulty consists the philosophical issue
in question.
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In a related fragment, Heraclitus makes explicit the relation between the sense of Clarification of "limit"
limit which belongs to the soul and its living proportionality. “You will not find the limits
[πείρατα] of the soul by going,” he warns, “even if you travel over every way, so abundant is
its proportion.”⁵⁰ There are indeed limits of the soul, but these limits cannot be understood
as extensional determinations, the sort which could be found by traveling to the perimeter.
As Heidegger explains, “πέρας in Greek philosophy is not ‘limit’ in the sense of the outer
boundary, the point where something ends.” It is not that which can be found by going.
Rather, “the limit is always what limits, defines, gives footing and stability, that by which
and in which something begins and is.”⁵1 Heraclitus thus here indicates this sense of limit
as that by which something “begins and is” by situating the limit in the measured
proportionality of an activity of life that is “abundant”⁵2 insofar as it is characterized by a
movement of self-exceeding. In Deleuze’s interpretation of Heraclitus,⁵3 such abundance
and self-increase means “going to the limit.” He clarifies: “Here, limit [peras] no longer
refers to what maintains a thing under a law, nor to what delimits or separates it from other
things. On the contrary, it refers to that on the basis of which it is deployed and deploys all
its power.”⁵⁴ In this sense, the limit is the measure, because it indicates the degree and kind
of power that belongs to the activity of life. “This ontological measure,” he continues, “is
closer to the immeasurable state of things” than any external measure, and “closer to the
hubris and anarchy of beings.”⁵⁵ The soul, as the activity of living, is not measured by an
⁵⁰ DK 45. “Proportion” here is “λόγος,” which could also be translated “measure.” See DK 31B and Kahn,The
Art andThought of Heraclitus 129.
⁵1 Heidegger, “On the Essence and Concept of Φύσις,” 1998 206.
⁵2 “βαθύς”: deep, abundant, strong, or profound (Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon). Cf. the “βαθείης
τάρφεσιν ὕλης” in Homer, Iliad, 1999 5.555.
⁵3 This interpretation occurs largely through Nietzsche’s reading and bears the marks of that mediation.
⁵⁴ Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 1994 37 (brackets original).
⁵⁵ Deleuze, 37. Conceiving things in themselves—as “hubris,” “anarchy,” “absolute immanence,” or “complete
power” in Delueze’s diverse vocabulary: ultimately, as “a life”—reveals the necessity of a sense of limit and
measure that is not imposed upon but arises from things as they occur. Deleuze, Pure Immanence, 2002 27.
168
external limit to which it attains or fails to attain. Rather, the determinate limits of the soul
are to be found internally, in the determinate proportionality by which it begins to be and
is. Neither, however, is this proportionality a homeostatic event. Rather, life occurs as a
determinate proportionality that consists in a specific manner of self-increase and ὕβρις.
This is why ὕβρις is a particularly incisive word in Heraclitus philosophical vocabulary, for
it names the self-overflow as such: that preeminently vegetal condition marked by an
intensive degree of power and oversaturation of force.⁵⁶ ὕβρις—perhaps more than
fire—indicates a limit constituted out of the inner movement of abundant self-increase.
§7.3. Nourishing-Growing
In identifying fire primarily with the sun, Heraclitus does not neglect the aspect of
nourishment that dominates Aristotle’s image of the voracious, all-consuming flame.
Instead, he shifts its locus. For Aristotle’s all-consuming forest fire, Heraclitus substitutes
the measure of the solar passage: a fire which not only gleams but also grants nourishing
light and warmth to living things. Thus fire is both “need and satiety,” the necessity and
excess that belong to life as nourishment.⁵⁷ In the surviving fragments, however, there is
little development of this aspect of Heraclitus’ thinking. Among the ancients, it is rather
Aristotle who takes up the philosophical questions concerning nutrition most directly, as
we have seen.
What, precisely, is the “θρεπτικόν soul?” As I mentioned above (page 156), this is θρεπτικόν means nourishing‐growing.
Aristotle’s preferred term for that sort of soul that is especially characteristic of plants but
which ultimately belongs to all living things. Usually translated “nutritive,” θρεπτικόν more
precisely means “of or promoting growth”⁵⁸ and is closely associated with “increase”
⁵⁶ For the previous discussion of ὕβρις in Heraclitus, see page 117ff.
⁵⁷ DK 65.
⁵⁸ Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon.
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(αὔξησις).⁵⁹ The word is derived from the verb, τρέφω, which is likewise often translated
“nourish.”⁶⁰ These translations are potentially misleading, however, if we have in mind a
modern concept of metabolism. In fact, the primary sense of τρέφω is “to grow, to cause to
grow” referring to the kind of growth that is characteristic of living creatures, as Émile
Benveniste explains in detail:
In reality, the translation of tréphō by ‘nourish’ in the use that is actually the
most common does not suit all the examples and is itself only an acceptation of
both a broader and a more precise sense. In order to account for the ensemble
of semantic connections of tréphō, we have to define it as: ‘to encourage (by
appropriate measures) the development of that which is subject to growth.’⁶1
In order to remain as close as possible to this complex of meaning, I will translate
“θρεπτικόν” as “nourishing-growing,” despite the inelegance of the expression.
I return now to On the Soul II.4 and to the beginning of Aristotle’s specific Objects are prior to activities, which
are prior to capacities.
discussion of the nourishing-growing activity of the soul. The passage begins with two
claims about priority:
But if one is to say what each of them is—the noetic, the perceptive, or the
nourishing-growing [θρεπτικόν]—one must rather first say what thinking is
and what perceiving is. For in the order of λόγος, the forms of being-at-work
⁵⁹ See e.g. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1934 1098a1.
⁶⁰ Beekes and Van Beek, Etymological Dictionary of Greek 1505 (“τρέφω”).
⁶1 He continues: “With paîdas, híppous, we would translate it as ‘to nourish, to raise (children, horses).’ But
there is also tréphein aloiphén ‘to encourage the increase of fat’ (Od. 13. 410); tréphein khaítēn ‘to let
his hair grow’ (Il. 23. 142). It is here that a peculiar and ‘technical’ development is inserted, and it is
precisely the sense of ‘curdle.’ The Greek expression is tréphein gála (Od. 9. 246), which must now be
literally interpreted as ‘to encourage the natural growth of milk, to let it attain the state towards which it is
tending,’ or, prosaically, ‘to let it curdle.’ This is nothing other than an idiomatic connection of tréphein to
the sense of ‘to let grow, to encourage growth’ that it has everywhere. From the standpoint of Greek, there
is no difference between tréphein khaítēn ‘let the hair develop itself ’ and tréphein gála ‘let the milk develop.’
Nor is there any difference between tróphies paîdes ‘children who have grown (and attained the adult age),
and kúmata tróphoenta, kúma tróphi ’waves that have attained their full development.’ Emile, Problems in
General Linguistics 252. Compare Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon,”τρέφω.”
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and the actions are prior to the potencies for them, and prior to actions one
must contemplate correlative objects. […] So first we must speak of τροφή
and reproduction, for the nourishing-growing [θρεπτικόν] soul belongs
already to all the others: it is the first and most common potency of soul, the
one through which living belongs to all things. Its works are reproduction and
the exercise of τροφή.⁶2
According to Aristotle, (a) activities are prior to capacities, and (b) correlative objects are
prior to activities. “Correlative objects” (ἀντικείμενα) are not just any objects; rather, they
are the specific object to which a relative activity is relative. Without entering a lengthy
digression concerning relatives, we might simply say that correlative objects are the objects
that the activity is “of,” as seeing is of a visible thing and thinking is of an intelligible
thing.⁶3 In combination, these two principles of priority indicate that an account of the
capacity for sight, for example, will first require understanding the activity of seeing, and
an account of the activity of seeing will first require understanding the thing seen. Aristotle
also emphasizes this priority in the Categories, where he explains that an activity of the soul
is defined in reference to the correlative object, but the correlative object is not defined in
⁶2 Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 415a17-26. I read “τροφῇ χρῆσθαι” as “exercise of τροφή” against the usual
translation, “use of nutriment.” χράομαι with a dative noun is often used in this way. According to Aristotle,
“the exercise of anything [χρῆσθαι παντὶ] is this: when the capacity is for the thing, someone does this
very thing” (Aristotle, Protrepticus, 2017 57, 57.23 [B84]). See Coates and Lennox, “Unity of Nutritive
and Reproductive” n21. I also depart from the usual translations in my rendition of lines 20-22: “εἰ δ’
οὕτως, τούτων δ’ ἔτι πρότερα τὰ ἀντικείμενα δεῖ τεθεωρηκέναι, περὶ ἐκείνων πρῶτον ἂν δέοι διορίσαι
διὰ τὴν αὐτὴν αἰτίαν, οἷον περὶ τροφῆς καὶ αἰσθητοῦ καὶ νοητοῦ.” περὶ ἐκείνων is typically interpreted
as referring backwards to τὰ ἀντικείμενα, and οἷον περὶ τροφῆς καὶ αἰσθητοῦ καὶ νοητοῦ is therefore
read as a list of three ἀντικείμενα. It is equally permissible, however, to read περὶ ἐκείνων as referring
forward to οἷον περὶ τροφῆς καὶ αἰσθητοῦ καὶ νοητοῦ (for an example of this grammatical construction, see
Aristotle, “Topics,” 1960 125a33-37). On this reading, the need in question is the general need to investigate
the activity of nourishment, the perceptible thing, and the intelligible thing, rather than specific need to
investigate ἀντικείμενα in every case. Likewise, the cause of this need is not the priority of correlative
objects over activities only; rather, the cause is the entire structure in which correlative objects have priority
over activities and activities over potencies. My translation follows this latter reading. For a detailed case
for the same interpretation—albiet in a much different context—see the recent Coates and Lennox, “Unity
of Nutritive and Reproductive”, to which my reading is on this point greatly indebted.
⁶3 Cf. Aristotle,Metaphysics, 2003 1021a26-31; see also Polansky, Aristotle’s De Anima 202.
171
reference to the soul: my perception of a sunflower depends upon the sunflower, but the
sunflower does not depend upon my perception of it.⁶⁴
At this point, however, two problems arise. First, why is the nourishing-growing Why two works for one power?
power of the soul characterized by two works (“reproduction and the exercise of τροφή”)
instead of one? After all, the feeding habits of, say, a housecat are very different from its
habits of mating and childbearing. To this observational objection we might add a logical
one: if activities are prior to capacities, then one would expect that the duplicity of activity
(nutritive growth versus reproduction) would correspond to a duplicity of capacity (a
nourishing-growing power versus a reproductive power). The problem has puzzled
commentators.⁶⁵ Furthermore, why does Aristotle, who typically stresses the reproductive Why not stress reproduction?
activity of the soul over the nourishing-growing activity, identify the single power of the
vegetal soul in terms of the latter, rather than the former?⁶⁶ At one point in II.4, he even
entertains the alternative suggestion explicitly: “since it is right to assign every thing its
name from its end, and its end is to reproduce, the primary soul would be that which is
reproductive.”⁶⁷ Despite the suggestion, he nevertheless persists in preferring the term
“nourishing-growing.”
In order to address this problem, we must resist the common impulse to think in
zoological terms. To the extent that Aristotle is thinking primarily of plants (rather than
animals such as housecats), the apparent difficulty is dispelled: in vegetal life, as we have
noted repeatedly in this essay, there is not typically any neat division between growth and
reproduction; rather, the characteristic activity of the plant is nourishing-growing qua
⁶⁴ The point in the Categories, which concerns the status of correlatives, is the straightforward observation
that knowledge or perception requires its objects, but the objects do not require knowledge or perception.
See Aristotle, “Categories,” 1938 7b15-8a12.
⁶⁵ SeeCoates and Lennox, “Unity ofNutritive andReproductive” for one example. See also Polansky,Aristotle’s
De Anima 200-207 and Aristotle, De Anima, 2016 200-202.
⁶⁶ See for example Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 415a26-29, Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 2000 731a21-33,
Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 2000 735a18-20, etc.
⁶⁷ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 416b22-23.
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reproductive proliferation. In the History of Animals, Aristotle makes the point forcefully:
plants have no other function than reproduction, he says, whereas animals both reproduce
and feed.⁶⁸ The philosopher is not denying that plants nourish themselves; rather, he is
asserting that the activity of nourishment is not other than that of reproduction in the
vegetal case. The local preference in this case for the term “reproduction” rather than
“nourishing-growing”—an artifact of the context in which the passage occurs in the
History of Animals—emphasizes the essential fungibility of the terms.
In the first (vegetal) instance, then, the activity which belongs to the Nourishment and reproduction are
one activity.
nourishing-growing power of the soul is not essentially two but one. This is why Aristotle
turns immediately to τροφή in the passage quoted above.⁶⁹ Although most translations
render τροφή as “food” and understand this as the correlative object of nourishment, such
a reading cannot make sense of the passage, as commentators have noticed.⁷⁰ This
mistranslation concerns an artifact of the language. Whereas Aristotle’s terms for the
perceptive and noetic powers of the soul (νοητικόν, αἰσθητικόν) have direct counterparts
naming the correlative objects of those corresponding activities (τὸν νοητόν, τὸν
αἰσθητόν), the term for the nourishing-growing power (θρεπτικόν) has no such
counterpart. Aristotle therefore often takes recourse to the related term τροφή, which has
two meanings. As the direct nominal form of the verb τρέφω, it refers in the first place to
⁶⁸ “τῶν τε γὰρ φυτῶν ἔργον ἄλλο οὐδὲν φαίνεται πλὴν οἷον αὐτὸ ποιῆσαι πάλιν ἕτερον,” Aristotle, “History
of Animals,” 1965 588b25-26.
⁶⁹ See page 170.
⁷⁰ To take one illustrative example, Ross dodges this difficulty by simply declaring Aristotle’s reasoning in
415a20-25 to be “rather careless.” “The reasoning here is rather careless. A[ristotle] first says that we should
study the objects of the faculties before we study the faculties themselves; and this is quite reasonable.
Nutrition, for instance, being the absorption of food, we must know what food is before we can understand
what nutrition is. τροφῆς, in l. 22, being treated as corresponding to τὸ αἰσθητόν or τὸ νοητόν, must
mean ‘food’; but in l. 23, being parallel to γέννησις, it must mean ‘the absorption of food.’ In ll. 22-23 it
is said to follow from what has just been said that we must treat first of nutrition and generation; but this
in fact follows not from what has just been said, but from what follows in ll. 23-25, viz. that nutrition and
generation are the basic faculties whose presence constitutes life” (Ross, De Anima ad loc.). Once τροφή
in 415a22 is understood as referring to the activity (rather than the correlative object), however, Aristotle’s
claims do follow, as I explain.
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“nourishment” or “nurture”—that is, to the activity of nourishing-growing. In this sense,
τροφή often entails but is distinguished from simple increase (αὔξησις), for increase is
merely quantitative, whereas τροφή pertains to the substance of the living creature.⁷1 By
derivation, τροφή also has the second meaning: it is a typical way to refer to “nutriment” or
“food” as that which serves such growth.⁷2 In this case, however, the fact that Aristotle
pairs τροφή with reproduction indicates that it refers to an activity. The point becomes
clearer when Aristotle repeats himself a few lines later: “Since the same potency of the soul
is nourishing-growing and reproductive, it is necessary first to draw distinctions
concerning τροφή, for it is by this activity [ἔργον] that such a potency distinguishes itself
from the others.”⁷3 As in the previous passage, we read here that a single potency of the
soul is characterized by both nourishing-growing and reproduction (fig. 19⁷⁴). In this case,
however, Aristotle suggests that there is a standpoint from which the two activities can be
seen as one: namely, when understood in terms of the activity of τροφή.
Since activities must be understood in terms of their correlative objects, the The correlative object of τροφή is not
food.
question which next arises concerns the correlative object of the activity of τροφή. To the
extent that τροφή involves nourishment, one might think that its correlative object is food
(τροφή in the objective sense). Many of Aristotle’s interpreters have made this
suggestion.⁷⁵ Indeed, food is necessarily involved in nourishing-growing. Nevertheless,
⁷1 Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 416b13-14.
⁷2 Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon. In fact, the ambiguity is somewhat more pronounced, since
Aristotle sometimes even uses the term τροφή as a synonym for θρεπτικόν. Compare Polansky, Aristotle’s
De Anima 202: “Though the term τροφή obviously can mean food, it has wider possibilities. The term can
also refer to the nutritive faculty and even to its operation. This is somewhat similar to the way the term for
sense perception, aisthesis, can refer to the faculty, its operation, and even the object and the sense organ.
Aristotle can speak unambiguously of the faculty of nutrition by the term threptikon or threptikh, which
he employs in ii 4 at 415a17, a23, and 416a19. Hence when he uses τροφή in passages that can mean more
than one thing, this must be by design.”
⁷3 Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 416a19-22.
⁷⁴ Fig. source: Parkinson,Marsilea Polycarpa, 1769.
⁷⁵ Ronald Polansky is one excellent example. In contrast to my own reading, his interpretation maintains an
essential distinction between reproduction and nourishment, but justifies their relation to a single potency
by suggesting that they have a single correlative object. On his account, food is the object not only of
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FIGURE 19. Marsilea polycarpa
175
food is not a correlative object in Aristotle’s sense.⁷⁶ This can be seen by the fact that “food
is acted upon by the one feeding,” as the philosopher explains, “but not the feeder by the
food.”⁷⁷ As we saw above,⁷⁸ correlative objects are logically and ontologically prior to their
activities: the visible object, for example, acts upon the seer. Food does not have this
relationship to nourishing-growing: the feeder acts upon the food, not vice versa.
According to Aristotle, the correlative object to which the activity of τροφή is The correlative object of τροφή is the
living creature as ensouled body.
relative is what shares in life: the living creature, the ensouled body as ensouled. “Since
nothing nourishes itself [τρέφεται] that does not share in life, the thing nourished [τὸ
τρεφόμενον] would be the ensouled body, as ensouled,” he explains: “thus τροφή is relative
to what is ensouled.”⁷⁹ In this way, Aristotle is able to lay out the precise structure of
nourishing-growing:
There are three things involved: that which is nourished [τὸ τρεφόμενον], that
by which it is nourished [ᾧ τρέφεται], and that which nourishes [τὸ τρέφον].
What nourishes is the primary soul, what is nourished is the body that has
this, and that by which it is nourished is the food.⁸⁰
nourishment but also of reproduction, which cannot occur without food: “Reproduction fits within the
nutritive capacity because the food that is employed for the growth and maintenance of the organism also
becomes in its ultimate rendering the seed that serves for propagating new life, and many living things
naturally reproduce themselves by means of seed” (Polansky, Aristotle’s De Anima 204). On his reading,
the unity of the two activities is guaranteed by their common object, and Aristotle’s preference for the
term “nourishing-growing” is the natural outcome of a focus on food. That food might be necessary for
reproduction, however, does not entail that it is the correlative object of reproduction. For a survey of
other examples, see Coates and Lennox, “Unity of Nutritive and Reproductive” n18.
⁷⁶ Actually, food is a correlative object in Aristotle’s thinking, but that of taste, not of nourishing-growing. See
Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 434b18-24.
⁷⁷ Aristotle, 416a34-35.
⁷⁸ See page 170.
⁷⁹ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 416b9-11 (emphasis added). Some translators render “τροφή” as “food” in this
context, but Aristotle thinks the activity is relative to its correlative object, not vice versa. Compare Aristotle,
II.6, especially 418a23-26: “The perceiver is not acted upon by the thing perceived […] and it is relative to
these [things perceived] that the distinct being of each sense is naturally ordered.” See alsoAristotle, 429a17-
18: “as the perceptive potency is relative to the perceptible thing, so the intellective potency is relative to
the intelligible thing.”
⁸⁰ Aristotle, 416b21-24.
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The active participle (τὸ τρέφον) indicates the activity, the primary soul; the passive
participle (τὸ τρεφόμενον) indicates the correlative object, the body as ensouled.⁸1 Food
has a specific place as one of the two necessary conditions “by which” nourishment occurs
(the other is vital heat, as Aristotle immediately explains).⁸2 Aristotle’s understanding that The correlative objects of nourishment
and reproduction are the same.
the correlative object of τροφή is the ensouled body qua ensouled—that is, the existing
living creature—also furnishes further reason for thinking that reproduction and nutrition
are related to one potency of the soul, the nourishing-growing. We saw above that
nourishing-growing (τροφή) and reproduction are essentially one activity in their first
(vegetal) occurrence. We are now able to see that nourishing-growing and reproduction
both have the same correlative object: the living creature as an ensouled body.⁸3
From this perspective, we can return to the the passage which begins the discussion Nourishing‐growing is its own
correlative object.
of τροφή in II.4 (quoted on page 170), including what I previously elided:
For in the order of λόγος, the forms of being-at-work and the actions are prior
to the potencies for them, and prior to actions one must contemplate
correlative objects. For these reasons, one ought to delineate the following
things: τροφή, the perceptible object, and the intelligible object.⁸⁴
Many translators render “τροφή” here as food, arguing that (a) the list in which it appears
is a list of correlative objects and (b) the correlative object of nourishing-growing is food.
This produces an apparently tidy reading: “the edible thing, the perceptible thing, and the
⁸1 For other instances of this typical grammar, see Aristotle, 418a23-26 and 429a17-18, quoted above.
Compare Aristotle, 416b17-20: on the one hand, nourishing is related to its correlative object, whereas
“on the other hand, food furnishes the necessary materials for the activity, so without food it would not
exist.”
⁸2 Aristotle, 416b28-30. Coates and Lennox understand the point to be significant: “Showing that Aristotle
understands both nutrients and heat as necessary conditions for nutrition thus speaks strongly against the
standard interpretation of the antikeimenon of nutritive soul. Being a necessary condition of nutrition or
reproduction is not sufficient for qualifying as the antikeimenon of either” (Coates and Lennox, “Unity of
Nutritive and Reproductive” n32).
⁸3 Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 416a15-17.
⁸⁴ Aristotle, 415a17-23.
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intelligible thing.” As I have shown, however, Aristotle does not consider food the
correlative object of nourishing-growing. When τροφή is understood as the activity of
nourishing-growing, however, Aristotle’s list appears as rigorously precise: the three things
mentioned (the activity of τροφή, the perceptible thing, and the intelligible thing) are the
correlative objects of three activities of the soul. This is because the thing which nourishes
and the thing nourished are, in the end, the same thing: the ensouled, living creature. As
Aristotle stresses, the correlative object of nourishing-growing is not merely a body which
happens to be nourished, but rather the ensouled qua ensouled.⁸⁵ In its perceptive and
noetic activities, the soul relates to something else: namely, perceptible and intelligible
things. The nourishing-growing activity of the soul is crucially different, for in this activity
the soul relates to itself. Since this “self ” in question is nothing other than the activity of
nourishing-growing, the activity of τροφή is ultimately related, in the most essential
analysis, to activity of τροφή. We have thus arrived at the full solution to the problem
introduced above, namely, the question of why Aristotle prefers to speak of
“nourishing-growing” before “reproduction.” Although either would be fitting, the former
highlights the sense in which this primary soul-activity has its own activity as its correlative
object.
In Chapter VI, I suggested that the ambivalent place of plant life in Aristotle’s Conclusion
philosophical project reveals that “the plant strives for the perpetuation of striving itself.”⁸⁶
This sensibility appears in Heraclitus’ definition of the soul (cf. pages 117 and 167) as a
proportional activity of increase in which what increases is that activity of increase itself.
Here, the same conative element of vegetal life has been brought to light by Aristotle’s
explication of nourishing-growing. To put the point inelegantly: the plant nourishes
nourishing. Or—because “the plant” just is an activity of nourishing—more precisely:
⁸⁵ Aristotle, 416b9-11, quoted on page 176.
⁸⁶ Page 143.
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nourishing nourishes nourishing.⁸⁷ In Aristotle’s own terms, “this originary principle of
the soul is a potency to hold alive this potency as such.”⁸⁸
At one point in his discussion of the proportionality of vegetal soul, Aristotle contends that
the nourishing-growing soul is what holds together the mixture of elements in living
creatures.⁸⁹ This is presumably a reference to Plato’s Timaeus, where plants are introduced
into Timaeus’ cosmology precisely in order to address the difficulty of understanding such
a mixture. Like Aristotle, Plato is concerned with articulating the relationship between the
activity of life and its correlate object. Like Aristotle, Plato is ultimately interested in the
vegetal soul en route to the human soul. Whereas Aristotle begins with the vegetal activity
of nourishing-growing, however, Plato begins with the human being and works backward
to uncover the necessity of the vegetal. In Timaeus’ account, the difficulty of
understanding the relationship between the activity of life and its correlate object emerges
because this life is first of all not a nourishing-growing life. Rather, in the dramatic
presentation of Timaeus’ speech, the human being is first constructed without the activity
of nourishing-growing. It is due to the failure of this configuration that plants are
introduced into the account. Animals life (including that of the human animal), according
to the Platonic account, is impossible without the activity of the vegetal soul. This vegetal
activity is a φύσις that is “akin” to the human, in Timaeus’ words: different, but blended
together with it. Like Aristotle, Plato articulates an understanding of vegetal life that sees it
as a proportionality that articulates a self-exceeding relation of the activity of nourishment
with the thing nourished. However, Timaeus’ account addresses this activity more
precisely in terms of movement. For Aristotle, the activity of the soul is always a kind of
⁸⁷ Here “nourishing” must be understood in the properly Aristotelian sense so as to include at the same time
“growing” and “reproducing.” “Nourishes” must be understood likewise.
⁸⁸ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 416b18-19.
⁸⁹ Aristotle, 416a5-10, quoted on page 158.
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movement. Timaeus, however, characterizes this movement precisely as a kind of
movement that is both wild and balanced. The next chapter, then, explores this
understanding of vegetal life by taking up Timaeus’ account in detail.
As this chapter has argued, Aristotle understands vegetal life in terms of a
proportionality and limit that belongs to the movement of nourishing-growing, the latter
understood as a self-relation of the activity of nourishment to that which is nourished. In
the course of the study, I distinguished the concept of nutritive proportionality from that of
perceptive proportionality by indicating that the former consists in a type of limit (πέρας),
and I began developing this concept further in relation to Heraclitus’ philosophy. After
receiving additional development in the next chapter, the question concerning the
proportionality and limit that characterizes vegetal life will reappear in the concluding
chapter, where it will be brought into explicit relation to the question of reproduction,
which Aristotle holds to be equally characteristic of the single activity—growing,
nourishing, reproducing—that he calls the primary soul.⁹⁰
⁹⁰ Fig. 20: Parkinson, Canavalia Cathartica, 1769; fig. 21: Parkinson, Rodriguezia Rigida, 1768.
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FIGURE 20. Canavalia cathartica
181
FIGURE 21. Rodriguezia rigida
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CHAPTER VIII
A CHORIC LIFE
The specific activity of life—which is the being of all things—is not primary, but
is poured forth as from a spring. [...] Imagine the life of a great plant, the
originary principle of which goes through the whole while remaining also not
scattered about the whole but settled in the root. This vegetal principle grants
the whole multiplicity of life to the plant while remaining itself not a multiple
being but rather the originary principle of the multiplicity of life.
Plotinus
In Physics IV.II, Aristotle offers an influential misreading of Timaeus’ χώρα:1 “Plato, in the
Timaeus, says that matter [ὕλη] and χώρα are the same.”2 But Plato rarely uses the word
ὕλη, and never to mean an Aristotelian “matter.” Rather, Plato uses the word in its everyday
sense: to mean “timber.”3 This identification between χώρα and matter is nevertheless
taken up in Plutarch and the great stream of Platonic interpretation that flows fromMiddle
Platonism onward. But what if this misreading indicates far more than it realizes? Suppose
χώρα really is, at least in some sense, identified with ὕλη: not as Aristotelian matter, but
precisely as timber. The χώρα, lodged at the heart of the difficulties involved in thinking
about the living movement of φύσις, would then indicate a vegetal aspect of life.
Despite the brevity of their appearance, plants enjoy a pivotal importance in the
Timaeus. First, Timaeus would not be able to give his “guest-gift of speeches”⁴ to Socrates
without them: the human body, Timaeus says, “sprouted” legs and hands, the marrow is a
“universal seed” that gives to life its “roots” and in which the various forms of souls are
1 Although usually translated “space,” I leave χώρα untranslated because the meaning of the term is what this
chapter places into question, especially in its relation to vegetal life.
2 Aristotle, Physics, 1957 209b. Epigraph source: Plotinus, “Enneads” §3.8.10 1-13.
3 Sallis, Chorology, 1999 152-153.
⁴ Plato, Timaeus, 1922 20c. English translations are based on Plato, Plato’s Timaeus, 2001 and are frequently
modified.
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“planted,” the brain is a “field” to hold the “divine seed,” the skin of the head grows by
“budding” as it is “watered” by moisture around the brain, the hair “took root” in the scalp
and “sprouted” there, and so forth.⁵ He apparently needs the metaphorical vocabulary of
plants in order to give his account its proper shape and character. Second, Timaeus also
speaks of a more fundamental need for plants: the formation of the human being is
impossible without them.⁶ The discussion of the role of plants in the formation of the
human being—the only extended discussion of plant life in Plato’s dialogues—recounts
how the gods, after fashioning the human creature, contrive plants to be cultivated as
nourishment. Plants, strangely rooted in the ground while still being living things (ζῷα),
are the means by which Timaeus is able to render life and body compatible in the
construction of the human animal. Early in the dialogue, Timaeus claims that “one must
determine how the accounts are also akin to those very things of which the accounts are
interpreters”:⁷ in their dependence on flora, at least, the constitution of the cosmos
(κόσμος) and the constitution of Timaeus’ story (μῦθος) agree.⁸
Nevertheless, commentators have been strangely silent concerning the importance
of Timaeus’ botany. Archer-Hind lauds the text: “Brief as is Plato’s treatment of the subject,
the union of poetical imagination and scientific grasp which it displays renders this short
chapter on plants singularly interesting.”⁹ At the same time, however, he gives no attention
to the relation between vegetation and its anthropological context. Taylor’s magisterial
commentary cannot avoid the botanical passage, but he follows the tenor of Archer-Hind’s
remarks, as does Cornford.1⁰ Sallis’ more recent book, Chorology, does not mention plants
⁵ See Plato, Timaeus, 1922 45a, 73b-d, 76a-b.
⁶ Plato, 76e-77c.
⁷ Plato, 29b.
⁸ This chapter focuses on the second way in which plants achieve prominence in the Timaeus. The
complicated issue concerning the role of plants as metaphor—which has appeared tangentially on more
than one occasion in this essay—is beyond the scope of this study.
⁹ Archer-Hind,The Timaeus of Plato 288.
1⁰ Taylor, A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus 540-544; Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology 302-303.
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even once.11 Similarly, Skemp’s line by line commentary on Plato’s botany deals
comprehensively with every aspect of the passage except this feature.12 Although Karfik’s
analysis of the generation of the human body notes the important parallel between the
instability of the world soul/body and that of the human soul/body and even mentions the
importance of nutrition in the latter case, he does not discuss the passage concerning
plants.13 These surprisingly univocal examples are, it appears, representative.
This chapter explores the role of plants in the creation of the cosmos as it occurs in
Plato’s Timaeus, focusing on the parallel relation between (a) the structural position of
plants in the formation of the human being and (b) the structural position of the χώρα at
the crucial turning point of the text. According to my interpretation, Timeaus’ account is
crafted so as to render the human-plant relation a microcosm of the cosmos-χώρα relation.
By reading the neglected passage concerning vegetation in this light, it becomes possible to
situate Timaeus’ botany firmly in the conceptual and rhetorical structure of the dialogue.
In the first two sections, I show how Timaeus introduces plants to address the difficulty of
understanding how life relates to the living creature (especially the human being). The
third section details the distinction he makes between wild and cultivated plants, which
leads to an interpretation of χώρα in terms of movement in the fourth section. The fifth
section returns to the discussion of plants, showing how plants are the microcosmic
analogue to the cosmic χώρα. This is because of their nutritive character, which I address
in the final section. My interpretation therefore has two aims. Primarily, I aim to show
how Plato gives articulation to the activity of plant life, especially through analogy with the
χώρα. Secondarily, I also aim to put into question the status of plants in the broader
cosmology that Timaeus develops. Although the χώρα is not itself vegetal, the fact that
11 Sallis, Chorology, 1999.
12 Skemp, “Plants in Plato’s Timaeus.”
13 Karfík, “The Constitution of the Human Body in Plato’s Timaeus” 177.
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Timaeus’ speech depicts it as the cosmic counterpart of terrestrial plant life provides an
opportunity to reconsider those aspects of the χώρα that are most analogous to the vegetal.
§8.1. Anthropology and Zoology
Timaeus’ speech, in which consists the bulk of the dialogue that bears his name, answers to
a specific set of dramatic conditions. According to the plan of speeches Hermocrates,
Critias, and Timaeus lay out for Socrates, the purpose of Timaeus’ account is to generate
human beings, delivering them to Critias to be made into citizens of a city.1⁴ This
stipulation has two broad ramifications for the interpretation of the text: Timaeus’
sprawling cosmology is fundamentally (a) anthropological and (b) zoological in character.
(a) Despite its reputation as a cosmological text, the Timaeus is in many ways The dialogue is primarily about human
beings.
focused on human beings. Timaeus reminds his audience of this when he begins his
speech with the necessity to “invoke what has to do with ourselves.”1⁵ As commentators
have pointed out, the cosmology constitutes a minority part of Timaeus’ speech by
measure; the “microcosmology” of the human being occupies the largest part.1⁶ Plato
crafts Timaeus’ account in such a way as to emphasize the parallels between the cosmic and
human constructions, presenting them as mirror images of one another.1⁷ This becomes
most explicit in Timaeus’ discussion of human eyes, given to us “in order that, by
observing the circuits of intellect in heaven, we might use them for the orbits of thinking
within us, which are akin to those.”1⁸ In this way, Timaeus’ cosmology prepares for his
1⁴ Plato, Timaeus, 1922 27a-b.
1⁵ Plato, 27d.
1⁶ By Stephanus pagination, the generation of the cosmos occupies about twenty-seven pages (27c-41b, 47e-
61c) and the constitution of the human being about thirty-six (41b-47e, 61c-91c). For a different (though
complementary) perspective on this point, see Karfík, “The Constitution of the Human Body in Plato’s
Timaeus” 167.
1⁷ “The parallel of macrocosm and microcosm runs through the whole discourse” (Cornford, Plato’s
Cosmology 6).
1⁸ Plato, Timaeus, 1922 47b. Examples could bemultiplied: the human body is initially a micro-sphere crafted
by micro-gods, etc. See also Karfík, “The Constitution of the Human Body in Plato’s Timaeus” 168-172.
186
anthropology not merely by providing materials (e.g. a cosmos in which humans will live)
but also by providing the structural features of the anthropology.
(b) If the Timaeus is concerned primarily with the human being, the problem of the The dialogue questions human beings
in terms life.
human being appears foremost as a problem concerning its life. In fact, the original
impetus for Timaeus’ far-reaching cosmology arises explicitly from a question of life. Early
in the dialogue, Socrates complains that his affect toward the previous day’s speech is as
that of someone who had gazed upon living creatures but found them to be mere paintings.
Such a person might have a desire to see not only images but living bodies, moving and
struggling.1⁹ Socrates’ earlier speech had spoken of political arrangements and the
education of the soul, but his words did not take into account the nature of men and
women as living creatures belonging to the movement of φύσις.2⁰ Without this prior
register of existence, Socrates’ account of the city remains lifeless and immobile. To remedy
the lifelessness of Socrates’ account, Timaeus will therefore speak, “beginning from the
birth of the cosmos and ending in the φύσις of mankind.”21 Such an account of humans
qua living creatures begins by acknowledging that the cosmos itself (along with the
creatures in it) is not made but born. That is, the cosmos and its creatures are not
manufactured members of the world of artifacts; rather, they are living things which
belong to φύσις. In this sense, the whole cosmos “was truly born an animal.”22 As Timaeus
1⁹ Plato, Timaeus, 1922 19b.
2⁰ For a discussion of the identity of this prior speech, see Sallis,Chorology, 1999 21-31. In this sense, “Socrates’
discourse serves tomark certain limits that impose themselves on the fabrication (ποίησις) of the city, limits
that limit the extent of the technical order that could be imposed” (Sallis, 29).
21 “ἀρχόμενον ἀπὸ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως τελευτᾶν δὲ εἰς ἀνθρώπων φύσιν” (Plato, Timaeus, 1922 27a).
22 Plato, 30B-C. Compare Cornford, who notes that Plato models his conception of human life “on the
inexpugnable foundation of the order of the universe.” We should only add that this ordermust be living if it
is to constitute such a basis. Unfortunately, Cornford neglects this aspect and therefore interprets Plato to be
offering us an artificial cosmos (a “machinery”), explicitly contrastedwith a living one. See Cornford, Plato’s
Cosmology pp. 6, 31. Because of this observation and the further elaboration that the birth of the human
being receives in the course of the dialogue, I can affirm only the first half of Cornford’s interpretation:
“The whole leads up to the central problem of human life, the establishment of rational control over the
bodily nature” (Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology 147). The problem is fundamentally not one of control; still
less one of control over nature. Rather, the question concerns how nature occurs in such a way that the life
of the human creature can be intelligible in a cosmic context. Sallis is more sensitive to the tension at issue
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insists at the beginning of his speech, what is “most important” is that “all things begin at
the beginning which is φύσις.”23 From this perspective, the cosmic animal and all the
animals in it are “akin according to φύσις,” and Timaeus’ task is to articulate the originary
principle (ἀρχή) of this life.2⁴
Aside Notably, in the dramatic order of the dialogue, Timaeus does not himself
do this. Beginning with a distinction between being (associated with the same and the
soul) and becoming (associated with the other and the body), Timaeus first suggests that
the demiurge secures the relation between the two by forcefully binding the elements
(earth, air, fire, and water) together.2⁵ At this juncture, the demiurge appears as a craftsman
who looks to a blueprint and then imposes its intelligible order upon recalcitrant materials
by force. Conceived in this manner, however, the resulting unity remains problematic; the
movements of the cosmos remain gripped by a fundamental incongruence analogous to
that of the music scale.2⁶ In light of this problem, Timaeus declares, it is unclear whether
“we have spoken correctly in naming the heaven ‘one,’ ” or whether it would be “more
correct to say that it’s many and indefinite?”2⁷ In its first appearance, the human
microcosm recapitulates these terms. Because it involves binding “immortal soul within a
body subject to inflow and outflow,” generating a human requires reconciling the “circuit of
the same” with the “circuit of the other” so as to establish an “immortal principle of the
here, aptly describing Timaeus’ discourse as “wavering between a discourse of production and a discourse
of procreation and birth” (Sallis, Chorology, 1999 58).
23 Plato, Timaeus, 1922 29b.
2⁴ Plato, 31a; see also 27a.
2⁵ Plato, 27d-28a, 33b, 35b.
2⁶ Namely, the Pythagorean comma, or the incongruence between the system of fifths and octaves in any
musical tuning; see Plato, 35b-36b.
2⁷ Plato, 31a.
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mortal creature.”2⁸ As Timaeus first tells the story, soul and body are “glued” together by
force with “close-packed rivets”; the circuits of the human creature move along without
proportion (ἀλόγως), distorting the movements of both the same and the other.2⁹ Because
it involves binding “immortal soul within a body subject to inflow and outflow,” generating
a human requires reconciling the “circuit of the same” with the “circuit of the other” so as
to establish an “immortal principle of the moral creature.”3⁰ An important element of the
drama of this Platonic dialogue is the movement from this initial discourse, which operates
according to the assumption of an external force and craft on the part of the demiurge, to a
discourse that more adequately answers to the living character of the cosmos and the
creatures within it. In other words, Timaeus’ programmatic demand that the account begin
with φύσις is exhibited in the failure of the account which does not heed the demand.
On the one hand, then, the Timaeus is primarily an account of the human being. On the
other hand, it is nevertheless an account of the human with respect to a life that is not
simply human but rather belongs to the living movement of the cosmos understood in
terms of φύσις.
How will such an account proceed? Timaeus rejects the possibility of a proof or Timaeus' account must itself be living.
demonstration. While accounts of purely intellectual matters may admit of such methods,
an account which concerns φύσις requires a different orientation, since “accounts are also
akin to those very things of which the accounts are interpreters.”31 An account which will
bring to light the coming to be and passing away of things must itself come from φύσις.
2⁸ Plato, 43a, 43d, 42e.
2⁹ Plato, 42e-43d.
3⁰ Plato, 43a, 43d, 42e.
31 Plato, 29b.
189
Such a discourse will be far from a proof; in fact, it will not even always be in agreement
with itself.32 Because it strives to articulate the movements of φύσις, Timaeus’ account
must begin in a way of thinking that follows alongside things in their generation: it must
be a living account. This requirement becomes the basis for his rejection of the attempt to
understand the relation of being and not being according to the logic of model and copy.
To the extent that this relation is conceived in terms of “likeness” or resemblance, the
account would become unbounded (ἄπειρος) and open upon an infinite regress.33
Timaeus therefore insists that his discourse is not properly a λόγος but a “likely story” (τὸν
εἰκότα μῦθον) which receives it determination through being “congenital” (συγγενής) with
the cosmos.3⁴ In this way, Timaeus offers a discourse that attempts to follow the
articulation of living things—of things as living—as they are born.3⁵ For these reasons, it is
all the more significant that Timaeus’ discussion of plants appears at that point in the
dialogue that corresponds to the birth of the human being: here, at precisely the moment
when the discourse must follow the movement of life in its uniquely human appearance,
Timaeus turns to the life of plants.
§8.2. Life and the Living
Timaeus’ treatment of plant life occupies a single paragraph. After the various parts of the
mortal animal had been fashioned, we are told, it turns out that its living activity was not
yet balanced and appropriate to the creature, so its life would dissipate and leave it empty.
For this reason, the gods planted another kind of life: plants. The wild plants are the eldest
and most originary, and the cultivated plants are the most suitable support for animal life.
32 Plato, 29c-d.
33 That is, the model/copy pair would have to be thought as a likeness of something else, etc. (Plato, 31a).
3⁴ Plato, 29d, 29b.
3⁵ The two questions raised here—that of beginnings and that of language—are themselves thematic foci of the
dialogue. While a serious treatment of these issues would carry the current study far afield, their definitive
treatment is found in Sallis, Chorology, 1999.
190
These plants, too, are living creatures, and they partake of the third form of soul. Its
characteristic activity is persistence, moving to and fro within itself while being rooted in
the earth.3⁶ The issue Timaeus here addresses concerns the relation of life (ζωή) to the
living thing (ζῷον):
When all the parts and limbs of the mortal animal [ζῷον] had been made to
grow together according to φύσις, it turned out from necessity that the life
[ζωή] it had was in fire and air and for this reason withered away when it was
melted and left empty by them.3⁷
In terms reminiscent of Socrates’ painted animals, Timaeus asks how it is possible for a The movement of growth brings
together the animal and its life.
living thing to be alive: what, in other words, is the relation between the liveliness and
thingliness of the creature? The various “parts and limbs” of the mortal animal, Timaeus
explains, “grow together according to φύσις.” Thus the various parts of the animal body are
related to one another in proportion by way of movement, viz., the movement of growth
that is from φύσις. This is not an external movement that forces together two antecedent
terms; rather, this is a generative movement in which the various parts and limbs first come
to be within the motion of growth which relates them.3⁸
But such a movement of growth also occurs in relation to what it is not: the This movement of growth is external
to the animal.
elements, especially fire and air. Although most commentators have understood this as a
reference to the fragile vulnerability of the human creature,3⁹ the issue here is more
3⁶ The foregoing is a summary of Plato, Timaeus, 1922 76e-77c. In the rest of the chapter, I work through the
text of this paragraph directly.
3⁷ Plato, 76e-77a.
3⁸ We are now far from the “gluing” and “riveting” that characterized the beginning of Timaeus’ account.
Although the work of the gods is still present, the emphasis has shifted from the register of craft and
production to that of φύσις.
3⁹ Taylor is representative in seeing a reference to the harsh sun and wind; other commentators have pointed
out various other vicissitudes of life. See for example Taylor, A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus 541 and
Skemp, “Plants in Plato’s Timaeus” 53-54. Although these suggestions have some plausibility, the relation
between this passage and and earlier passages seems to me definitive, as I explain in what follows.
191
fundamental: as a movement of growth, life is exposed and outward-facing, depending
upon a continually renewed influx of the elements (through nutrition, respiration, and
sensation) in order to persevere.⁴⁰ As Timaeus points out in an earlier passage, the living
creature is “a body subject to inflow and outflow.”⁴1 Nutriment and sensation crash over
the human animal like a great wave, driving it this way and that, “bringing about the most
widespread and greatest commotion.”⁴2 Here, in the construction of the human creature,
this problem takes on a central prominence. “Everything that surrounds us from without is
always melting us away,” as Timaeus says: the elements, rushing into the human body, just
as readily rush out, leaving the body lifeless.⁴3 On the one hand, there is the living creature,
understood in terms of the bodily “parts and limbs” that are not a mere collection of
inanimate objects but rather organs generated in a movement of growth which bears them
forth. On the other hand, the very life of such a living creature is outside of itself,
consisting in fire and air. In this way, the standing together of life (ζωή) and the living thing
(ζῷον) appears as a problem.⁴⁴ This is a problem of harmony: within the strife that
characterizes the divergent movements that constitute the living creature, it is necessary to
find a principle of proportionality that can hold these movements in a kind of balance.⁴⁵ In
⁴⁰ Just prior to this passage, Timaeus elaborates a theory of sensation grounded in the analysis of the elements
(Plato, Timaeus, 1922 61c-68d). Note that Plato does not share Aristotle’s allergy to speaking of plants as
sensitive.
⁴1 Plato, 43a.
⁴2 Plato, 43c. On the relation between this cacophony and the originary cosmic cacophony out of which the
demiurge brings order, see Vallega-Neu,The Bodily Dimension in Thinking 13-14.
⁴3 Plato, Timaeus, 1922 81a, 78a-b.
⁴⁴ A similar problem logosoccurs slightly earlier in the account. In order to ward off the threat of destruction
through gluttony, the gods fashion the intestines as a “receptacle” (ὑποδοχήν) through which nutriment is
made to pass more slowly through the body (Plato, 73a).
⁴⁵ This problem recapitulates in microcosm the problem which motivates the demiurge to bring an ordered
cosmos out of “discordant” and “disorderly” chaos. Plato, 30a; see also Vallega-Neu,The Bodily Dimension
in Thinking 7. In the cosmic context, Timaeus depicts the reconciliation of disparate movements as a
question of literal harmony: the same and the other are related in various proportions so as to constitute
a musical scale. Because they are held together by force, the their relation ultimately remains unmusical,
and Timaeus remarks upon the “leftover interval”—the Pythagorean comma—that takes the ugly ratio of
256:243. Plato, Timaeus, 1922 35b-36b; see also Vallega-Neu,The Bodily Dimension inThinking 10. On the
issue of proportionality with respect to plants specifically, compare pages 158ff.
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terms of the preceding chapter, the initial configuration of the human animal lacks the
specifically nutritive proportionality that would establish a limit (πέρας) according to
which the living creature might remain in existence. Instead, the human being is
characterized more by fire, which lacks proportion and simply flares up then wastes away.
Following the pattern established from the beginning of his account, Timaeus
therefore insists once again upon the difficulty of finding a relation—a distinguishing
principle—that can hold together being and not being in a finite creature. This
distinguishing principle is a “life” (ζωή), but a different kind of life than the animal life
discussed hitherto:
The gods prepared support for it. They planted [φυτεύω] a φύσις akin to
human φύσις, though blending it with different looks as sensation so as to be
another kind of animal [ἕτερον ζῷον]. These are precisely our current
cultivated trees and plants and seeds that are trained by the agricultural art
and domesticated for our use; but formerly the wild kinds were alone, since
these were elder to the cultivated ones. For everything that partakes of living
[μετάσχῃ τοῦ ζῆν] may justly and most correctly be called a living creature
[ζῷον].⁴⁶
What is needed to address the difficulty of bringing together life and living thing, Timaeus Animal life subsists in plant life.
suggests, is a third kind: a nature akin to the human nature, but at the same time different
in form so as to be another kind. That in which animal life is able to subsist, then, is plant
life: a (vegetal) life before (animal) life (fig. 22⁴⁷). This difference is especially significant in
the light of the rest of Timaeus’ account, which considers all the fauna to be variations on
human nature: it is only plants that are truly different, although also somehow akin.⁴⁸ In
⁴⁶ Plato, Timaeus, 1922 77a-b.
⁴⁷ Fig. source: Parkinson, Spondias Dulcis, 1769.
⁴⁸ In the “devolutionary” account of non-human animals givennear the end of Timaeus’ speech, all the animals
are derived from humans.
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the passage just quoted, Timaeus trades his usual term for beginning, “birth,” for the
vegetal equivalent, “planting” (φυτεύω). The wordplay involved in the passage emphasizes
the “middle” character of the vegetal. On the one hand, the plant (φυτόν) belongs to φύσις;
on the other hand, since it is living (ζωή) it is correct to call it an animal (ζῷον). For Plato
(as for Aristotle⁴⁹), vegetal life is a different kind of life that straddles the boundary between
the animal (including the human) and the broader activity of coming to be and passing
away that belongs to φύσις writ large.⁵⁰
§8.3. TheWild and the Cultivated
Since the relation between humans and plants is consumptive, Timaeus draws particular
attention to the domesticated plants:
These are precisely our current cultivated trees and plants and seeds that are
trained by the agricultural art and domesticated for our use; but formerly the
wild kinds were alone, since these were elder to the cultivated ones.⁵1
At the same time, however, he takes pains to point out the wildness of plants: the elder
nature of plants is to be untamed. Although this qualification has been largely ignored by
commentators,⁵2 I suggest that it is an important indicator of how Plato conceives the place
of plants in his vision of life and the cosmos.
Wildness belongs to plants in an originary way, according to Timaeus. Within the Plant life is a wild form of life.
context of the Timaeus, the priority enjoyed by the elder, wild plants is not merely
⁴⁹ See page 147 and following, above.
⁵⁰ Archer-Hind greatly emphasizes the continuity of plant and human life, but fails to appreciate the equal
necessity for a radical difference (see Archer-Hind,The Timaeus of Plato 286).
⁵1 Plato, Timaeus, 1922 77a.
⁵2 Cornford is typical in not mentioning the passage; Sallis follows suit. Taylor’s suggestion that these remarks
mean nothing more than to “soften” the application of the term “ζῷα” to the φυτά by pointing out that
there are other words used of both animals and plants is unconvincing, as I show in what follows (Taylor,
A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus 543).
194
FIGURE 22. Spondias dulcis
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chronological.⁵3 In the section of his speech preceding the botanical, Timaeus discusses
the different parts of the soul, especially that third kind of soul which is responsible for
nutrition and reproduction. In distinction from the intellective and spirited parts of the
soul, the third part of the soul is characterized by desires pertaining to the φύσις of the
body.⁵⁴ This striving movement of desire, to which belongs the nutritive and reproductive
aspects of life, is also called “wild” (ἄγριος). As Timaeus explains, plants partake in this
third form of soul.⁵⁵ This nutritive part of the soul is a “wild beast” that has to be fed “if
indeed the mortal kind was ever going to somehow be at all.”⁵⁶ Both here and in the
botanical passage, then, the existence of living animals requires another, “wild” kind of life
positioned between φύσις and animal life (ζωή). This life is nutritive/reproductive: it is a
movement that involves something (nutriment, progeny) that is both alien to the animal
and most fundamentally consistent with it.
For the Greeks, the distinction between wild and domesticated plants corresponds Cultivated plants are those at the
middle of the continuum of plant life.
to a network of related concepts. Cultivation is not primarily a technique humans apply to
a plant to bring it from a state of wildness to gentility; rather, cultivation belongs to the
nature of the plant and its place in the cosmos.⁵⁷ As there is a continuum of life from the
movement of φύσις to the human animal (in which plants occupy the middle term), so also
there is a continuum of plant life. At one end of the continuum stand the cold, wet plants
that are closely associated with the earth and with what is rotten (such as wild grasses); at
the other stand the hot, dry plants that are closely associated with fire and air (especially
⁵3 In Timaeus’ cosmology, it would be inappropriate that “an elder be ruled by a younger.” For this reason,
the cosmic soul, as “prior to the body in both birth and excellence” and its ruler, must be elder to the body
(Plato, Timaeus, 1922 34c). So, for example, the earth is “first and eldest” of the gods within the heaven
(Plato, 40c). To be elder is to have a more than chronological priority.
⁵⁴ Plato, 70d.
⁵⁵ Plato, 70e, 77b. Together with a passage concerning the mingling of bile and saline power (83c), these are
the only occurrences of the word “ἄγριος” in the Timaeus.
⁵⁶ Plato, 70e.
⁵⁷ See for example Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, 1999 1.3.5-6.
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the aromatic plants, such as myrrh). At the former extreme, plants are edible only for a
limited number of animals (such as snakes); at the latter extreme, plants can be consumed
only as seasonings. The earthly plants prefer dark places far from the sun and winter
months; the solar plants prefer lands and seasons closer to the celestial fire.⁵⁸ Between
these two extremes stand the cultivated plants, which range from the somewhat colder (e.g.
cereals) to the somewhat hotter (e.g. fruits such as dates).⁵⁹ Such plants are “cooked” both
in the sense that they are concocted externally by domestic cooking processes and in the
sense that they are concocted internally by a process of nourishment that balances the wet
and hot elements of their constitution (this process is aided by farming). By contrast,
plants at the extremities of this continuum are “wild” and therefore raw (a) in their internal
nature, (b) in their resistance to the agricultural arts, and (c) in their unsuitability for
domestic cooking.⁶⁰
Domestication must therefore not be conceived as the contrary of the wild but Cultivation is the balance in plant life
that is compatible with human life.
rather as a mode of wildness: under certain conditions, what is wild becomes proportioned
and balanced in such a way as to become compatible with human life.⁶1 The domesticated
plants, then, are precisely those “middle” plants whose otherwise wild movements strike a
balance between these two extremes. In such plants, what is cold and wet is brought into
tune with what is hot and dry in a measured, harmonious way. Like the countryside
⁵⁸ Detienne,The Gardens of Adonis 13-15, 37.
⁵⁹ “Their intermediate position is illustrated, especially, in the dual status of the fruit of the vine. This is
sometimes a moist and refreshing food, when the first grapes are gathered in July for eating, and sometimes
a fermented drink of a fiery nature that is made from the riper grapes picked after the Dog Days, at the
rising of Arcturus” (Detienne, 14).
⁶⁰ “So in the earth some come to be and grow out of concocted nourishment, others out of residues and what
is in an opposite condition. Now farming concocts and makes productive the nourishment; from this,
cultivated fruits are formed. What grows from such cultivation, then, are called ‘cultivated’ because they
are benefited by expertise, as if being trained; but those that are unable to be (cultivated) or even are formed
out of an opposite condition, these are wild and tend not to grow in farmed land. For farming ruins these
by training them, since they come to be out of corruption” (Aristotle, Aristotle, 2011 924a16-24). See also
Detienne,The Gardens of Adonis 14
⁶1 Is the human animal itself domesticated or wild? This question is asked but left undecided in Plato, Sophist,
2006 222b-c.
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(χώρα) surrounding the city that enacts an interface between human sphere and the barren
reaches beyond such that it is possible for the city to be at all, the plant gives space within
the movements of φύσις for the activities of human life.⁶2
Such giving-space, however, is a question of movement. Socrates’ painted animals This balance is possible through a
choric motion that is neither active
remain unsatisfactory because they lack their proper, living movement. In Timaeus’ nor passive.
account, the human animal also lacks its proper movement prior to the introduction of
plants. But what kind of movement is needed? On the one hand, we are familiar with the
autonomous motion which comes forth from the animal, fending off external influences
and expressing its own animation; on the other hand, there is the external motion which
even so-called inanimate things suffer passively, being moved from without.⁶3 In the
Timaeus, the former (autonomous) type of movement is characteristic of animal life (ζωή),
the intellect (both human and cosmic), and what always is (being/sameness); the latter
(external) type of movement is characteristic of φύσις, the body, and what is always being
born (becoming/otherness).⁶⁴ The relation between these two series of terms, however,
cannot be sought in either of these two types of motion. Instead, what is needed is a third
kind of movement, a “wild” movement which is neither active nor passive—a kind of
movement simpliciter. This is not the first time we have seen such a movement: Goethe’s
account of intensification and Aristotle’s account of indefinite striving, for example, have
much in common with this wild movement, although they are not articulated in precisely
the same terms. In the context Timaeus’ broader cosmic account, however, this “third
kind” of movement is identified with the χώρα.
⁶2 See e.g. Plato, Laws, 2001 745b-e, 759b, 817a, 823e, 945d, 950d.
⁶3 An animal that flees capture illustrates the former; a rock that is skipped across the surface of a pond
illustrates the latter.
⁶⁴ Note that this passive motion is only associated with φύσις in a partial and provisional way.
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§8.4. Choric Motion
Timaeus gives at least two reasons for introducing the famous χώρα into his likely story. The χώρα is introduced to address a
particular kind of motion.
First, his account prior to the introduction of the χώρα considers only those things crafted
through reason and not those things arising through necessity.⁶⁵ To genuinely inquire
(ὄντως ἐρεῖ) into the generation of the cosmos, however, one must include “the form of the
wandering cause.”⁶⁶ Timaeus therefore declares it necessary to “retreat” (ἀναχωρητέον, “go
to the χώρα”)—to another beginning, which is provided by the χώρα.⁶⁷ The second reason
for introducing the χώρα concerns the fluidity of the elements. In his initial account of the
cosmos, Timaeus says that the gods “borrowed” the elements as if intending to pay them
back, but he makes no attempt in that account to speak of the elements themselves.⁶⁸ To do
so, making “use of some word that’s trustworthy and stable,” is difficult because they
perpetually transmute into one another.⁶⁹ The elements therefore appear as a form of
restlessness that accepts no stability. For this reason, they require that in which things
might show themselves and from which they perish: the distinguishing relation Timaeus
names χώρα.⁷⁰ I wish here to stress one aspect of the complex emergence of the χώρα in
Timaeus’ speech: in both cases, the χώρα appears in relation to a particular kind of
motion.⁷1 In the first case, it involves the wandering motion of whatever comes to be from
⁶⁵ Plato, Timaeus, 1922 47e.
⁶⁶ “τὸ τῆς πλανωμένης εἶδος αἰτίας” (Plato, 48a).
⁶⁷ Plato, 48b.
⁶⁸ Plato, 42e-43a, 48b.
⁶⁹ Plato, 49b-c.
⁷⁰ Plato, 49e-50a. For a careful analysis of the difficult passage in which Timaeus makes this argument, see
Cherniss, “A Much Misread Passage of the Timaeus (Timaeus 49c7-50b5)” and the lengthy discussion of
the attendant arguments in Sallis, Chorology, 1999 102n13.
⁷1 This emphasis is justified in part by the connection in Plato’s thinking between movement and the soul,
the “essence and λόγος” of which is to be a principle of movement that moves itself (Plato, Phaedrus, 1952
245e).
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necessity; in the second place, it involves the instability of perpetual transmutation.⁷2
Although underappreciated by some of the best commentators, the specificmobility of the
χώρα is a characteristic that is central to its relation with vegetal life, as we shall see.⁷3
The cosmic “third kind”—the χώρα—is “a form difficult and obscure,” according to The movement of the χώρα is neither
active nor passive.
Timaeus:⁷⁴
For it never ceases from its own δύναμις at all. It always receives all things,
and nowhere in no way has it ever taken on any shape similar to the ones that
come into it. For it is laid down by φύσις as a molding stuff for everything,
being both moved and thoroughly configured by whatever things come into it;
and because of these, it appears different at different times.⁷⁵
If the χώρα is to give space to all that is, then a difficulty arises: it cannot have a shape of its
own, nor can it take on the shape of that which comes into it. After all, “that in which the
imprints are fixed,” Timaeus says, “wouldn’t be prepared well unless it’s shapeless with
⁷2 Although the χώρα is not the focus of this study apart from its vegetal aspect, my interpretation of it is
influenced by Sallis, Chorology, 1999, especially ch. 3.
⁷3 On the mobile aspect of χώρα, compare Sallis, 127: “It is not without paradox that one can speak of the
χώρα as itself in movement, as something—though not, of course, some thing—that moves. For the χώρα
is not only utterly amorphous but also invisible, even insistently invisible, whereas the things that can be
said, without further ado, to move are visible things, things that occupy some place andmove to another, or
at least that alter their position or state within a place. But how can the χώρα be in a place in which or from
which to move?” It is remarkable that Sallis devotes so little attention—not quite a page—to this paradox.
⁷⁴ “χαλεπὸν καὶ ἀμυδρὸν εἶδος” (Plato, Timaeus, 1922 49a). The problem is presented as extreme; Timaeus
finds himself forced into a remarkably uncertain discourse. “If we say that it’s some invisible and shapeless
form—all-receptive, but partaking somehow of the intelligible in a most perplexing way and most hard-
to-capture—then we won’t be lying,” he stammers (Plato, 51a-b). The degree of hedging in this sentence is
remarkable: (1) the entire construction is conditional; (2) χώρα is a shapeless and invisible form; (3) the
relation between χώρα and intelligibility is impassible; (4) we assert the relation without capturing it; (5) all
we can even say when speaking this way is that we are not lying. Beyond this, what can be said? “How,” he
asks, “should we speak about this third kind itself, and in what way, and what should we say?” (Plato, 49b).
In this chapter, I seek to shed light on plant life by highlighting the parallel between the role of the χώρα
in the cosmos and the role of the plant in the human microcosm. One could productively do the opposite,
rather shedding light on the difficulties surrounding the χώρα.
⁷⁵ Plato, 50b-c.
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respect to all those looks [τῶν ἰδεῶν] that it might be going to receive from elsewhere.”⁷⁶ It
cannot impose a form of its own upon those things which come to be in it, for that would
mean those things were simply determined in their form by the χώρα. Instead, it must
allow the things to come to be as those things which they are. At the same time, it is not
simply nothing: it must have some identity and characteristic of its own (“never ceasing
from its own δύναμις at all”). In discussing such a paradoxical movement, Timaeus is
attempting to articulate a kind of motion between activity and passivity.⁷⁷ This is why he
can paradoxically affirm and deny passivity to the χώρα, saying on the one hand that it
“nowhere in no way” has ever taken on the shape of what comes to be in it and on the other
hand that it is “thoroughly configured” by such things. Similarly, he suggests that the χώρα
is filled with powers, but that these work neither in concert nor in opposition to one
another.⁷⁸ Instead, the χώρα “sways irregularly in every direction,” being shaken and
moved by whatever comes to be in it and shaking them back.⁷⁹ This “wandering” motion is
that upon which its capacity to receive all things rests.⁸⁰ And yet such wandering is not
mere passivity. Rather, the motion of the χώρα relates such “being shaken” and “shaking
back” together in a characteristic manner. Like the domesticated plants, the χώρα indicates
a wild movement that is somehow balanced within itself so as to be resolutely receptive of
whatever is.
⁷⁶ Plato, 50d. See the helpful example given in Sallis, Chorology, 1999 109: “For, in order to be capable of
suitably receiving all forms, it must itself be devoid of form, as the base for a fragrant ointment must be as
odorless as possible.”
⁷⁷ In grammatical terms, such motion would be in the “middle voice” of the Greek verbal system, which
offers a construction that is neither active nor passive. Something analogous might be heard in certain
English constructions, such as “it rains,” “the drum beats,” etc. Aristotle’s discussions of the soul also show
a predilection for the middle voice.
⁷⁸ Plato, Timaeus, 1922 52e.
⁷⁹ Plato, 52e.
⁸⁰ Compare Hegel’s restless “tremulation of vitality,” discussed on page 50.
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The verb that corresponds to the noun χώρα—viz., χωρέω—accentuates the
importance of motion. It has a number of related meanings.⁸1 First, it means to “make
room for another, give way, withdraw,” as when one gives way to an opponent in battle or
as the earth gives way beneath one’s footing. The sense of withdraw is therefore not one of
mere absence; rather, it is of a withdrawing that draws in and grants space. Second, χωρέω
means to “go forward, advance,” as when one departs upon a journey or when important
news spreads through a community. In this more active sense of the word, one still hears
the element of receptivity to whatever may come, whether serendipitous or calamitous. At
a more basic level, therefore, χωρέω simply denotes “to be in motion or flux,” as in the
famous saying of Heraclitus: “Heraclitus says somewhere that everything moves [πάντα
χωρεῖ] and nothing remains still, and, likening the things that are to the flow of a river, he
says that you cannot step twice into the same river.”⁸2 In this sense, the χώρα indicates a
form of motion that is neither simply active nor simply passive but is rather a motion in
which activity and passivity appear in relation to one another.⁸3
§8.5. The Choric Plant
We are now in a position to return to Timaeus’ botany and the problem to which it The plant is the microcosmic
counterpart to the cosmic χώρα.
responds in the account of the human microcosm. From the beginning, this problem is
articulated in terms of movement:
⁸1 Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon.
⁸2 Plato, “Cratylus” 402a.
⁸3 CompareWood, Time After Time 39: “That activity acts on somethingmight suggest a ‘passivity’ on the part
of that which is acted upon, an acquiescence, showing that activity presupposes some cooperation, some
relation—not least, for example, material on which to act. Here passivity would not be opposed to activity
but would complement it. Activity that is appropriate to the circumstances, that conforms to rules, that is
tailored to certain objectives could be said to display a certain passivity in allowing its positive determination
by something other than itself. Again, if this can be called passivity, it serves to enhance, direct, and specify
the activity in question, rather than being opposed to it.” On my interpretation, Plato’s Timaeus involves—
among other things—the attempt to articulate that movement which relates activity and passivity in these
complex ways.
202
They [the gods] bound the circumvolutions of the immortal soul within an
inflowing and outflowing body. And these circumvolutions, as though bound
within a prodigious river, neither overpowered it nor were overpowered, but
by force both were swept along and also did sweep, so that the whole animal
was stirred into motion—but irregularly, moving along by chance and without
proportion.⁸⁴
Here the specific incompatibility involved in the generation of the human animal occurs
between the circuitous course of the soul and the somatic activity of inflow and outflow.
The soul and body each moves and is moved, but neither appears entirely active or passive.
Rather, a motion emerges which involves a stirring that belongs to the whole. Such
movements, however, lack a relation in which they could become balanced. For this
reason, the movements are irregular and lack proportion; life “withers away, melting and
being left empty” as a result of the lack of proportional relation between life and living
body.⁸⁵ As Timaeus explains, so long as the animal remains subject to such motions, it is
“overpowered and utterly destroyed.” The animal therefore requires an “imitation,” on the
microcosmic scale, “of what we have called the nurturer and wet-nurse of the all”—viz., the
χώρα. This microcosmic counterpart would provide some kind of “measured shaking”
(μετρίως σείων) in which the “wandering affections and parts” of the human animal might
be held in relation “according to kinship.”⁸⁶ By coming to be in something else, that which
comes to be will then be able to somehow hold fast to being, “or else be nothing at all.”⁸⁷
This counterpart to the χώρα is vegetal life: as a form of life “akin to human nature […] but
⁸⁴ Plato, Timaeus, 1922 43a-b.
⁸⁵ Plato, 77a, quoted on page 190.
⁸⁶ Plato, 88d-e.
⁸⁷ Plato, 52c.
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different,” it provides a motion that bears the difference that distinguishes and relates being
and not being in the human animal and so allows the animal to somehow be.⁸⁸
It is therefore to this type of movement that Plato’s botany next turns: The analogy is justified through a
similarity of movement.
This living creature we’re talking about now surely partakes of the third form
of soul, that which the account has seated between midriff and navel, and
which shares in no way at all in opinion and reasoning and intellect, but only
in sensation, pleasant and painful, accompanied by desires. For it persists in
being entirely subject to impression, itself somehow twisting to and fro within
itself around itself. Its formation did not by φύσις⁸⁹ impart to it the ability to
reason (while observing) about anything of its own by rejecting motion from
without while making use of its own motion. For this reason, it truly lives and
is none other than a living creature, but because it has been deprived of
self-motion, it stays firmly fixed and rooted down.⁹⁰
Many commentators posit a dramatic break in the text at this point. According to Skemp,
with this passage we reach “the more important sentences” which “deal with the status of
plants in the universe apart from their relation to man.”⁹1 Taylor is in virtual agreement,
discussing the passage from this point onward without reference to human being.⁹2 On
this interpretation, the rest of the discussion of vegetation is an aside in which Timaeus
seizes the opportunity to pontificate upon the nature of plants. Although this would not be
out of the question, nothing in the context suggests such a digression. To the contrary,
⁸⁸ Plato, 77a, quoted on page 190.
⁸⁹ φύσει A F Y, φύσιν W. “The editors all printed φύσιν until Burnet, though Archer-Hind had misgivings.
Taylor and Rivaud follow Burnet, but Cornford reverts to φύσιν” (Skemp, “Plants in Plato’s Timaeus” 58).
See also Taylor, A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus 544. I am content with reading “φύσει.”
⁹⁰ Plato, Timaeus, 1922 77b-c.
⁹1 Skemp, “Plants in Plato’s Timaeus” 56. See also Skemp, 53: “The first part (to 77 B 1) deals with plants as
human nutriment, the rest of the passage with their status in the universe apart from their fulfillment of
this function.”
⁹2 Taylor, A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus 543f.
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both the opening phrase of this passage (“πᾶν γὰρ οὖν”) and the sentence immediately
following the discussion of plants (“ταῦτα δὴ τὰ γένη πάντα”) rather suggest continuity.⁹3
In fact, Timaeus’ discussion of plants is still tied very closely to their nutritive function in
relation human beings, for he is justifying the position he has ascribed to plants as the
“third kind,” akin to human nature but not identical to it. In order to serve this role, plant
life must share a genetic relation (συγγενῆ) with human life while maintaining its own
nature.⁹⁴ As we have seen, this nature must appear as a kind of movement: the paradoxical
kind of movement between activity and passivity which belongs to the χώρα.
Aside The reading of 77b-c is difficult. According to most editions, “πάσχον γὰρ
διατελεῖ πάντα στραφέντι δ᾽ αὐτῷ ἐν ἑαυτῷ περὶ ἑαυτό τὴν μὲν ἔξωθεν ἀπωσαμένῳ
κίνησιν, τῇ δ᾽ οἰκείᾳ χρησαμένῳ, τῶν αὑτοῦ τι λογίσασθαι κατιδόντι φύσει οὐ
παραδέδωκεν ἡ γένεσις.” Are “στραφέντι,” “ἀπωσαμένῳ,” and “χρησαμένῳ” affirmed of
plants or denied them? It would initially seem the former, and the passage has been
traditionally read in this way. However, this reading poses a problem: if plants are said to
indeed fend off motion from without and make use of their own movement, this would
present an apparent contradiction between this sentence and both the wording
immediately prior, in which plants are said to be entirely passive (πάσχον γὰρ διατελεῖ
πάντα), and the one immediately following, in which plants are said to be stationary “διὰ
τὸ τῆς ὑφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ κινήσεως ἐστερῆσθαι.” Galen, for example, felt the need to emend his
text to address the discrepancy.⁹⁵ Taylor notes an additional problem in describing plants
as self-moving and unmoved by external motion: “this makes T.’s whole theory of κίνησις
⁹3 Plato, Timaeus, 1922 77c.
⁹⁴ Cf. Plato, 50d: “it’s fitting to liken the receiver to a mother, the ‘from which’ to a father, and the nature
between these to an offspring.”
⁹⁵ See Skemp, “Plants in Plato’s Timaeus” 57.
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self-contradictory. It was precisely because the οὐρανός rejected motion from without and
revolved wholly on itself that it was held to be supereminently intelligent.”⁹⁶ That is, if
plants make use of the same motion as the heavens, we cannot make sense of the passage,
whose force is to deny λογίσασθαι to them. Taylor therefore points to Zeller, who was the
first to argue that the three dative participles are parallel and follow “οὐ παραδέδωκεν,”
therefore being denied to plants.⁹⁷ On this reading, plants do not turn within themselves,
fend off motion from without, or make use of their own motion, and correspondingly lack
reason. Modern editors and commentators generally prefer this latter reading on both
grammatical and conceptual grounds. On the other hand, plantsmust have their own
motion, since they have a ψυχή. Since Timaeus (on this reading) denies motion to plants,
Taylor is forced to add an implied provision that Timaeus is speaking only in a restricted
sense.⁹⁸ While certainly possible—and clearly superior to the traditional alternative—this
approach remains unsatisfactory. In fact, Taylor’s analysis appears to rest upon a
framework which imagines only two kinds of motion: the autonomous, intelligent
movement of the heavens and the reactive movement of things simply moved from
without.⁹⁹ As I have argued, it is the third kind of movement, neither active nor passive,
that must be at stake here. In this vein, another interesting reading suggests itself: taking
“στραφέντι δ᾽ αὐτῷ ἐν ἑαυτῷ περὶ ἑαυτό” to resonate not with the κύκλῳ κύκλον
στρεφόμενον of the heavens1⁰⁰ but rather with the ἀνωμάλως πάντῃ ταλαντουμένην of the
χώρα.1⁰1 Such a reading would receive impetus from the interpretation I have been
⁹⁶ Taylor, A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus 544.
⁹⁷ Taylor, 543.
⁹⁸ Taylor, 543.
⁹⁹ Compare Karfik’s division of motion in the Timaeus, which is articulated somewhat differently but also
prohibits a third kind, in Karfík, “The Constitution of the Human Body in Plato’s Timaeus” 179.
1⁰⁰ Plato, Timaeus, 1922 34b.
1⁰1 Plato, 52e; see also 43e in specific relation to the human.
206
articulating; it would also be warranted on purely lexical grounds1⁰2 and fits well with
Timaeus’ later mention of διαιωρούμενον ἀεὶ in connection with nutrition.1⁰3 Instead of
reading all three participles in parallel with οὐ παραδέδωκεν, the second and third
(ἀπωσαμένῳ and χρησαμένῳ) would be read this way while the first (στραφέντι) would be
read with διατελεῖ. This reading would have the advantage of following more closely the
μὲν/δε construction enjoyed by the second and third participle. All that would then be left
would be to clarify the grammar by reconsidering the editorial decision to read the
archetypal “ΣΤΡΑΦΕΝΤΙΔΑΥΤΟ” as “στραφέντι δ᾽ αὐτῷ,” preferring instead “στραφέν τι
δ᾽ αὐτό.” Taking “δε” in its explanatory force,1⁰⁴ the passage would then read relatively
smoothly: “πάσχον γὰρ διατελεῖ πάντα, στραφέν τι δ᾽ αὐτὸ ἐν ἑαυτῷ περὶ ἑαυτό. τὴν μὲν
ἔξωθεν ἀπωσαμένῳ κίνησιν, τῇ δ᾽ οἰκείᾳ χρησαμένῳ, τῶν αὑτοῦ τι λογίσασθαι κατιδόντι
φύσει οὐ παραδέδωκεν ἡ γένεσις” (as I translate above). Such textual speculation—which
to my knowledge is unremarked in the extant literature—must remain admittedly
conjectural. My reading, however, has the advantage of emphasizing the interpretation for
which I have argued on other grounds.
It is precisely this paradoxical movement—neither active nor passive, but “somehow Conclusion
twisting to and fro within itself around itself ”—which forms the phenomenal basis for the
passage, commending plant life to Plato as so suitable an analogue for the χώρα in
Timaeus’ account of the human being: among living things (ζῷα), plants have the peculiar,
choric combination of being at the same time active and mobile (having ψυχή) and
nevertheless strikingly passive and sessile (κατερριζωμένον). Seen in this light, it becomes
1⁰2 Liddell, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon “ΣΤΡΕΦΩ” B.I.1 and B.II.1.
1⁰3 Plato, Timaeus, 1922 78e.
1⁰⁴ Cf. Smyth, Greek Grammar §2836.
207
clear that the botanical passage responds to twin demands: on the one hand, it answers to
an ontological demand which involves the status of life in both its cosmic and microcosmic
aspects; on the other hand, it answers to an ontic demand which arises in relation to the
specific, observable features of plant life (fig. 231⁰⁵). Perhaps this is why many readers find
it difficult to decide between a structural-ontological interpretation and a botanical one:
Timaeus’ aim is precisely to carry out both discourses simultaneously.
The plant is rooted in the ground and deprived of motion with respect to place. At
the same time, it possesses its own proper motion, according to which it is a living
creature. Nevertheless, it does not reject motion from without, asserting its own motion
against it as an active force. Instead, it is moved by whatever comes to be in it, and by
wandering, shaking, and twisting within itself it persists in its own δύναμις.1⁰⁶
§8.6. Nutrition, Revisited
In this chapter hitherto, I have stressed the choric mobility of plants. In the previous The centrality of plants concerns
nutrition.
chapter, the essential activity of plants was identified as nourishing-growing. So too in the
context of the Timaeus, where the living movement of plants appears primarily with respect
to nutrition. It is specifically the domesticated plants—those plants whose wild movements
occur in a manner that balances hot, cold, wet, and dry elements in a “middle” that is not
only compatible with animal life but sustains it nutritionally—that play a crucial role in
Plato’s text. Whereas for Aristotle, plants appear as nutritive in the sense that their manner
of being consists essentially in the activity of nutrition, Plato’s account adds the additional
recognition that plants are nutritive in the sense of serving as nutriment for another.
Life occurs from necessity. Just as it is this recognition that signals the introduction Nutrition is necessary for life.
of χώρα into the macrocosmic account, so also this recognition signals the turn to vegetal
1⁰⁵ Fig. source: Parkinson, Stigmaphyllon Ciliatum, 1768.
1⁰⁶ Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 1922 50b-c, quoted on page 200.
208
FIGURE 23. Stigmaphyllon ciliatum
209
life in the microcosmic account.1⁰⁷ For the Greeks, necessity (ἀνάγκη) does not specifically
denote what follows a law. Plato writes of the motion of the elements that it is “according to
chance from necessity,” (κατὰ τύχην ἐξ ἀνάγκης) in contrast to craft.1⁰⁸ Rather, necessity
names here a compulsion that arises from the character of life itself: as nutritive, life is not
enclosed within itself but rather requires another. That is, life is perforce dependent upon
what is external to itself, but the necessity of this dependence arises from its own nature.
The term “χώρα” already suggests this necessity: in an everyday sense, the χώρα,
“countryside,” is closely related to nutriment, for it is the land surrounding the city on
which depend those who participate in the city’s life.1⁰⁹
In Timaeus’ account of animal life, plants answer to this compulsion by acting as its As nutritive, plants bear the nutritive
limit between φύσις and ζωή.
food. The movements of life occur in and through “the constantly flowing channel of
nutriment” that characterizes every living thing.11⁰ The problem concerning nutrition,
then, can be situated in terms of the relation between those movements which appear to be
external and those which appear to be internal. As Timaeus explains, it is “since the body is
burned and chilled within by what enters it, and again dried up and moistened by what
comes from the outside, and suffers everything that follows from this by both motions,”
that life does not adhere within the living creature.111 “Internal” and “external” do not here
name two opposing terms established by a sharply delineated self. Rather, they name a
movement of relatedness that belongs to the occurrence of life as such, such that “within”
1⁰⁷ Plato, 47e and 76e, respectively.
1⁰⁸ Plato, Laws, 2001 889b-c. See also Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology 171-176 and Sallis, Chorology, 1999 92:
“Thus, if one is to translate ἀνάγκη as necessity, it must be insisted that this necessity is not the necessity
of law, that it is not that form of necessity to which one would refer in describing something as bound by
law. It is rather a necessity that would operate outside the law, that would even determine this very outside;
this necessity would be an outlaw eluding the noetic supervision that determines the lawfulness of ποίησις,
resisting the rule of νοῦς even if responsive to its persuasion. This necessity is also called the errant form of
cause.”
1⁰⁹This relation between χώρα and nutriment is highlighted, among other places, in Plato, Republic, 2013
414d-e.
11⁰ Plato, Timaeus, 1922 43c.
111 Plato, 88d.
210
and “without” are correlates of a motion of infusion. The attempt to bring together the
“same” and the “other” after they are first conceived as separate is the error of Timaeus’ first
account. Only by beginning with the necessity of a third kind can the “same” and “other”
first appear in an originary relation that sustains them in their difference. The question
concerning the place of vegetal life, therefore, concerns that which is akin to animal life but
blended proportionally with something different so as to be a different kind of life.112 Such
a blending, as we saw in Chapter VI,113 would also mark a limit between φύσις and ζωή.11⁴
Iin Aristotle, plant life is revealed as an activity of growing-nourishing that has itself as its
correlative object. In the Timaeus, that relationship is doubled: the plant also appears as
nutritive life par excellence through which animal life is nourished. Like Nietzsche, Plato
largely indicates, rather than elaborates, the issues surrounding the details of nourishment;
as we have seen, these are developed with greater specificity in Aristotle’s account.
Whereas Aristotle therefore characterizes nourishment primarily in terms of a
self-relation, Plato focuses on understanding the particular kind of motion that is involved
in nourishment: a choric, “third kind” of motion that is neither active nor passive. Such
movement is indefinite, insofar as it neither expresses a form upon things nor receives its
form from things. Nevertheless, such movement also has a specific determination, insofar
as it achieves a certain balance or proportion. For this reason nourishing, as this living
movement, is that “in which” the same and the other can first come to be together in the
living creature. In the concluding chapter, we will highlight the relation between the same
and the other by returning to Aristotle’s account to stress the reproductive aspect of the
single activity of plant life. If—as we have seen in previous chapters—the activity of growth
112 Plato, 77a, quote on page 190.
113 See page 147 and following.
11⁴ As we noted earlier, this limit requires thinking from the standpoint of life and generation, rather than from
a standpoint of logical demonstration (see page 189 and following, above).
211
is a movement by which the living thing constantly surpasses itself in a proliferative
movement of expansion, such expansion is also a movement of nutritive assimilation and
reproductive differentiation. In each of these senses, life is constituted in relation to its own
outside: or, rather, life appears as a relation in which inside and outside first emerge within
the movement of φύσις.11⁵
11⁵ Fig. 24: Parkinson, Tacca Leontopetaloides, 1769; fig. 25: Parkinson, Antigramma Repanda, n.d.
212
FIGURE 24. Tacca leontopetaloides
213
FIGURE 25. Antigramma repanda
214
CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION
δεῖ γὰρ συμφυῆναι, τοῦτο δὲ χρόνου δεῖται.
For one must grow into knowing, and this requires time.
Aristotle
This study has orbited around the concept of ὕβρις.1 In Hegel, ὕβρις appears in the
“restlessness” and “tremulation of vitality” that characterizes in vegetal growth (page 48
and following). In Goethe, it shows itself as the rhythmic interplay between intensificiation
and polarity (page 84 and following). In Nietzsche, it refers to the determination of a will
to power in relation to the movements of φύσις (page 112 and following). In Heraclitus,
ὕβρις indicates the self-increasing nature of the soul and the necessity of its inner limit
(πέρας) or measure (page 117 and following). In Aristotle, it appears as the indeterminate
striving (ὄρεξις) that belongs to the power of nourishing-growing so as to constitute a limit
and proportion (page 151 and following). In Plato, ὕβρις appears as a wild manner of
movement, neither active nor passive, that nevertheless occurs in a harmonious and in that
sense determinate manner (page 207 and following). In each case, the philosopher in
question reaches for an articulation of a movement belonging to vegetal life that relates
indefinite proliferation and self-surpassing with a precise limit and proportionality. By way
of concluding this essay, I would first like to press the concept of vegetal ὕβρις one step
further, then characterize two limitations of the account I have developed herein.
To speak here of proportion is to speak of a relation, namely, one which belongs to
the proliferative movement of vegetal life. According to Aristotle, this movement (which
he identifies as the primary activity of the soul) is nourishing-growing, the correlative
1 Epigraph source: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1934 1147a22.
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object of which is the living creature qua ensouled—that is, qua the activity of
nourishing-growing. However, this Aristotelian account, as it is elaborated in Chapter VII,
stands in need of a corrective: it is not enough to say only that the primary activity of the
soul is nourishing-growing, the correlative object of which is itself (as
nourishing-growing). Such an analysis would risk leaving us with a self-enclosed relation
and would fall back into the preservationism that this essay has repeatedly rejected.2 As
Aristotle insists, the activity of nourishing-growing is also reproductive, and we cannot
neglect this aspect of the activity that constitutes the occurrence of vegetal life.3
When Aristotle declares that “plants are always being born anew,” he echoes the
discussion about the paradox of the living in Plato’s Symposium.⁴ “Each one of the living
creatures is said to live [ζῆν] and to be the same,” Diotima there says, by “always being born
anew,” and this “not only in body but also in soul.”⁵ The paradox here concerns the fact that
reproduction means becoming otherwise than oneself yet thereby remaining the same. “It
always remains alive with respect to something different and new,” as Diotima explains.⁶
Insofar as the primary activity of the soul is reproductive, in Aristotle’s view, its correlative
object is not merely itself but rather itself as different. In a certain respect, then, Aristotle is
able to say that “nothing generates itself ”: the single activity of the nourishing-growing
soul generates not the living creature itself but a living creature “suchlike” (οἷον) it.⁷ The
plant’s growth is not a merely quantitative increase of the same, like the continual increase
of sediment at the mouth of a river. Rather, the growth of the living creature is properly
reproductive in the sense that it involves a fundamental difference. In Diotima’s terms, it is
2 See especially page 92 and following.
3 Although the foregoing discussion has emphasized that Aristotle views nourishment and reproduction as
a single activity (see page 170 and following), it does so within a context that emphasizes nourishment at
the expense of reproduction.
⁴ Quoted on page 151.
⁵ Aristotle, “Length and Shortness,” 1957 467a13. Plato, Symposium, 2001 207d-e.
⁶ Plato, Symposium, 2001 207d.
⁷ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 416b17, 416b16.
216
an ongoing generation that concerns not only the quantitative, regenerative change of the
body (i.e., the continual regrowth of hair and nails) but also the generation of the soul (the
activity characteristic of the living creature). This is the essential character of
nourishing-growing: it is an activity of increase that is aimed at nothing other than the
living creature itself, but is aimed at that living creature as different from itself.
Insofar as it is reproductive, nourishing, and growing, the plant is essentially an
activity of self-differentiation. In the blossoming flower or proliferating rhizome, vegetal
life engages in a generative work that intensifies its activity without being reducible to
either simple self-maintenance or self-reduplication. In its reproductive aspect, the living
creature (a) differs from itself and (b) reveals itself as this activity of differing from itself.
“This kind of originary principle of the soul is a potency to hold alive this potency as such,”
as Aristotle says.⁸ There is thus an indeterminate aspect of vegetal life and a determinate
aspect. On the one hand, nourishing-growing is characterized by a prodigal profusion that
answers only to the unbounded essence of life’s movement of self-increase. On the other
hand, this movement of increase is not positivity and self-identity, but rather difference
and relation. Against both the infinitude of the line, the limit of which is external arrest
and termination, and the infinitude of the circle, the limit of which is the determinacy of
infinite self-relation, the plant posits the finitude of hubristic growth: an activity defined
only in terms of itself, yet defined in terms of a “self ” that is a relation of exuberant
self-differentiation. “Limit” here is not the terminal point of cessation but the determinate
actuality of a life.
Of what is vegetal life a proportion? In Plato’s Timaeus, we saw that the particular
being of plants makes possible a proportion in the construction of the human being: since
the definite “parts and limbs” of the human body and its indefinite “life” would not hold
together in proportion, but instead wasted away in dissipation, plants were fashioned as the
⁸ Aristotle, 416b18-19, quoted on page 179.
217
condition for the possibility of a relation between the two, so that the human being might
exist. Aristotle also, making reference to the Timaeus, claims that the nutritive and growing
soul is what holds together the relation in living creatures.⁹ Thus plants are emblematic
sites for such blending, which always involves a certain ὕβρις (it is after all Dionysus, as
Socrates points out to Protarchus, who presides over the mixing).1⁰ But what of vegetal life
itself? In a previous chapter, we saw that Aristotle rejects the idea that it is a proportion of
the elements.11 We are now able to specify the answer more precisely: the proportionality
of vegetal life consists in a relation between the determinate and the indeterminate aspects
of growth. To follow a Platonic schema, vegetal growth appears as a relation between the
aspects of determination and indetermination that compose the living creature. This
relation itself, however, must have a cause—namely, a certain proportionality that grants
the relation its characteristic existence.12 The activity of plant living is such a proportion
insofar as it is a ratio of the limited and unlimited according to which living things exist.
Such a proportionality is not a late or accidental aspect of vegetal life; on the
contrary, it is originary and essential. We therefore should not think first of two types
(determination and indetermination) which are then brought into relation with one
another such that the relation can finally stabilize into a proportion. Rather, the related
terms present themselves in a plant which always already possesses the existential
⁹ Aristotle, 416a5-10.
1⁰ Plato, “Philebus,” 1925 61c.
11 See page 158.
12 The schema is taken from Plato’s Philebus. See especially Plato, “Philebus,” 1925 16c, 17a. With
characteristic lucidity, Gadamer explains: “But ontologically the good mixture of the ontic constituent
parts—that is, the being of health, of musical harmony, and so forth—depends upon the appropriateness
of the shares of the opposed constituent parts. That is, it depends upon the correct proportion. Only
this definiteness of proportion, which Plato characterizes ontologically as a unity of indefiniteness and
definition, makes a mixture into a unity that can exist. A mixture that was not definite in this way would
not really be. […]This measured proportion, after all, constitutes the being of the entity. Proportionmeans
‘logos.’ Something that is addressed in its proportion is addressed in its being. So the genus of the cause,
which is arrived at within this horizon of production, is indeed at the same time an ontological moment
of definiteness—and not a dispensable one that, say, is only added when the subject is brought into the
picture, but, on the contrary, the one in which the meaning of being really presents itself for the first time”
(Gadamer, Plato’s Dialectical Ethics 141, 143).
218
character of a relation, appearing as aspects of that relation. Such a relation is determined
not by antecedent relata but by an appropriate proportion in whose joining and
differencing vegetal life is able to exist at all. Heraclitus’ dense expression for the
occurrence of life—“self-increasing proportion”13—is particularly suitable in this respect:
the self-increase in which vegetal life consists is the proportionality of a relational activity
that gives rise to both determination and indetermination in their appropriate
conjunction. The ὕβρις of vegetal life is the characteristic manner of occurrence that
belongs to this proliferative self-differentiation: nourishing-growing-reproducing.
When Cyrus essayed to cross the Gyndes, it being there navigable, one of his
sacred white horses dashed with ὕβρις into the river, that he might win through
it, but the stream overwhelmed him and swept him under and away. At this
ὕβρις of the river, Cyrus was very wroth, and he threatened it that he would
make it so weak that women should ever after cross easily without wetting their
knees.
Herodotus
At this point in the essay, I must confess that I have become much like Cyrus’ horse:
intoxicated with the ὕβρις of my subject matter, I have thrown myself headlong into a
current which perhaps exceeds my powers.1⁴ At the same time, I am reminded that this
study began with another river: one which carried Socrates and Phaedrus to the tree that
granted a sheltered space for thinking.1⁵ In the interpretation of that text, I suggested that
there is a certain necessary extravagance (extra-vagari, wandering about outside) and even
vagueness (vague as wild, uncultivated, but also vagus, strolling, rambling) that must
belong to any account which attempts to remain close to the movement of vegetal life.
13 See page 167.
1⁴ Epigraph source: Herodotus,The Persian Wars. I.189.
1⁵ See page 4 and following.
219
“φύσις,” Aristotle says, “is a traveling to φύσις,” and this means that a philosophical study
which strives to follow the growing forth and withering away of things strives to follow a
manner of existence that is not simply given but rather always developing—or, one might
say, is a certain manner of development.1⁶ The texts that figure prominently in the
preceeding chapters all bear the marks of this difficulty. As I have have emphasized
throughout the essay, those thinkers who wish to remain faithful to plants must be satisfied
to address themselves to a subject matter that remains half-buried in the soil, for only
under such conditions can thinking move alongside a life whose character involves not
only blossoming revelation but also recession and withdrawal. It is therefore appropriate
for me to end this study by highlighting two of its limitations. The first pertains to the
subject matter itself; the second pertains to the scope and focus of this essay.
The first limitation I wish to highlight is a tension in my account between the specificity of
plant life and the generality of life as such.1⁷ On the one hand, I suggest that plants are a
specific kind of life that must be understood in their own particularity. I have repeatedly
stressed the inadequacy of conceiving plants on the model of animal life and the
importance of studying plant life on its own terms, advocating a philosophical phytology as
an alternative to a merely zoological approach to plant life. In Hegel, I emphasize the
passages of the Encyclopedia in which the philosopher addresses growth in its uniquely
vegetal character. What I find most fascinating in Goethe’s thought is his “delicate
empiricism,” which attempts to bring his ideas as close as possible to the specificity of the
plant. In Nietzsche, I uncover an ontology that takes its inspiration from plants and
attempts to understand everything from physics to societies in those terms. Aristotle’s
account of the soul is most fruitful when he attends to the ambivalent position of plant life,
1⁶ “ἡ φύσις ἡ λεγομένη ὡς γένεσις ὁδός ἐστιν εἰς φύσιν.” Aristotle, Physics, 1957 193b13f. The earlier form
of the English word “develop” was “disvelop”; both terms had the now obsolete sense of “unfurl, unfold,
unveil” (from the Old French desveloper).
1⁷ This tension is mentioned in the introduction (page 11).
220
suspended between the coming to be and passing away of all that is (φύσις) and the activity
that is proper to animals (ζωή). Timaeus’ account of the cosmos reveals an extraordinary
dimension of plant life precisely insofar as it is able to conceive plants as a “different kind”
of life, one akin to animal life yet not the same as it. It is no exaggeration to say that this
entire study is motivated by the conviction that the specificity of plant life marks a
particularly fruitful site for philosophical reflection.
On the other hand, I have also suggested that the specificity of plant life reveals
something broader than the vegetal. This aspect of the study becomes most pronounced
beginning with the discussions of Nietzsche and Heraclitus in Chapter V. Although
Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power is inspired by the vegetal occurrence of life, it does
not constitute an attempt to understand plants specifically. Rather, Nietzsche takes plants
to be emblematic of a broader ontological current that is his real interest. In a similar vein,
my readings of Heraclitus in chapters V and VII are able to shed light on vegetal life despite
the fact that Heraclitus addresses life only generally, rather than addressing plants
specifically. In Aristotle’s philosophy, vegetal life occupies a central place in the study of the
soul because it persists in the animal and human soul—or, to be more precise, that aspect
of the soul which defines the plant is not unique to the plant but rather belongs also to
animals and humans. At the same time, that aspect of the soul also remains very close to
φύσις. Thus, at the very point that Aristotle speaks of what is most distinctive of the plant
(namely, nourishing-growing), he places this aspect in relation to both animal life and the
broad movement of φύσις: “For nothing withers or increases by φύσις unless it grows
nutritively [τρεφόμενον], and nothing grows nutritively itself unless it shares in life
[κοινωνεῖ ζωῆς].”1⁸ In the Timaeus, the generality of life is likewise at the forefront.
Because Timaeus depicts plants in terms of their analogue, the χώρα, plants are ultimately
1⁸ Aristotle, De Anima, 1979 415b27-28.
221
understood in relation to a kind of movement that possesses a cosmic scope and
significance.
The tension between these two aspects of the study is deliberate and necessary. In
its first appearance in Greek literature, φύσις appears in the μῶλυ plant.1⁹ On the one hand,
what appears is not a plant but φύσις; on the other hand, φύσις only appears in the
specificity of the plant. What Homer articulates from the direction of φύσις, this study
articulates from the direction of the plant (φυτόν): on the one hand, what phytology
studies is not the generality of life or φύσις but the specificity of the plant; on the other
hand, what the specificity of vegetal life reveals is also something broader that pertains to
the occurrence of life as such. That is, it is the nature of vegetal life to make manifest
something concerning life as such. Theophrastus makes the point precisely: in contrast
with animals, “the plant has growth in all its parts, inasmuch as it has life [ζωή] in all its
parts.”2⁰ What is characteristic of the uniquely vegetal manner of growth, in other words, is
that it is thoroughly characterized by the appearance of what is not specific to the plant: the
life of the living creature as such. The tension between the specificity of plant life and the
generality of life as such is therefore a limitation of this study insofar as that tension
belongs to vegetal life itself as it shows itself to philosophical thought.
The second limitation I wish to highlight concerns temporality. Indeed, the question of
temporality is a thread which runs consistently through this essay without being addressed
directly. In Hegel, vegetal life ultimately appears as a “tremulation of vitality within itself ”
that is understood as a “restlessness of time.”21 The activity of plants appears as
“tremulation,” as movement quamovement, which consists in an indeterminate (“restless”)
modality of time. Goethe carries this idea further: intensification, understood as an
1⁹ See page 8.
2⁰ Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, 1999 1.1.4.
21 See page 50.
222
ever-striving movement, is a temporalizing activity articulated according to the interplay
of expansion and contraction. Goethe therefore develops an initial sense for a specifically
vegetal temporality, neither linear nor cyclical but rather intensive, essentially plural but
rhythmically coherent.22 In this respect, Goethe’s influence on Nietzche can be seen in the
latter’s identification of life with nutrition and his understanding of nutrition as a modality
of rhythmic adjustments.23 Likewise, Heraclitus’ sense of limit and measure, of which the
sun’s fire is the primary image, is an essentially temporal understanding.2⁴ Although
Aristotle and Plato do not place temporality at the forefront of their discussions of plants, a
study which takes up the question of vegetal temporality would nevertheless find it helpful
to address the implicitly temporal aspects of those discussions. In the Phaedrus, for
example, the vegetal grove in which Socrates and Phaedrus converse shelters a form of
temporality that is distinguished from both the time of the city and the time of the sun’s
daily passage. In the Timaeus, the dramatic necessity for the introduction of plants into
Timaeus’ account concerns the question of establishing a temporality that is not the
cyclical image of eternity (as in the macrocosmic account) but is instead the form of finite
endurance in the living creature.
A second essay, following in the footsteps of this one, would develop the concept of
vegetal ὕβρις more precisely in its temporal character. Such a study would situate itself in a
lineage of philosophy that understands time as belonging to things and therefore as
plural.2⁵ As I have briefly indicated, it would draw on many of the same thinkers that
feature in this essay, while also turning to others, such as Plotinus, who coins the
neologism “to temporalize” (χρονόω) to describe the activity of living creatures and who
22 See page 81 and following.
23 See page 108.
2⁴ See page 165 and following.
2⁵ This lineage is phenomenological, in the sense that it develops an understanding of time by attending to
the occurrence of things as they appear. For recent examples of the philosophy of time carried out within
this lineage, see Scott,The Lives of Things, Vallega-Neu,The Bodily Dimension inThinking, andWood, Time
After Time.
223
begins his account of φύσις by investigating the way in which plants strive for (and
achieve) contemplation.2⁶ It would also have fruitful recourse to Augustine, for whom
temporality is finite and plural because it belongs to the “swelling” or “distension” of living
things, and who begins his considerations of time by imagining himself as a plant.2⁷
In this essay, however, I have for the most part endeavored to avoid these questions.
The necessity for doing so arises not from the nature of my subject, but only from the form
of the essay: any study must suffer limits if it is ever going to exist. The question of vegetal
temporality therefore constitutes the immediate horizon of the present study, in the sense
that it is a crucial element that orients and defines my explorations of vegetal life while
never itself being adequately explored. By introducing the question of vegetal temporality
in connection with the study of plant life, however, this study motivates another which
would take up the question in a sustained way.
There rises a tree. O pure rising-over!
Rainer Maria Rilke
Plants appear.2⁸ We find ourselves next to a tree; there it is, rising. The roots are hidden
beneath the earth; the crown is hidden above the branches. We remain yet in the middle,
situated within an interval of place and time. This essay has not attempted to articulate for
vegetal life an origin or an end. Rather, it has attempted to come alongside the plant in
medias res, in the midst of its growing and withering, and give thoughtful articulation to its
essential occurrence as ὕβρις. To the extent that the experiment is successful, the ὕβρις of
plants has emerged as the ontological character of vegetal existence that appeared first in
2⁶ Plotinus, “Enneads.” III.7.11.30; III.8.1.1-7.
2⁷ Augustine, Confessions. XI.ii.
2⁸ Epigraph source: Rilke, Duino Elegies &The Sonnets to Orpheus 82, quoted on page 1.
224
terms of unity and multiplicity (Hegel, Goethe, Nietzsche) and second in terms of limit,
prodigality, and proportion (Heraclitus, Aristotle, Plato). Plant life occurs neither as
identity in excess nor prodigality under constraint; rather, it is a proportionality that relates
determination and indetermination in their appropriate difference, a choric movement
that grants life shape without thereby containing it, a modality of reproductive growth
both unending and finite.
What is at stake in this study is the possibility of an encounter between philosophy
and vegetal life that calls for a rethinking of the latter and therefore of the former. This
essay is therefore an exercise in listening, and its success is measured by the degree to
which it invites the soul to become more sensitive to the occurrence of “a nature akin to
human nature yet different.”2⁹ Such an invitation is threefold. First, it occurs as an
invitation to notice the subtle ways in which vegetal life has shaped the thinking of certain
figures in the history of philosophy, often in tension with the broader terms of their own
projects. Second, it consequently occurs as an invitation to rethink our philosophical
concepts and approaches by rendering them more responsive to the specifically vegetal
dimension of life. Third, it occurs as an invitation to cultivate an intensified awareness of
and attention to the vegetal life which everywhere surrounds us—and in which we, too,
find ourselves rooted and nourished.
2⁹ Plato, Timaeus, 1922 77a, quoted on page 190.
225
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