We barely talk about them and seldom know their names. Philosophy has always overlooked them; even biology considers them as mere decoration on the tree of life. And yet plants give life to the Earth: they produce the atmosphere that surrounds us, they are the origin of the oxygen that animates us. Plants embody the most direct, elementary connection that life can establish with the world.
In this highly original book, Emanuele Coccia argues that, as the very creator of atmosphere, plants occupy the fundamental position from which we should analyze all elements of life. From this standpoint, we can no longer perceive the world as a simple collection of objects or as a universal space containing all things, but as the site of a veritable metaphysical mixture. Since our atmosphere is rendered possible through plants alone, life only perpetuates itself through the very circle of consumption undertaken by plants. In other words, life exists only insofar as it consumes other life, removing any moral or ethical considerations from the equation. In contrast to trends of thought that discuss nature and the cosmos in general terms, Coccia’s account brings the infinitely small together with the infinitely big, offering a radical redefinition of the place of humanity within the realm of life.
By:
Emanuele Coccia
Imprint: Polity Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 218mm,
Width: 142mm,
Spine: 15mm
Weight: 340g
ISBN: 9781509531523
ISBN 10: 1509531521
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 19 October 2018
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
General/trade
,
Undergraduate
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments I. Prologue 1. On Plants, or the Origin of Our World 2. The Extension of the Domain of Life 3. On Plants, or the Life of the Spirit 4. Toward a Philosophy of Nature II. Leaf Theory: The Atmosphere of the World 5. Leaves 6. Tiktaalik roseae 7. In Open Air: Ontology of the Atmosphere 8. The Breath of the World 9. Everything is in Everything III. Theory of the Root: The Life of the Stars 10. Roots 11. The Deepest are the Stars IV. Theory of the Flower: The Reason of Forms 12. Flowers 13. Reason is Sex V. Epilogue 14. On Speculative Autotrophy 15. Like an Atmosphere Notes
Emanuele Coccia is Associate Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris.
Reviews for The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture
Back to animals! Back to mushrooms! And now back to plants! It is with plants that this marvellous, witty and immensely literate book wants us, the human readers, to get acquainted again. And of course with plants, it is actually the sun toward which we are reoriented. Philosophy is on the move again, not exactly forward but downwards, giving a completely different meaning to what counts as a foundation to thought. Bruno Latour
