Attached Paper Annual Meeting 2024

Seeing Plant Souls: Reviving Gustav Fechner’s Vegetal Vision

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

This paper analyzes the vegetal theology of Gustav Fechner by drawing upon the author’s original translation of his previously-untranslated 1848 book, Nanna, Or On the Soul-Life of Plants. I explore the telelogical and aesthetic implications of Fechner’s category of plant-soul (Pflanzeseele), and explore how it rests on a thoroughgoing dual-aspect monism. I put Fechner’s arguments in dialogue with monistic predecessors, including Spinoza, Goethe, and Schelling, and contextualize the uniqueness of Fechner’s methods in the context of post-Hegel Germany. Finally, I characterize my translation project as a kind of vegetal ressourcement, along the lines of philosopher Michael Marder, whose 2013 book Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life attempts to “vegetalize” the Western philosophical cannon.