Plant Philosophy should be Rooted in Pantheism

Nature’s creativity connects life to nonlife, and thus animals to plants

Benjamin Cain
Philosophy Today
Published in
6 min readOct 8, 2024

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Living with plants
AI-generated image by Nicky from Pixabay

In her Aeon article, “Seeing Plants Anew,” philosophy professor Stella Sandford argues that recent science has overturned the old presumption about our superiority to plants, calling for a philosophy of plants that rethinks the nature of animal and human life.

The upshot is that if plants aren’t so vegetative or passive, personhood isn’t likely as advanced as we presume.

For instance, she points out:

Most plants respond to damage to their leaves by releasing volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Some of these VOCs activate abiotic stress-related genes; some have antibacterial and antifungal properties. Some VOCs specifically repel the attacking herbivore with nasty tastes or toxins, and some plants can identify which specific herbivore is attacking, and produce different responses accordingly. Some VOCs attract the predators of the insects that are attacking the plant. Herbivore attack can also induce plants to produce more nectar, encouraging insects away from leaves.

Other experiments seem to show that plants “cooperate with kin, whereas they tried to outcompete non-kin plants.”

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