Tra le pagine di La pianta filosofale, Michael Marder monda le specie vegetali e ne estrae il succo che ha alimentato il discorso filosofico per secoli. Scegliendo dodici esemplari di piante che corrispondono a dodici filosofi significativi, Marder traccia la storia della filosofia attraverso l’evoluzione del rapporto tra uomo e mondo vegetale. Questo libro apre un sentiero attraverso il fitto sottobosco e le intricate radici della filosofia – dal platano di Platone alle ninfee di Luce Iri...

Green Mass is a meditation on—and with—twelfth-century Christian mystic and polymath Saint Hildegard of Bingen. Attending to Hildegard's vegetal vision, which greens theological tradition and imbues plant life with spirit, philosopher Michael Marder uncovers a verdant mode of thinking. The book stages a fresh encounter between present-day and premodern concerns, ecology and theology, philosophy and mysticism, the material and the spiritual, in word and sound.Hildegard's lu...

Understanding the political and ecological implications of Heidegger’s work without ignoring his noxious public engagementsThe most controversial philosopher of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger has influenced generations of intellectuals even as his involvement with Nazism and blatant anti-Semitism, made even clearer after the publication of his Black Notebooks, have recently prompted some to discard his contributions entirely. For Michael Marder, H...

De los libros y herejes incinerados en las piras de la Inquisición a las autoinmolaciones en las concentraciones de protesta, de la quema masiva del calentamiento global al crisol de razas, de la imagen de las chispas revolucionarias prestas a encender los espíritus de los oprimidos hasta los atentados con coches de Oriente Medio, el fuego resulta ser la condición sine qua non de la política.Piropolítica en un mundo en llamas pretende crear un campo semántico-discursivo que...

Despite their conceptual allergy to vegetal life, philosophers have used germination, growth, blossoming, fruition, reproduction, and decay as illustrations of abstract concepts; mentioned plants in passing as the natural backdrops for dialogues, letters, and other compositions; spun elaborate allegories out of flowers, trees, and even grass; and recommended appropriate medicinal, dietary, and aesthetic approaches to select species of plants.In this book, Michael Marder illuminates...

Western philosophy has been dominated by the concept or the idea—the belief that there is one sovereign notion or singular principle that can make reality explicable and bring all that exists under its sway. In modern politics, this role is played by ideology. Left, right, or center, political schools of thought share a metaphysics of simplification. We internalize a dominant, largely unnoticeable framework, oblivious to complex, plural, and occasionally conflicting or mutually contradicto...

An innovative, wide-ranging consideration of the global ecological crisis and its deep philosophical and theological roots.Global crises, from melting Arctic ice to ecosystem collapse and the sixth mass extinction, challenge our age-old belief in nature as a phoenix with an infinite ability to regenerate itself from the ashes of destruction. Moving from antiquity to the present and back, Michael Marder provides an integrated examination of philosophies of nature dr...

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, existence is perpetual transformation. Humans and gods become plants and animals, stones and stars—or something in between. No rigid distinctions remain untroubled. In his own time and in ours, Ovid’s work challenges fundamental assumptions about the universe and humans’ place in it.Metamorphoses Reimagined offers a twenty-first-century retelling of Ovid’s masterpiece that decenters the human. Michael Marder reinvents the text in new genre...

Jacques Derrida's writings often embed the key themes of deconstruction in a notion of the thing. The Event of the Thing is the most complete examination to date of Derrida's understanding of thinghood and its crucial role in psychoanalysis, ethics, literary theory, aesthetics, and Marxism.Arguing that the thing, as a figure of otherness, destabilizes the metaphysical edifice it underlies, Michael Marder reveals the contributions it makes to critiques of humanism and ideal...

Western philosophy has been dominated by the concept or the idea—the belief that there is one sovereign notion or singular principle that can make reality explicable and bring all that exists under its sway. In modern politics, this role is played by ideology. Left, right, or center, political schools of thought share a metaphysics of simplification. We internalize a dominant, largely unnoticeable framework, oblivious to complex, plural, and occasionally conflicting or mutually contradicto...

Là où les philosophes contemporains s'abstiennent d'aborder la vie végétale sous l'angle ontologique et éthique, Michael Marder place les plantes au premier plan de l'actuelle déconstruction de la métaphysique. Il identifie les caractéristiques existentielles du comportement des plantes et l'héritage végétal de la pensée humaine afin de confirmer la capacité qu'ont les végétaux à renverser le double joug de la totalisation et de l'instrumentalisation. Au fil de son écriture, Marder se penc...

The margins of philosophy are populated by non-human, non-animal living beings, including plants. While contemporary philosophers tend to refrain from raising ontological and ethical concerns with vegetal life, Michael Marder puts this life at the forefront of the current deconstruction of metaphysics. He identifies the existential features of plant behavior and the vegetal heritage of human thought so as to affirm the potential of vegetation to resist the logic of totalization and to exce...