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Plants & Philosophy

Caroline Deforche sees similarities between gardening and philosophising.

A few weeks ago I bought two chrysanthemums for my windowsill. After giving them the dose of water they clearly missed in the shop, I started musing on how closely plant care and philosophy are connected. The two, I realized, share more than meets the eye.

Plant image © Pumpkinsky 2017 Creative Commons 4

You care for plants, and enjoy the life that develops thanks to your care, but the process is never finished. It continues until the plant completes its life cycle and then starts all over again. Philosophy works in the same way: new ideas, insights and perspectives are constantly emerging from the care taken with existing ideas. So just as plants grow and bloom, philosophical thinking is an ongoing process of becoming which never really reaches an end point. But it is precisely this constant thinking that keeps us on our toes, stimulates our creativity, and challenges us to leave the beaten track. And just as a plant can choose a new direction of growth under the influence of light, sometimes a line of reasoning turns an idea completely upside down.

Philosophical thinking, like caring for plants, also requires patience. The contemplative dimension has its own pace. While we think, little seems to be happening. The thinker seems to lose himself in reasoning, an idea, a concept… In this he resembles the gardener who also plays a largely passive role between sowing and harvesting. In other words, the gardener has to surrender to the rhythms of nature, which adhere to no human schedule. He can do little but wait, observe – and perhaps attend to his own thoughts. His compulsion to activity does not help him.

This waiting, this slowness, this patience we must exercise, are part of philosophy, just as they’re part of gardening. Deep reflection can be a slow process: rushing to a conclusion does not belong to the sincere philosopher, nor to our deepest search for meaning. As Martin Heidegger's philosophy suggests, true waiting is without expectation, an attitude of openness to Being itself.

Furthermore, both gardening and philosophy are far from useful in the traditional understanding of the word. Philosophical thinking rarely produces immediate, tangible results that contribute to survival. There is no visible productivity associated with it – unless, like me, you suffer from a case of ‘obsessive book buying disorder’, which might have some economic utility. But the essence of philosophical thinking does not submit to the utility imperative. The same goes for taking care of plants: there’s little economic utility in watering house plants.

But isn’t true happiness to be found precisely in the seemingly useless? When I see the spray of water from my watering can, my mind escapes the world of immediate utility for a moment. In that moment I step outside Plato’s Cave, in search of truth. And as I gaze at the plant being watered, I feel that I am no longer active, but simply exist. It’s as if I surrender myself to a deeper reality.

This simple moment in the garden reveals a fundamental insight: nurturing plants is pure ontology – in other words it’s an exploration of pure existence! Moreover, the form of plant reality is not static, but constantly changing, in a constant cycle of growth, flowering, and decay. As Heraclitus said panta rhei: “Everything flows.” Yet behind this constant becoming, there may also be something unchanging, an eternal being. We also find this tension between becoming and being in philosophy. Perhaps Hegel loved plants?

So even watering plants raises more questions than you might think. But isn't questioning precisely the essence of both philosophy, and of life itself?

Caroline Deforche is a Belgium-based freelance translator with a keen interest in philosophy and the natural world.