REVIEW: Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany, by Matthew Hall, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011

When it comes to plants, Aristotle got a lot of things wrong. So did Pliny and Thomas Aquinas. In fact, most of Western intellectual thought really has not accurately understood plants nor has it treated them fairly. This, at least, is Matthew Hall's contention in Plants as Persons, and I agree with him. Let's take a look at some of his arguments.

Things start badly with the Greeks as they devise ontological dualisms and hierarchies: humans and nature are separate; humans are better than animals and animals are better than plants, who are better than stones. Things did not improve with the Romans nor the Christians; not only were animals under the dominion of man, but so of course were plants, if they were given any special consideration at all. This basic understanding of plants as lesser entities, not even properly 'beings' in the sense that is attributed to animals, has endured over the centuries and remains as our basic matrix today.

As Hall carefully notes, however, there were important exceptions, so not everyone in the Western canon failed to see the sophisticated nature of plants. He is particularly appreciative of the work of Theophrastus, for example, writing:

It is apparent in the work of Theophrastus that rather than exclusion, his orientation was toward inclusiveness and consideration. The result of this difference in intent is phenomenal. Instead of regarding plants as passive beings lacking sensation and intellect, Theophrastus related to plants as volitional, minded, intentional creatures that clearly demonstrate their own autonomy and purpose in life. For Theophrastus, plants demonstrated their own purpose and desire to flourish through their choice of habitats and the production of seed and fruit.

There are other glimmers of appreciation, which manifest in at least a symbolic sense. The Bible, for example, is full of instances in which apples, grass, crocuses, cedars and oaks act with volition and autonomy, or are at least expected to:

Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen, for the glorious trees are ruined! Wail, oaks of Bashan, for the thick forest has been felled!

Hall is a good writer and he effortlessly places engaging illustrations of his points within his more  expository prose. In one passage, he relates Jesus' particularly harsh treatment of a fig tree. 

In a passage from Mark, Jesus is hungry during the Passover, and although early spring is obviously not the season for figs, Jesus approaches a fig tree seeking fruit. When he finds only leaves covering the tree, he curses the fig tree and issues the curse, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." When his disciples pass by the following day, they find that the cursed tree has withered and died.

In defense of Jesus, and to pose a challenge to Hall, I must say that Jesus, in engaging the tree, at least regards it as a person, which is after all the state of relations that Hall is promoting. Admittedly, to regard plants as persons only when they exhibit an instrumental value is less than ideal, but it at least does not constitute a complete negation of vegetal subjectivity, and their relegation to serving as elements in a backdrop against which humans and other animals act as uniquely volitional agents.

Things get better when we move to either the Eastern traditions or to the Pagan or Animist worlds, wherever they are and whenever they were. The shift is more proportional than absolute, however, since not all non-Western constructions of human-environmental relations gave credit to the full capacities of vegetation, at least as modern science now understands it (a development which points to a Western triumph over its earlier failings, or at least a reconciliation of matters).

For example, in the Mahabharata we find the following passage:

A creeper winds round a tree and goes about all its sides. A blind thing cannot find its way. For this reason it is evident that trees have vision. Then again trees recover vigour and put forth flowers in consequence of odours, good and bad, of the sacred perfume of diverse kinds of dhupas. It is plain that trees have scent. They drink water by their roots. They catch diseases of diverse kinds. Those diseases again are cured by different operations. From this it is evident that trees have perceptions of taste.

As compared to the radical separation between human and plant ontologies found in Western works, Hindu texts emphasize the commonality of all beings, unproblematically including humans, animals and plants, essentially all living things, in a single category of entities that all share a proto-ontology. All things suffer, and all things suffer in the same way, this logic suggests, so all things deserve respect and compassion. The Jains have created a particularly sincere version of this belief and practice, eating only plants whose harvesting does not kill them. Root vegetables are not allowed in one's diet, for instance, because their harvest requires the death of an entire plant, a consequence that does not arise with the picking of an apple, or better yet, with the procurement of fruit that has fallen to the ground.

Plants show yet a different face in the Pagan and Animist traditions, even those in the European world. Nordic folktales, for instance, give us trees who are wily and self-defending. In the Finnish Kalevala, one reads an exchange between a group of woodsmen looking for timber to build a boat and the various trees they approach to get it. For example, we read this from a particularly astute aspen:

Full of leaks a boat from me
And a craft likely to sink!
I am hollow at the base.

In my opinion, however, Hall delivers his most convincing and heartfelt rendition of the belief in 'plants as persons' in his treatment of various Indigenous cultures of the Americas and of Oceania. In the interest of brevity, and also to leave what I consider to be the best part of the work to be discovered by any eventual readers of the book, I will not say much about them. Although most people know the general contours of these philosophies, which display a deep sense of kinship across human, nonhuman and even inanimate ontologies, encountering them anew always stirs a profound sentiment and a unique insight into what it means to be a spirited thing among other spirited things on the face of the earth.

Additionally, Hall's accounting of modern scientific engagements with the question of plant subjectivity, such as in the work done by Stefano Mancuso and others, offers convincing support to his philosophical arguments, and is a fine summation of current knowledge.

By offering a global and historical survey of the various ways people have understood and treated plants, Plants as Persons adds tremendous depth to the topic of plant ontology and personhood, and as such it is essential reading for anyone who is interested in this fascinating question.