Propagating Plant Empathy with Edith Stein

Abstract

The phenomenon of plant empathy has gained traction in contemporary literature within environmental philosophy and ethics. Phenomenology has been invoked to broach this subject matter, most notably Edmund Husserl’s and Max Scheler’s thought respectively. Whilst these discussions have been fruitful, I argue that a more comprehensive evaluation of Edith Stein’s account of plant empathy is wanting. Considering plants as Leibe (living body), Stein captures the ways that plants are perceptually gleaned as living, animate beings. Seeing what she calls ‘spontaneous movement’ as the perceptual gateway into a kind of empathy with plants, I evaluate the further recourse of Stein’s conception of intuitive empathy for broaching plant empathy. Irreducible to but informed by imagination, intuitive empathy engenders the cultivation of the sense of a plant’s aliveness, which is first inculcated by our perception of a plant’s animacy and organic development.