The Wisdom of Trees: Thinking Through Arboreality, Edited by David Macauley and Laura Pustarfi
Available from SUNY Press
Pioneering essays that reveal the significance of new interdisciplinary understandings of trees and forests, especially in terms of their philosophical and ecological dimensions and their importance for addressing the climate emergency.
This is the first book to apply philosophical thinking to trees. Through a series of sixteen diverse essays by leading scholars and writers, along with an in-depth introduction to the key issues and ideas, it examines the new and emerging understanding of trees in science and society. Contributors show how these developments encourage a revisioning of philosophical thought and a more sustainable relationship with trees and forests - a reconceptualization with important ecological and social implications for responding to deforestation, the loss of biodiversity, and the climate emergency. The interdisciplinary contributions in this collection investigate the many interconnected dimensions of arboreality, focusing on subjects related to time, mind, truth, memory, being, beauty, goodness, silence, wisdom, personhood, and death. The volume engages in a conversation about why trees matter, how they can best be protected, our obligations to them, and even what or who they are. Most of the chapters are informed by natural history or ecological science and many share a particular emphasis on continental philosophy and the environmental humanities.
Including contributions from Daniel O'Dea Bradley, Kimberly Carfore, Luke Fischer, James Hatley, Don Hanlon Johnson, Alphonso Lingis, David Macauley, Joan Maloof, Michael Marder & Edward S. Casey, Sam Mickey, Mara Miller, Dalia Nassar, Eric W. Orts, Laura Pustarfi, John Charles Ryan, Matthew David Segall, and David Rothenberg.
EVENTS
Featured Post
Arboreality and the Ethics of Standing in Place
This chapter has been published in the volume The Vegetal Turn: History, Concepts, Applications edited by Marcello Di Paola, Springer, 2024.
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Featured Video
Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology podcast: Spotlights, 5.15. Trees for Earth Day, with Beth Norcross, Leah Rampy, & Laura Pustarfi
WRITER. CREATIVE. INTEGRAL ECOLOGIST.
Laura Pustarfi, Ph.D. is a writer and scholar with a focus on philosophy, ecology, and religion. Her current work addresses trees in the Western paradigm.
If you would like to invite me to write or speak, please contact me.
“Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He [sic] wants to be nothing except what he is.”
Join me for this free online conversation with David Macauley on our new volume, The Wisdom of Trees: Thinking Through Arboreality.