Seeing Plant Souls: Reviving Gustav Fechner’s Vegetal Vision

This paper analyzes the vegetal theology of Gustav Fechner by drawing upon the author’s original translation of his previously-untranslated 1848 book, Nanna, Or On the Soul-Life of Plants. I explore the telelogical and aesthetic implications of Fechner’s category of plant-soul (Pflanzeseele), and explore how it rests on a thoroughgoing dual-aspect monism. I put Fechner’s arguments in dialogue with monistic predecessors, including Spinoza, Goethe, and Schelling, and contextualize the uniqueness of Fechner’s methods in the context of post-Hegel Germany. Finally, I characterize my translation project as a kind of vegetal ressourcement, along the lines of philosopher Michael Marder, whose 2013 book Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life attempts to “vegetalize” the Western philosophical cannon.

The 19th century German thinker Gustav Fechner remains largely unknown to both German- and English-speaking audiences. His life and work resist simple categorization. A true Gelehrte, he studied medicine, physics, and psychology, publishing widely in both the sciences and philosophy. However, most of his works remain untranslated; few saw second printings.

If Fechner is remembered today, it is most commonly as the forefather of experimental psychology. However, his intellectual contributions are much more ambitious and metaphysical than introductory psychology textbooks permit. For example, in his 1848 untranslated book, Nanna, or On The Soul-Life of Plants, he championed the idea, unpopular then as now, that plants have souls – that they are self-experiencing beings with feelings and desires. Plants, says Fechner, delight in the sun as we might delight in a wholesome meal. The world strikes them with pleasure, pain, and even meaning, just as it does us humans. Drawing upon my original forthcoming translation, this paper analyzes the plant-thinking presented in Nanna, with a particular emphasis on Fechner’s category of Pflanzenseele, or plant-soul. How does the category of “soul” operate theologically in Nanna? How is it distinct from the categories of Fechner’s monistic predecessors, including Spinoza’s cogitatio, and Goethe and Schelling’s Geist? What is at stake, for Fechner, in claiming Seele for the plant? What is at stake for us, reading Fechner today?

Divided into eighteen chapters and a preface, Nanna might be best understood as an apology in the theological sense: a disciplined defense of faith through systematic arguments. The book is organized as a response to what Fechner cites as common arguments against plant-souls. These include that plants lack nerves and a central nervous system; they lack free, voluntary movement; they are indiscriminately murdered; they satisfy others’ ends but have none of their own; and that their life is so different from humans’ that we lack concepts with which to understand them.  In the preface, Fechner states that his objective is to demonstrate that plants have their own unique souls, in addition to being part of what he deems “universally ensouled nature" (Fechner, 1848). And indeed, Fechner would dedicate several later works to arguing that not only plants, but also the whole Earth, stars, and the Universe are ensouled, presenting a sweeping pantheistic vision lost to most readers today.

This paper articulates Fechner’s theology of plant-souls and its reliance on a thoroughgoing dual-aspect monism: that is, Fechner’s assertion that soul and body are simply two sides of the same reality, viewed from different perspectives. Nanna asserts that we can only ever infer the existence of inner experience (plant-souls) through outward physical expressions (plant-bodies). The soul is not some monolithic essence that can be separated (as Descartes had) from material form; the soul, for Fechner, is a dexterous proposition that renders physical action intelligible: “that souls can take diverse organizations and forms is demonstrated by humans with different dispositions and characters, and animals with different instincts. The richer the array of bodily formations, the richer the abundance of corresponding soul formations; one depends on the other… in addition to souls that run about, cry out, and feast, why shouldn’t there also be souls that bloom in stillness, exhale fragrance, slake thirst by slurping dew, fulfill urges through budding, and satisfy their highest longings by reaching towards light?” (Fechner, 1848, 32). I further explore the teleological defenses Fechner puts forward for the plant-soul, and their aesthetic and ethical implications.

I also comment on Nanna’s unique methodology and argumentative style. In contrast to the top-down claims of idealist predecessors including Oken and Schelling, Fechner deploys analogical, inductive arguments that rely on findings from botanical experiments of his day, constructing what we might call a Metaphysik von unten. I argue that Fechner’s method speaks to a unique historical moment in post-Hegel Germany when Naturphilosophie was on the decline just as empirical sciences – and with them, materialism - grew in prestige and authority.

I characterize the project of translating Nanna as an effort at “ressourcement theology,” a term most often associated with the Catholic nouvelle théologie movement of the mid-twentieth century. In short, ressourcement theology attempts to retrieve elements of a tradition that have been ignored by dominant intellectual forces – in the case of Catholicism, the hegemony neo-scholastic theology and philosophy had over the life of the Church. I argue for the importance of revitalizing a forgotten ancestor who offers a perspective on plant life that does not succumb to the anthropocentrism, dualism, or reductive materialism that prevailed for millennia in the West. In this way, I hope to further a vegetal ressourcement along the lines of philosopher Michael Marder, whose 2013 book Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life attempts to “vegetalize” the Western philosophical cannon. Finally, I reflect on how Fechner’s arguments for the agency and intelligence of plants pre-empted many made by contemporary plant neurobiologists and critical plant scholars alike.