The Italian philosopher, Emanuele Coccia, presents his much praised book, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture, where he presents a new way of thinking about the natural world and the need for humans to look to plants to learn about what it means to be alive.
This event is a partnership with Istituto italiano di cultura – Toronto.
Q&A and book signing to follow. Books available for purchase.
Program:
October 31 | 6 PM to 7 PM, EMANUELE COCCIA “The Life of Plants”
October 31 | 7 PM to 8 PM, David Wallace-Wells “The Uninhabitable Earth”
Final titles TBC
FREE EVENT –PLEASE RSVP BY CLICKING HERE
Emanuele Coccia is an Associate Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He received his PhD in Florence and was formerly an Assistant Professor of History of Philosophy in Freiburg, Germany. He worked on the history of European normativity and on aesthetics. His current research topics focus on the ontological status of images and their normative power, especially in fashion and advertising.
In his book “The Life of Plants,” Emanuele Coccia argues that, as the very creator of atmosphere, plants occupy the fundamental position from which we should analyze all elements of life. From this standpoint, we can no longer perceive the world as a simple collection of objects or as a universal space containing all things, but as the site of a veritable metaphysical mixture. Since our atmosphere is rendered possible through plants alone, life only perpetuates itself through the very circle of consumption undertaken by plants. In other words, life exists only insofar as it consumes other life, removing any moral or ethical considerations from the equation. In contrast to trends of thought that discuss nature and the cosmos in general terms, Coccia’s account brings the infinitely small together with the infinitely big, offering a radical redefinition of the place of humanity within the realm of life.