From Inorganic Feeling to Vegetable Feeling

Abstract

The initial question from which this article starts is: how does a plant feel? Thomas Nagel had already proposed, in a famous essay, a peculiar phenomenology for bats, that is to say, for beings with very different perceptual capacities that those of human beings, wondering what the phenomenological content of their first–person experience would be. In the same vein goes this work by Mario Perniola: after taking its starting point from Hermann Keyserling’s thought and his concept of gana, the article proceeds to focus more and more on the androgynous sensitivity and sensuality of plants, to explore a kind of «plant sensitivity», which is related, however, to fundamental aspects of human experience in the world, explored here from a series of mythological, philosophical and literary examples.