Plant-Inclusive Care Ethics by Kate Brelje

Plant-Inclusive Care Ethics by Kate Brelje

Examining anthropocentric assumptions and arguments in care ethics literature, this book argues that caring for plants represents a moral obligation and vital relationship between human carers and plant cared-fors.

By exploring the moral value in plants and their capabilities for caring relationships, the book demonstrates that this type of care is already in practice and discusses three case studies of human-plant contexts: bonsai, tomato plants, and giant sequoias. Brelje reasons that plants should be included in care ethics based on the human carers and plant cared-fors ability to meet the core requirements of caring relationship: carers’ valuing-attitudes for plants, caring affect towards plants, human-plant interdependency, responsive interactivity between humans and plants, and plant success conditions. This theory is applied to real life caring relationships between human carers and plant cared-fors through interviews with bonsai practitioners, tomato plant farmers, native caretakers, and parks personnel, providing sketches of contemporary human-plant care relationships. Each case offers context-relevant challenges based on plant type and use, aesthetic, and consumption, while highlighting the common ethical care patterns.

Plant-Inclusive Care Ethics will be useful for students, instructors, and practitioners in environmental ethics, plant humanities, critical plant studies, and plant-related artistic work.

Kate Brelje is a researcher at the intersection of environmental ethics and feminist theory. She is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. Bonaventure University. Previous publications include “More than Humans: A Case for Inclusion of Non-human Persons in Care Ethics” in Essays in Philosophy (2023). She is also the showrunner for the Networking with Plants in the Anthropocene Podcast (soundcloud.com/networking-with-plants).