“Upward Levelling” of Plants – Early Greek Perspective

Abstract

In this paper the author considers scientific and bioethical requirements triggered by existing
environmental, and not just environmental issues, that it is necessary to regulate differently the
relationship between humans and other living beings. Attempts are being made to establish a
new relationship by relativizing the differences between the man and non-human living beings,
often by attributing specifically human traits and categories, such as dignity, moral status and
rights to non-human living beings, but also, especially in regards to plants, the ability of sight,
feeling, memory, communication, consciousness, and thinking. In the process of levelling of these
differences, presented are the findings of researches showing that plants have extremely sensitive
and complex sensory mechanisms, that they lead complex, dynamic and eventful lives, react to
signals from other plants, i.e. there is interaction between them, and have a short-term and longterm memory. Regarding the “consciousness” of plants, it is concluded that it is in an analogical
connection with the human consciousness. The author then analyzes whether these findings are
new, surprising and revolutionary, as commonly asserted, or whether their anticipation can be
already found in some Presocratics, philosophically based on the similarity of all the varieties of
life. Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus, in this context, were of
the opinion that the plants are driven by natural yearning, that they breathe, feel joy and sorrow,
that they have a soul, discernment, consciousness, ability to think, reason, and mind. Eventually,
the author illuminates the limits of non-anthropocentric approaches, i.e. their non-reflected
establishment of the very anthropocentrism, the difficulty of relocating the man from the centre
of the world while he himself does not remain the patron of that same world.