ABSTRACT
To consider non-human entities on ethical grounds, it is crucial to define what makes the distinctive specificity of these entities. In this chapter, I apply a pluralist approach to highlight that in contrast to human beings and animals, plants are open, non-self-centered subjects. I introduce a new realist definition of the plant kingdom by considering the way in which the plant open form behaves, arguing that plant life can only be fully recognized by adopting a non-Euclidian perspective and defining center-standing on new grounds. Subsequently, I analyse how the open character of plants is modified in the process of domestication and how plant-human forms are melded by enhanced fruiting properties. In the following section, I examine how to express ethical concern and care for open beings and how these concerns may become more consciously oriented at epistemological, aesthetic and ethical levels; interdisciplinary art-science-philosophical research could play a vital role in that and open up more participatory approaches for the design of plant-human forms in the fields of agriculture and landscape management. Finally, I conclude that the philosophical notion of open being should also lead to explore a number of more general issues that reach beyond plants.
