Responsibility with the Other: Plant Ethics and Education at the End of the World

This paper proposes ideas of an ethics that destabilizes the axis of anthropocentrism around which climate change education revolves. Education is a future-oriented practice, narrated as aiming at ‘solving’ the climate crisis, or ‘saving’ the planet. I set out to unsettle established notions of humans’ ethical responsibility for the world, considering instead our capacity to be responsible with non-human others. What follows is an ecological ethics that conceives of humanity as mutually interdependent and inextricably involved in complex interrelationships with plants. Plants are seen as being beyond ethical considerations; reduced to the level of resources, food sources, or ornaments, we do not feel the need to question or consider our ethical responsibilities to them. We begin by travelling the greatest distance from ourselves, the paper proposes how we might begin this ethics, centered on the notion of being responsible as remaining open and attentive to the other, and answering – through meaningful action – in reply. The conversational responsiveness of this ethics does not assume mastery over plants, nor does it seek to reduce plants to images of ourselves. Indeed, this new understanding of responsibility presupposes the agency and awareness of plants.