169
o N  s o i l  a N D  s o u l :  
t h e  P h i l o s o P h i C a l 
Q u e s t i o N  o F  t h e  G a r D e N
D e n n i s  J .  s c h m i d t *
in what follows i want to suggest that, although the garden is gener-
ally quite absent from philosophical discussions, the idea of the garden 
is nonetheless philosophically significant. There are three sets of reasons 
for this significance and that argue for a closer look at the nature of the 
garden. First, the garden is a quite distinctive site; it cannot be thought 
simply as a place of nature – the presence of human intention defeats 
that attempt – but neither can it be thought simply as the product of 
human intention – the vitality and unruliness of nature defeats that at-
tempt. in other words, the notion of the garden escapes the categories 
– of nature and of art – that have long structured the discussion of the 
human relation to the natural world. second, as such a distinctive site 
where the human and natural worlds intersect in a manner not able to 
be defined by either the human or nature alone, the garden opens up a 
space that helps us think the relation of the human being to the natu-
ral world in a rather novel manner. Third, the garden is a place of cul-
tivation, not just of the earth but of the self as well. one does well to 
recognize that the ancient sense of the garden as a place of education 
– a rather unique kind of education in light of the unique relation be-
tween nature and the human in the garden–needs our attention today. 
in other words, the absence of the garden from philosophical reflection 
is an oversight that needs to be addressed. The question of the garden 
is a far-reaching one that touches upon basic questions of how we are 
in the world.
locating the garden, getting a grip on its elements and on the ways 
in which we might approach it, is no easy matter. The word “garden,” 
like the word “paradise” to which it is related, derives from words that 
* Penn state university
170
P o l i G r a F i
refer to a “walled enclosure.”1 The word speaks of something set apart 
and protected from the outside. however, like the word “paradise,” this 
meaning of “garden” as something set apart and enclosed is more a 
dream, an idealization, than a name that is appropriate to the reality of 
the garden which is both constantly dependent upon and threatened by 
the “outside.” Weather and insects are not alone in reminding us that 
the “wall” defining a garden is thoroughly porous. The garden needs 
what is not in the garden; it can never be self-contained, but needs to 
be understood as part of a larger whole. so, while it is true that gardens 
are set apart and delimited from within – they are defined spaces – it is 
equally true that the starting point for any reflection upon gardens must 
be that they are intersections: of the human and the natural realms, of 
animal and plant, of earth and heaven. Though full of human purpose 
and intention, every gardener knows all too well that intention does 
not account for much in the life of a garden. Though a place of growth 
and the arrival of the new that is mostly the result of human design, the 
garden is equally a marker of the limits of what we can know, define, 
and control. in the end then, though it may be well defined and walled 
off, the garden needs to be approached as a place of mixtures. Garden-
ing naturally invites hybrids; they are liminal phenomena not by vir-
tue of their edges, but by virtue of their own character. to understand 
the garden, one needs to recognize that it is not, in the first instance, a 
walled enclosure defined by a set of geographical coordinates; rather, it 
is set apart by virtue of the peculiar place that it defines. it is, one might 
say, set apart only conceptually. Despite the meaning of its name, it can 
never be fully enclosed.
as such a place of interaction and mixtures, the garden is by nature 
a metaphorical place: that is, it is a sort of doubling of the human and 
the natural world, of the heavens and the earth. it is the site of connec-
tions made between what is otherwise distinct: gardens are naturally 
metaphorical.2 it is no accident then that gardens have long been meta-
1 The word “paradise” comes from the ancient Persian word “pairidaēza” which means walled-
in park or garden. on this, and on the way one finds this echoed in Milton’s Paradise Lost, see: 
Casey, e., (1993), Getting Back into Place. Bloomington: indiana university Press, pp. 154–155.
2 see my (1999) “stereoscopic Thinking: aristotle on Metaphor and the law of resemblance,” 
in: American Continental Philosophy (ed. Brogan and risser). Bloomington: indiana university 
171
o N  s o i l  a N D  s o u l :  t h e  P h i l o s o P h i C a l  Q u e s t i o N  o F  t h e  G a r D e N
phors in which we see and understand something of ourselves and of 
our world. Consequently, when one speaks of the garden, one needs to 
remember that they have a double meaning: as simultaneously real – as 
plots of earth – and as representations – as ways in which we work out 
our relation to the natural world. Gardens engage our senses – the feel 
of the soil, the smells that range from putrid to perfumed, the splashes 
of color, the sound of life abuzz, and tastes galore – they also engage 
our imagination and enact our understanding of the human place in the 
world. to speak of the garden, one needs to bear in mind its double life: 
it grows just as well in our imagination as in our backyard. as Michael 
Pollan put it: “a tree in a garden is also a trope.”
ready made for multiple meanings, gardens figure prominently and 
frequently in literature (just think of Voltaire, Boccaccio, Dante, and 
even the oldest literary work – The Epic Gilgamesh) as well as in religions 
(from the Garden of eden to the Zen rock gardens). But the garden is 
just as easily made an image of an ideal (the gardens of elysium). There 
is a tendency for things to grow in the garden – ideas as well as plants 
– and so it will always need to be defined as a place of cultivation. it is 
not by chance that institutions of learning have a long history of setting 
themselves up in gardens. From Plato’s academy in athens and epicu-
rus’ Garden school in the ancient world to the British “college garden” 
and the american campus in the present, places of learning, reflection, 
and conversation have long gravitated to the garden.3 Gardens, both real 
and imagined, cultivate common grounds for communities.
in light of all of these possibilities of the garden, the difficulty in de-
fining the garden, in getting some purchase upon its specific character, 
is easy to understand. Much more could be said about the various dis-
tinctions and meanings of the garden, it is a rich site, but the point that 
is as yet only tacitly present, but that i want to highlight, is that the gar-
den is intimately bound to the human even while it remains a place in 
the natural world. The garden is what it is because nature remains itself 
while the garden is defined by virtue of the trace of the human that is 
Press, pp. 66–94.
3 see: harrison, r.P. (2008), Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition. Chicago: university 
of Chicago Press. This book is very much at the heart of what i will argue in this essay.
172
P o l i G r a F i
always present: “vestigium hominis video.”4 That is why we learn some-
thing about the nature of human being from reflections upon the gar-
den. This deep kinship between human beings and gardens is expressed 
as well by the latin word for human, homo, which is closely relation to 
the word for soil, “humus”5 (likewise, the name “adam,” the original 
biblical human being who emerged in the Garden of eden, is a form of 
the word “earth” [“adama”]). in other words, the link between the soil 
and the soul, between the earth and the human, is very much at stake 
when one speaks of gardens. as a plot of land, the garden may be mod-
est, but as an idea it can seem so sweeping that one eventually comes 
to see the legitimacy of the claim that “life is a subset of gardening.”6
The importance of the garden, its rather unique and doubled place 
within the world, can be seen by even a superficial glance. and yet, de-
spite this obvious significance of the garden as an idea, philosophical 
reflection upon gardens remains remarkably rare.7 This absence of any 
serious consideration of gardens is however indicative of a more gen-
eralized problem with philosophy today, namely, that we are not able 
to take up the question of nature outside of the orbit defined by sci-
ence and technology. in the age of technology, our being in nature has 
shown itself to be profoundly destructive, our relation to nature is over-
whelmingly a matter of aggression. heidegger, rightly i believe, char-
4 on this remark by Vitruvius in De Architectura, see: Kant, i. (2001), Kritik der Urteilskraft. 
hamburg: Meiner Verlag, ak., 370.
5 heidegger discusses this in the fable of “Cura” in Sein und Zeit, see: § 42. There heidegger 
emphasizes not only the relation of the human being to the earth, but also the significance of 
care for the maintenance of that relation.
6 Klinkenborg, V., “introduction,” in: The Gardener’s Year, by Karel Čapek. New york: The 
Modern library, p. xii. Čapek, for whom technology was a central concern (he also coined the 
word “robot” in his 1921 play r.u.r.), wrote his book as the story of a year (1938) in the life of 
a garden which he tells as the story of his obsession with the soil and his relation to the various 
possibilities of soil.
7 so, for instance, see: Cooper, D.e. (2006), A Philosophy of Gardens. oxford: Clarendon 
Press, which opens with the remark that “The volume of philosophical writings about gardens 
in recent years is modest – so modest that their authors typically begin, as i am now doing, by 
remarking on the relative neglect of the garden by modern philosophy” (p. 1). The most signifi-
cant exception to this tendency is found in romanticism. on this see especially schiller’s “Über 
den Gartenkalendar auf das Jahr 1795.” schlegel and Novalis are also important in this regard. 
likewise, see: hirschfeld, C. C. l. (1779–1785) Theorie der Gartenkunst, 5 Bd., leipzig. i will 
discuss this exception and its significance in what follows.
173
o N  s o i l  a N D  s o u l :  t h e  P h i l o s o P h i C a l  Q u e s t i o N  o F  t h e  G a r D e N
acterizes this relation as a matter of a “herausfordern” [an “insistence” 
or “demand”].8 on the other hand, the garden models a different sort 
of relation to nature, one that is much more collaborative and one in 
which there is clearly the need for a sort of reciprocity in that relation 
– one needs to adapt and adjust oneself to the garden as much as one 
needs to design and define it. in the garden, we find a different sort of 
ethic,9 a different way in which we can understand our place in nature: 
one tends nature, one does not attempt to tame it, one cultivates rather 
than challenges. one might say that one learns an ethics of care. to say, 
as does Voltaire, that “il faut cultiver notre jardin” is not to propose 
some sort of retreat from the world or a withdrawal from responsibility. 
Quite the contrary, it is to point to the need to change oneself. Voltaire’s 
comment needs to be heard as centered on the meaning of the cultiva-
tion required in the garden. 10
in the following, my intention is twofold: to provide what i believe 
is a productive context for opening up the garden in its philosophical 
significance, and to provide some indications of what might develop out 
of a serious philosophical consideration of the garden.
***
in the ancient world the garden was – when it was taken up as a mat-
ter for thinking at all – typically regarded as having some relation to “the 
good life.” one sees this, for instance, in Pliny for whom a life spent 
in the garden was a “good and genuine life.”11 similarly, the “pleasure 
garden” (that is, the garden that is made without practical intent such 
as growing food or medicinal herbs) of the Medieval world was often 
conceived as a copy of the Garden of eden and its cultivation was re-
8 heidegger, M. (1962), Die Technik und die Kehre. tübingen: Neske Verlag, p. 14.
9 here, i am taking the word “ethic” in the sense one finds in homer where “ethos” is the 
name for an abode or dwelling place of an animal; that is, it is the name for a place where one 
properly belongs and is at home.
10 here the German word, “Bildung,” which needs to be translated as “formation,” “cultiva-
tion,” and “education,” captures the sense of cultivation that is at work in the garden.
11 Quoted in Cooper, op.cit. p. 10.
174
P o l i G r a F i
garded as a way of reenacting something of divine creation.12 indeed, 
until modern times discussions of gardens tended to regard them as 
matters of spiritual practice and the formation of character. in line with 
this, religion, more than philosophy, concerned itself with the nature 
of the garden.
This changes with Kant. in his Critique of Judgment, Kant exposes the 
limits of the capacity of determinate reflection – in the forms of science 
and mechanism – to give an account of nature that is able to understand 
the place of human being in nature.13 More precisely, guided by the 
concern to understand the relation of freedom and nature, Kant dem-
onstrates how conceptual reason is unable to grasp this relation of nature 
and human being in its fullest extent. at the same time that he marks the 
limits of the concept, Kant argues that aesthetic judgment provides an 
opening for thinking this relation. The aesthetic opens up the question 
of nature in such a way that the place of purposes in nature can become 
intelligible. once this happens, once nature comes to be recognized as a 
realm of purposes and not simply of mechanisms that are calculable, the 
ethical significance – the place of purpose and meaning – of how we are 
to understand the relation of nature and human being can be addressed. 
Kant is clear that aesthetic experience is not fully sufficient to this end, 
but, he argues, it is the proper beginning to this question.14 The third 
Critique made many new beginnings, but among the still underappre-
ciated of these is that it opens up the question of the relation of human 
being and nature in a way that is not found elsewhere; it opens up this 
question from out of a concern with aesthetic experience, but equally 
as a question of ethical life. With this new beginning, the question of 
12 Glacken, C.J. (1967), Traces on the Rhodian Shore. Berkley: university of California Press, 
pp. 347–348.
13 here, of course, the project of establishing the limits of cognition that is laid out in the Cri-
tique of Pure Reason has a different intention. There the problem of the limits of our knowledge 
of nature is not specifically centered on the problem of judgment and practice. While the 3rd 
antinomy does point to this problem, the problematic of the first Critique does not extend to 
its full treatment. The third Critique on the other hand opens with precisely this problem that 
judgment faces in light of the limits of our knowledge. This is a problem of reflection, not of 
cognition.
14 see my (2000), “on the significance of Nature for the Question of ethics,” in: Research in 
Phenomenology, Vol. XXi (2000), pp. 62–77; and (2005), Lyrical and Ethical Subjects. albany: 
suNy Press, pp. 7–18.
175
o N  s o i l  a N D  s o u l :  t h e  P h i l o s o P h i C a l  Q u e s t i o N  o F  t h e  G a r D e N
the relation of art and nature wins a new found significance that frees 
it from the realm of science and that recognizes that in this relation we 
face a profoundly ethical matter.
This is not the place to begin taking up the great insights of Kant’s 
third Critique, but what does need to be noted for my concern with the 
question of the garden is that by virtue of his opening of the question 
of nature through aesthetic experience, and by virtue of his insistence 
upon the importance of thinking through the relation of art and na-
ture, Kant makes a concern with the idea of the garden inevitable. and 
yet, thought Kant’s turn to the garden signals a sort of revolution, Kant 
himself only discusses the garden briefly and, when he does so, he sub-
ordinates the garden to the problematic of painting. in other words, the 
garden, though recognized as a philosophical topic, still remains only a 
pendant of some other concern.15
one consequence of this way of calling attention to the problematic 
of aesthetics is that, by and large, the garden is treated as a work of art16 
(and then it is further located as an instance of a more basic art form so 
that the question of the garden is removed at the same time that it ap-
pears). This means that, in hegel’s words, “in the garden, as in the build-
ing, the human being is the main issue.”17 The notion that the garden is 
an intersection, a mediate realm that is defined as between the human 
and natural realms, is lost. to be sure, the work of art is defined by Kant 
as an intersection of art and nature; however, in the case of art, human 
freedom and purpose, spirit, are ultimately the determining features. in 
other words, in the work of art – even as a composite of the human and 
nature – it is the presence of the human that is the dominant feature. 
awareness that the garden is not defined solely – or even basically – by 
human purpose or art and that it challenges the efficacy of such purpos-
es, falls away. What is lost is what is essential to understanding the na-
ture of the garden, namely, that gardens are “built, or perhaps we should 
15 Kant, op. cit., § 51 (ak 323). hegel too will treat the garden as a pendent an art form, but in 
his case it is a pendent of architecture. see: hegel, G.W.F. (1970), Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, 
Bd. i. Frankfurt: suhrkamp Verlag, p. 321.
16 see, for instance, Miller, M. (1993), The Garden as an Art. albany: suNy Press, and ross, 
s. (1998), What Gardens Mean. Chicago: university of Chicago Press.
17 hegel, op. cit., p. 321 [emphasis added].
176
P o l i G r a F i
say contrived, places and yet are largely if not entirely composed of nat-
ural things. even if i am not yet in wilderness, in a garden i am in the 
presence of things that live and grow, often on their own schedule.”18 
in short, the garden does not let itself be sufficiently domesticated to 
be thought of as a work of art, that is, as a product of human freedom 
and intention. No garden is ever able to be “finished” or “completed,” 
rather one must struggle to “keep up with it” – it will always overgrow 
human intention. it will always live on its own schedule. so, to take up 
the garden as a work of art fails to recognize that element of the garden 
that cannot be understood as art, but that must be understood as the 
unruly element that resists human art. The inappropriateness of taking 
up the garden as a form of painting is not the only problem with Kant’s 
comments about the garden. even if it does not let itself be thought as 
a form of nature, neither does it let itself be thought as a form of art.
But it is not only the case that we take up the garden inappropriately 
when we treat it as a work of art. We do the same when we regard it 
through the optic of aesthetic experience. our relation to the garden can 
never qualify for the basic condition of aesthetic experience as Kant lays 
it out: we can never fully be “disinterested” in the garden. We can never 
take up a distance from it. We walk through the garden, smell it, taste 
and eat it, touch it. For many of the same reasons that food can never 
be properly regarded as an art work, so too the garden breaks down a 
distance that might be necessary for a purely contemplative relation to 
the work.19 so, while Kant speaks of the garden and thus breaks the 
philosophical silence about gardens, his way of doing this, that is his 
way of opening up the idea of the garden as an aesthetic phenomenon 
and as a work of art, never fully opens up the real questions posed by 
the peculiar intersection that is the garden. The garden simply does not 
fit the categories that guide Kant. Consequently, the garden, though 
18 Casey, op. cit., p. 154. one Japanese word for garden, “teien,” recognizes that the garden is 
a hybrid of nature and human intention: it is composed of two words which mean “wildness” 
and “control.” see: Keane, M. (1996), Japanese Landscape Design. Boston:tuttle, p. 14–15.
19 This does not imply that food cannot be philosophically interesting, just that, like the gar-
den, the approach to the philosophical question of food should not be defined within the ho-
rizon of aesthetics. on this, see: hamilton, r. and todolí, V. (eds.)(2008), Food for Thought, 
Thought for Food. New york: actar.
177
o N  s o i l  a N D  s o u l :  t h e  P h i l o s o P h i C a l  Q u e s t i o N  o F  t h e  G a r D e N
dignified as a question, is fenced in and severely limited. its challenge 
to us never fully emerges.
The one exception to this failure to fully appreciate the significance 
of the garden is romanticism, especially the German romanticism that 
followed immediately in Kant’s wake and took the claims of the Cri-
tique of Judgment as its starting point. here the notion of the garden gets 
taken up in a much more extensive manner than the limited contexts 
articulated by Kant and hegel. The garden is so elemental a notion in 
romanticism that “in one of its aspects … romanticism may not in-
accurately be described as a conviction that the world is an englischer 
Garten on a grand scale.”20 in romanticism, the world is thought in 
terms of the garden. While the garden is still thought through the optic 
of an aesthetics, the aesthetics in this case is one that is altered to ac-
count for the peculiar character of the garden; it is not the case, as one 
finds in Kant and hegel, that the garden is simply pulled into an aes-
thetic framework that is designed according to what Dewey called “the 
museum conception of art”21 so that gardens are treated as subsets of 
painting or of architecture. it is rather the natural and unruly aspect of 
the garden, not its regularity and conformity to human intention, that 
is what attracts romantic thinkers to the idea of the garden. in roman-
ticism, the effort to think the meaning of the garden is not guided by 
the signature of the human, but by that which resists being captured by 
that signature.
however, even insofar as German romanticism has a living legacy 
– one finds elements of it in Benjamin, Nietzsche, and heidegger for 
instance – that legacy has dropped the notion of the garden as a central 
concern. one does find references to gardens in Nietzsche22 and one 
could quite legitimately link heidegger’s notion of bauen [building] to 
the problematic of the garden.23 Nonetheless, as a central notion and 
20 lovejoy, a.o. (2009), The Great Chain of Being. New york: transaction Publishers, p. 16. 
see also: immerwahr, r. (1960), “The First romantic aesthetics,” Modern Language Quarterly 
Vol. 23 (1960), No. 1, pp. 3–26. one sees the expanded role of the garden even in the titles of 
works such as Novalis’ Blüthenstaub [Pollen].
21 Dewey, J. (2005), Art as Experience. New york: Perigee trade, p. 6.
22 see, for instance, the many references in Also Sprach Zarathustra and Fröhliche Wissenschaft.
23 heidegger, M., (1978), Vorträge und Aufsätze. Pfüllingen: Neske Verlag, pp. 139–156.
178
P o l i G r a F i
as a notion that opens the question of the human relation to nature, 
the garden has fallen away from philosophy once again, or, if it has any 
place at all, it has by and large been relegated to the realm of aesthetics.24 
This, as i have already suggested, is a great loss since the idea presented 
by the garden offers promising avenues for addressing the urgent ques-
tion of the relation of the human to nature in the technological age. in 
the following section my intention is to give some indications of where 
this promise leads.
***
two assumptions guide the remarks that follow. First, that the garden 
is a liminal place – a hybrid, an intersection – and, consequently, that 
it is not well served by any approach that treats the garden as a work 
of art, that is, as a fundamentally human production. a key feature of 
the garden is that some aspect of it always exists independently of hu-
man intention and purpose; our efforts to give some manner of form to 
the garden will never come under our control. second, that the garden 
needs attention and care; indeed, it is these human elements that set the 
garden apart from wilderness and render it an intersection of the human 
and the natural worlds. even if the garden cannot properly be treated 
as a human production, neither can it be regarded solely as the place 
of nature. it is fair to say that “nature abhors a garden”25 and without 
our care and attention, without the human contribution, nature would 
overrun the garden. Care and attention are constant elements of the gar-
den – they are the elements that balance the peculiar mixture of nature 
and the human that one finds in the garden. it is precisely these ele-
ments that i believe most merit discussion when speaking of the idea of 
the garden since care not only cultivates the garden, rather care itself is 
cultivated by being set in the garden. Pressing this point, one eventually 
24 There are exceptions to this neglect. among the most interesting of these is Borchardt, 
r. (1968), Der Leidenschaftliche Gärtner. stuttgart: Klett Verlag, who writes that his inten-
tion is “zwischen dem menschlichen Garten und dem menschlichen Geiste eine Verbindung 
zu schaffen” (p. 267). But these exceptions tend to be marginal figures in the philosophical 
tradition.
25 Pollan, M., (1991), Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education. New york, Grove Press, p. 37.
179
o N  s o i l  a N D  s o u l :  t h e  P h i l o s o P h i C a l  Q u e s t i o N  o F  t h e  G a r D e N
come to understand that the promise of the garden is a promise of cul-
tivation, a cultivation of a form of care that defines the human relation 
to nature at its best. What one comes to understand is that “gardens do 
not, as one hears so often, bring order to nature; rather, they give order 
to our relation to nature.”26
in focusing upon the meaning of cultivation one sees how this prom-
ise of the garden works: one learns that “cultivation of soil and cultiva-
tion of spirit are connatural, and not merely analogical, activities. What 
holds true for the soil – that you must give it more than you take away 
– also holds true for nations, institutions, marriage, friendship, educa-
tion, in short for human culture as a whole, which comes into being 
and maintains itself in time only as long as its cultivators overgive of 
themselves.”27 it is this connaturality of the soil and the soul – once re-
membered in creation myths that were placed in gardens, in language 
that bound these notions (homo/humus; adam/adama), or in allegories 
such as the Fable of Cura that heidegger recounts – that needs to be 
addressed philosophically. From this starting point, it makes no real 
difference what kind of garden is in question. Whether it be a pleasure 
garden, a garden of flowers, medicinal herbs, for food, or Versailles, the 
significance of the garden will always emerge out of this linking notion 
of cultivation that binds the soil and the soul. From this starting point 
then, one sees that the garden – that common ground between the hu-
man and natural worlds – instructs the gardener about being responsible 
and caring for what one cannot define, control, or fully understand. 
one sees that one learns even more: one learns patience and the limits 
of the human will, one learns how to be responsive to the earth and the 
sky, one learns attentiveness.
The garden is thus the place of a peculiar education.28 Foucault 
makes a distinction between the philosophical tradition that is derived 
26 ibid., p. 48.
27 ibid., p. 33.
28 This is why it is right to suggest that “genuine teaching …is more like planting than…in-
scribing,” ibid., p. 62. The rather commonplace characterization of teaching as sowing seeds 
is thus quite appropriate; thus, the soul is not just like the soil, it is a sort of soil with its own 
nature and requirements for cultivation. on this, see Plato’s Phaedrus, 276c, especially the re-
marks about the Gardens of adonis. see also: Detienne, M., (1972), Les Jardins d’Adonis. Paris: 
Gallimard.
180
P o l i G r a F i
from the imperative to “know oneself ” [gnothi seauton] and that derived 
from the notion of the “care for the self ” [epimeleia heautou].29 it is this 
care for the self, which permeates the approach of “The Garden school” 
of epicurus and that describes the character of the education one re-
ceives in the garden: “[epicurus’ garden] was a form of education in the 
ways of nature: its cycles of growth and decay, its general equanimity, its 
balanced interplay of earth, water, air, and sunlight…here…the cosmos 
manifested its greater harmonies; here the human soul rediscovered its 
essential connection to matter….yet the most important pedagogical 
lesson…was that life – in all its forms – is intrinsically mortal and that 
the human soul shares the fate of whatever grows and perishes on and 
in the earth.”30 The first lesson of this education is thus that the self is 
always in a relation to a world that exceeds its own reach and compre-
hension. The care of the self can only take place by attending to this 
larger world; it can never succeed if it understands itself as walled off 
from the world that is outside its own boundaries. This is the first lesson 
one learns from epicurus’ Garden school.
one can formulate a number of principles that emerge from reflec-
tions upon the character of the garden and the nature of gardening. 
Michael Pollan does this and arrives at ten theses regarding “the kinds 
of answers the garden is apt to give….[to] questions having to do with 
man in nature.”31 Pollan’s list of “answers the garden is apt to give” is a 
fine starting point for pressing forward with the philosophical consid-
eration of the garden. so are the texts we have from epicurus’ “Garden 
school.” No doubt other traditions and texts will offer other promising 
29 see, for instance, Foucault, M., (2005), The Hermeneutics of the Subject (translated by G. 
Burchell). New york: Palgrave Macmillan, p .8.
30 harrison, op. cit., p. 74.
31 Pollan, op. cit., p. 190. his ten theses are found on pages 190–196. one might summarize 
these theses as follows: 1). “an ethic based on the garden would give local answers,” 2). the gar-
dener “accepts his own and nature’s contingency,” 3). “a garden ethic is anthropocentric,” 4). the 
gardener’s “conception of his self-interest is broad and enlightened,” 5). the gardener “tends not 
to be romantic about nature,” 6). the gardener “feels it is legitimate to quarrel with nature,” 7). 
the gardener “doesn’t take it for granted that man’s impact on nature will always be negative,” 
8). the gardener “firmly believes it is possible to make distinctions between kinds and degrees 
of human intervention in nature,” 9). the gardener “commonly borrows his methods, if not his 
goals, from nature herself,” 10). “if nature is one necessary source of instruction for a garden, 
culture is the other.”
181
o N  s o i l  a N D  s o u l :  t h e  P h i l o s o P h i C a l  Q u e s t i o N  o F  t h e  G a r D e N
starts as well. The philosophical tradition has been impoverished with 
respect to serious considerations upon the character of the garden, but 
that does not mean that it is completely without resources to address 
that character so long as the habits we have developed of misplacing the 
garden, of not recognizing its quite distinctive character do not obstruct 
such considerations.
But, before moving forward to make such a start, i believe that it is 
important to flag a fundamental difficulty, a real impediment, to any 
such beginning. it is the same difficulty that renders problematic every 
effort to address questions regarding nature and the human relation 
to nature: the difficulty namely of asking such questions in the age of 
technology. one might like to believe that the question of technology 
could simply be bracketed, its framework sufficiently set aside, so that 
one could speak directly of gardens and of the education one receives in 
them. such, however, is not the case. in the age of technology with its 
imperatives of control and calculation, and its emphasis upon produc-
tion and producibility, the extraordinarily different requirements and 
character of the garden are difficult to see – if not completely obscured. 
That is why it is fair to say that “we live in a gardenless age, despite the 
fact that there are plenty of gardens in our midst.”32 such a comment 
is directed not at plots of land, but at the human capacity to grasp the 
meaning of the garden in the present historical juncture. This incapacity 
is more tenacious than it might appear at first blush.
it is thus not by chance, by simple oversight, that gardens do not 
seem to merit serious philosophical attention today. even the attempt to 
consider gardens from the perspective of aesthetics which has been the 
chief form of such attention over the past two hundred years, though a 
step in the right direction, remains tethered to a notion of production 
that mistakes the character of the garden and that domesticates the idea 
of the garden. at bottom, the gardener is not dedicated to any form of 
production – be it of food or of beauty – nor is the gardener guided 
by the goal of consumption or even pleasure. even when the garden is 
planted out of need for food, the gardener needs to be rooted in an at-
titude of care and attentiveness; the gardener is one who cultivates and 
32 harrison, op. cit., p. 124.
182
P o l i G r a F i
tends. in the age guided by the aims of consumption and production, 
such cultivation and care are difficult to preserve, one could even argue 
that they are foreclosed. By turning the world into what heidegger has 
described as a “standing stockpile of resources” [Bestand]33 destined for 
our consumption, we have lost sight of the truth that “human happi-
ness is a cultivated rather than a consumer good, that it is a question of 
fulfillment more than of gratification….[and that] neither consumption 
nor productivity fulfills. only caretaking does.”34
technology is a way of extracting or making something that is not 
simply given in nature. it is – or at least we tend to believe that it is – a 
way of bending the natural world to human needs. as such, it readily 
falls into an antagonistic relation to nature. The garden, on the other 
hand, requires a different relation between human needs and nature, 
one that is more collaborative than confrontational. it requires a tem-
pering of the will. and yet, the garden is not an easy collaboration: care 
is certainly more difficult than consumption, but it is also much more 
satisfying. No matter how intimate our collaboration with nature is, the 
garden will always mark our separation from nature at the same time 
that it marks one way in which we are in nature, for the garden is also 
a reminder that we need something – be it order, beauty, or food – that 
nature does not supply quite as well without our help. The garden, even 
if not defined by the human, remains apart from nature by virtue of 
human care. it is, in the end, an intersection, a between, the common 
ground of the human and natural worlds. to think with reference to the 
garden is to think from out of this between.
***
one can argue, rightly i believe, that ethical matters – ethical prob-
lems and the source of good ethical judgment alike – begin at the limits 
of the human.35 ethical matters begin where cognition and knowledge 
end, where one cannot determinatively decide a question and where 
33 heidegger, op. cit., p. 26
34 ibid., p. 166.
35 see my (2008), “hermeneutics and original ethics,” in: The Difficulties of Ethical Life (ed. 
sullivan and schmidt). New york: Fordham university Press, pp. 35–47; 214–216, and (2004) 
183
o N  s o i l  a N D  s o u l :  t h e  P h i l o s o P h i C a l  Q u e s t i o N  o F  t h e  G a r D e N
one can no longer calculate or control; as such, ethical life always takes 
root and grows in a liminal situation. one such situation is the garden 
where one finds the encounter of the human and nature as well as the 
liminal situation, the between, that delimits that encounter. i said at the 
outset that the garden is by nature a metaphorical place – a between in 
which there is sort of a double truth presented – but one also needs to 
understand that the garden is by nature a place of a sort of ethical edu-
cation. literature has long recognized and played with the metaphorical 
character of the garden. likewise, religion has long played with another 
meaning of the garden as the place where life takes root. Philosophy, on 
the other hand, has tended to neglect the way in which gardens are the 
place of a sort of ethical education and yet, this cultivation that takes 
place in the garden, this care of the self required by it, might well be the 
greatest significance of the garden for us since it is in this way that we 
are changed by working in the garden. one is right to say that “garden-
ing is…a plunge into the depths of natural history, an immersion in the 
element where life first heroically established itself on earth. to garden 
is to understand the efforts by which life forced a foothold for itself in 
a hostile and resistant clay.”36 What is ultimately at stake in the ques-
tion of the garden is nothing less than our relation to the earth and to a 
world that we neither define nor control.
Voltaire wrote that “we must cultivate our garden.” This means that 
we must practice the care for the earth required of the gardener, we 
must learn to cultivate that which exists independently of our will, we 
must learn to draw closer to the sources of life and to understand how 
death belongs to those sources as well. Gardens require much effort, 
endure seasons, are fragile and can fail – and for all that, for precisely 
those reasons, gardens help us to grow and be better. They educate us 
about ourselves.
“Über sprache und Freiheit aus hermeneutischer sichtpunkt,” in: Heidegger Jahrbuch. Frank-
furt: Klostermann Verlag, pp. 59–73.
36 harrison, op. cit., p. 32.