The earth is not a dead, mute landscape but an eloquent, living being. Sometimes it just takes a spade, a packet of seeds, and a pair of sturdy boots to realize it.

The philosopher Byung-Chul Han spent three springs, summers, autumns, and winters in his secret garden in Berlin, devoting himself to daily gardening in all weathers. For Han, gardening is a form of silent meditation, a lingering in stillness. It gives you a different sense of time. Every plant has its own time that is specific to it, and the garden is a space in which these multiple temporalities overlap and cut across one another. The longer he worked in the garden, the more respect he developed for the earth and for its enchanting beauty. Gardening taught him what care for others means. Each organism has its own consciousness of time passing; each organism lives in its own micro-universe. Step by step, Han receded from himself and the world, moving closer and closer to an exuberant, divine nature which we are increasingly in danger of losing.

Through this rich meditation on plants, soil, gardening, and time, Han unfolds a way of relating to and tending the earth that is in sharp contrast to the brutal, incessant exploitation of our planet that we see all around us today.

Byung-Chul Han (born 1959) is a South Korean-born philosopher and cultural theoris living in Germany. He was a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts and still occasionally gives courses there. His work largely centers around critiques of neoliberalism and its impact on society and the individual.

Table of Contents

Preface

Winterreise
Winter Garden
Time of the Other
Back to the Earth
Romanticizing the World
Winter-flowering Cherry
Winter Aconites and Witch Hazel
White Forsythia
Anemones
Camellias
Willow Catkins
Autumn Crocuses
Plantain Lilies (Hosta)
On Happiness
Beautiful Names
Victoria Amazonica
Colchicum Autumnale
Diary of a Gardener

List of Illustrations
Notes

Reviews