My Animals & Flowers

Lessons from the Natural World

Theodor Lessing, Benton Arnovitz, Peter C. Appelbaum

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2025
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350526808
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Social Philosophy

Translated into English for the first time, My Animals and Flowers bring forth Theodor Lessing's visionary philosophy of need in an idiosyncratic series of musings on the natural world, which range from light-hearted to darkly shadowed. Full of imagination, wit, and insight into the nature and history of living species, they demonstrate Lessing's brilliant ability to combine biological observation with social, psychological, political, historical, educational, and above all, philosophical thoughts.

Grimly pessimistic about human society, Lessing found both a mirror and a refuge in the world of animals and flowers. In observing nature and attributing all type of human characteristics to animals and plants, he exposes the fusing of nature and culture, and – in dialogue with the natural world – confronts a whole cluster of political questions from the question of equality for women and marital fidelity to the pollution of cities and man's destruction of the environment. Much of this work, sketching out the implications of an atomic age for example, has proved uncannily prophetic.

To read this book is to enter into a curious and deeply sensitive world, in which to peer down at a colony of ants is to be reminded of 'giant nations, each in conflict with the others', and to catch a glimpse of bright poppies in a cornfield is to be submerged in a chain of thoughts from St Augustine to David Hume. Amongst the autobiographical reflections, Lessing weaves in critical observations of Western civilization, and critique of human culture as a destructive and disfiguring influence in the natural world. Ultimately, his philosophy of need shows how civilization comes at the expense of nature, ringing true with the climate of our times.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• About the Translator
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Foreword. Theodor Lessing and his Philosophy of Need
• Part 1 My Animals
• Dedication1
• 1 Rabbits and Cats1
• 2 Sparrows and Swallows1
• 3 White Mice1
• 4 Tristan and Isolde. The Starlings1
• 5 Dogs and Cats1
• 6 Our Beloved Crows1
• 7 Jays1
• 8 Hyenas1
• 9 Ants1
• 10 The Chicken Coop1
• 11 Dormice, or The Demise of the Aristocracy1
• 12 The Turkey1
• 13 Silver Bill and Amarant1
• 14 The Bird of Loyalty1
• 15 Spiders and Flies1
• 16 The Horse1
• 17 The Dove1
• 18 Bees and Wasps, or Bourgeoisie and Romanticism1
• 19 Wolves and Dogs1
• 20 The Wild Donkey and the Tame Donkey1
• 21 German Trees1
• APPENDIX 1 Nanekobo1
• APPENDIX 2 Frogs1
• APPENDIX 3 The Flea1
• APPENDIX 4 Worms and Insects1
• APPENDIX 5 The Barbel1
• APPENDIX 6 Big Cats and Chauffeurs1
• Part 2 Flowers
• Dedication1
• 1 Snowdrops1
• 2 Roses1
• 3 Northern Morning1
• 4 Busy Lizzies1
• 5 Birches on the Heath1
• 6 Poppies in the Cornfield1
• 7 Love and Hate Among Flowers1
• 8 Favorite Flowers1
• 9 Bleeding Trees1
• 10 Moravian Soil1
• 11 The Colors of Flowers1
• 12 A Great Hindu1
• 13 Faces of Flowers1
• 14 Garden Happiness1
• 15 Laurel and Ivy1
• 16 Wheat and Grapes1
• 17 Frost Flowers on the Window1
• 18 Asteriscus1
• 19 The Miracle of Flowers1
• 20 Butterflies at Play1
• 21 Passiflora1
• 22 Sunflowers1
• 23 Stones1
• Index