The Wisdom of Trees: Thinking Through Arboreality

Join Chantal Noa Forbes of the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion program in a conversation on arboreality with David Macauley and Laura Pustarfi.

The Wisdom of Trees is a uniquely edited volume that applies philosophical thinking to trees. Co-edited by David Macauley and Laura Pustarfi—an Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion adjunct faculty member and CIIS alumna—the book explores the new and emerging understanding of trees in science and society through a series of sixteen diverse essays by leading scholars and writers. Contributors include CIIS alumni Kimberly Carfore and Sam Mickey, as well as CIIS faculty Don Johnson and Matthew Segall.

Together, these essays examine how evolving perspectives on trees call for a revisioning of philosophical thought and a more sustainable, relational approach to forests. This reconceptualization carries significant ecological and social implications for addressing deforestation, biodiversity loss, and the climate emergency.

The interdisciplinary contributions in this collection explore the multifaceted dimensions of arboreality, examining subjects such as time, mind, truth, memory, being, beauty, goodness, silence, wisdom, personhood, and death. The volume engages in a conversation about why trees matter, how they can be best protected, our obligations to them, and even what they are. Most of the chapters are informed by natural history or ecological science, and many share a particular emphasis on continental philosophy and the environmental humanities.

Meet the Speakers

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David Macauley, Ph.D., is Academy Professor and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at Penn State University, Brandywine. He has taught at Oberlin College, Emerson College, and New York University and was a Mellon Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Macauley is the author of Elemental Philosophy: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water as Environmental Ideas; editor of Minding Nature: The Philosophers of Ecology, co-editor of The Seasons: Philosophical, Literary, and Environmental Perspectives; and co-editor of The Wisdom of Trees. He has published articles on ethics, aesthetics, politics, Greek philosophy, and Continental thought. Macauley is completing a book entitled Walking the Earth: Philosophical and Environmental Foot Notes; putting together a collection of philosophical parables and myths called Re-storying Wisdom; and working on a book project entitled Discovering Beauty in Dark Times.

He currently lives in West Philadelphia, where he bikes, gardens, competes in distance races, and renovates a Victorian house but is relocating to Eureka, California this summer. He enjoys running beneath trees in forests, parks, and cemeteries.
 

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Laura Pustarfi, Ph.D., is adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her scholarly work examines trees and plants in Western thought with a particular focus on philosophical literature in order to explore an arboreal and vegetal ontology and ethics that respects plants themselves. Laura has presented at several academic conferences, including those of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP), TORCH Oxford, the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition (PACT), and the International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE). She is Director of the Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research Certificate Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Laura lives in the San Francisco Bay Area on occupied Indigenous territory of the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo, represented by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.
 

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Chantal Noa Forbes, Ph.D., is a transdisciplinary scholar, storyteller, and educator at the intersection of ecology, spirituality, and culture. Born and raised in a multicultural family in South Africa, Chantal identifies as a transnational scholar who is part of the Global Majority, encompassing both human and more-than-human communities. Chantal’s work explores the environmental significance of decolonial and Indigenous perspectives on multispecies ontology, more-than-human personhood, and cultural sovereignty. Chantal’s teaching interests include decolonial methods and pedagogy, environmental studies and anthropology, ecology and religion, and Indigenous lifeways. Before completing her Ph.D., Chantal spent twenty years working in social documentaries, environmental media, and agricultural communications across Africa, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Chantal has served as a visiting assistant professor of anthropology at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and as adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and Pacifica Graduate Institute in California.

Chantal resides in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the traditional homelands and waterways of the Monacan Indian Nation.

About the Book

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The publisher of The Wisdom of Trees: Thinking Through Arboreality, SUNY Press, is offering a 30% discount on print copies of this book when ordered through their website www.sunypress.edu using code SNWS25 (add the discount code at checkout).

Order your copy

Related Academic Program
M.A. and Ph.D. in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion