In Praise of the Earth - by Byung-Chul Han (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"This is a book of exquisite beauty filled with the scents and colours of flowers and quiet changing of seasons in the author's Berlin garden. But more than that, it is a book of profound wisdom, a calm and deeply welcome antidote to the harshness of our troubled world."
Esther Woolfson, author of and Corvus

About the Author

Byung-Chul Han is the author of more than twenty books including The Burnout Society, Saving Beauty and The Spirit of Hope.