Learning from a more-than-human perspective. Plants as teachers

Abstract

Modern philosophy have categorized the enlightened human as the exclusive holder of reason. The modern notion of learning established an unbridgeable gap between human ways of learning and those of “non-humans.” We assume that learning is a skill of all organisms and not an exclusively human prerogative. We prefer the “more-than-human” expression instead of “post-humanism.” The reason is to avoid the prefix “post” and its meaning, very often teleological, evolving beyond or surpassing what was left behind. Our argument comes from an empirical analysis of ritual practices of a neo-shamanic kind based on the power of plants, found in Brazilian urban settings. We started from an ecological cosmovision where learning is a movement of life.