For me, the existentialists are important critics of 'absolutist' claims, and Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are, at least in their later writings, also… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
There are really three players: 'absolutists', for whom it is possible to describe reality as it anyway is; 'constructivists' or 'humanists', for… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
It's one thing to assent to propositions like 'The way of things is ineffable', and quite another to internalise what it is… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
Between nature and music there seems to be an elective affinity: they fit together, and when they do experiences of an ineffable… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
What impressed me about Plato and Sartre was their conviction that we should live our lives in the light of big truths about reality… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
The main objection to the 'scientistic' claim that physics describes the world as it is in itself is that you 'can't weed out' the… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
It's as if, for Schopenhauer and perhaps Kant, the mind is there up and running, equipped with its categories and concepts that it then… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
I don't think we should just 'muddle through' and ignore the question of life's meaning. Or better, perhaps, I don't think it is a… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
In all great civilizations, garden discourses have belonged to larger discourses about beauty, the good life, the relation of humankind to nature, and so… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
There is something myopic and stunted in focussing only on the meaning of words and sentences. And this myopia is especially unfortunate when combined… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
It turns out, in fact, that 'theories of meaning' are typically not about meaning in an everyday or 'folk' sense at all. They are… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
In the doctrine of the world and humankind as 'will to power and nothing else', Heidegger identified not an antidote to nihilism, but the… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
How people make gardens is bound to reflect a way of experiencing the natural world, while at the same time this experience of nature… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
The focus of environmental ethics should indeed be on the virtues and how these inform our relationship to natural environments. — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
For many years, questions about the meaning of life were dismissed as senseless. We were told that life, not being a word or sentence… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image
I'm very sceptical about the prospects for 'big' environmental causes - 'saving the planet', halving the world's population, ending the exploitation of animals, and… — David E. Cooper Copy Share Image