For me, the existentialists are important critics of 'absolutist' claims, and Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are, at least in their later writings, also exponents of a doctrine of mystery: Being or the 'well-spring' of everything is, for Heidegger, ineffable, just as… — 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 being gestured at by such propositions, to get a sense or feel for mystery. For me, at least,… — 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
