“What impressed me about Plato and Sartre was their conviction that we should live our lives in the light of big truths about reality and human existence.” ShouldHumansBigsRealityLightExistenceOur LivesConvictionImpressedPlatoHuman Existence Author:David E. Cooper
“I think it's true that for existentialist thinkers, appreciation of what we are - free, makers of meaning, 'issues' for ourselves, and so on - is at the same time a recognition of how we should try to live.” ThinkingShouldTryingIssuesAppreciationRecognitionMakersThinkerExistentialist Author:David E. Cooper
“The dis-incumbenced stance is the one people should cultivate, we are told, once they recognize that there is no world beyond the human world. They will, indeed must, have their beliefs and values, but they will recognize that these 'lean upon' - and are answerable to - nothing other than human commitments and purposes. The only fidelity, Rorty remarked, can be to our own conventions.” PeopleWorldShouldHumansPurposeValuesBeliefCommitmentConventionsFidelityStanceBeliefs And Values Author:David E. Cooper
“The focus of environmental ethics should indeed be on the virtues and how these inform our relationship to natural environments.” ShouldNaturalVirtueEnvironmentFocusEthicsEnvironmentalOur RelationshipNatural Environment Author:David E. Cooper
“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 question that can be ignored once the business of asking about the worth and significance of what one is doing - one's work, one's pleasures, one's ambitions and so on - has got going. You can't at any point stop the urge to ask Tolstoy's questions, '... and then what?', 'What's the point of that?'.” ThinkingShouldAsksPleasureAmbitionAskingUrgesSignificanceIgnoredMuddle Author:David E. Cooper
“I rather shared Nietzsche's conception of the kind of individual that an ideal education should be cultivating. 'Authenticity' is not Nietzsche's term, but as used by some existentialists, it nicely captures what Nietzsche admired - the resolve of an individual person to forge his or her own 'table of values', to be emancipated from strait-jacketing conventions, traditions, and ideologies. As embodied in the 'Overman', authenticity is the antidote to 'bad' nihilism.” ShouldKindPersonsUsedValuesIndividualTermIdealsTraditionTablesAuthenticityIdeologyResolveConceptionCaptureConventionsAntidoteNihilismCultivatingExistentialist Author:David E. Cooper