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Quote by David E. Cooper

“One thing that attracts me in Daoism and Heidegger is a delicate combination of recognizing deep differences between human being and any other kind of being, and a desire, nevertheless, to cultivate an intimacy with animals, trees, mountains and so on.”

Quote by David E. Cooper

Author

David E. Cooper

David E. Cooper, born in 1942, is a renowned author whose works span across philosophy, religion, and science, enjoying widespread popularity among readers. more

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“Chuang Tzu and Heidegger both emphasise the virtue of 'spontaneity' - a sort of mindful responsiveness to things as they are. It's this notion, I suspect, that is the best bet for helping to make some sense of talk about harmony or unity with nature.”

Helping Virtue Harmony Unity Notion Suspects Spontaneity Responsiveness Heidegger

Author:David E. Cooper

“The focus of environmental ethics should indeed be on the virtues and how these inform our relationship to natural environments.”

Should Natural Virtue Environment Focus Ethics Environmental Our Relationship Natural Environment

Author:David E. Cooper

“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 so on - but a person can ask him- or herself how he or she personally may exercise compassion or humility towards animals, vegetal life and so on.”

World May Persons Bigs Asks Causes Animal Compassion Humility Planets Exercise Environmental Population Saving Exploitation Prospects

Author:David E. Cooper

“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, it is in and through ways of engaging with nature that this sense is intimated. These ways include being in the garden.”

Way Feels One Thing Mystery Garden Propositions Engaging Ineffable

Author:David E. Cooper

“In all great civilizations, garden discourses have belonged to larger discourses about beauty, the good life, the relation of humankind to nature, and so on.”

Civilization Garden Relation Good Life Humankind Discourse

Author:David E. Cooper

“Does the unmistakeable intent of Versailles to proclaim dominion over nature destroy its aesthetic appeal, as Schopenhauer thought? Does the greenness of the lawn lose its allure when we learn how much water, sorely needed elsewhere, it uses? And historical shifts in garden taste - from formal, 'French' gardens to 'Capability' Brown's landscapes, for instance, or from the elaborate gardens of imperial Kyoto to Zen 'dry' gardens - register important changes in philosophical or religious attitudes.”

“Gardening is an excellent example of a practice to which, as Alasdair MacIntyre puts it, certain virtues are 'internal'. Good gardening requires a certain goodness on the part of the gardener: care, humility, patience, and respect, for example.”

Care Certain Practice Virtue Example Humility Goodness Excellent Internals Gardening Gardener

Author:David E. Cooper

“Not one has shown an iota of fear of death. They want to end this agony.”

Want Ends Agony Fear Of Death

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“As for the meaning of gardens, particular gardens may have, of course, all sorts of different meanings - emotive, historical, emblematic, religious, commemorative, and so on. But I think that good gardens all signify or exemplify an important truth about the relationship of culture and nature - their inseparability.”

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Author:David E. Cooper

“How people make gardens is bound to reflect a way of experiencing the natural world, while at the same time this experience of nature is bound to reflect a culture - ways of painting nature, for example, or representing nature in literature, or of course making gardens.”

People World Way Culture Courses Literature Natural Example Painting Garden Bounds Natural World Representing

Author:David E. Cooper