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Quote by David E. Cooper

“The garden is as good a symbol as you can find of a dialectic between spheres of experience - of culture and nature - that presuppose one another.”

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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

“I started my professional life as a philosopher of language and for several years took the orthodox line that meaning is an essentially linguistic phenomenon. Whether as a result of simply listening to everyday talk about meaning, or reading books of anthropology, sociology and art history, it dawned on me that there is nothing at all privileged or central about linguistic meaning.”

Years Art Book Reading Language Lines Results Listening Everyday Philosopher Orthodox Phenomenon Reading Books Privileged Sociology Anthropology Art History Professional Life

Author:David E. Cooper

“There is something myopic and stunted in focussing only on the meaning of words and sentences. And this myopia is especially unfortunate when combined with a rather abstract view of a language as a set of elements and rules for combining these. For the result is to divorce enquiry into meaning from attention to the way words - and gestures, facial expressions, rituals and so on - are embedded in practices, in what Wittgenstein called 'the stream of life'.”

“It turns out, in fact, that 'theories of meaning' are typically not about meaning in an everyday or 'folk' sense at all. They are theories designed to compute the truth or assertibility conditions of sentences from their components.”

Facts Turns Conditions Theory Everyday Folks Sentences Components

Author:David E. Cooper

“In the final analysis, all explanations of meaning, various as they are, serve to indicate how something is 'appropriate' in and to our practices, our lives in effect.”

Practice Our Lives Effects Finals Various Analysis Explanation Appropriate

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?'.”

Thinking Should Asks Pleasure Ambition Asking Urges Significance Ignored Muddle

Author:David E. Cooper

“The question of meaning goes all the way down: if human life as a whole is meaningless, so is everything that occurs or belongs within it. Since that's not a thought it is easy to live with, there is good reason to search for life's meaning.”

Ifs Way Humans Reason Whole Easy Human Life Meaningless

Author:David E. Cooper

“Like Nietzsche's own writings on education, most of mine were relatively youthful ones. Both were inspired by a critical animus against prevailing trends in education: in Nietzsche's case, the production either of 'useless', dry-as-dust scholars or people 'useful' for the needs of an expanding industrial economy; in my case, a similar subjection of education to economic imperatives, but also to ideological obsessions, notably with promoting 'equality'.”

“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.”

Should Kind Persons Used Values Individual Term Ideals Tradition Tables Authenticity Ideology Resolve Conception Capture Conventions Antidote Nihilism Cultivating Existentialist

Author:David E. Cooper

“The Overman will himself be a nihilist in the (good) sense of rejecting any metaphysical or religious grounding for truth and value, but instead of curling up in despair, or simply going along with the crowd like the 'passive' nihilist, he will recognize himself as the sole source of truths and values to live by.”

Values Religious Source Despair Crowds Live By Sole Passive Metaphysical Good Sense Rejecting Grounding Nihilist

Author:David E. Cooper

Quote by David E. Cooper

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