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Quote by David E. Cooper

“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 what Merleau-Ponty called 'Flesh' is for him.”

Quote by David E. Cooper

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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

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“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.”

Thinking Should Trying Issues Appreciation Recognition Makers Thinker Existentialist

Author:David E. Cooper

“To recognize that you are radically free, in Sartre's sense, but then to live as if you weren't, is to live in bad faith, in denial of what you know to be true. And that's not something anyone can sensibly want to do.”

Ifs Knows Want Being True Denial

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.”

People World Should Humans Purpose Values Belief Commitment Conventions Fidelity Stance Beliefs And Values

Author:David E. Cooper

“The aim of dis-incumbence is a hubristic one, for it requires confidence in the ability of men and women to live in the belief that nothing they do can, in the end, be justified by anything. That's a belief that it is easy to proclaim in seminar rooms or pubs, but not one that people could actually live with.”

People Men Ends Belief Easy Ability Rooms Men And Women Aim Justified Pubs Seminars

Author:David E. Cooper

“Certainly each side - the 'absolutists' and the 'constructivists' or 'humanists', as I've labelled them - accuses the other of hubris, and lays claim to humility. I see hubris on both sides: a pretence that we could ascend to an objective account of the world, on the one hand, and a pretence that we have the resources to live and act without a sense of there being something to which we answerable, on the other. So both sides are 'villains'.”

World Hands Sides Humility Resources Accounts Claims Lays Objectives Villain Both Sides Hubris Pretence

Author:David E. Cooper

“None of them want to delay. Understand that. None of them.”

Author:Jack Kevorkian

“My 'heroes' are those - like Chuang Tzu and Heidegger - who recognize that the world of experience is a human world, but recognize too that there is a 'way' or a 'source' to which our lives are answerable.”

World Way Humans Our Lives Source Hero My Hero Heidegger

Author:David E. Cooper

“The writing I have in mind and sometimes indulge in myself is concerned, not with plants, mountains or birds as items of scientific description, but with experiences of nature that impinge upon our moods and emotions, enrich our imagination and reveries, and shape our sense of how we stand in relation to the environing world. In a broad sense of the term, this kind of writing is an exercise in phenomenology, an attempt to render the significance that birds, plants or whatever have for us.”

“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.”

Humans Kind Desire Differences Human Beings Animal One Thing Tree Mountain Intimacy Combination Delicate Nevertheless Recognizing Heidegger

Author:David E. Cooper

“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