ASEBL Journal – Volume 10 Issue 1, January 2014
Savouring the View: David E. Cooper’s
‘Daoist’ Philosophy of Nature
Ben Irvine
Abstract: The question of how a person might live in an appropriate relationship to
nature is not only of intrinsic philosophical interest but of increasing relevance in the
modern world. David Cooper has injected new vitality into current debates by
articulating a philosophy of nature inspired by the ancient wisdom of Daoism, which
holds that by cultivating a convergent relationship with the natural world individuals
can achieve greater virtue in their outlook and comportment. While highly revealing
in many ways, Cooper’s position is based on a perspectivism which lends itself to a
misleading kind of nostalgia, and to an excessive antagonism to science and collective
action. These attitudes, in turn, translate into a misconstrual of the benefits and
problems of modernity.
How might a person live in an appropriate relationship to nature? In our time of
growing environmental understanding and anxiety, any attempt to provide a
dedicatedly philosophical answer to this question may seem brazen and foolhardy – as
if to venture naively into a minefield of criticism and censure. After all, even
environmentalists themselves cannot guarantee each other safe passage – the
intellectual terrain keeps shifting, like the sands of Morecombe Bay, as evidence and
debate accumulates.
Yet David Cooper, one of the world’s best and most underrated philosophers, is an apt
tour guide. His work is syncretic but always precise, combining flexibility with
steadiness and unwavering focus, as if steering a coil of good sense along a
convoluted wire of truth. Adept at avoiding extreme or one-sided views, Cooper rarely
sets off the buzzer of falsehood. In this essay, I reconstruct the journey he takes in his
new book, Convergence with Nature: a Daoist Perspective (Cooper 2012; henceforth
CN), suggesting a few places where I believe he errs.
1. The personal and the profound.
Cooper announces and defends his philosophical methodology by declining, in the
main, to engage with “strident” (CN: 10) environmentalist concerns; he hopes to avoid
getting bogged down in issues of “collective action” (CN: 9) which, he says, are
mostly irrelevant to the question of how an individual person should relate to nature.
To ward off any knee-jerk charges of “egotism,” “moral indifference” or “nihilism”
against his emphasis on “self-cultivation” (CN: 8-9), Cooper suggests that a “concern
for the good of the self” is not without “implications for the enlightened treatment of
other people,” and that “reflection on one’s personal relationship to nature is not
disjoined from ethical reflection” (CN: 10). We are promised, in effect, two for the
price of one.
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