ASEBL Journal – Volume 10 Issue 1, January 2014
the philosophical agenda. I have hinted that on many occasions Cooper caveats his
own argument along the lines I have done in this essay, but, to return to the analogy of
the coil of reason and the wire of truth, his modifications feel like corrective twitches
compared to the recurring urges which lead him too far astray. We should all be wary
of such urges.
Notes
1
Consider the following: “In reverie, a person sees things as they are. Not through penetrating
a veil of appearances to a world free from all perspective, for there is no such world” (CN: 93).
2
For instance: “[the] modern style of moral reason is lacking in realism, in attention to the
world and human conduct as they actually are, instead of what they might be if only . . .” (CN:
10).
Works Cited
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Cooper, David E. 2002. The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility, and Mystery,
NY: Oxford UP.
--. 2012. Convergence with Nature: A Daoist Perspective, Totnes: Green Books.
Dalrymple, Theodore. 2005. Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the
Masses, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
Dawkins, Richard. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker, Harlow: Longman.
--. 1998. Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder,
London: Penguin.
Diamond, Jared. 1998. Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the
Last 13000 Years, London: Vintage.
--. 2005. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, London: Allen Lane.
Dutton, Denis. 2010. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution,
Oxford: Oxford UP.
Harris, Sam. 2012. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human
Values, London: Black Swan.
Humphrey, Nicholas. 2010. Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness, London:
Quercus.
Pinker, S. 2011. The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, New
York: Viking.
Ridley, M. 2010. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, London: Fourth
Estate.
Wright, R. 2000. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, London: Little, Brown.
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