This rich, subtle and hugely ambitious book might also have been called “why (and how) metaphysics matters”. Cooper's themes are the tensions implicit in the relation of contingent human beings to the world and the implications of those tensions, and of putative means of their resolution, for our most fundamental attitudes towards ourselves and others. Grand in scheme, rich in detail, by turns meditative and aggressively analytic, unhurried yet purposive, it is, in short, a book of the highest insight about metaphysics and the meaning of life. That it is also, in part, a statement of a personal vision is something which is entirely in keeping with its purpose.
In his introduction, Cooper reports that the book originated in a reading of a passage in Thomas Nagel's The View from Nowhere in which Nagel characterises his defence of an objectivist stance– that the world is something over and beyond what we do or can make of it – as “a strong form of anti-humanism”. Since the term “humanism” and its correlates, has long been a rallying cry in the attempt to articulate our communal visions of what human life is and what it might be, Cooper was intrigued by its use to characterise an essentially metaphysical-cum-epistemological position. It is this connection – between epistemology and metaphysics on the one hand and on the other “vital” issues concerning our conceptions of ourselves and our relations - that is Cooper's point of departure on this long voyage.
Cooper's thesis, in grossly simplified form, is that our thinking about those tensions resolves, in complex ways, into an opposition between two broad camps: absolutists that seek to maintain the concept of a discursable world as independent of human perspectives and humanists who seek to ground, define or constitute concepts of truth and objectivity relative to human perspective and practice.
Each side, in a variety of guises, accuses the other of hubris. Via an insightful discussion of hubris and modesty, the dispute emerges as one in which the humanist accusation against the absolutist is one of hubris of belief – of claiming, falsely, that human beings are capable of the kind of knowledge with which the absolutist credits us. Whereas the absolutist accusation against the humanist is that of hubris of “posture”: the humanist pretends to a kind of self-sufficiency and prideful independence from the world which it is not, in fact, theirs to enjoy.
This, Cooper contends, is in effect a metaphysical Mexican standoff. Humanism is offered one last chance to break the deadlock through its vision of the “dis-encumbered” life. One which recognises the contingency of our practices and their relation to the world, our lack of foundations or groundings in an independently accessible world yet which continues to be able to be an “engaged life” in which first order commitments to values and projects remain. It is anti-foundationalism as a way of life. This part of the argument culminates in a subtle discussion of the distinctions between Wittgensteinian Quietism and Rortyian ironism, a distinction to which agreement to philosophical propositions is entirely irrelevant. In every other work, even remotely following the same melody, these would be the last quiet closing notes. Philosophy, after all its turbulent movements and grand breathtaking themes, brought down to a subtle inflection of tone, manner and mood.
The extraordinary ambition of Cooper's book, is that this moment, where we seem at last to have lost the need for philosophy, is only half-way through the journey. The pivot upon which the book turns is the claim that mutual charges of hubris and lack of humility are justified. Critical here is the concept of “answerability”: a need, rooted in our teleology seeking nature, for something that stands as “other” to ourselves and to which we are answerable. Cooper's argument then is that anti-foundationalism as a way of life is unliveable because our nature impels us to seek foundations and, whether we are reflecting upon the truth of our beliefs about the world, our values, our practices or the very meaning of the words we utter, this inevitably leads us to the thought of something ‘beyond the human’:
If significance is to be conducted back along the chain, its source must be “beyond the human' for whatever remains within the precincts of the human always inspires the question of its own significance (p. 271)
To support this claim Cooper adduces various philosophical “testimonies” which are supposed to lead us to agree to, or – Cooper is not in the least dogmatic here - at least consider the possibility of, the “unbearability of uncompensated disencumbence” which is to say, the thought that we can't live a life in which we recognise that the beliefs, values and meanings that give that life its sense are without foundations.
This, it seemed to this reviewer, was a profound statement of what is essentially the religious impulse. I confess that I found myself unpersuaded by it. Or at least, since Cooper is open that this is in part a question of temperament, unmoved by it. Says Cooper: ‘When it is a matter of the meaning of our lives, to recall Nozick's remark, we want meaning to go all the way down’ (p.274). It is not obvious to this reader just why one has to want that. One might instead want the meaning of one's life (interests, projects, loves, commitments) just to stay still long enough to be pursued. Or one may be suspicious of the “all the way down” metaphor and want instead, not depth but width, which is to say, connection, synergy and integration with parallel lives and not care that these too lack “depth”.
Still, this pivotal chapter in the book will strike different readers in different ways and to be forced as it were, to take philosophy personally, is an important part of what the book aims to achieve.
Given that “the choice between absolutism and humanism is one between something unbelievable and something unlivable”, where else are we to look?
At this point Cooper's journey takes a turn which will be quite unexpected to many in mainstream analytic philosophy. For, Cooper suggests, the only liveable way forward from the impasse, consequent on the absolutist/humanist standoff, is to look East. We are then offered a sustained account of Buddhist concepts of emptiness and mystery as a means to effect the escape from the impasse. There are many interesting thoughts here and Cooper has done the philosophical community a real service by making these ideas more intelligible to the western analytic temper. Pertinent here is the painstaking discussion – almost in the mode of an old-school linguistic philosopher - of different resonances in the Buddhist metaphor of emptiness as a way of characterising the world as it is independent of us: from empty cupboard (lack) and empty glass (transparency) through empty road (openness) to empty space (freedom to enter) and empty canvas (a background for possibility). This discussion ought to do much to make these concepts more palatable to more sceptical analytical thinkers.
I suspect it would take rather more however to persuade them to sign up to Cooper's main thesis. For at its most dramatic it is that the western metaphysical conversation can only be brought to a close by an appreciation, and a lived appreciation at that, of the essential insights of broadly Eastern philosophy. We are left at the end with the concept of “comportment” – of something like a style or set of styles of living which might be more faithfully attuned to mystery and what answers our need for “measure”. It is, in the end, a very English Mysticism: accommodating, understated, compassionate.
Cooper's journey through these issues, and vast swathes of the history of philosophy is erudite, elegant and, it seems to this reader, the product of a thinker with unique gifts. There are already very few philosophers with Cooper's combination of analytical acumen and wide-ranging historical understanding. Fewer still whose historical understanding crosses Anglo-American, continental and eastern traditions. And it is difficult to think of anyone else at all who can marry these skills with such sensitivity and subtlety.
It seems churlish to wish for additions to a book that already has such a huge scope. Nonetheless there is one aspect of the metaphysical theme to which Cooper seems less than acutely sensitive. There is some mention of appreciation of the natural world in general as a means of controlling our multiple impulses towards hubris and one can see how this might lead one to that kind of peace from those impulses as for example occurs at the end of Candide – “Excellently observed,” answered Candide [to Pangloss]; “but let us cultivate our garden.” (Notably Cooper has written elsewhere on the philosophy of gardens)
But there is little sign that our understanding and appreciation of a particular part of nature, namely other kinds of animal, is thought to play any significant part in mitigating the impact of our hubristic tendencies. Of course it is true, that for all the difference it has made to the Western tradition in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind, we may as well have been the only sentient species on the planet. But then that is precisely why one would have expected more treatment of this topic in a synoptic critique of this tradition. For a proper understanding of our place as one species amongst many in the world, and, as is increasingly recognised, as one kind of mind, however distinctive, amongst others, has surely something to say to both Absolutism and Humanism. To the former, the actuality of other kinds of sensory modality, neurological systems, expressive repertoires, should surely be a lesson that the contingency of our own cognitive structures runs much deeper than we habitually think. To the latter, the fact that other animals have such modalities and systems precisely in order that that the world may be delivered up to them too ought to forestall too hasty an identification of the world with the human world. Thus the world, the absolute knowledge of which some pretend to, and others deny, is actually a shared world. It is therefore surely no coincidence that a typical reaction to appreciation of the variety and otherness of other species is wonder and humility and for many who work and live with animals, a sense of quiet peace and compassion.
The style of Cooper's writing is of a piece with the content. But though elegant and subtle, prospective readers should not underestimate the task of reading this book. It is a rich diet and a demanding read that will require close and repeated attention. It brings proportionate rewards. Moreover, Cooper does, most courteously, take the trouble to give the reader some respite and pause by providing synoptic perspectives and summaries at appropriate turning points.
Cooper is very given to scare quotes. Thus for example, we hear of the necessity to distinguish between “talking about and talking ‘about’ the mysterious” (p.297). Such a way of making this particular point was perhaps not best suited to convince readers who by this stage may have been wondering quite what they had let themselves in for. It would perhaps been better here to have had a plainer statement that it has long been too cheap a trick merely to claim that the only sensible thing to do about the inexpressible is to keep mum. To say that we cannot talk about the concept of the ineffable, just because it is the concept of the ineffable, is to confuse mention and use.
Slightly more worrying is that as Cooper pushes his argument up the slope, more and more terms pick up more and more special significance as they roll forward and when the marking of these with single quotation marks is joined by genuine quotations from one of the many authors upon which Cooper draws, the effect is a little heady. One feels as if the author is asking one to pause slightly before each quoted term in order to register and savour its specialised sense and by the end of the book this has become a little wearing. But this is perhaps inevitable in a work which draws together so many different times and traditions. There is a useful index though no separate bibliography: one can only think that this is because, given the extraordinarily wide range of literature from which Cooper draws, the provision of one would have doubled the width of the volume. Thank goodness though that Cooper eschews the dreadful Chicago style of notes with its constant suggestion of ludicrous anachronism “(William of Ockham, 2005)” in favour of proper and interesting footnotes.
For all its extraordinary merits, it cannot be denied that many readers will find this book a formidable challenge. It is to be hoped then that the author might find an opportunity for producing a more accessible version of the main thesis that would appeal to a wider readership. For just at this book constitutes Cooper's long answer to Nagel's The View from Nowhere, he should consider responding too and in kind to that other book by Nagel, What Does It All Mean?
