Charles Elliott
The Telos of Titchmarsh
A Philosophy of Gardens
By David E Cooper
Oxford University Press 184pp £17.99 order from our bookshop
This terrifying little book represents an attempt by a professor of philosophy to establish – what else? – a philosophy of gardens. None, he argues, presently exists. There is plenty of garden writing, discussion of gardens, theorising about what makes a garden good or bad, but no real philosophy of gardens acceptable to a critical thinker like himself.
Drawing on a galaxy of big names for help, from Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Kant to Wittgenstein and Heidegger, David Cooper bravely and steadily hacks his way through a jungle of propositions and logical contradictions. What is a garden? Is it a form of art? Or of nature? Should a garden
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