Abstract

This is in part a reflection on issues raised by David Cooper in his paper entitled ‘The Idea of Environment’ , a paper that I have an ambiguous attitude towards. On the one hand it has opened my eyes to a way of thinking about the environment, namely as a field of significance, but on the other hand it seems to be unfortunate in its tone of negative criticism of much of the thinking of deep environmentalists, and wrong in its dismissal of the idea that the environment as a whole should be a field of significance