Tim Cooney, American Philosopher, American Original
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| Tim Cooney in New York in the 50s. |
An important contribution to the field of moral philosophy, this book provides an objective and precise answer to the question, “What is morality?” Moral philosophers, the author claims, have gotten bogged down in meta-ethical questions and now find themselves in a hopelessly relativistic position. Cooney develops a unique moral theory and isolates and explores the core of morality, separating actual moral issues from apparent ones.It’s a slim book, only 158 pages, published in 1985 by the small press Prometheus Books after Random House rescinded their contract when Cooney admittedly forged a letter from the chairman of the philosophy department at Harvard that attested to its brilliance. And that not insignificant anecdote points to the reason I’m more interested at the moment in the man than in his philosophical definition of morality (which was lucidly discussed in a New York Times review of his book). Cooney was an improviser, an autodidact, a self-publisher (of his first two books), an academic without affiliation, who was proud to claim:
“My ideas evolved from long hours in local bars, talking, talking, talking, always about morality. People were always asking, ’Who do you think you are? Socrates?’ They said it with contempt, but I would smile and say, ’Thank you.’”All through his life he had few possessions but a mountain of debts and got by, as the Beatles song goes, with a little help from his friends. One friend was his ex-wife Joan Ganz Cooney who, even though she went on to marry a former US Secretary of Commerce and win awards and fame for creating Sesame Street and The Electric Company, never changed her last name.
A fine eulogy is posted by John Haber, Cooney’s editor, here. A summation of his philosophy is here.