Andrew Cooper (1986-2025)
Andrew Cooper, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick, has died.
Professor Cooper worked in the history of modern philosophy, especially on the ideas of Immanuel Kant and Amalia Holst, and had recently begun focusing on philosophical issues surrounding conservation and land management. He was the author of the just-published Amalia Holst (Cambridge University Press), Kant and the Transformation of Natural History (Oxford University Press, 2023), and The Tragedy of Philosophy: Kant’s Critique of Judgment and the Project of Aesthetics (SUNY Press, 2016), among other works, which you can learn more about here and here.
He also took part in public-facing philosophy, hosting the podcast Daybreak, appearing on BBC programs and engaging the community with projects on empowering young voices and improving local food security. In 2023 he was named a BBC/AHRC “New Generation Thinker.”
Professor Cooper joined the philosophy faculty at Warwick in 2018. Prior to that, he held post-doctoral appointments at Bonn University, Durham University, and University College London. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Sydney.
Professor Cooper died unexpectedly while hiking near Federation Peak in Tasmania, Australia, on November 24th, 2025.
The University of Warwick Department of Philosophy has posted a more detailed memorial notice here.
Andrew was a fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at Pitt a couple of years ago where I — as a lowly somewhat Pittsburgh-sick graduate student — first met him. It fills my heart to read the remembrances: Andrew’s kindness, warmth, and openness was not only manifest to but also available for all. I loved talking to him in and outside the department and his philosophical acumen and philosophical charity was evident to everyone at the Center lunch talks. At Thanksgiving, Andrew, I, and a handful of others — who did not have homes to go — had a potluck dinner at a friend’s house. Andrew made for us an Aussie-style Pavlova. There was, I remember, some discussion about the origins of the dish and its name. It was an amazing dish and I had lots and lots of meringue that night over great conversations with Andrew and others. Just last Thursday, I was again at the friend’s house for Thanksgiving dinner having learnt about Andrew’s passing that very day. I will miss him.
Andrew was a close friend of mine. I’m still reeling from this news — such a shocking, devastating, sudden loss. He’s pretty irreplaceable in my life, and I’m sure in many other people’s. Such a special person — the only philosopher I knew raising chickens in central London! Even when I was still a grad student, he actively sent me CFPs, invited me into reading groups, asked me to speak at conferences he organized. (I was reminded of this aspect of his character when I watched him last year at the Kant Congress in Bonn spend hours engaging with current grad students about their work.) From then on, he became one of the closest interlocutors for my work and a real sounding board for me throughout the years. It’s hard to put into words how special he was — wise, steadfast in his values, genuine, not interested in academic hierarchies, and so much more besides. I’m finding myself at a loss to really convey it here. Not sure what I’m going to do without our long talks on our work and on our lives, and without his own work, from which I learned so much… I miss him deeply. What a loss for the Kant community, and for philosophy.
More tributes to Andrew can be found and posted here, on a page being maintained by Andrew’s family.
I first met Andrew at the University of Sydney, when we were both PhD students in the Philosophy Department, although I first encountered him in peculiar circumstances. I’d just begun my teaching career as a causal tutor, and never great with finances I was pleased with how flushed with cash I was. I figures the academic life really does pay! But another explanation was at hand! The finance team had contacted me to say that, for the first half of the term, I was not only being paid my wages, but that of another tutor! In a familiar refrain that I’ve been hearing all my life, ‘Anthony’ had been confused with ‘Andrew’ and ‘Hooper’ with ‘Cooper’.
And so I wasn’t paid again for the rest of the term, that money being redirected towards the deserving party. But I was rewarded even more richly with the acquaintance of my near-namesake, whom I tracked down shortly afterwards.
Andrew and I remained friendly acquaintances throughout our time as post-grads, only properly becoming friends later. In 2016 my wife, cat, and I moved to the other side of the world to take up a post-doc in Classics at Durham University. Breaking the stereotype of Australians, we were never great travellers, never had any ambitions of moving anywhere in the world, and were thoroughly home-bodies, stubbornly of the mind that Sydney was the only place we could ever make our home. Not thrilled with the shock of this move, I remember wandering on a cold day across Framwellgate Bridge in Durham city centre (well, I thought it was cold at the time; it was actually a very lovely Durham day!). And whom should I stumble across but Andrew, who I had no idea had recently taken up a post-doc in the Philosophy Department.
Words cannot describe how pleased my wife and I were to see a familiar, and familiarly Australian face! Over the next year or so, Andrew was a fixture at our house, hosting him for dinner whenever we had a change. But it was Andrew’s company, more so than the food and central heating, which leant us warmth and light in those increasingly cold and dark days of our first Winter abroad.
It seems inevitable that someone will always mistake my name for either ‘Andrew’ or ‘Cooper’. But while I use to greet this with irrational anger, I will always now greet the implicit comparison with tremendous pride!