Because the problems are objective features of the human situation - social animals without the capacities for making social life come easily… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
It may be hyperbolic to declare that Shakespeare teaches us more about being human than all the natural scientists combined. — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Refined religion is aimed at realizing ethical values, including the fostering of human lives and human communities. — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
I'm often quite gloomy about the prospects for the human future. But, although I have no competence to intervene directly in a… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
When I try to outline the history of ethical life, it's sometimes possible to find evidence for a hypothesis about how important… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Secular humanists should recognize those forms of religion as allies in the struggle for human advancement. They should also learn from them,… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Both Proust and Joyce record the ways in which human perspectives can be transformed. In Portrait, Stephen Dedalus is constantly undergoing epiphanies,… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Ethical inquiry has always been motivated by the aim of improving human conduct. It doesn't follow from that that the goal is… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
The variety within Mann's fiction is impressive and fascinating. But Joyce is even more various and many-sided. He begins his career with… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Those citizens are distracted by the toys technology has supplied, and fail to recognize the ways in which what they most deeply… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
I'm a fan of Hugh Kenner, Richard Ellman, Lionel Trilling and Frank Kermode. All these people have taught me how to read - but… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Refined religion is aimed at realizing ethical values, including the fostering of human lives and human communities. — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Many of the greatest works of philosophy seem to me to be valuable not because of their arguments, but because they offer us perspectives… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
As I read Mann in German for the first time, the full achievement - both literary and philosophical - of Death in Venice struck… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Look at Mann's reading habits, his explicit comments on Nietzsche, and his copy of Birth of Tragedy, and it starts to seem doubtful that… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
My ethical naturalism sees us as facing the predicament of being social animals without evolved adaptations that make social life easy. The fundamental problem… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
So my methodological approach is to draw on many different features in highlighting different facets of the novella (and the opera and the film). — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
In my view, we ought to replace the notion of analytic philosophy by that of synthetic philosophy. — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Philosophers ought to aspire to know lots of different things and to forge useful synthetic perspectives. — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
The balance between literature and philosophy in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is different from that struck in the novella, but, as Mann clearly pointed out… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
I don't think that anything of any consequence is known a priori: all our knowledge is built up by modifying the lore passed on… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Because the problems are objective features of the human situation - social animals without the capacities for making social life come easily - ethics… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
