I use biography, I use literary connections (as with Platen - this seems to me extremely helpful for appreciating the nuances of… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
It's a very bad idea for scientific conclusions to be accepted because they fit with the political values of a group of… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
In working towards ways of reading Mann, so that his own advances in suggesting new perspectives will become more vivid, I do… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
It's not at all a bad idea for scientific questions to be chosen because a democratic deliberation would identify them as important… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
I'm a pluralist about perspectives on literature. There seem to me to be all sorts of illuminating ways of responding to major… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Sometime during the 1990s, when I was teaching philosophy at UCSD, my friend, colleague, and music teacher, Carol Plantamura, discussed the possibility… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
One of the things I want to do in the book is to explore how philosophy can be done in literature. I… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
In elaborating how "philosophy by showing" works, and in defending the idea that literature and music can contribute to philosophical "showing", I… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
I'm very suspicious of the idea of a "final theory" in natural science, and the thought of a complete system of ethical… — 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
