There's a disciplined erotic component to it, so that the height of sexual contact is the embrace, the modest touch, a relatively chaste kiss. An important passage from the surviving 1942 diary (one I quote in the book) relates this… — Philip Kitcher Copy Share Image
Mann was conscious of adopting different perspectives in different parts of the novella, but my guess is that there are plenty of passages in which the resonance of the words he chose struck him as exactly right (even though he… — 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
