I felt I should also contrast Visconti's treatment of the novella - usually damned by Mann fans (who typically respect Britten's more "faithful" adaptation). The Visconti film does many quite wonderful things, although there are good reasons for the condemnation. — 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 a wonderful sequence of bleak studies about the ways in which human lives can go awry - in… — 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
