Philip Kitcher

Klaus Mann saw very clearly how different was his own (more liberated) form of homosexuality from the same-sex attractions of his father…

— Philip Kitcher

The hardest problem of all is to appreciate the facts that the poor nations are - quite reasonably - not going to…

— Philip Kitcher

A different vision of ethics is that of a collection of resources people can use to act better. The resources might be…

— Philip Kitcher

The amalgam of psychological attitudes we form is the synthetic complex. It may fall apart quite quickly as further reflection or further…

— Philip Kitcher

I'm quite pessimistic about climate change. This is an urgent problem, and much of the world is only now waking up to…

— Philip Kitcher

Any writer who could handle all these different voices would deserve high praise, but to do so without any sense of jarring…

— Philip Kitcher

Schopenhauer's thought that Will is insatiable, that once satisfied in one form it must be expressed in new desires, is inherited both…

— Philip Kitcher

Was Mann himself fully aware of all the facets of his irony? Probably not - any more than Shakespeare was fully aware…

— Philip Kitcher

After two years of undergraduate study, it was clear that I was bored by the regime of problem-solving required by the Cambridge…

— Philip Kitcher

Finally, this is one way to reconcile the delight in beauty with the bourgeois life. Aschenbach, on one reading, has spent virtually…

— Philip Kitcher

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

One of the things I want to do in the book is to explore how philosophy can be done in literature. I…

— Philip Kitcher

Mann is widely recognized as a master of irony and ambiguity, yet it's remarkable how quickly people foreclose options he carefully leaves…

— Philip Kitcher

Consider the different narrative styles within the story, and the glee with which the "moralistic narrator" celebrates Aschenbach's fall - maybe, then,…

— Philip Kitcher

There are actually two separate issues here. The first is whether (as ancient philosophers and Nietzsche assume) only the privileged elite can…

— Philip Kitcher

My ethical naturalism sees us as facing the predicament of being social animals without evolved adaptations that make social life easy. The…

— Philip Kitcher

So is fighting incompleteness the source of artistic neurosis? I doubt it. At most, this would apply to artists who deal with…

— Philip Kitcher

If the intuition-mongering were abandoned, would that be the end of philosophy? It would be the end of a certain style of…

— Philip Kitcher

Think about Mann's own daily routine (ascribed to Aschenbach), read the extant diaries and the letters in which he discusses the novella's…

— Philip Kitcher

In my current work on global warming, I argue that the only apparent solution to the deep problem of climate change would…

— Philip Kitcher

I'm a fan of Hugh Kenner, Richard Ellman, Lionel Trilling and Frank Kermode. All these people have taught me how to read…

— Philip Kitcher

I argue against literal interpretation of religious doctrines. Religions make progress when they emancipate themselves from literalism, and take their doctrinal statements…

— Philip Kitcher

Current education in science treats all students as if they were going to have scientific careers. They are required to solve problems…

— Philip Kitcher

Secular humanists should recognize those forms of religion as allies in the struggle for human advancement. They should also learn from them,…

— Philip Kitcher

To my mind, Death in Venice represents an enormous advance in Mann's literary development, not simply for the commonly appreciated reason that…

— Philip Kitcher

After the success of Buddenbrooks, he married and fathered six children. Yet the surviving diaries tell us of recurrent sexual problems -…

— Philip Kitcher

Sometimes, of course, the artist does give up, saying, in effect, "I've done enough". Prospero declares that the revels are ended, and…

— Philip Kitcher

My ideal of conversation that includes wide representation of perspectives, informed by the consensus view of current experts, pursued with an attempt…

— Philip Kitcher

For anyone who conceives literature in terms of plurality of perspectives, Finnegans Wake has to be the apogee. For, as we are…

— Philip Kitcher

I suggest in my own discussion of this episode, Mann invites us to set the attempt to philosophize about his predicament in…

— Philip Kitcher

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

I think the tone of mockery Heller finds is a part of Mann's irony, but only a part - a brilliant further…

— Philip Kitcher

I read Aschenbach's constant desire to go beyond the works he has already produced to be the counterpart of Mann's deep wish…

— Philip Kitcher

Mann's sexuality and his attitudes towards it are extremely complex - and the complexities are inherited in the figure of Aschenbach. Mann…

— Philip Kitcher

In my view, all students should be given an initial opportunity to pursue the science track as far as it goes. But…

— Philip Kitcher

I don't think readers of Mann have overlooked the fact that he was a great ironist, but they have tended to see…

— Philip Kitcher

The balance between literature and philosophy in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is different from that struck in the novella, but, as Mann clearly…

— Philip Kitcher

We know that he gave Aschenbach Mahler's first name, and also his facial features. So Visconti picks up on something interesting. That…

— Philip Kitcher

The "little theme" from Vinteuil, heard by Swann as emblematic of his love for Odette, remains a point of reference for him,…

— Philip Kitcher

Sometimes, however, the new synthetic complex proves stable, and even serves as the beginning of a much larger cluster of attitudes that…

— Philip Kitcher