“The more you read the novella, the more you should wonder, I think, which judgments are to be taken as bedrock.” ThinkingShouldWonderTakenJudgmentBedrock Author: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 he crafted a superbly supple and elegant style, apparently well suited to the kind of prose Aschenbach is supposed to write.” WritingMindWellsKindReasonStyleDevelopmentEnormousProseElegantAppreciatedVeniceSuppleDeath In Venice Author:Philip Kitcher
“We find in the novella a seamless interweaving of at least two narrative voices, one of which is that of an observer so sympathetic that his language appears to be Aschenbach's own, the other of which is superficially celebratory (except at the moment of moralistic condemnation) but undercuts Aschenbach by means of an ironic detachment.” MeanTwoMomentsLanguageVoiceNarrativeIronicObserversDetachmentSympatheticCondemnationSeamlessNarrative Voice Author:Philip Kitcher
“Critics who perceive the first level of Mann's irony recognize that the second voice is giving us reasons to be dubious about various aspects of Aschenbach's life and work. But many of them don't appreciate the second level of irony, the one exemplified in setting this narrative voice alongside the more sympathetic one, and inviting us to choose.” GivingFirstsReasonVoiceLevelsAspectAppreciateCriticsVariousSettingSettingsNarrativePerceiveIronySympatheticInvitingDubiousNarrative Voice Author:Philip Kitcher
“Any writer who could handle all these different voices would deserve high praise, but to do so without any sense of jarring or incoherence is an extraordinary accomplishment.” DifferentVoiceDeservePraiseExtraordinaryHandleAccomplishmentDifferent VoicesIncoherence Author:Philip Kitcher
“I think the tone of mockery Heller finds is a part of Mann's irony, but only a part - a brilliant further touch consists in juxtaposing perspectives so that we're led to wonder whether the mockery itself is the last word.” ThinkingLastsWonderPerspectiveBrilliantIronyToneLast WordsMockery Author:Philip Kitcher
“Was Mann himself fully aware of all the facets of his irony? Probably not - any more than Shakespeare was fully aware of all the riches subsequent critics have found in his plays.” PlayFoundCriticsRichesIronyFacets Author:Philip Kitcher
“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 didn't probe to discover exactly what tone or narrative device gave them that effect).” DifferentEffectsPerspectiveConsciousPlentyNarrativeToneDevicesPassagesResonanceDifferent PerspectiveAdopting Author:Philip Kitcher
“Mann's sexuality and his attitudes towards it are extremely complex - and the complexities are inherited in the figure of Aschenbach. Mann had lived through a series of (almost certainly unconsummated) relationships with young men.” MenYoungAttitudeFiguresSeriesComplexesSexualityYoung ManComplexity Author:Philip Kitcher
“After the success of Buddenbrooks, he married and fathered six children. Yet the surviving diaries tell us of recurrent sexual problems - and of Katia Mann's extremely sympathetic response to them” ChildrenProblemSixMarriedResponseSurvivingDiariesSympathetic Author:Philip Kitcher
“Wilhelmine Germany was hostile to the expression of same-sex love - and, of course, Mann would have known of the fate of Oscar Wilde. His early reading of Platen's poetry, and, probably when he was in his early twenties, of Platen's diaries, introduced him to a form of sexual expression he found profoundly congenial. It's not quite Platonic.” FormCoursesReadingFoundSexKnownFateExpressionTwentiesGermanyOscarsHostileDiariesPlatonicWildeSex Love Author:Philip Kitcher
“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 mode of sexual expression to his own life. Mann had returned to his diary for 1927 (one of those he burned) and to his parting from the young man, Klaus Heuser, whom the family had met on holiday and invited to Munich.” MenImportantBookYoungExpressionMetsKissingEmbraceContactRelateHeightYoung ManHolidayPassagesBurnedModestInvitedComponentsEroticSurvivingDiariesPartingChasteMunich Author: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 - and that is reiterated in TM's diary queries about "how two men can sleep together".” MenTwoDifferentTogetherFormFatherSexSleepSawsAttractionHomosexualityDiariesLiberatedQueries Author:Philip Kitcher
“conclude, what Thomas Mann really wanted was a limited physical relationship with beautiful young men: the opportunity to gaze at them, an occasional touch, a restrained kiss. That isn't a surrogate for what he'd like to have if he were somehow free from social constraints. It's what the young Platen wanted, it's what he wanted - and it's what his Aschenbach wants.” IfsMenWantWantedBeautifulYoungOpportunitySocialKissingYoung ManOccasionalConstraintsSurrogates Author:Philip Kitcher
“The classical allusions and the Platonic disquisitions on beauty are no longer a form of cover, but integral to Aschenbach's complex sexuality. Moreover, the wandering around Venice in pursuit of Tadzio isn't a prelude to some sexual contact for which Aschenbach is yearning.” FormComplexesSexualityPursuitContactWanderYearningVeniceAllusionPlatonicPreludeWandering Around Author:Philip Kitcher
“Britten's opera tends to see things in simpler terms. It portrays an Aschenbach who wants a richer form of sexual fulfillment, and who is hemmed in by the social conventions to which he subscribes. But Visconti's use of the Mahler Adagietto is perfect for what I take to be Aschenbach's sexual desire.” WantUseFormDesireSocialTermPerfectFulfillmentConventionsOperaSexual DesireMahler Author:Philip Kitcher
“Finally, this is one way to reconcile the delight in beauty with the bourgeois life. Aschenbach, on one reading, has spent virtually all of his adult life balancing his restrained homosexuality, which is bound together with his sensitivity to beauty and thus with his artistic vocation, against the demands of conventional society.” WayTogetherReadingDemandAdultsBoundsDelightOne WayArtisticConventionalHomosexualitySensitivityVocationBourgeoisReconcile Author:Philip Kitcher
“Aschenbach is not only a projection of Mann in the obvious ways - same daily routines, author of the works Mann had planned - nor even in sharing his author's aspirations, doubts, and sexual identity. His watchword, "Durchhalten!" [persevere, keep going] could be Mann's own.” WayDoubtIdentityObviousAspirationKeep GoingProjectionPersevereDaily Routines Author: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 to surpass his previous fiction; sometimes the diaries express this in terms of a dejected judgment that the summit has already been reached.” SometimesDesireWishTermFictionJudgmentConstantDiariesSummitCounterpartsDejected Author: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 by Mann and by Aschenbach (it's in Mahler, as well). So life is inevitably incomplete.” WellsFormLife IsDesireSatisfiedIncompleteInsatiableMahler Author: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 breaks his staff - his author retires to Stratford. At the very end, Mann did something similar. Interestingly, in both instances, death came quite quickly after that.” GivingDoeEndsSometimesDoneEnoughArtistCoursesBreakEffectsGiving UpInstanceRetiringStaffProspero Author:Philip Kitcher
“So is fighting incompleteness the source of artistic neurosis? I doubt it. At most, this would apply to artists who deal with particular kinds of problems. I don't think we should think of Haydn or Mozart or Dickens or George Eliot in these terms.” ThinkingShouldKindProblemArtistFightingTermDealsDoubtParticularSourceArtisticNeurosisDickensEliotIncompleteness Author:Philip Kitcher
“Mann was less interested, I think, in constructing any kind of "portrait of an age" than he was in delineating an individual consciousness in which profound struggles about identity and direction arise - struggles that Mann himself had not only reflected on but felt keenly. Visconti takes up this central focus of the novella, but he couples it with a more social perspective.” ThinkingKindAgeIndividualSocialFeltConsciousnessStruggleFocusIdentityPerspectiveCoupleProfoundArisePortraits Author:Philip Kitcher
“Mann and Joyce are very different, and yet their fiction often appeals to the same people: Harry Levin taught a famous course on Joyce, Proust, and Mann, and Joseph Campbell singled out Joyce and Mann as special favorites. To see them as offering "possibilities for living", as I do, isn't to identify any distinctive commonality. After all, many great authors would fall under that rubric.” PeopleDifferentFallCoursesFictionSpecialPossibilityTaughtAppealsOfferingDistinctiveJoyceCommonalityProustGreat AuthorRubrics Author:Philip Kitcher
“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 my view, Dubliners is underrated.” WayHumansViewsFictionCareersStudyWonderfulVariousVarietyHuman LifeFascinatingSequenceImpressiveBleakUnderratedJoyce Author:Philip Kitcher
“Both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are inexhaustible. They are celebrations of the ordinary, compelling reactions to philosophical elitism about "the good life". I hope to examine both of them further, doing more justice to Joycean comedy than I did in my "invitation" to the Wake, and trying to understand how the extraordinary stylistic innovations, particularly the proliferation of narrative forms, enable Joyce to "see life foully" from a vast number of sides.” TryingFormSidesJusticeNumbersComedyOrdinaryInnovationPhilosophicalExtraordinaryReactionsNarrativeGood LifeCelebrationCompellingInvitationsProliferationElitismJoyceUlyssesFinnegans Wake Author:Philip Kitcher
“For anyone who conceives literature in terms of plurality of perspectives, Finnegans Wake has to be the apogee. For, as we are told, every word in it has three score and ten "toptypsical" meanings - an exaggeration, of course, but an important reminder to readers who like their fiction definite.” ImportantThreeCoursesLiteratureTermFictionPerspectiveReaderTenScoreDefiniteRemindersExaggerationFinnegans Wake Author:Philip Kitcher
“I rather stumbled into philosophy. When I began my undergraduate career at Cambridge, I studied mathematics.” PhilosophyCareersMathematicsCambridgeUndergraduate Author: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 mathematical tripos. A very sensitive mathematics don recommended that I talk to the historian of astronomy, Michael Hoskin, and the conversation led me to enroll in the History and Philosophy of Science for my final undergraduate year.” YearsTwoPhilosophyProblemStudyClearConversationMathematicsFinalsAstronomyMathematicalBoredSensitiveTwo YearsHistorianRegimesProblem SolvingPhilosophy Of ScienceCambridgeUndergraduate Author:Philip Kitcher
“I was occupied by a range of questions, often different from those fashionable in the professional philosophy of the past half century, that have sometimes troubled philosophers in the past. It's taken me several decades to work out my own philosophical agenda, and it is wide.” DifferentSometimesPhilosophyPastMy OwnHalfTakenCenturyPhilosophicalPhilosopherWork OutWideDecadesRangeAgendasFashionable Author:Philip Kitcher
“I have enormous respect for Derek Parfit, although he seems to me bound within an unfortunate philosophical tradition - rather like the extraordinarily brilliant exponents of Ptolemaic astronomy in the Middle Ages.” SeemsAgeMiddleTraditionPhilosophicalBoundsBrilliantAstronomyEnormousUnfortunateMiddle AgesExponents Author:Philip Kitcher
“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 to us by our ancestors in light of our experiences, and the best a philosopher can do is to learn as much about what has been discovered in various empirical fields, and use it to try to craft an improved synthesis.” ThinkingTryingHas BeensUseLightCan DoKnownFieldsConsequenceBuiltPhilosopherVariousCraftsAncestorSynthesisModifying Author:Philip Kitcher
“Experiments work when, and only when, they call into action cognitive capacities that might reliably deliver the conclusions drawn.” MightActionCapacityExperimentsConclusionCognitive Author:Philip Kitcher
“For a pragmatist like me, the important issues concern the words we might deploy to achieve our purposes, rather than the language we actually use.” ImportantUseMightPurposeLanguageIssuesAchieveConcernLike MeImportant IssuesPragmatists Author: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 philosophy - a style that has cut philosophy off, not only from the humanities but from every other branch of inquiry and culture.” IfsEndsPhilosophyWould BeCertainHumanityCultureCuttingStyleIntuitionBranchesAbandonedInquiry Author:Philip Kitcher
“In my view, we ought to replace the notion of analytic philosophy by that of synthetic philosophy.” PhilosophyViewsOughtNotionAnalyticsSynthetic Author:Philip Kitcher
“Philosophers ought to aspire to know lots of different things and to forge useful synthetic perspectives.” KnowsDifferentPerspectiveOughtPhilosopherDifferent ThingsAspireSynthetic Author:Philip Kitcher
“Ethical inquiry has always been motivated by the aim of improving human conduct. It doesn't follow from that that the goal is to produce a complete rule book that would be applicable to all cases.” HumansBookWould BeGoalCasesProduceAimEthicalMotivatedImprovingInquiry Author:Philip Kitcher
“I'm very suspicious of the idea of a "final theory" in natural science, and the thought of a complete system of ethical rules seems even more dubious.” IdeasSeemsNaturalTheoryFinalsEthicalSuspiciousNatural ScienceDubious Author:Philip Kitcher
“A different vision of ethics is that of a collection of resources people can use to act better. The resources might be firm rules that could always be relied on. Or they might be ideals that could often be followed without thinking but that sometimes conflicted with one another.” PeopleThinkingDifferentSometimesUseMightVisionEthicsResourcesIdealsFirmCollectionsOften Is Author:Philip Kitcher
“One goal of ethical inquiry might be to uncover strategies available for use when values conflict or when rules are incomplete.” UseMightValuesGoalConflictStrategyAvailableEthicalInquiryIncomplete Author:Philip Kitcher
“My ethical naturalism sees us as facing the predicament of being social animals without evolved adaptations that make social life easy. The fundamental problem that sparks the ethical project lies in our limited responsiveness to one another. The only way we have to address that problem is through a representative, informed, and engaged conversation.” WayProblemLyingSocialEasyAnimalConversationProjectsFundamentalsEngagedAddressesEthicalSparksRepresentativesAdaptationSocial LifeNaturalismPredicamentsResponsiveness Author:Philip Kitcher
“I take the ethical truths to be the stable elements that emerge out of ethical progress and that are retained under further ethical progress.” ProgressElementsEthicalStable Author:Philip Kitcher
“The expert is a midwife. The expert is not someone who has the authority to pronounce the last word on the subject.” LastsSubjectsAuthorityExpertsLast WordsMidwife Author:Philip Kitcher
“In ethics, we don't make progress by discovering pre-existent truths; we do so by solving problems.” ProblemProgressEthicsDiscoveringProblem Solving Author:Philip Kitcher
“Because the problems are objective features of the human situation - social animals without the capacities for making social life come easily - ethics is objectively constrained. It's not the case that "anything goes".” HumansProblemSocialAnimalSituationCasesEthicsCapacityObjectivesFeaturesSocial LifeAnything Goes Author: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 transitions actually went. Often, however, that isn't so. There are many facts about human life in the Paleolithic we're never likely to know.” KnowsTryingHumansImportantSometimesFactsEvidenceHuman LifeEthicalTransitionHypothesisOutlines Author:Philip Kitcher
“I argue against literal interpretation of religious doctrines. Religions make progress when they emancipate themselves from literalism, and take their doctrinal statements to be metaphors or allegories.” ReligiousProgressMetaphorArguingStatementsDoctrineInterpretationLiteralAllegory Author:Philip Kitcher
“Refined religion is aimed at realizing ethical values, including the fostering of human lives and human communities.” HumansValuesRealizingCommunityIncludingHuman LifeEthicalRefinedFosteringEthical Values Author:Philip Kitcher
“Secular humanists should recognize those forms of religion as allies in the struggle for human advancement. They should also learn from them, as they try to build a fully secular world in which people can have the opportunity to live rich and fulfilling lives.” PeopleWorldShouldTryingHumansFormOpportunityStruggleRichAlliesSecularFulfillingAdvancementFulfilling Life Author:Philip Kitcher
