Philip Kitcher Quotes - Page 3

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• 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.

  Philip Kitcher

  Beautiful, Kissing, Opportunity

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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.

  Philip Kitcher

  Perspective, Important, Three

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I rather stumbled into philosophy. When I began my undergraduate career at Cambridge, I studied mathematics.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophy, Careers, Mathematics

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophy, Years, Two

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Taken

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The hardest problem of all is to appreciate the facts that the poor nations are - quite reasonably - not going to forgo their development, and that they can only afford to develop by consuming fossil fuels.

  Philip Kitcher

  Appreciate, Poor Nations, Development

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Experiments work when, and only when, they call into action cognitive capacities that might reliably deliver the conclusions drawn.

  Philip Kitcher

  Might, Action, Capacity

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophy, Cutting, Humanity

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• In my view, we ought to replace the notion of analytic philosophy by that of synthetic philosophy.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophy, Views, Synthetic

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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.

  Philip Kitcher

  Book, Goal, Would Be

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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.

  Philip Kitcher

  Thinking, Often Is, People

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• In my current work on global warming, I argue that the only apparent solution to the deep problem of climate change would require very large transfers of wealth from rich nations to poor nations, so that the entire world can make the transition to renewable forms of energy as fast as possible.

  Philip Kitcher

  Poor Nations, Energy, Climate

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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.

  Philip Kitcher

  Issues, Important, Purpose

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The result can be quite new - perhaps a tendency to judge that something we've never conceived of is possible, or to feel sympathy for a trait or a type of person whom we've regarded with indifference or even hostility.

  Philip Kitcher

  Judging, Indifference, Results

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• When we read a literary work (or, in some instances, listen to music) our imagination is stimulated, we feel various emotions, and we arrive at new judgments. These attitudes are brought into relation with many others, including our standing tendencies to think and feel in particular ways, and we try to fit our psychological capacities and responses together.

  Philip Kitcher

  Attitude, Thinking, Imagination

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I'm a fan of Hugh Kenner, Richard Ellman, Lionel Trilling and Frank Kermode. All these people have taught me how to read - but perhaps, above all literary critics, I'm indebted to Wayne Booth (several people have suggested to me that I'm trying to reinvent "ethical criticism").

  Philip Kitcher

  People, Criticism, Trying

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• There are many critics whose work I greatly admire. Even though I diverge from T.J. Reed in several important ways, I've learned greatly from his writings on Mann.

  Philip Kitcher

  Writing, Important, Way

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I use biography, I use literary connections (as with Platen - this seems to me extremely helpful for appreciating the nuances of Mann's and Aschenbach's sexuality), I use philosophical sources (but not in the way many Mann critics do, where the philosophical theses and concepts seem to be counters to be pushed around rather than ideas to be probed), and I use juxtapositions with other literary works (including Mann's other fiction) and with works of music.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophical, Ideas, Appreciate

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Read Mann's notes, which contain precise accounts of cholera and its symptoms, and observe how careful he is throughout his fiction in getting medical details straight - then you might begin to wonder whether cholera is the only candidate for the cause of Aschenbach's death. What results from this, I think, is a deeper appreciation of Mann's brilliance in keeping so many possibilities in play. The ambiguity is even more artful than people have realized.

  Philip Kitcher

  Appreciation, Thinking, Play

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Think about Mann's own daily routine (ascribed to Aschenbach), read the extant diaries and the letters in which he discusses the novella's themes, and it won't be so obvious that the attraction to Tadzio is completely unprecedented; it also won't be obvious that what Aschenbach wants is full sexual contact.

  Philip Kitcher

  Thinking, Routine, Diaries

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Consider the different narrative styles within the story, and the glee with which the "moralistic narrator" celebrates Aschenbach's fall - maybe, then, this is a hostile verdict and the international fame is warranted after all (given that Mann modeled his protagonist so closely on himself, it would be quite odd if he had intended Aschenbach's literary inferiority to be a fixed part of the interpretation).

  Philip Kitcher

  Fall, Style, Narrators

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I suggest in my own discussion of this episode, Mann invites us to set the attempt to philosophize about his predicament in the context of Aschenbach's life. The literary presentation thus adds to the naked philosophical skeleton.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophical, Skeletons, Naked

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The balance between literature and philosophy in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is different from that struck in the novella, but, as Mann clearly pointed out in his writings about both thinkers, both modes are present.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophy, Writing, Balance

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I suspect that any worthwhile exploration of these deep questions about living requires going beyond abstract discussions to the vivid presentation of possibilities. If readers are to be prompted to serious examination of their lives, anatomy isn't enough. We have to be stimulated to imagine, in some detail, what it would be like to live in particular ways.

  Philip Kitcher

  Details, Would Be, Examination

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Mann is widely recognized as a master of irony and ambiguity, yet it's remarkable how quickly people foreclose options he carefully leaves open. Lots of readers - including eminent critics - jump to conclusions: that Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy is a central background text, that Aschenbach is an inferior writer, that he's never been attracted by pubescent male beauty before, that he dies of cholera.

  Philip Kitcher

  People, Tragedy, Males

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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