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 p….

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

It's not at all a bad idea for scientific questions to be chosen because a democratic deliberation would identify them as important for people's live….

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 i….

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

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

In ethics, we don't make progress by discovering pre-existent truths; we do so by solving problems..

If there are to be appropriate judgments about what questions are significant, you need both the informed views of scientists who know what has been ….

I'm quite pessimistic about climate change. This is an urgent problem, and much of the world is only now waking up to the easiest part of solving - t….

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 M….

Philosophy by showing - including philosophy in literature - does truly valuable work in leading us to new perspectives from which our arguments can ….

One goal of ethical inquiry might be to uncover strategies available for use when values conflict or when rules are incomplete..

Because the problems are objective features of the human situation - social animals without the capacities for making social life come easily - ethic….

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….

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….

I take the ethical truths to be the stable elements that emerge out of ethical progress and that are retained under further ethical progress..

Part of my methodological approach is made explicit when I discuss ways in which literature can have philosophical significance. Literature doesn't t….

Presenting Aschenbach as a composer - based on Mahler - leads to some dreadful scenes (especially those in which Aschenbach is berated by his student….

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….

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

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….