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.

So this is my attempt to give a preliminary - probably far too crude - account of how philosophy by showing can really teach us. The attempts we make to work through problems by reasoning always presuppose starting points, and even the most self-critical philosophers adopt some of those starting points simply by picking them up from the social environments in which they grow up.

In working towards ways of reading Mann, so that his own advances in suggesting new perspectives will become more vivid, I do some fairly standard philosophical analysis of ideas in Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

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.

It's a very bad idea for scientific conclusions to be accepted because they fit with the political values of a group of researchers.

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 this work of Nietzsche's played much role in the gestation of the novella.

It may be hyperbolic to declare that Shakespeare teaches us more about being human than all the natural scientists combined.