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

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".

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.

Current education in science treats all students as if they were going to have scientific careers. They are required to solve problems and memorize lists. For many of them, this kills interest very quickly.

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

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.

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