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.

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.

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 lives.

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

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.

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

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.