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.

I don't think that anything of any consequence is known a priori: all our knowledge is built up by modifying the lore passed on to us by our ancestors in light of our experiences, and the best a philosopher can do is to learn as much about what has been discovered in various empirical fields, and use it to try to craft an improved synthesis.

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 Aschenbach (it's in Mahler, as well). So life is inevitably incomplete.

My ethical naturalism sees us as facing the predicament of being social animals without evolved adaptations that make social life easy. The fundamental problem that sparks the ethical project lies in our limited responsiveness to one another. The only way we have to address that problem is through a representative, informed, and engaged conversation.

When I try to outline the history of ethical life, it's sometimes possible to find evidence for a hypothesis about how important transitions actually went. Often, however, that isn't so. There are many facts about human life in the Paleolithic we're never likely to know.

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.

I believe that the arts make indispensable contributions to our understanding.