If we look at our attitudes consistently and work out the logical implications we're on the road to moral progress, moral understanding.

I was trained as a philosopher never to put philosophers and their ideas into historical contexts, since historical context has nothing to do with the validity of the philosopher's positions. I agree that assessing validity and contextualizing historically are two entirely distinct matters and not to be confused with one another. And yet that firm distinction doesn't lead me to endorse the usual way in which history of philosophy is presented.

Answers? Forget answers. The spectacle is all in the questions.

I don't only act out of my character; my character reacts to my actions. Each time I why, even if I'm not caught, I become a little bit more of this ugly thing: a liar. Character is always in the making, with each morally valenced action, whether right or wrong, affecting our characters, the people who we are.

One doesn't diminish a philosopher's achievement, and doesn't undermine its soundness, by showing how the particular set of questions on which he focused, the orientation he brought to bear on his focus, has some causal connection to the circumstances of his life.

The philosophers talk across the centuries exclusively to one another, hermetically sealed from any influences derived from non-philosophical discourse.

Given cognitive vulnerabilities, it would be convenient to have an arrangement whereby reality could tell us off; and that is precisely what science is. Scientific methodology is the arrangement that allows reality to answer us back.