Monthly Archives: October 2020

Read it Here First! My Obit!

Posted on October 27, 2020 by Abigail

Read it Here First! My Obit! All this week, Jerry and I have been attending to what I call “Last Arrangements.” Though we’re not expecting to kick off any time soon, you never know, and one of the chores I’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in "Absolute Freedom and Terror", Absurdism, Academe, Action, Afterlife, Alienation, Anthropology, Art, Art of Living, Atheism, Autonomy, beauty, Bible, Biblical God, books, bureaucracy, Childhood, Chivalry, Christianity, Cities, Class, conformism, Contemplation, Contradictions, Cool, Courage, Courtship, cults, Cultural Politics, Culture, Desire, dialectic, Erotic Life, Eternity, Ethics, Evil, Existentialism, exploitation, Faith, Fashion, Female Power, Femininity, Feminism, Freedom, Friendship, Gender Balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, Guilt and Innocence, Health, Hegel, hegemony, Heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, History, history of ideas, ID, Idealism, Ideality, Identity, Ideology, Idolatry, Immorality, Immortality, Institutional Power, Jews, Journalism, Judaism, Law, Legal Responsibility, life and death struggle, Literature, Love, Male Power, Masculinity, Memoir, memory, Mind Control, Modern Women, Modernism, Moral action, Moral evaluation, Moral psychology, morality, Mortality, Ontology, Oppression, Past and Future, Peace, Phenomenology of Mind, Philosophy, politics of ideas, post modernism, Power, presence, promissory notes, Propaganda, Psychology, public facade, Public Intellectual, Reading, Reductionism, relationships, Religion, Roles, Romance, Romantic Love, secular, Seduction, self-deception, Sex Appeal, Sexuality, social climbing, social construction, Social Conventions, social ranking, Sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, Spirituality, status, status of women, Suffering, Terror, The Examined Life, The Problematic of Men, The Problematic of Woman, the profane, the sacred, Theism, Theology, Time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, Work, Writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged A.J. Ayer, Abigail L. Rosenthal, Abigail L. Rosenthal’s A Good Look at Evil, Abigail L. Rosenthal’s “A Hegelian Key to Hegel’s Method”, Abigail L. Rosenthal’s “Feminism without Contradictions”, Abigail L. Rosenthal’s “God and the Care for One’s Story”, Abigail L. Rosenthal’s “The Right Way to Act”, Abigail L. Rosenthal’s Confessions of a Young Philosopher, academic arbitrator, academic job fight, anthologized philosophy articles, Augustinian confession, banality of evil, Barnard College, Bernard Williams, Brooklyn College Philosophy Department, Chaim Tchernowitz, chance episodes, chief rabbi of Odessa, Chronicle of Higher Education, College de France, Columbia class of 1925, Columbia M.A., Columbia University, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, defending Holocaust victims, defending introspection, dialectical life, doctoral exams, doing philosophy, evil life, falling in love, feminine wisdom, filial piety, Fulbright Scholar, good life, Hannah Arendt, Hebraist renaissance, Hegel in a Hegelian way, Hegel’s humanism, Henry M. Rosenthal, Henry M. Rosenthal’s The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes’s Secret; Spinoza’s Way, Hermeneutics, High School of Music and Arts, Holocaust, hometown Manhattan, honors in philosophy, Jacob Taubes, Jerry L. Martin, Jerusalem street name, John Bacon, last arrangements, life as a search for truth, Marx and Freud, Memorial Minute, Morality in the Modern World, obituary, Penn State, philosopher’s daughter, philosophic friendship, philosophic life, Proceedings and Addresses, providential intervention, Rachelle Rosenthal, Rav Tsair, self-corrective narrative, sensitivity measure, spoiling the story, SUNY at Stony Brook, Sydney Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy, Sydney University, The class genius, The Jewish Daily Forward, the lives of women, The New York Post, the Sorbonne, University Seminar on Hermeneutics | 6 Comments

Snobbism

Posted on October 20, 2020 by Abigail

Snobbism I was reminded of how much I hate snobbism by another biography of a philosopher. Having just finished Ray Monk’s Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, from which I learned about a man, an era and a creative philosophical method … Continue reading →

Posted in Absurdism, Academe, Action, Anthropology, Art of Living, Autonomy, books, bureaucracy, Childhood, Cities, Class, conformism, Contemplation, Contradictions, Cool, Courage, cults, Cultural Politics, Culture, Desire, dialectic, Erotic Life, Ethics, Evil, Existentialism, exploitation, Faith, Fashion, Feminism, Freedom, Friendship, Gender Balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, Guilt and Innocence, Health, hegemony, Heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history of ideas, Ideality, Identity, Ideology, Idolatry, Immorality, Institutional Power, life and death struggle, Male Power, Masculinity, master, master/slave relation, Memoir, memory, Mind Control, Modernism, Moral action, Moral evaluation, Moral psychology, morality, Oppression, Past and Future, Philosophy, politics of ideas, post modernism, Power, presence, promissory notes, Propaganda, Psychology, public facade, Public Intellectual, Reading, Reductionism, relationships, Roles, scientism, secular, Seduction, self-deception, Sexuality, social climbing, social construction, Social Conventions, social ranking, Sociobiology, spiritual journey, Spirituality, status, status of women, The Examined Life, The Problematic of Men, The Problematic of Woman, the profane, the sacred, Time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, victimhood, victims, Work, Writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged Alan Turing, American high school, biography of a philosopher, Cambridge University, charm v character, Cheryl Misak’s Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers, contemporary culture, continental snobs, cultural era, cultural pecking order, culture of intimidation, Darwinian games, dinner with the count, discouraging bullies, dying young, economics, English public school, English snobbery, English snobs, English universities, Ethiopian nobility, fox hunt, French aristocrat, French count, good at games, good at school work, good manners, hereditary privilege, high school rank, hounds at the hunt, influencing Wittgenstein, intellectual aristocracy, intellectual hierarchy, invited philosophy paper, Kurt Godel, life as a test of thought, living one’s views, math, outliving high school rank, outranking somebody, philosophers’ lives, philosophic creativity, philosophic method, philosophy, post-lecture gathering, prep school, pretentiouness, Ramsey Pricing, Ramsey Sentences, Ramseyan Humility, Ramsey’s influence, Ramsey’s Problem, Ramsification, Ray Monk’s Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, rudeness, Russian princesses, snob as hound at the foxhunt, snobbism, snubbing, social ordeal, social target, sporty type, survival of the fittest, the Keynes-Ramsey Rule, the Ramsey Test for Conditionals, thinker’s life, thought and life, unofficial caste, unpretentiousness, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus | 2 Comments

Hunting Eichmann

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Abigail

Hunting Eichmann This is not a book review, despite the book title above. I haven’t read the book, only watched a talk before a packed hall by Neal Bascomb, the author of Hunting Eichmann, on a C-Span history program last … Continue reading →

Posted in "Absolute Freedom and Terror", Absurdism, Academe, Action, Afterlife, Alienation, American Politics, Anthropology, Art of Living, Atheism, Autonomy, Biblical God, books, bureaucracy, Christianity, Cities, Class, conformism, Contemplation, Contradictions, Cool, Courage, cults, Cultural Politics, Culture, Desire, dialectic, Ethics, Evil, Existentialism, exploitation, Faith, Freedom, Gender Balance, glitterati, Guilt and Innocence, hegemony, Heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, History, history of ideas, Idealism, Ideality, Identity, Ideology, Idolatry, Immorality, Institutional Power, Jews, Journalism, Judaism, Law, Legal Responsibility, life and death struggle, Memoir, memory, Mind Control, Modernism, Moral action, Moral evaluation, Moral psychology, morality, Mortality, Oppression, Past and Future, Philosophy, Political, Political Movements, politics of ideas, post modernism, Power, Propaganda, Psychology, public facade, Race, radicalism, Reading, Reductionism, relationships, Religion, Roles, secular, Seduction, self-deception, social construction, Social Conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, Spirituality, status, Suffering, Terror, terrorism, The Examined Life, The Problematic of Men, The Problematic of Woman, the profane, the sacred, Theism, Theology, Time, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, victimhood, victims, Violence, War, Work, Writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged "Jewish", Abigail L. Rosenthal’s A Good Look at Evil, Adolf Eichmann, analyzing Eichmann, Argentine dictator, author’s normality, banality of evil, book lecture, book review, bureaucratic mindset, C-span history program, Eichmann’s son Klaus, Eichmann’s sons, German Prosecutor-General, Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Holocaust, Holocaust executioner, international negotiation, Israeli ambassador, Israeli diplomat, Israeli intelligence, Jerusalem trial, Josef Avidar, kidnapping Eichmann, Mossad, Nazi refuge, Nazi war criminals, Neal Bascomb’s Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World’s Most Notorious Nazi, no hunting season, no news is good news, non-fiction suspense story, organization man, plot reversals, Ricardo Klement, secret agent, Shin Bet, spy story, the Eichmann trial, the Nazi escape line, the rat line, the word Jewish, time traveler, war crimes tribunals, West German government | Leave a comment

What’s with Wittgenstein?

Posted on October 6, 2020 by Abigail

What’s with Wittgenstein? Ludwig Wittgenstein seems still to bestride the narrow straits of world thought like a colossus, reflections of him flickering over cultural regions far afield from his own. By lamplight, I’ve been spending my recent weeks with the … Continue reading →

Posted in Absurdism, Academe, Action, Alienation, Art of Living, Atheism, Autonomy, books, Cities, Class, Contemplation, Contradictions, Cool, Courage, Cultural Politics, Culture, Desire, dialectic, Erotic Life, Eternity, Ethics, Evil, Existentialism, exploitation, Faith, Fashion, Freedom, Friendship, glitterati, Gnosticism, Guilt and Innocence, hegemony, Heroes, hidden God, history of ideas, Idealism, Ideality, Identity, Ideology, Idolatry, Institutional Power, Jews, Law, Legal Responsibility, Male Power, Masculinity, memory, Mind Control, Modernism, Moral action, Moral evaluation, Moral psychology, morality, Mysticism, Ontology, Oppression, Past and Future, Philosophy, politics of ideas, post modernism, Power, presence, promissory notes, Psychology, public facade, Public Intellectual, radicalism, Reading, Reductionism, relationships, Religion, Roles, scientism, secular, Seduction, self-deception, Sexuality, social construction, Social Conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, Spirituality, status, Suffering, The Examined Life, The Problematic of Men, The Problematic of Woman, the profane, the sacred, Theology, Time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Work, Writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged aesthetic theories, collegial companions, Cornell philosophers, Cornell University, cultural influence, detective story, divine dimension, Dostoyevskian, ethical understanding, freedom and determinism, gay vulnerability, genius, gifted colleagues, gifted students, healthy mind, History of Philosophy, inherited problems, intellectual bad habits, intellectual habits, intellectual junk pile, introspection, Jewish ancestry, Jewish vulnerability, John Nelson, longest conversation, love of wisdom, Ludwig Wittgenstein, meaning of life, mind/body problem, misguided intellectual, misuse of language, moral theories, neutral observer, observer and data, Oets Bouwsma, philosopher defined, philosopher’s biography, philosophic discussion, philosophic history, philosophic questions, philosophic torment, philosophic whodunnit, philosophy and culture, philosophy as morbid condition, philosophy as the mind’s auto-immune disease, philosophy of law, philosophy teacher, pseudo-problems, psychological morbidity, Ray Monk’s Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, relentless inquiry, saying and seeing, science and ordinary life, search for truth, self-observation, suicides in Vienna, talking philosophy, the last philosopher, tormented genius, ultimate questions, useless baggage, Wittgenstein’s therapy, world thought | Leave a comment

Monthly Archives: October 2020

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