Monthly Archives: April 2023

Where Is the Happy Ending?

Posted on April 25, 2023 by Abigail

Stories, as I see them, are supposed to come out right. And here’s what I mean by “right.” It’s nothing deep, mysterious or esoteric. Our romantic couple rides off into the Western sunset. They have the time for their trip, … Continue reading →

Posted in Absurdism, Academe, Action, Afterlife, Alienation, American Politics, Anthropology, Art, Art of Living, Atheism, Autonomy, bad faith, Bible, Biblical God, bigotry, books, bureaucracy, 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, Films, Freedom, Friendship, Gender Balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, Guilt and Innocence, Health, hegemony, Heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, History, history of ideas, ID, idealism, Ideality, Identity, Ideology, Idolatry, Immorality, Institutional Power, Jews, Journalism, Judaism, Law, Legal Responsibility, life and death struggle, Literature, Love, Male Power, Martyrdom, Masculinity, master/slave relation, Memoir, memory, Messianic Age, Mind Control, Modern Women, Modernism, Moral action, Moral evaluation, Moral psychology, morality, Mortality, Mysticism, non-violence, Ontology, Oppression, pacifism, Past and Future, Peace, Philosophy, Poetry, Political, Political Movements, politics of ideas, post modernism, Power, presence, promissory notes, Propaganda, Psychology, public facade, Public Intellectual, Race, radicalism, Reading, Reductionism, relationships, Religion, Roles, Romance, Romantic Love, scientism, secular, Seduction, self-deception, Sex Appeal, Sexuality, slave, social climbing, social construction, Social Conventions, social ranking, Sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, Spirituality, status, status of women, 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, Utopia, victimhood, victims, Violence, War, Work, Writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged 36 righteous, academic politics, academic romance, academic victory, adult ed, anti-Jewish cartoons, campus anti-semites, Chronicle of Higher Education, conflict and congregations, core curriculum, cowboy gets the girl, cowboys, criterion for righteous deeds, defending Jewish students, Evangelicals and Zionism, facing justice, fashionable victims, former terrorist, good guys and bad guys, good story with bad ending, grace under anti-semitic pressure, grace under persecution, grace under pressure, happy ending, holier than thou, how things ought to be, inappropriate with women, Israel Consul vs Quakers, Kasim Hafeez's Never Again?, Lamed Vavnik, liberal arts program, love and marriage, metric for righteous deeds, miraculous cure, miraculous cure for anti-semitism, mitzvah, moral high ground, moral holiday, ousting a predator, philosophy department at Brooklyn College, philosophy professor, Phyllis Chesler, Phyllis Chesler's The New Anti-Semitism, politics in the real world, prayer and miracle, Presbyterians and BDS, public debate, pulling moral rank, rabbinical search committee, Reformed Temple, remembering the story, reprisals vs whistleblower, righteous deeds, righteous deeds vs chaos, righteous warrior, safeguarding the story, sanctimony, saving the core curriculum, search committee, StandWithUs, Stephen Spector, Stephen Spector's Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, stories ending wrongly, suffering of Jewish students, synagogue congregants, targeting Jewish students, trauma and recovery, unequal power relations, Western movies, whistleblower's trauma | Leave a comment

Reluctant Inferences

Posted on April 18, 2023 by Abigail

This is the evening when I usually pen the weekly essay for “Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column.” Till I take pen in hand, I never know exactly what I’m going to write. Often, I don’t even know the topic! So … Continue reading →

Posted in Absurdism, Academe, Action, Afterlife, Alienation, American Politics, Anthropology, Art of Living, Atheism, Autonomy, bad faith, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, Childhood, Christianity, Class, conformism, Contemplation, Contradictions, Cool, Courage, cults, Cultural Politics, Culture, Desire, dialectic, Eternity, Ethics, ethnicity, Evil, Existentialism, exploitation, Fashion, Female Power, Freedom, Friendship, Gender Balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, 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, Male Power, Martyrdom, Masculinity, master, master/slave relation, Memoir, memory, Mind Control, Modern Women, Modernism, Moral action, Moral evaluation, Moral psychology, morality, Mortality, Ontology, Oppression, Past and Future, Peace, Philosophy, Political, Political Movements, politics, politics of ideas, post modernism, Power, presence, promissory notes, Propaganda, Psychology, public facade, Public Intellectual, Race, Racism, Reading, Reductionism, relationships, Religion, Roles, scientism, secular, Seduction, self-deception, social climbing, social construction, Social Conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, Spirituality, status, status of women, 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, Utopia, victimhood, victims, Violence, War, Work, Writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged academic presentations, Adolf Eichmann, American common sense, American intellectual openness, American Political Science Association, anti-Jewish insults, anti-semitism, APSA, Argentina, Bettina Stangneth's Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer, bigoted words, collegial friendships, contemporary nihilism, contemporary reductionism, contemporary skepticism and cynicism, contrived writing, covert subtext, creative inspiration, creative thinkers, creatively inspired writing, deliberate ambiguity, denouncing while justifying, denying a people's value, disguised insults, divine message, duty vs convenience, Eichmann's Argentine transcripts, erasing a people, Eric Voegelin, Eric Voegelin and Jews, Eric Voegelin Society, Eric Voegelin's Order and History, Eric Voegelin's Israel and Revelation, European intellectual systems, EVS, fashionable opinions, genocide, good neighbors, good vs evil, Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, hidden message, Holocaust survivor, intellectual refinement, Jewish farmers, Jews and Judaism, know it all, losing friends, nazis in Roumania, philosophy of history, playing with evil, political science, pre-exilic post-exilic and post-Biblical Judaism, prejudicial language, pro-nazi informers, rationales for genocide, religion of Israel, Roumania, saying it and taking it back, significant coincidences, spirituality and history, strategically elusive, strategy of now you see it now you don't, stream of consciousness, theology of contempt, truthful writing, Voegelin escaping Gestapo, Voegelin targeted by nazis, Voegelin's anti-nazism, Voegelin's Vienna circle, words with consequences, world history, writing ambiguously, Yom ha Shoah | Leave a comment

Authenticity Adios

Posted on April 11, 2023 by Abigail

The philosopher who first brought “authenticity” to public notice was, I believe, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). According to a recent book, Tyranny and Revolution by Waller Newell, Heidegger’s notion went like this: you and I are to be grasped as localizations … Continue reading →

Posted in "Absolute Freedom and Terror", Absurdism, Academe, Action, Alienation, American Politics, Anthropology, Art, Art of Living, Atheism, Autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Biblical God, bigotry, books, 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, hegemony, Heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, History, history of ideas, ID, idealism, Ideality, Identity, Ideology, Idolatry, Immorality, Institutional Power, Jews, Journalism, Judaism, Law, Legal Responsibility, life and death struggle, Literature, Love, Male Power, Masculinity, master, master/slave relation, Memoir, memory, Messianic Age, Mind Control, Modern Women, Modernism, Moral action, Moral evaluation, Moral psychology, morality, Mortality, nineteenth-century, novels, Ontology, Oppression, Past and Future, Philosophy, Poetry, Political, Political Movements, politics of ideas, post modernism, Power, presence, promissory notes, Propaganda, Psychology, public facade, Public Intellectual, radicalism, Reading, Reductionism, relationships, Religion, Roles, Romance, Romantic Love, secular, Seduction, self-deception, Sex Appeal, Sexuality, slave, social climbing, social construction, Social Conventions, social ranking, 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, Violence, War, Work, Writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged antihero, Authenticity, épater le bourgeois, before the fall, being-toward-death, bourgeois morality, choice of evils, conformism, conventional opinion, counterculture, counterculture and creative artists, Dasein, death as news, era of authenticity, fashionable nonconformity, fashionable outlaws, female powerlessness, finding one’s calling, finding one’s own path, getting real, girls and French intellectuals, go along to get along, gossip, Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, Heidegger and existentialism, Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, Heidegger and Nazism, Heidegger Rector of University of Freiburg, Heidegger's authenticity, Heidegger's Jewish students, Hell is other people, hippies, hippy communes, inauthentic, inauthentic depth, infant dependency, integrity and conformism, integrity in society, Jean-Paul Sartre's Authenticity, judgment and judgmentalism, judgmentalism, Lionel Trilling's Sincerity and Authenticity, Martin Heidegger, middle class values, nonconformity à la mode, obituaries and condolences, other-directedness, outlaw chic, pony tails turning grey, prelapsarian innocence, put out or I'll put you in my book, Sartre and the waiter, Sartre on courtship, Sartre's advice to young women, Sartre's bad faith, Sartre's Being and Nothingness, Sartre's Huis Clos, Sartre's mauvaise foi, Sartre's No Exit, talent as an excuse, the counterculture and women, uncanniness in Heidegger, Walter Newell's Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger | Leave a comment

What Would Hegel Do?

Posted on April 4, 2023 by Abigail

I called myself a Hegelian for much of my academic career. Though that field is usually assigned to Continental Philosophy, the chair of one highly-regarded – and predominantly Analytic – philosophy department to which I’d applied told me that my … Continue reading →

Posted in "Absolute Freedom and Terror", Absurdism, Academe, Action, Alienation, American Politics, Anthropology, Art, Art of Living, Atheism, Autonomy, bad faith, Biblical God, bigotry, books, bureaucracy, Christianity, Cities, Class, conformism, Contemplation, Contradictions, Cool, Courage, cults, Cultural Politics, Culture, Desire, dialectic, eighteenth century, 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, Institutional Power, Jews, Journalism, Law, Legal Responsibility, life and death struggle, Literature, Love, Male Power, Martyrdom, Masculinity, master/slave relation, Memoir, memory, Messianic Age, Mind Control, Modern Women, Modernism, Moral action, Moral evaluation, Moral psychology, morality, Mortality, nineteenth-century, novels, Ontology, Oppression, Past and Future, Peace, Phenomenology of Mind, Philosophy, Poetry, Political, Political Movements, politics of ideas, post modernism, Power, presence, promissory notes, Propaganda, Psychology, public facade, Public Intellectual, radicalism, Reading, Reductionism, relationships, Religion, Roles, Romantic Love, scientism, secular, Seduction, self-deception, Sex Appeal, Sexuality, slave, social climbing, social construction, Social Conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, Spirituality, status, status of women, 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, Utopia, victimhood, victims, Violence, War, Work, Writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged Abigail L Rosenthal's Feminism Without Contradictions, academic career, addressing cultural assumptions, analysts vs continentals, Analytic philosophy, answers to prayer, Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, appeals to unconscious instinct, Brooklyn College students, collective conclusions, contemporary cultural skepticism, Continental philosophy, cultural conformism, culture and history, decoding unspoken assumptions, democracy highest form of government, dialectic and history, dialectic and world views, dialectic vs prayer, dialectical method, diverse student body, Divine intervention, doing philosophy, dominant cultural opinion, elite opinion, fashionable opinion, Frances Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man, Gates of Vienna 1683, God helps those who help themselves, Hegel vs theism, Hegelian analysis, Hegelian teaching method, Hegelian thought, history of ideas, images lifted out of context, jihad and the West, Lepanto 1571, manipulative speech, mass communication and demagogues, mass communication and mob action, mass opinion, mob action and demagogues, Nietzsche and Marx, objective truth, Parisian postmodernism, petitionary prayer, philosophic questions, philosophy and inspiration, Poitiers 732 A.D., prayer and healing, prayer is not enough, prayer vs magic, prayer won't mail a letter, reign of soft terror, rights dignity and representation, skepticism and social privilege, skepticism within the educated, skeptics nihilists and revolutionaries, social construct, stages of consciousness, story of human history, teacher-student dialogue, technology and deception, the battle for Ukraine, the long march through institutions, the reasonable life, the victory of representative democracy, the way of the lemming, the West and the other, the West and Ukraine, unconscious power dynamic, underlying power relations, using Western achievements against the West, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Western hegemony, Western intellectuals, what would Hegel do, WWHD | 2 Comments

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Monthly Archives: April 2023

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