Monthly Archives: June 2023
Women, Women, Women
I know of two instances where fair-minded young mothers brought their child custody disputes before a judge. In each case, the fact that the judge turned out to be a woman caused the plaintiff’s heart to sink, anticipating the worst … Continue reading →
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, 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, 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, immortality, institutional power, journalism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, medieval, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, mysticism, novels, ontology, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, political, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, science, 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, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged Beauvoir and Sartre, believe your lying eyes, biology vs ideology, child custody disputes, equity feminism, existentialism and feminism, faculty women, femininity and human nature, feminism and the human story, feminism and true love, feminism's absent theory, feminism's philosophic foundation, feminisms gains and losses, feminisms victory and defeats, feminist activists, feminist anti-essentialism, feminist betrayal, feminist case histories, feminist illusions, feminist infighting, feminist magazine, feminist theory, feminists and feminine nature, French existentialism, goddess worship, happy-ever-after, Harriet Taylor, hen party, husbandly protection, Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness, John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women, matriarchy, Phyllis Chesler’s Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman, popular girl, postmodernism and feminism, public feminists, romantic endings, Sartre and freedom, Sartre’s betrayal of Beauvoir, Sartre’s Fundamental Project, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, stigmatizing women, true love, utilitarianism, woman philosopher, women and conformism, women as fair-minded, women confidantes, women not different from men, women philosophers, women's vulnerability, women’s acculturation, women’s gossip, women’s illusions, women’s legal equality, women’s negative freedom, women’s ruthlessness to women, women’s unkindness to women, yin and yang
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Witness
How important is it to be witnessed? I think we’re built to view it as pretty important. It’s close to the heart of motivation. We don’t want “no one to know.” “As God is my witness,” we say, to underscore … Continue reading →
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Bible, Biblical God, bigotry, books, bureaucracy, childhood, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, eighteenth century, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, Idealism-, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jews, Judaism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, mysticism, nineteenth-century, non-violence, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, politics, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, race, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romanticism, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, 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
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Tagged academic politics, academic quarrels, ancien regime, ancien regime’s reprisals, autobiographical memory, blaming the whistleblower, blaming the woman, canceling the whistleblower, cost of the Louisville Ohio River flood, cynicism and feeling unseen, defending God’s house, El Al airline, Elmer Sprague, emotional shelter, erasing memories, evidence that we live true stories, father daughter relation, fatherhood, feeling isolated, feeling unseen, filial piety, forgetting what we regret, French aristocrats, God as my witness, going along to get along, guilty stories, high school honor student, importance of remembering, inherited memories, inspired advice, institutional faith of the covenant, isolating inconvenient people, key witness, King Louis XVI, looking for my father, Louisville boyhood, Louisville Fourth of July, Louisville Male High, Louisville’s Ohio River flood, McGuffey Readers, Me Too, meritorious deeds and recognition, no need for recognition, no one knows, old time religion, ousting a predator, personal exoneration, pilgrimage, places reserved in memory, power relationships, remembering accurately, revisiting a remembered place, revisiting memories, sacred places, seeing Ancient Israel in Modern Israel, seeing the past in the present, selective forgetting, selective memory, sharing true stories, sharing what happened, silencing resistance, southern courthouse square, southern hospitality, southern memories, southern nostalgia, the American Revolution, the Jewish covenant, the old home town, the old house, the town my father knew, to honor through memory, when no one remembers, whistleblower, witness to the story
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From the Horse’s Mouth
My latest ride at what I shall call The Metaphysical Stables has proved particularly gratifying. This time Legacy, the mid-sized, hairy dog, did not sit on my lap while I waited for Dusty to be saddled and bridled. One front … Continue reading →
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Bible, Biblical God, bigotry, 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, Idealism-, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jews, journalism, Judaism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, medieval, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, mysticism, nineteenth-century, non-violence, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, peace, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, poetry, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, 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, 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
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Tagged academic revolutionary, aesthetics of anti-semitism, ambivalence toward Jews in literature, American anti-semites, American Zionists, animal communication, animal interpreter, anti-semitism as spiritual refusal, armchair radicalism, cafe marxism, cafe revolutionary, Camelot the musical, can’t fool your dog, coming to terms with parents, curing anti-semitism, daughter of a genius, dog as a good judge of character, double life, emotional intelligence in animals, escaping a parent’s shadow, ethical pretense, female as victim, finding the Right One, first love, grand passion, Henry M. Rosenthal, his and her perspectives, horse sense, horse sense vs psychotherapy, Jewish fathers and daughters in literature, Jews in English literature, knights and their ladies, le coup de foudre, living a contradiction, living in a parent’s shadow, love at first sight, men’s romantic suffering, outward success inward distress, Parisian intellectuals, Parisian Men of the Left, pretense of concern for the oppressed, professional success vs personal failure, public facade vs private suffering, recognizing a man of God, recovering from first love, redeeming femininity, refusal of the divine, refusal of the God of history, revisiting memories, romantic disappointment, romantic disillusionment, Romantic memory, seduced and abandoned, seductive idealization, seductive ploys, self judgment, spiritual ambivalence toward the Jews, spiritual refusal, talking one way living another, The 36 righteous, the eternal feminine, the horse’s mouth, the man’s viewpoint, the metaphysical stables, the stroke of lightning, theological insight, Thomas Altizer, time’s winged chariot, Tristan and Iseult, turning around of the soul, unintegrated life, unresolved romance, Walter Russell Mead’s The Ark of a Covenant: The United States Israel and the Fate of the Jewish People, womanly understanding, working through memories, worldly honors
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Boys, Girls, and Metaphysical Monism
By “metaphysical monism” I mean the view that every kind of variety and difference in the world is ultimately unreal. So what’s real? The One. In reality, the many things we experience are One Thing or – more precisely – … Continue reading →
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, books, chivalry, 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, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history of ideas, id, Idealism-, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, memory, 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 movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romantic love, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, 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
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Tagged above the battle, achieving samadhi, Achilles and the Hare, appearance and reality, ashram attractions, bad guys shouldn’t win, beyond good and evil, change as delusive, clever enemies, corruption in ashrams, credible defamations, damaging fictions, delusion of difference, difference as unreal, fall of the guru, feminine power, feminine vulnerability, finding refuge in a different culture, Gnosticism, Gnosticism in Western culture, human condition as fallen, idealization of women, malicious gossip, metaphysical idealism, metaphysical monism, metaphysical monism and human rights, new age and brainwashing, ordinary common sense, Parmenides, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, personal defeat of the guru, realized masters, refuge in ashram, spiritual dangers, stopping bad guys, the one as sole reality, women's vulnerability, yoga and abuse of power, yoga and ethical abuses, yoga and human rights, yoga and sex asymmetries, yoga and the guru, yoga as protection, yoga for health, yoga sex differences, yoga siddhis, Zeno, Zeno’s paradoxes
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