Author Archives: Abigail
Thought Faces the Future
One of the reasons that, back in my professorial days, I thought studying philosophy was beneficial was that a culture’s preferences and beliefs could be tracked to its underlying assumptions. A culture rests on what it thinks is true and … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, American politics, anthropology, anti-semitism, appreciation, art, art of living, atheism, authenticity, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, ethnicity, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, fatherhood, female power, femininity, feminism, filial piety, films, 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, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, mysticism, Nihilism, non-violence, novels, ontology, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, poetry, political, political movements, politics, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, power games, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, racism, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, remembrance, repairing the culture, roles, romantic love, 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, Truth, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged A.J. Ayer’s after-death experience, acupuncture’s holistic view, American Philosophical Association, APA’s Proceedings and Addresses, bad money drives out good, benefits of philosophy, brute power vs functional power, cancel-culture, cultural cowardice, cultural mediocrity, culture of intimidation, current cultural theme, current intellectual theme, dismissing Ayer’s after-death experience, explaining away new data, fashions in oppression, feminism’s real-world failings, feminism’s unanticipated side-effects, foundational views in culture, Gramsci’s hegemonic powers, how philosophy can help life, humanities vulnerable to intimidation, intellectual dead end, Jean-Paul Sartre, mapping knowledge, mapping what we do and don’t know, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, mechanism vs holism, mending fractures and the mechanistic view, NY Times Book Review, oppressor vs oppressed, philosophy and cultural diagnostic, philosophy and the zeitgeist, philosophy at the frontier of thought, philosophy immune to intimidation, philosophy unscathed by culture of intimidation, philosophy’s frontier problems, philosophy’s key to effective living, philosophy’s real task, postmodernism and power-relations, postmodernism and the play of interpretations, postmodernism vs objectivity, premonitions and time-bound human experience, reconceiving feminist theory, Sartre and defining one’s self, Sartre and irreducible freedom, Sartre and personal freedom, Sartre as cultural trendsetter, Sartre’s key insight, Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex, the invisible oppressed, The New York Review of Books
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September 11, A Week Later
This post, written the week after September 11, 2001, is dedicated to Frank De Martini and Pablo Ortiz. Starting at the 88th floor on the North Tower, they went from floor to floor calling out to people who crouched in … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, action, alienation, art, cities, contradictions, cool, culture, desire, dialectic, ethics, evil, faith, freedom, friendship, guilt and innocence, health, heroes, history, history of ideas, identity, ideology, idolatry, institutional power, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, memoir, non-violence, peace, political, political movements, power, psychology, relationships, religion, roles, spirituality, suffering, terror, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, theism, time, twenty-first century, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged 9/11, art protection, attack, Byzantine crucifix, city walkers, cops, crisis, crisis center, cultural crisis, defining event, emergency vehicles, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Faith, fear, fearfulness, FEMA, fire station, first responders, God Bless America, gratitude, Ground Zero, heroes, immanence, Jihad, Job, Kali, Lower Manhattan, Metropolitan Museum, National Guard, New York City, New York Subway, New Yorkers, realism, sorrow, spirit, sprit of the City, street smarts, terrorism, Todd Stone, transcendence, TV history, urban neighborhood, voyeurism, walking intelligently, Wall Street, war zone
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