Author Archives: Abigail
The Silver Plus One
During the days following our return from California, we had to postpone the celebration of our 26th wedding anniversary so the “silver” anniversary plus one – in order first to face the leaning tower of chores and summonses that awaited … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, anthropology, appreciation, art, art of living, atheism, authenticity, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, 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, ethnicity, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, 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, Jesus, Jews, journalism, Judaism, 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, Nihilism, nineteenth-century, 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, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, remembrance, repairing the culture, 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, 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, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged AAR, Abigail L. Rosenthal's "A Good Look at Evil", Abigail L. Rosenthal's "Confessions of a Young Philosopher", Abigail L. Rosenthal’s philosophical articles, academic combat, academic politics, action vs theory, against all odds, American Academy of Religion, analytic philosopher, anniversary celebration, betting on love, book with illustrations, Borough of Brooklyn, Brooklyn College, calculating advantages, City University of New York, college administration, college administration and curriculum, core curriculum, courtship and analytic philosophy, dating and analytic philosophy, defending academic standards, defending civilization, defending education, defending higher education, falling in love, fatal risks, fighting the good fight, finding the right marriage partner, finding the right partner, foolhardy, foolish risks, God makes marriages, God: An Autobiography As Told to a Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin, history department, holy ground, impolitic risks, intelligent risk, Jerry L. Martin’s Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age, joining two lives, knowing when to act, knowing when to theorize, last stand, letting go of the result, life review, lifelong projects, looking for Miss Right, looking for Mr. Right, looking for the right partner, love and marriage, marital commitment, marital illusions, marital politics, marriage for compatibility, matters of the heart, meeting friends in cafes, miscalculations, narrowmindedness, not looking for Miss Right, not looking for Mr. Right, novelistic encounters, Pascal's wager, personal history, personal virtues, philosophic evaluation of religious claims, philosophical articles, philosophy and religious claims, Philosophy Department, philosophy of religion, political theory vs action, politics of experience, putting personal life on hold, real life means taking risks, received wisdom, reflection on past choices, religious claims and counterclaims, religious experience, risks of love, romantic illusions, Romantic Love, romantic love as absolute, romantic mistakes, romantic wager, Signature Project, silver wedding anniversary, strategizing, striking while the iron is hot, Theology Without Walls, theoretical vs practical level, true love, true love and marriage, TWW, unexpected religious experience, unprecedented religious experience, unusual religious experience, wedding anniversary, working class restaurant
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Feminism with Something to Hide
When I was a girl, nobody thought women weren’t liberated. Heck, we had the vote. We could get as educated as we wanted to be. We could get hired for jobs formerly reserved for men. Of course, we had to … 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, Bible, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, childhood, 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, Jesus, Jews, journalism, Judaism, 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, Nihilism, nineteenth-century, 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, race, racism, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, remembrance, repairing the culture, 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, Truth, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged 15 minutes of fame, Abigail L. Rosenthal’s Confessions of a Young Philosopher, academic feminism, American courtship patterns, American Fulbrights in Paris, birth of the unconscious, Confessions of a Young Philosopher by Abigail L. Rosenthal, dystopia, European feminine know-how, European vs American courtship, European women, extravagant courtship, fallacies of argument, fame, fame and feminism, fashionably Oppressed, fashions in oppression, Feminism, feminism and dialectic, Feminism and Freudian theory, feminism as performance, feminism past and present, feminist power, fictional self-disclosure, forgiving one’s self, formation of the “I”, formation of the unconscious, Fulbright Fellows, Fulbright Fellows in Paris, girdles nylons and virginity, infantile trauma, influential intellectuals, intellectual power, intellectuals and culture, Judith Butler and Hegel, Judith Butler’s feminism, Judith Butler’s Giving an Account of Oneself, Judith Butler’s primal scene, life before feminism, older and wiser, personal relations and risk, philosophical dialogue, pre-feminist marriage deadline, pre-feminist women, pseudo-arguments, self and social conditions, self mistrust, self repair, self-formation, sense of self, social conditions and self-formation, social conditions and self-knowledge, social status of truth, telling one’s story, telling one’s truth, the American script for women, truth about oneself, unfashionable oppression, women’s experience, women’s liberation, women’s reality vs ideology, women’s wisdom
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Book Matters
Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Soren Kierkegaard by Clare Carlisle This is a biography of Kierkegaard, written by a woman philosopher. It tells the well-known story of his jilted fiancée, and just about everything else you might … Continue reading
When It Has My Name On It
There are moments that put one’s integrity to the test. They aren’t necessarily to be ranked higher than the everyday moments that only require one to keep on keeping on. In first youth, one dreams of deeds of heroic daring … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, anthropology, appreciation, art, art of living, atheism, authenticity, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Biblical God, bigotry, books, bureaucracy, childhood, chivalry, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, ethnicity, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, 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, medieval, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, mysticism, Nihilism, nineteenth-century, non-violence, novels, ontology, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, political, political movements, politics, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, power games, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, remembrance, repairing the culture, 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, 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, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged Abigail L. Rosenthal's "A Good Look at Evil", academic politics, admitting the truth, all that glitters is not gold, answering a call, avoiding a calling, being put on the spot, breaking the silence, career risk, careerism, child abuse, coming out of the closet, courage to grow up, derring-do, dodging a duty, duties one cannot dodge, earned vs phony status, everyday courage, everyday moments, expressing remorse, familial sexual abuse, family loyalty, family tree, father-daughter abuse, go along to get along, gossip, heroic efforts, imaginary heroics, integrity, integrity on the line, integrity's price, Israel, job threats in academe, life between heaven and hell, life challenge, life on the timeline, living normally, missing one's moment, moral blindness, moral challenge, moral courage, moral evasion, moral summons, morality has no gender, normality as heroic, ordinary choice vs moral choice, outward status vs real merit, Paul Newman in Exodus, power threats in academe, PTSD, putting one's honor on the line, real manhood and pretense of manhood, rising to a challenge, sharing a painful truth, social conformism, the call to courage, the call to heroism, the cost of truth, the courage to be normal, the moral dimension, the truth as reinstating reality, war wounds, war wounds and personality change, yearning for extremes, youthful dreams
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Anti-Semitism and the Zeitgeist
At the time I came to young womanhood, Jews of my generation believed we were way past the dark days of danger. Only refugees from recent tyrannies spoke of anti-semitism as a force that could show up “even here.” Well … 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, 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, 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, Industrial Revolution, institutional power, Jesus, Jews, journalism, Judaism, 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, Nihilism, nineteenth-century, 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, race, racism, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, remembrance, repairing the culture, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, seventeenth century, 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, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged Adam in Judaism and Christianity, Ambrose, Ambrose and supersessionism, anti-semitism and prejudice, anti-semitism as incurable, anti-semitism defined, anti-semtism and the chosen people, Augustine, Augustine and supersessionism, becoming anti-semitic, Biblical covenant, Bildungsroman, Cain and Abel, Cain's mistake, choosing the Jews, chosenness of the Jews, Christian anti-semitism, Christian thought leaders, coming of age novel, Copernicus Kepler and Galileo, covenant of Abraham, covenant of Israel, crucifixion and redemption, curing anti-semitism, difference between Judaism and Christianity, Enlightenment vs the Jews, erotic competition, ever recurring nature of anti-semitism, exorcism of anti-semites, God as an actor in time, God of history, God of history vs God of nature, God of history vs God of supernature, God's pilot project, Goebbels and his Jewish love, Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, Heidegger’s nazism, human interaction with God, Jesus and Adam's sin, Jewish view of redemption, Jewish vs Christian theology, Jews as the anti-zeitgeist, Judaism and life in real-time, Judaism and preserving memory, Judaism and temporal life, Judaism and the human condition, Judaism as historical religion, Martin Heidegger, Modernity, nazis and Darwin, nazis and racial theory, Newton and the Age of Reason, obsessions about Jews, Old Testament vs Hebrew Bible, original sin, Paul and Original Sin, Paul and the crucifixion, perenniality of anti-semitism, persecuting Jews, political correctness and anti-semitism, political correctness and Israel, recovering anti-semites, religious competition, Romanticism, Romanticism and finding one's roots, Romanticism and rootless cosmopolitans, Romanticism and the Jews, sibling rivalry and anti-semitism, sin in Judaism and Christianity, supersessionism, the Age of Reason, the chosen people, the church and the Jews, the Hebrew Bible, the Holocaust, the Holocaust and nazi rationales, The Trinity, theological defamation, unhealthy relationships, young womanhood, Zeitgeist, Zeitgeist vs the Jews
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