Category Archives: book reviews

Are We Seeing a Culture Shift?

Posted on March 30, 2021 by Abigail

Are We Seeing a Culture Shift? Dates vary, when people try to characterize a phase of culture, but for (let us say) the past 50 years, opinion-shapers in our culture have functioned under the aegis of the following influences:  post-structuralism, … Continue reading →

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Book Matters

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Abigail

Book Matters The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century By Adam Kirsch This is an unusual book. Its author, Adam Kirsch, has combined skills rarely found together: poet, successful literary critic, academic … Continue reading →

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Proceedings and Addresses

Posted on February 9, 2021 by Abigail

Proceedings and Addresses Proceedings is the shared forum, like the Athenian agora, where American philosophers who have managed to command the attention of their colleagues publish their invited addresses. Since 2000, I’ve stepped down from active faculty status (though not … Continue reading →

Posted in Absurdism, Academe, Action, Afterlife, Alienation, American Politics, Anthropology, Art of Living, Atheism, Autonomy, bad faith, beauty, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, Chivalry, Cities, Class, conformism, Contemplation, Contradictions, Cool, Courage, Cultural Politics, Culture, Desire, dialectic, Erotic Life, Eternity, Ethics, Evil, Existentialism, exploitation, Faith, Fashion, Female Power, Femininity, Feminism, Freedom, Friendship, Gender Balance, glitterati, Guilt and Innocence, hegemony, Heroes, hierarchy, history of ideas, Ideality, Identity, Ideology, Idolatry, Immorality, Institutional Power, life and death struggle, Love, Male Power, Masculinity, Memoir, memory, Modern Women, Modernism, Moral action, Moral evaluation, Moral psychology, morality, Mortality, non-violence, Ontology, Oppression, Past and Future, Philosophy, politics of ideas, post modernism, Power, presence, Propaganda, Psychology, public facade, Public Intellectual, Reading, Reductionism, relationships, Roles, Romance, Romantic Love, science, scientism, Seduction, self-deception, seventeeth century, Sex Appeal, social climbing, social construction, Social Conventions, social ranking, Sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, status, status of women, Suffering, The Examined Life, The Problematic of Men, The Problematic of Woman, the profane, the sacred, Time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, victimhood, Work, Writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Book Matters

Posted on November 10, 2020 by Abigail

Book Matters Blaming the Jews: Politics and Delusion By Bernard Harrison It’s not common that you see someone with a high degree of philosophic training actually doing something helpful with it.  This book, by a well-regarded British philosopher, sheds a … Continue reading →

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Book Matters

Posted on September 15, 2020 by Abigail

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk Good biographies of philosophers are a rarity.  The reason is that philosophers, more than other people, take ideas and the whole realm of thought terribly seriously.  Just as we would expect … Continue reading →

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Book Matters

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Abigail

Book Matters Signatures: Literary Encounters of a Lifetime by David Pryce-Jones I rode in the limousine with David Pryce-Jones and other speakers going to the conference titled “Is It 1938 Again?” held at Queens College of The City University of … Continue reading →

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Book Matters

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Abigail

Book Matters The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family by Bettye Kearse It’s the African-Americans who have the secret of America.  Or so we all feel subliminally, with a kind of “holy envy.”  That’s the expression … Continue reading →

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Book Matters

Posted on March 3, 2020 by Abigail

Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neal Hurston This is the autobiography of the great Zora Neal Hurston, whom I first learned of when Jerry started reading aloud from her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, at breakfast.  The … Continue reading →

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Book Matters

Posted on December 24, 2019 by Abigail

Book Matters Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written by Himself by Frederick Douglass, edited by Benjamin Quarles I know of no book, and no reading experience, like this one.  Years ago, I read Uncle Tom’s … Continue reading →

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Book Matters

Posted on December 3, 2019 by Abigail

The Exiles Return: A Novel by Elisabeth de Waal. This book would never have come to my notice had it not been for Barry Cooper, the professor of political science at Calgary.  Cooper has an insider’s understanding of a philosopher … Continue reading →

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