Category Archives: book reviews

When the Stones Speak

Posted on August 12, 2025 by Abigail

Doran Spielman’s When the Stones Speak: The Remarkable Discovery of the City of David Is the Bible a history book? Did the stories in it (or some of the more literal-sounding ones) really happen? Or are we modern people obliged … Continue reading →

Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, American politics, anthropology, anti-semitism, appreciation, art, art of living, atheism, authenticity, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Bible, Biblical Archeology, 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, 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, Renaissance, 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 adversaries to biblical archaeology, ancient human DNA, archaeology confirming Bible, atheism and civilization, Babylonians destroy First Temple, battle for the modern mind, Bible and archeology, Bible and existential questions, Bible and modern people, Bible as analogical, Bible as history, Bible as metaphorical, Bible as poetical, Bible as symbolic, Biblical historicity and anti-semitism, Biblical Israelites and DNA, Biblical Israelites and modern Jews, Biblical literalism, Biblical stories as factual, Biblical tales as nonfactual, Davidic monarchy, decline of the West, DNA analysis, First Temple ruins, First Temple stones, First Temple’s destruction 586 BCE, God as real vs metaphoric, God in real history, if it bleeds it leads, Israelite DNA and Jews, Jeremiah thrown in cistern, Jerusalem’s Eastern Gate, Jesus, Jesus and the press, Jesus at the King David hotel, Jesus holds a press conference, Jesus’ hypothetical return, Jesus’ return, Jewish history from ancient to contemporary, King David’s palace, modernity and skepticism, modernity vs Bible’s historicity, ongoing Jewish history, Paleo-Hebrew of Biblical times, postmodern skeptics, Satan holds a press conference, spirituality and history, the city of David, When the Stones Speak by Doron Spielman, Yehuchal and Jeremiah, Yehuchal son of Shelemiah | 4 Comments

The Fork in the Road

Posted on August 5, 2025 by Abigail

* * * A realization visited me the other day. It had to do with lost friendships. I’d always pictured these losses as mere phenomena lying on the surface of life. In the depth, in the end – in the … 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, eighteenth century, 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, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, 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 A Good Look at Evil by Abigail L Rosenthal, afterlife reunions, believing in oneself, betraying a friend, beyond good and evil, binding commitments, breakup differently explained, broken friendship, café regular, change of heart, changing philosophic commitments, character as destiny, choice with life implications, comfortable in one’s skin, consequential choices, credible defamation, death of friendship, deciphering life events, decisive choice, decoding life events, deep friendship, defamatory gossip, demoralizing the culture, drawing a moral line, erotic exploitation, Europeans and cafés, evil and reality, evil as philosophic concept, female athleticism, fork in the road, friendly opposites, friends and misunderstandings, friendship and trust, friendship destroyed, friendship through differences, friendships’ importance, hip, hipster, irreversible life-choice, journal for self-discovery, life choices, life energy misspent, losing life-force, losing one’s athleticism, loss of grace, lost friendship, lost self-command, lost vitality, lost zest for life, manipulative social relations, misunderstanding between friends, moral categories and reality, Nordic woman, persona as binding the future, philosophers and life strategy, philosophers and personal choice, philosophers and the outdoors, philosophic friendship, philosophy and life wisdom, reality as amoral, reality of evil, Reign of Terror, self-renewal in nature, sexual exploitation, sexual politics, sharing life’s lessons, social enemy, social life in cafés, social manipulation, solitude among café regulars, solitude in nature, superficial friendship, the real and the rational, the real is not the rational, two sides to the story, understanding evil, unshared memories, wearing shorts with authority, women philosophers, writing in cafés, zest for life | Leave a comment

The Story

Posted on July 22, 2025 by Abigail

“The crucial thing is the story.” That is what I claim in A Good Look at Evil, my book which holds that the person who would live a good life finds her own story while the evil-doer may be detected … Continue reading →

Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, 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, 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, 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 a shattering secret, Abigail Rosenthal's A Good Look At Evil, above all do no harm, blame as manipulation, Carl Jung, chemistry and healing, danger acknowledged, dementia praecox, despair and guilt, detecting evil, determinism and relativism, discerning evil, disrupted story, distinguishing fact from fantasy, evil doers, evil psychologized away, evil-doers in real life, good life, guilt and projection, hippocratic oath, illness and fashion, inauthenticity, inducing guilt, infanticide, Jung as mental hospital assistant, Jung in Zurich, Jung's autobiography, Jung's Memories Dreams Reflections, life-saving advice, losing true love, marrying the wrong man, meaningful storyline, medical bureaucracy, medical ethics, medical power, medicalizing desire, mental healing, mental illness and conformism, moral blackmail, mothers and depression, Oedipal guilt, outliving despair, philosophical fashions, power misused, preventing suicide, psychological cures, psychology and healing, psychology's banalization, psychology's conventionalism, psychology's denial of significance, psychology's mistreatment of women, psychology's narrow horizons, psychology's reductionism, psychology-based cures, real life confused with fiction, real-life story, relativism and denial, repairing one's story, repairing the psyche, repairing the soul, Schizophrenia, self-sabotage, self-spoiled story, social vulnerability, spoiling one’s story, status and vulnerability, stolen story, story and philosophical fashion, story as defining the problem, suicide and secrets, suicide and therapy, suicide as the wrong solution, telling fact from fiction, the bureaucracy of psychology, the worst harm, thwarting evil, true stories, truth and healing, unchivalrous conduct, victimization, victims of evil, warning victims, wives and depression | Leave a comment

Reincarnation: Anne Frank and Me

Posted on July 8, 2025 by Abigail

Some years back I read a book with the title, And the Wolves Howled: Fragments of Two Lifetimes. The author was Barbro Karlen, a Swedish woman who claims to be the reincarnation of Anne Frank. Anne was the Jewish Dutch … Continue reading →

The Puzzle of Hannah Arendt

Posted on June 17, 2025 by Abigail

The career of Hannah Arendt is surely one of the oddest on record. Doubt has been cast on claims for which she was best known. Yet her posthumous prestige as a political theorist seems largely unaffected by any refutations of … Continue reading →

Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, American politics, anthropology, anti-semitism, appreciation, art of living, atheism, authenticity, autonomy, bad faith, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, chivalry, 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, 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, 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, Nihilism, non-violence, ontology, oppression, past and future, 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, 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, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged Abigail L. Rosenthal's Spoiling One's Story: The Case of Hannah Arendt, Abigail L. Rosenthal's "A Good Look at Evil", Arendt and Heidegger, Arendt in social life, Arendt’s coverup, Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt’s excuses for Heidegger, Arendt’s Heidegger at 80, Arendt’s insight in her own case, Arendt’s personal survival smarts, Arendt’s self-concern, denying evil, denying evil as reality, denying guilt, Eichmann as ordinary bureaucrat, Eichmann’s conscience, Eichmann’s lack of regret, evil as banal, evil not banal, excuses for evil, excusing evil, excusing guilt, Hannah Arendt, Hannah Arendt’s career, Heidegger and Husserl, Heidegger bans Jewish students, Heidegger betrays Husserl, Heidegger's Jewish students, Heidegger’s ingratitude to Husserl, history and reality, history's real stories, in Arendt’s own case evil is not banal, influencing public opinion, intellectual career, intellectual woman, just following orders, misdeeds without regret, moral insight as an aid to survival, moral relativism, moral transgressions, Nazis directing the Holocaust, political theorist, pretending innocence, psychological determinism, public acclaim and posthumous prestige, rewriting history, senior Nazi official, sleeping with the enemy, Stangneth’s Eichmann Before Jerusalem, strategies of the Holocaust, student/teacher affair, survival and moral insight, the excuse of following orders, the real Hannah Arendt | 1 Comment

Book Matters

Posted on June 3, 2025 by Abigail

Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (1876) This is an English novel from the days before Freud, Nietzsche, Darwin and Marx substituted their own reductionist theories for the day-to-day reality from which real-life stories arise for most of us. It’s likely … Continue reading →

Posted in book reviews, books | Tagged book matters, George Eliot's Daniel Deronda | 2 Comments

The Owl of Minerva Takes Flight

Posted on May 6, 2025 by Abigail

This week, Abbie brings back a reader favorite. First shared in an earlier column, The Owl of Minerva Takes Flight explores what it means to understand history only in hindsight, and what we might see when we try. *** “The … Continue reading →

Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, childhood, chivalry, Christianity, 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, Hegel, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, Idealism-, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, Industrial Revolution, 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, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, poetry, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, racism, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romanticism, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, 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, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, work, writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged ancient skepticism, anthropic principle, Antony Flew’s There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, brainwashing, cancel culture and desire, cancel culture and social power, chance and life’s origin, coerced confessions, culture and the absolute, culture and ultimate truth, Darwin and chance, Darwinian evolution, decoding present history, desire and erotic skepticism, erotic manipulation, foreseeing the future, Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama and liberal democracy, G.W.F. Hegel, George Orwell's "1984", guilt and social power, Hegel and history, historical eros, ideology and tyranny, intelligibility of history, laws of probability and evolution, liberal democratic values, Mind Control, Modernity, my story and humanity’s story, natural purposes, ostracism and social power, owl of Minerva, personal story and world history, philosophy and teleology, postmodern skepticism, postmodernism and denial, psychoanalysis, purposiveness in nature, reading the Zeitgeist, Robert Jay Lifton's Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of 'Brainwashing' in China, skepticism, skepticism and biological nature, skepticism in history, Sy Garte’s The Works of His Hands: A Scientist’s Journey from Atheism to Faith, teleology, the big picture, the bird’s eye view of history, The Owl of Minerva and history, theology and teleology, Ukraine and Western nations, Ukraine as a test of values, understanding the present, world history and liberal democracy | Leave a comment

Book Matters

Posted on April 29, 2025 by Abigail

On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization by Douglas Murray Some years ago, I had a dream that appeared to be a scene from a past life. I am not claiming it was that, only that … Continue reading →

Posted in book reviews, books | Tagged book matters, Douglas Murray's On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization | Leave a comment

The Campus Wars

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Abigail

Detail from Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David 1787 Detail from The Prophet Ezekiel by Gustave Doré 1866 The American contribution to rolling back the Nazi conquest of Europe and defeating Hitler’s regime was ornamented by the cartoons of Bill … Continue reading →

Civilization’s Erotic Discontents

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Abigail

If you want to talk safely about the topic of sexual preferences, you must begin with the following disclaimer: “I don’t care what people do in …” In what? The privacy of their homes? Insofar as they’re old enough 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, 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, Renaissance, 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 adolescence and the popularity nightmare, adult credibility, bad faith about erotic desire, bad faith and eros, bad faith and erotic life, bad faith in argument, being asked to dance, boy-girl relations and patriarchy, Butler’s Bodies that Matter, Butler’s Gender Trouble, Butler’s Giving an Account of Oneself, capturing the moral high ground, civilization-authorized desire, civilization’s desire to live, civilization’s eros, civilization’s lack of desire to live, competition for erotic prestige, culture-authorized desire, desire to go on living, desire to persevere in one’s own being, disvaluing heterosexuality, disvaluing homosexuality, eros and civilization, eros in history, eros in the state and the individual, erotic bad faith, erotic desire, erotic discontent, erotic life as competitive, erotic playing field, erotic prestige, erotic rivalry, erotic safety, establishing credibility, feminist jargon, feminist passwords, feminist signals, feminist slogans, feminist theoretician, forms of oppression, fulfillment of bodily purpose, fulfillment of life purpose, heterosexual advantage in Western civilization, heterosexual advantages, heterosexual prestige, heterosexuality and homosexuality mutually disvaluing other sexualities, heterosexuality associated with oppression, homosexual competition, homosexual privilege in classical times, how to talk about private matters, indifference to what people do, internal and external erotic competitiveness, Judith Butler, lesbian social dancing, logical possibilities of sexual combinations, loss of desire to live, Nietzsche’s revaluation of values, non-standard erotic combinations, non-standard erotic possibilities, not being asked to dance, one way open-mindedness, oppression studies, outranking erotic rivals, patriarchy, patriarchy racism colonialism, philosophic facts of life, Plato’s republic, Plato’s state as the soul writ large, playing field in the game of life, popularity contest, pretending not to care, private life and public life, pulling moral rank, reality based discussion, reasons to live, restoring the desire to live, reviving the desire to live, rhetorical tactics in seduction, rhetorical tactics in sexual choice, rivalry between man-woman courtship and same-sex courtship, rivalry between same sex attraction and opposite sex attraction, rules of the game of life, same-sex monogamy, sexual preferences, social space for man/woman romance, Spinoza’s conatus, stakes in the game of life, the erotic territory, the game of life, the last shall be first, the trajectory of desire, there are no neutrals, trustworthiness in discussion, unfair erotic advantage, valuing non-heterosexuality, wallflower, Western Civilization, what people do in private | 1 Comment

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Book Matters

Book Matters

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