Category Archives: Idealism-
Authenticity Adios
The philosopher who first brought “authenticity” to public notice was, I believe, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). According to a recent book, Tyranny and Revolution by Waller Newell, Heidegger’s notion went like this: you and I are to be grasped as localizations … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Biblical God, bigotry, books, 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, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, Idealism-, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, institutional power, Jews, journalism, Judaism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, nineteenth-century, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, 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, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, slave, 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
Tagged antihero, Authenticity, épater le bourgeois, before the fall, being-toward-death, bourgeois morality, choice of evils, conformism, conventional opinion, counterculture, counterculture and creative artists, Dasein, death as news, era of authenticity, fashionable nonconformity, fashionable outlaws, female powerlessness, finding one’s calling, finding one’s own path, getting real, girls and French intellectuals, go along to get along, gossip, Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, Heidegger and existentialism, Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, Heidegger and Nazism, Heidegger Rector of University of Freiburg, Heidegger's authenticity, Heidegger's Jewish students, Hell is other people, hippies, hippy communes, inauthentic, inauthentic depth, infant dependency, integrity and conformism, integrity in society, Jean-Paul Sartre's Authenticity, judgment and judgmentalism, judgmentalism, Lionel Trilling's Sincerity and Authenticity, Martin Heidegger, middle class values, nonconformity à la mode, obituaries and condolences, other-directedness, outlaw chic, pony tails turning grey, prelapsarian innocence, put out or I'll put you in my book, Sartre and the waiter, Sartre on courtship, Sartre's advice to young women, Sartre's bad faith, Sartre's Being and Nothingness, Sartre's Huis Clos, Sartre's mauvaise foi, Sartre's No Exit, talent as an excuse, the counterculture and women, uncanniness in Heidegger, Walter Newell's Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger
1 Comment
Call No Woman Happy
In his Histories, Herodotus tells the tale of a certain King Croesus of Lydia (reigned 585-547 BCE) who boasted of his happiness to a guest, the wise Solon. The guest warned him that – given life’s uncertainties – no one … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, childhood, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, Idealism-, ideality, identity, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, journalism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, mind control, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, ontology, oppression, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, political, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, 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, 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 admitting that one is happy, anachronistic judgements, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s view that the dead suffer from the living, beyond our control, call no man happy, call no man happy until he is dead, cancel culture, Charles Van Doren, Charles Van Doren’s congressional testimony, classical proverbs, Columbia College Class of 1925, congruence with one’s self, Cyrus and Croesus, dangers of success, death as refuge, destroyed reputation, don’t speak ill of the dead, dumb and happy, family honor, family in the public eye, family politcs, family prestige, fascism and antifacisim, father son relation, fear of success, feeling another’s sorrows, fortune is fickle, Founding Fathers, friendship and empathy, good breeding, good taste and bad form, happiness and envy, happiness in the real world, happiness mistaken for stupidity, Henry M Rosenthal, Herodotus’ Histories, heroes unmasked, highbrow reputation, hubris, ignorance is bliss, inward joy, joy and misfortune, joy vs happiness, judging the past by current standards, King Croesus, learning life's lessons, life’s contingencies, lifelong regrets, literary celebrity, loss of standing, luck and merit, mob mentality, moralism, nobody’s perfect, personal downfall, posthumous disgrace, posthumous loss of reputation, pride goeth before a fall, public approval, pulling moral rank, realistic happiness, repercussions, reputation reversal, retroactive moralistic denunciations, rich as Creosus, rolling with the punches, self integration, showbiz or dishonesty, showbiz vs integrity, social hierarchy, Solon and Croesus, students of Mark Van Doren, success and happiness, tempting fate, that’s showbiz, the ancients were right, The Autobiography of Mark Van Doren 1958, the etiquette of happiness, the hazards of joy, the integrated self, the past is present, the risks of happiness, TV celebrity, uncertainties of fate, uncovering secrets
3 Comments
I Never Got A Cat
Cats are greatly to be respected. For that reason, I never wanted to treat a cat as Abbie’s Plan B, to have and to hold just in case she didn’t obtain what she really wanted – Abbie’s Plan A – … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, 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, immorality, institutional power, journalism, 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, motherhood, nineteenth-century, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, poetry, political, political movements, politics, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, science, scientism, secular, seduction, 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, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged a good woman, a woman’s virtue, beauty of women, believing victims, Bill Clinton and women, castration fear, cats as feminine, dishonored man, dishonored woman, feminine normality, femininity of cats, Freud and masculinity, Freud and women, honor in men and women, I know what you need, Juanita Broaddrick, Kierkegaard and women, Kierkegaard on marriage, Kierkegaard on the ethical, Kierkegaard’s Either/Or Volume 2, Kierkegaard’s ethical woman, Kierkegaard’s misogyny, male normality, MeToo movement, Monica Lewinsky, mystery of cats, NBC’s Lisa Myers, normal women, Oedipus complex, Oedipus Rex, ordinary women, ostracized women, outing a woman, respect for cats, respectable women, social exile, Sophocles, Soren Kierkegaard, spinsterhood, unmarried women, vulnerability of women, war between the sexes, what do women fear, what do women want, woman endangered, womanhood threatened, women and notoriety, women in the spotlight, women’s fears, women’s honor
1 Comment
What Do Women Want?
At the beginning of the American feminist movement, a distinguished philosophical journal, The Monist, brought out an entire issue on the subject. It included my contribution, “Feminism Without Contradictions.” There I pointed out some of the dangerous rocks, shoals and … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Biblical God, bigotry, 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, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, Idealism-, ideality, identity, ideology, immorality, institutional power, journalism, 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, motherhood, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, peace, philosophy, 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, 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, violence, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged a female perspective on Freud, American feminism, caricaturing women, castration fear, civilized discontent, compensating women, confidences between strangers, cost of sublimation, European women, female role models, females as defective males, feminine models, femininity and womanliness, feminism and philosophy, Freud's map of consciousness, Freudian inner life, Freudian New York, Freudian sublimation, Freudian unconscious, gender balance, gender identity, gender norms, gender specific, idealizing women, incestuous passion, liberated women, men as the enemy, nonbiologic aims in Freud, Oedipus complex, opening up to strangers, pre-feminist America, pre-feminist double binds, pre-feminist fashion, pre-feminist women, primal defect, protective privacies, protective rights, rollback of rights, sexual identity, sisterhood, sisterhood and feminism, social constructs, southern women, sublimation in Freud, The Monist, unconscious strategy, unequal power dynamic, unisex facilities, what women want, woman as social construct, women as castrators, women as defective, women on a pedestal, women writers, women's bathrooms, women's Freudian compensations, women's Freudian sublimation, women's locker rooms, women's prisons, women's right to achieve, women's rights, women's sports, women's vulnerability, World of Desire
4 Comments
