Tag Archives: Abigail L. Rosenthal’s A Good Look at Evil

Battle Wounds

The post-October 8th, 2023 outbreak of Jew-hatred in academe continues to open psychic wounds. As a battle-tested veteran of many combats (for example the one pictured above), this phenomenon of psychic wounds is itself startling to me. Let me give … Continue reading

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One of a Kind

David Stove was a philosopher of the not-cut-to pattern kind. (Is that a kind? Just how many are there?) For example, he did not hesitate to kick the seemingly unassailable Charles Darwin in the shins for a train of errors … Continue reading

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Where Are the Ex-Friends Now?

This is a week when I’ve been thinking about old friends who are, as it happens, ex-friends. Maybe it’s a special category of friendship.  I’ve devoted a recent column to David, who was a valued philosophical colleague. Together we shared … Continue reading

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A Good Look at an Old Evil

The title of this column plays off my first book, A Good Look at Evil. There I revisited some of the main philosophical ways of understanding evil before I offered my own view, exhibiting its power to illuminate a wide … Continue reading

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What Is Truth?

The question, famously put to Jesus by Pontius Pilate, was prompted by Jesus’ self-report that he had come to bear witness to the truth. Without capitalizing “Truth,” so that it acquires other-worldly sound-and-light effects – isn’t bearing witness to the … Continue reading

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Father and Daughter

Having recently read the memoir of Hannah Tillich, largely concerned with her marriage to Paul Tillich, renowned theologian – with close-up views of how he pursued his own erotic opportunities at the cost of their marital romance – one upshot was … Continue reading

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The Theologian’s Wife

At the time I was at Columbia University, as a graduate student in philosophy as well as an Assistant in the Religion Department, Paul Tillich – a theologian of world stature in the twentieth century – was just a few … Continue reading

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The Real-Life Whodunits

Every few months, Jerry and I fly out to California (no longer a fun thing to do in current travel conditions) to get neuropathy treatments for me. The treatment, available only at a clinic out there, is innovative and appears … Continue reading

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Where’d My World Go?

The world in which I came of age, learned to be a young woman, and entered my chosen academic field of philosophy, did not include provisions for people who hated Jews and wanted them dead. Hitler lost the War – … Continue reading

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Understanding Evil

The French say, to understand all is to forgive all – but, where evil is concerned, forgiving all would be a bad idea. I have written a whole book on the topic, called (accurately enough) A Good Look at Evil. … Continue reading

Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, 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, 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, institutional power, Jews, 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, mortality, motherhood, mysticism, nineteenth-century, non-violence, novels, ontology, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, poetry, political, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, racism, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, 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, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment