Tag Archives: Abigail L. Rosenthal’s “Confessions of a Young Philosopher”
Pixels Thin and Thick
Pixels Thin and Thick On the day I got married, Jerry said to me after the ceremony, “Look in the mirror!” Puzzled, I pulled down the car mirror, looked, and said aloud, My God! I looked different. Like a photo … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, action, afterlife, alienation, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, books, childhood, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, freedom, friendship, gender balance, guilt and innocence, health, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, memoir, memory, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, novels, ontology, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, 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, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged Abigail L. Rosenthal's "Confessions of a Young Philosopher", American Philosophical Association, animal ethology, animal flirting, animal friendships, being where I should be, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, dense presence, depressed animals, Eric Voegelin Society, familiar landmarks, father-daughter relation, feeling abandoned, feeling precarious, filial duty, filial obligation, first love, frontier of experience, haunting memory, interspecies friendship, life challenge, life problematic, life purpose resolved, life question, life themes, lifelong purposes, loneliness, orangutans, otters, painful memories, Parisian first love, personal history, pitching podcasts, Romantic memory, romantic terminus, story's end, thinning presence, unfamiliar situation, unmapped terrain, unprecedented experience, untrodden territory, VoegelinView, writing what you believe, zoo habitats
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Tales of My Mother
Tales of My Mother Only in Victorian novels do we find good women who are also universally beloved. Here, from the annals of literary memoir, is the view of my mother taken by the well-known writer, Diana Trilling. Diana was … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, art of living, bad faith, beauty, books, childhood, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, institutional power, Jews, journalism, Judaism, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, martyrdom, masculinity, memoir, memory, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, nineteenth-century, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, philosophy, political, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romantic love, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, 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, theology, time, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged Abigail L. Rosenthal's "Confessions of a Young Philosopher", catching spies, charisma, college friendships, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, Diana Trililng's The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling, Diana Trilling, East Side superintendent, end of Cold War, enemy agent, Europeanism, fall of communism, FBI raid, female cattiness, female jealousy, good women, Holocaust rescue, intuitive women, Lionel Trilling, literary critic, literary memoir, Nazi supporter, no filter, personal presence, Polish pope, Pope John Paul II, short wave radio, snobbery, social fearlessness, Sovietologists, storied lives, taking center stage, traditional woman, U boats, understanding people, unflattering recollections, upstaging, Victorian novels, wife and mother, womanly wisdom
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New Year Retrospective
New Year Retrospective I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. If they had any force for me, I might. First, you gotta believe in those things. But I do find living force in going back over the path recently trodden, to … 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, books, childhood, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, femininity, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, health, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jews, Judaism, life and death struggle, love, male power, masculinity, memoir, memory, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, novels, ontology, past and future, philosophy, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, relationships, religion, roles, secular, self-deception, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, 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, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged 2020, 2021, 5th Commandment, Abigail L. Rosenthal's "A Good Look at Evil", Abigail L. Rosenthal's "Confessions of a Young Philosopher", Athenians and Socrates, audio book, Bernard Harrison’s Blaming the Jews: The Persistence of a Delusion, British philosopher, Clifton Fadiman, Columbia class of 1925, competition in suffering, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, conscious truth, corrigible life project, course correction, dialectical tests, disloyalty to truth, Dr. Mark Bussell, elephant in the room, evil defined, failure as success, father-daughter relation, filial piety, genius, good clean fun, happiness, happiness in New York, Henry M. Rosenthal, higher code of feeling, history and the Jews, illustrated novels, intellectual memoir, Jewish intellectual, Jews on the Brain, keeping a journal, Life Force, Lionel Trilling, living dialectically, Loma Linda Neuropathic Therapy Center, materials for archiving, mental health in New York, Meyer Schapiro, narrative plotline, neuropathy treatments, New Year resolution, New York intellectuals, non-fiction narrative, novelty of narrative view, pandemic shutdown, personal growth, personal memoir, philosophic colleagues, philosophic narrative, philosophy dramatized, Platonic dialogues, satiric sense, Socrates, spoiling one’s story, talking about Jews, the drama of philosophy, theologians, Thomas Altizer, time for review, unconscious influence, unique talent, universalism in religion, world religions, yearly review, you gotta believe
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My Latest Teaching Anxiety Dream
My Latest Teaching Anxiety Dream Last night I had a variant of the dream that visits many teachers in the pre-dawn hours. Short of taking a survey, I have yet to meet a teacher who’s never had this dream in … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, art of living, atheism, autonomy, Biblical God, books, childhood, chivalry, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, faith, fashion, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jews, Judaism, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, masculinity, memoir, memory, mind control, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, mysticism, nineteenth-century, non-violence, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romantic love, scientism, secular, self-deception, 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, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged Abigail L. Rosenthal's "Confessions of a Young Philosopher", afterlife judgment, bad dream, Brooklyn Bridge, Catalan identity, Columbia University in the 1920s, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, conversational magic, cultural identities, cultural layers, demoralization, divorce stress, facing real world, fascinating parents, fear of public speaking, forgiver and forgiven, forgiving yourself, German-Jewish identity, God as life partner, high-stress situations, how I overcame forgiving myself, identity, insoluble dilemma, Jewish lineage, Jewish Theological Seminary, lack of armor, last judgment, Leo Bronstein, life review, life story, long story, Louisville Male High, loving parents, McGuffy’s Reader, medical stress, meeting one’s contradictions, narrative view, NDE, near death experience, New York at its heyday, New Yorker magazine, normal stress, overwhelming experiences, Oxford professors, parent-child relation, parenting, personal armageddon, personal collapse, philosophy dissertation, philosophy Ph.D., Rav Tsair, reproacher and reproached, Russian identity, self-undoing, sheltered childhood, Spanish identity, talking straight to children, teaching anxiety, teaching anxiety dream, teaching preparation, therapeutic jargon, vulnerability, Where was God?, Yankee identity
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How Jewish Am I?
How Jewish Am I? If being Jewish by birth is what counts, I suppose I’m Jewish enough. But it’s not a necessary condition for securing that identity. A few years ago, a young Christian woman – a friend and participant … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, alienation, anthropology, art of living, autonomy, Biblical God, books, Christianity, cities, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, femininity, freedom, friendship, gender balance, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, Hegel, hidden God, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, Jews, Judaism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, nineteenth-century, ontology, oppression, past and future, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status of women, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged Abigail L. Rosenthal's "Confessions of a Young Philosopher", ancestral religion, ashram, asking God, becoming a cult, coherent narrative, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, conversion misgivings, conversion to Judaism, cult leader, cults, defining anti-semite, defining Jews, demoralization, disconnected episodes, disparaging Jews, dissolving ego, Divine aura, escapism, ethnic identity, Freud, Freudian interpretation, God as Witness, God’s answer, grass is greener, guru, Guru Gita, hating God, Hegel, Hegelian interpretation, Hindu classics, Indian worship, inherited values, Jewish by birth, Jewish convert, Jewish identity, Jewish observance, Jewish spirit, Lakshmi pujas, language game, learning meditation, legitimizing the person, looking marvelous, meaningful story, memorial gathering, merging with the Divine, mikvah immersion, observance v belief, passion for God, personal identity, philosopher friend, prayer in the IRT, reaching samadhi, religious identity, Sanscrit, sense-making, signing the covenant, story and person, the Jewish troubles, total immersion, unearthly grace, we will do and we will hear, what is a Jew?, Wittgenstein, woman guru, yentas, yoga asanas, yogic breathing
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