Tag Archives: Dante and Beatrice
The Stroke of Lightning
Tonight I want to revisit an experience whose status in modern culture is typically regarded with skepticism. The French call it the stroke of lightning (le coup de foudre). It’s the sudden descent/visitation of romantic love. It’s not the same … 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 Archeology, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, childhood, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, Desire and Authenticity, 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, Married Philosophers Discuss Confessions, Married Philosophers Discuss Confessions, 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
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Tagged absolute risk, antiromantic skepticism, Brooklyn Connections vs Core Curriculum, choice at the crossroads, Coup de foudre, Dante and Beatrice, Dante’s Divine Comedy, detachment of the observer, Edmund Husserl, failing to rise above it, failing to stay detached, first kiss, Jerry Martin and Abigail Rosenthal, knowing you are in love, life choice, maintaining detachment, meaningful kiss, meaningful relationship, Medieval romance and gnosticism, Medieval romance and otherworldly, Medieval romance as model, medieval romance as subversive, mistaking infatuation with love, mutual attraction, no guarantees in love, obeying the summons of love, observer and observed, peak experience, phenomenological bracketing, phenomenological reduction, resisting the summons of love, rising above it, Romance, romance in fiction, romance in psychology, romance novels, Romantic Love, romantic risks, saving Brooklyn College, Saving the Brooklyn College Core in The New York Post, Saving the Brooklyn Core in The Jewish Daily Forward, saving the core curriculum, Saving the Core in The Chronicle of Higher Education, self awareness, self deception, skeptical of romance, the meaning of a first kiss, the stroke of lightning, The Stroke of Lightning vs societal norms, the summons of love, Tristan and Iseult, two paths in the wood
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The Stroke of Lightning
One time I asked the Swiss-French philosopher Jeanne Hersch what she thought the French model for romantic love was. Her response was instant: C’est Tristan. That twelfth-century tale, which exists in many versions, goes like this: Tristan, a Cornish knight, … Continue reading →
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, anthropology, appreciation, art, art of living, atheism, authenticity, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Biblical God, bigotry, 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, 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, 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, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, public facade, public intellectual, 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, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged academic attitudes, blinded by love, bracketing personal involvement, bracketing the natural attitude, cynicism as pretense, dance of the lovers, Dante Alighieri, Dante and Beatrice, Dante's romantic love, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Edmund Husserl, encoded Gnostic stories, explaining away romance, falling in love, falling in love unawares, feminism as anti-romantic, fitting romantic love into categories, French choreography of romance, French culture and the coup de foudre, French model of romantic love, gender imbalance, good life as a balance between extremes, honoring womanly hopes, independent woman, insincere hopelessness, Jeanne Hersch, lawbreaking for the sake of a better world, le coup de foudre, libertine Gnosticism, lovers in Paris, medieval romance, modern woman, nihilism as pretense, nonviolent resistance, noticing the romantic spark, objective self-examination, objective self-knowledge, ontology of romantic love, outliving one's love, outliving romantic love, personal histories, Phenomenology, pretended maturity, professional woman, reductive explanations for romantic love, resistance and non-resistance, romance and self protection, romance as novelistic, romance tales as encoded Gnostic tracts, romantic approach of French vs. American women, Romantic Love, romantic love and psychology, romantic love and the experts, romantic love and theoretical explanations, romantic love as a law onto itself, romantic love as sanity in depth, romantic love as temporary, romantic love treated as abnormal, romantic love treated as madness, romantic love vs. seduction, saving the liberal arts, studying romance, taking romantic love seriously, the strategy of being a woman, the stroke of lightning, the Tristan template, the world has no room for romance, Tristan and Iseult, true love, trusting romantic love, Upper East Side, well-balanced life, woman philosopher
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Is Spirituality Natural?
In last week’s column, I visited the phases of our human development, from infancy to adulthood, as assembled by philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum in Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of the Emotions. Despite my own high regard for Martha Nussbaum, … Continue reading →
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Bible, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, 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, female power, femininity, feminism, films, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immortality, institutional power, 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, nineteenth-century, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, 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, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged boundaries and methods of the sciences, boundaries of science, boundaries of the sciences, cross-cultural spiritual developmental stages, cross-cultural spirituality, cultural norms, culturally approved beliefs, Dante and Beatrice, developmental psychology and Martha Nussbaum, disgust in children, envy in children, framing research programs, getting to health in adulthood, groupthink, happy endings in novels, high-functioning adulthood, human developmental stages, infant anxiety, infant helplessness, Is physics foundational?, jealousy in children, learning from experience, life lessons, life projects, Lisa Miller’s The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving, Lisa Miller’s work in developmental psychology, live and learn, logical positivism, making life plans, making sense of life experiences, Martha C. Nussbaum’s Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of the Emotions, natural spirituality and success in life, natural spirituality and thriving adulthood, natural spirituality’s outcomes, new research in spiritual development, personal sense-making, Philip Kitcher’s What’s the Use of Philosophy?, philosophers of science, philosophic work today, philosophy and science, philosophy can clarify life plans, philosophy clarifying life, philosophy’s present-day tasks, present day work in philosophy, romantic idealization, Romantic Love, Science setting the norm, Science vs nonsense, Science vs sciences, shame in children, spiritual development, spiritual developmental stages, spiritual experience vs settled science, spirituality, spirituality and depression, spirituality and psychology, spirituality and romance, spirituality as protective, spirituality encouraged, supporting natural spirituality, the Other is a lot like us, Tristan and Iseult, true love, true love in novels, true love in the Bible, uses of philosophy, What does the Science say?
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