Tag Archives: Diana Trilling’s The Beginning of the Journey

The “New York Intellectuals” and Me

Recently I’ve been reading a book titled Arguing the World: The New York Intellectuals in Their Own Words, by Joseph Dorman. It’s based on the author’s interviews with surviving members of a group that played a significant part in the … Continue reading

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Filial Piety

Filial Piety I once wrote an article whose original title was “Filial Piety.”  That’s the category under which people used to cite the duties and types of honor that children were thought to owe their parents.  Every philosophical journal to … Continue reading

Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, books, childhood, chivalry, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jews, Judaism, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master, memoir, memory, mind control, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, mysticism, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, peace, philosophy, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, 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, victimhood, work, writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

My Defense of My Parents

My Defense of My Parents Recently I read the collected letters of Lionel Trilling.  Afterward, curiosity prompted me to look in the file folder I had under that name.  Trilling had been, possibly, the most influential opinion-shaper in mid-twentieth-century America.  … Continue reading

Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, art of living, atheism, autonomy, beauty, Biblical God, books, childhood, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jews, journalism, Judaism, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, memoir, memory, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, ontology, past and future, philosophy, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romantic love, secular, self-deception, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, 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 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments