Tag Archives: George Orwell’s “1984”

The Owl of Minerva Takes Flight

Posted on May 6, 2025 by Abigail

This week, Abbie brings back a reader favorite. First shared in an earlier column, The Owl of Minerva Takes Flight explores what it means to understand history only in hindsight, and what we might see when we try. *** “The … Continue reading →

Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, childhood, chivalry, Christianity, 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, Industrial Revolution, institutional power, Jews, journalism, Judaism, 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, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, poetry, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, racism, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, 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, 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 ancient skepticism, anthropic principle, Antony Flew’s There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, brainwashing, cancel culture and desire, cancel culture and social power, chance and life’s origin, coerced confessions, culture and the absolute, culture and ultimate truth, Darwin and chance, Darwinian evolution, decoding present history, desire and erotic skepticism, erotic manipulation, foreseeing the future, Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama and liberal democracy, G.W.F. Hegel, George Orwell's "1984", guilt and social power, Hegel and history, historical eros, ideology and tyranny, intelligibility of history, laws of probability and evolution, liberal democratic values, Mind Control, Modernity, my story and humanity’s story, natural purposes, ostracism and social power, owl of Minerva, personal story and world history, philosophy and teleology, postmodern skepticism, postmodernism and denial, psychoanalysis, purposiveness in nature, reading the Zeitgeist, Robert Jay Lifton's Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of 'Brainwashing' in China, skepticism, skepticism and biological nature, skepticism in history, Sy Garte’s The Works of His Hands: A Scientist’s Journey from Atheism to Faith, teleology, the big picture, the bird’s eye view of history, The Owl of Minerva and history, theology and teleology, Ukraine and Western nations, Ukraine as a test of values, understanding the present, world history and liberal democracy | Leave a comment

The “New York Intellectuals” and Me

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Abigail

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 →

Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, American politics, anthropology, anti-semitism, 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, eighteenth century, erotic life, eternity, ethics, ethnicity, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, feminism, 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, Judaism, 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, remembrance, 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, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged A Good Look at Evil by Abigail L. Rosenthal, Abigail L. Rosenthal’s “A Hegelian Key to Hegel’s Method”, academic norms, academic values, American intellectual culture, anti-capitalism, apocalyptic thinking, Arguing the World: The New York Intellectuals in Their Own Words by Joseph Dorman, art historian, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, “unreal city in the future”, betraying the revolution, Book-of-the-Month Club judge, brainwashing, children of Jewish immigrants, City College alcove 1, City College in the 1930’s, City College Marxists, Clifton Fadiman, coerced confessions, Columbia University class of 1925, Columbia University rabbi, cultural critic, culturally malnourished, dating artwork, defacing Alma Mater, Diana Trilling’s The Beginning of the Journey, discrediting a civilization, enemy of the people, ex-communist, finding attribution of artworks, genius of the class of 1925, George Orwell's "1984", Hannah Arendt, Henry M. Rosenthal, Henry M. Rosenthal’s journal, Hitler-Stalin Pact, ignorance of civilization, Information Please, intellectual conscience of America, intellectual friendship, intellectual safety, intellectuals and the Great Depression, Jacob Taubes, Jacques Barzun, Jewish intellectuals, Joseph Stalin, Judaism and the method of argument, Leon Trotsky, Lionel Trilling, Lionel Trilling and Henry M. Rosenthal, literary critic, Lower East Side garment district, Lower East Side immigrants, Meyer Schapiro, Meyer Schapiro as art historian, mobs against the academy, New York intellectuals, New York intellectuals network of influence, public intellectuals, radio personality of the 1950’s, Reign of Terror, revolutionaries vs liberals, The Country of the Revolution, The God That Failed, the Great Depression, The Moscow Trials, the opiate of the people, Trotskyists vs Stalinists at City College, Trotskyites, twentieth-century America, Whittaker Chambers, world wide revolution, youthful friendships | Leave a comment

“The Real World”

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Abigail

“The Real World” Is there a real world? There are those who deny it, and they are not the smallest fry in the ranks of the influential. I’ve been reading a new book called Winning Arguments by Stanley Fish, a … Continue reading →

Posted in absurdism, academe, action, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, ethics, evil, existentialism, faith, fashion, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, journalism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, male power, masculinity, master, memoir, memory, mind control, modernism, mortality, non-violence, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, philosophy, political, political movements, politics, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reductionism, relationships, roles, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, social climbing, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, status, status of women, suffering, terrorism, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, theology, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged Abigail L. Rosenthal's "Confessions of a Young Philosopher", argument, bad arguments, candor, coherence theory, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, contradiction, correspondence theory, doxa, dying, eloquence, embarrasment, epistemolgy, external world, facing death, fallacy, George Orwell, George Orwell's "1984", group consensus, honesty, inconsistency, influence, informal fallacies, informal logic, irrelevancy, language, last days, linguistic construction of reality, literary theory, losers, martial arts, Mind Control, modesty, noesis, non sequitur, norms, opinions, Orwell's "Animal Farm", Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" 1946, paradigm, Persuasion, persuasive power, picturing, post modernism, Power, pragmatic theory, real world, relevancy, rhetoric, silence, simplicity, Socrates, Sophistry, Stanley Fish, Stanley Fish's "Winning Arguments: What Works and Doesn't Work in Politics the Bedroom the Courtroom and the Classroom", terminal cancer, the God's eye view, The Gorgias, theories of truth, truth, TV debates, understanding, view from nowhere, visualizing, winners, winners and losers, winning and losing, wordsmith, world views | Leave a comment

Tag Archives: George Orwell’s “1984”

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