Tag Archives: true stories
The Story
“The crucial thing is the story.” That is what I claim in A Good Look at Evil, my book which holds that the person who would live a good life finds her own story while the evil-doer may be detected … Continue reading →
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, anthropology, anti-semitism, appreciation, art, art of living, atheism, authenticity, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, Truth, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged a shattering secret, Abigail Rosenthal's A Good Look At Evil, above all do no harm, blame as manipulation, Carl Jung, chemistry and healing, danger acknowledged, dementia praecox, despair and guilt, detecting evil, determinism and relativism, discerning evil, disrupted story, distinguishing fact from fantasy, evil doers, evil psychologized away, evil-doers in real life, good life, guilt and projection, hippocratic oath, illness and fashion, inauthenticity, inducing guilt, infanticide, Jung as mental hospital assistant, Jung in Zurich, Jung's autobiography, Jung's Memories Dreams Reflections, life-saving advice, losing true love, marrying the wrong man, meaningful storyline, medical bureaucracy, medical ethics, medical power, medicalizing desire, mental healing, mental illness and conformism, moral blackmail, mothers and depression, Oedipal guilt, outliving despair, philosophical fashions, power misused, preventing suicide, psychological cures, psychology and healing, psychology's banalization, psychology's conventionalism, psychology's denial of significance, psychology's mistreatment of women, psychology's narrow horizons, psychology's reductionism, psychology-based cures, real life confused with fiction, real-life story, relativism and denial, repairing one's story, repairing the psyche, repairing the soul, Schizophrenia, self-sabotage, self-spoiled story, social vulnerability, spoiling one’s story, status and vulnerability, stolen story, story and philosophical fashion, story as defining the problem, suicide and secrets, suicide and therapy, suicide as the wrong solution, telling fact from fiction, the bureaucracy of psychology, the worst harm, thwarting evil, true stories, truth and healing, unchivalrous conduct, victimization, victims of evil, warning victims, wives and depression
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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 →
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, 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, 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, Nihilism, nineteenth-century, 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, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, racism, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, remembrance, repairing the culture, roles, romantic love, 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, 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 Abigail L. Rosenthal’s A Good Look at Evil, acculturation and maturation, aesthetic theory, bearing witness, beyond good and evil, celebration of the novel, characters in novels, children’s adaptation to grownups, continental know-it-all, cultural history, culture and meaning, culture as influence on purpose, despair as affectation, destroying the culture, discerning life purpose, discerning one’s purpose, evil defined, evildoers and innocent purposes, evildoers attacking ordinary purpose, fashionable despair, feminine self-respect, fiction and nonfiction, good and evil, Guido Mazzoni’s Theory of the Novel, initial purposes, intellectual influence, Jesus, ladies don’t believe this creep, libertine Gnosticism, life as a journey, life as a pilgrimage, life as a quest, literary criticism, literary history, mapping and purpose, moral anomie, moral flatness, mutual influence in society, nineteenth-century novels, novelistic life stories, novels and real-life, Pontius Pilate, preferred purposes, pretense of amorality, revising purposes, seducer’s line, seducing the reader, self-definition, self-discovery, self-education, self-respect, stories true and false, story as putting purpose to the test, storylines, subjectivity mischaracterized, technique of seduction, testing purposes, the nature of evil, the novel, trials and errors, true stories, truth and falsehood, truth and postmodernism, truth vs fiction, undermining the culture, What is truth?, what you see is what you get
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The Past 150 Years: Looking Backwards
The Past 150 years: Looking Backwards I’ve said, and I believe, that our lives are the true stories of who we are – something we find out as we try out the deeds that appear to express who we are … 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, bigotry, books, Christianity, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, feminism, freedom, 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, institutional power, Jews, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, nineteenth-century, novels, oppression, past and future, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, poetry, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, race, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, 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, 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, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged Abigail L. Rosenthal's "A Good Look at Evil", aestheticism, Alfred Lord Tennyson's Locksley Hall, anthropologists, Arthur Schopenhauer, auto-fiction, Bloomsbury circle, Charles Beaudelaire, Charles Darwin, chronological narratives, civilizational guilt, communism, concept of equality, cultural self-confidence, cultural self-doubt, cultural skepticism, cynicism, dark romanticism, demagogic power, denunciation competitions, disillusionment, enhanced status, fascism, flattering men, Frederich Nietzsche, global communications, God's eye view, good and evil, healthy conscience, human community, improved rights, J. K. Huysmans, keys to world history, living dialectically, living meaningfully, lost generation, lycanthropy, manipulative men, memoir, meta-narratives, moral rank-pulling, narrative view, Oscar Wilde, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey, penis envy, reductive views, repression as seductor's weapon, righteousness, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, role of religion, saving the planet, self-corrective life, self-righteousness, Sigmund Freud, spoiling the story, suffragettes, suspending judgement, the feminine in culture, the human epic, totalitarian movements, true stories, value judgments, values as objective, values as subjective, Victorian beliefs, weakened traditions, women on the defensive, women's socialization, women's liberation
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Battered, Bruised … but Unbowed?
Battered, Bruised … but Unbowed? Last week, reflecting on my deep reluctance to do anything that would promote my newly-released book, A Good Look at Evil, second edition, I determined that the real barrier isn’t that I believe I have … Continue reading →
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, anthropology, art of living, atheism, autonomy, beauty, Biblical God, bureaucracy, 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, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jews, Judaism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, mind control, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, nineteenth-century, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, radicalism, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romantic love, 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, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged A. G. Eric Scheniderman, Abigail L. Rosenthal's "A Good Look at Evil", abusive men, abusive relationships, Amazon’s “Look Inside”, amazon’s books, assertiveness training, bad guys winning, being outnumbered, betrayal of trust, Bible study, Bill Clinton, book endorsements, book promotion, chariots of fire, cheering the sick, combatting adversity, compliance with abuser, coping with setbacks, decent manhood, defending one’s work, demands of nature, distance healing, electronic preview, embezzler, evil diagnosed, evil portrayed, female receptivity, female vulnerability, feminine pliancy, feminine sensitivity, femininity as social construct, feminism’s counsels, fictional stories, getting evil’s number, giving up the fight, hype, II Kings 6:15-17, internalizing real problems, jacket blurbs, Juanita Broaddrick, king of Syria, life as story, lifemanship, mirror of evil, modern cynicism, modernity’s worldview, mug shot, nameless adversary, narrative view, nature v nurture, neuropathy treatment, nineteenth century novels, nonfiction narrative, not giving up, Pentateuch, persistence as key, persistence as victory, prayer guidance, prayer-based healing, predator in disguise, projection, protecting one’s book, publication date, puffery, rabbinic duties, satanic attack, sexual predator, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, sting operation, stress fracture, string of accidents, taking oneself seriously, the sleeping dogs, thwarted story, Torah Study, true stories, unexpected guest, Victorian novels, woman's nature, women’s disguising armor, yin and yang
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Why Women Are Mean to Other Women
Why Women Are Mean to Other Women Whew! This is a touchy subject. Almost taboo, since we are these days denominated the compassionate, caring, anti-violence sex. Labels of these kinds call to mind the way 19th-century suffragettes made the case … Continue reading →
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, autonomy, beauty, chivalry, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, institutional power, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master, memoir, memory, mind control, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, motherhood, nineteenth-century, non-violence, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, political, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reductionism, relationships, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, scientism, 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, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged 19th century, American Philosophical Association, androgyny, anti-war women, APA, bad women, badness and goodness, cattiness, choreography, dance of courtship, domesticity, erotic polarities, female attractiveness, forging freedom, Francis Thomson’s In No Strange Land, free will, gender roles, good men, good women, gossip, helpmeet, living one’s story, male brutality, male cruelty, male/female polarity, man/woman asymmetry, man/woman choreography, manliness, maternal coldness, maternal virtues, mean girls, Mean women, moral difference, motherhood, nature v nurture, nurturing, philosophical argument, Plato’s Symposium, public v private, real men, real women, reigning orthodoxy, same-sex eros, sensitizing men, sex and gender, sex differences, sexual attraction, social constructs, suffragettes, sympathy for women, the caring sex, the compassionate sex, the feminist movement, time and fertility, timeless attraction, touchy subject, true stories, unisex, virility, winners and losers, women against violence, women against women, women in competition, women in the kitchen, women in the nursery, women’s caring, women’s compassion, yin and yang, youth and attractiveness
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Are the Stories We Live True?
Are the Stories We Live True? Good people try to live the sorts of stories that will solve the problems of their lives as reasonably and realistically as they can. Meanwhile, evil people aim to mess up good people’s stories. … Continue reading →
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, alienation, anthropology, art, art of living, autonomy, beauty, bureaucracy, chivalry, class, conformism, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, fashion, femininity, feminism, freedom, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, hegemony, heroes, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, institutional power, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master, memoir, memory, mind control, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, nineteenth-century, ontology, oppression, past and future, philosophy, poetry, political, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, scientism, 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, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, victimhood, victims, violence, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged Abigail L. Rosenthal's "A Good Look at Evil", abstraction, abuse of power, adultery, Anglophone philosophers, authority figure, Bernard Harrison's What Is Fiction For: Literary Humanism Restored, Bertrand Russell, chronology, Continental philosophers, creative living, credence, credulity, deconstruction, deconstructionism, delusions, early Wittgenstein, empiricism, Evil, evil people, false consciousness, fantasy, Ferdinand de Saussure, fictional stories, French philosophers, Freudian unconscious, Gilles Deleuze, giving credit, good people, goodness, graduate student, incredulity, Jacques Derrida, manipulativeness, marital cheating, metaphysics, Michel Foucault, narrative, narrative theory, narrative view, narrativity, novels, Ontology, outside the text, philosophical analysis, plot line, scholarly attribution, seductive ploy, self-mistrust, self-trust, sense data, skepticism, social embarrasment, Steven G. Smith's Full History: On The Meaningfulness of Shared Action, suppressed stories, suspicion, the marginal, the powerful, theory, theory of being, true stories, ultimate reality, verbal vertigo, wish fulfillment
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Putting Puzzle Pieces in Place
Putting Puzzle Pieces in Place Today I finished a good part of what I had to do to prepare the first book I ever wrote, A Good Look at Evil, to reappear in the world. This meant writing a new … Continue reading →
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, Biblical God, bureaucracy, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, immorality, institutional power, Jews, journalism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, memoir, memory, mind control, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, mortality, oppression, past and future, philosophy, political, political movements, politics, postmodernism, power, presence, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, scientism, seduction, self-deception, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, 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, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged Abigail L. Rosenthal's "A Good Look at Evil", academic journals, academic readership, banality of evil, dishonest views, dramatic lives, Eichmann in Jerusalem, evidence for God, evidence for Providence, Evil, evil as counter-story, fashionable views, Hannah Arendt, life as puzzle, Michelangelo’s Kneeling Boy, narrative theory, negative story, nonfiction narrative, nonfiction plotlines, novelistic lives, philosophic articles, philosophic publication, providence, Public Intellectual, puzzle pieces, reprint, revisions, specialized readership, true stories, willful evil
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Real Life and the Philosophic Life
Real Life and the Philosophic Life Is there any connection between the two? The book I recently fell in love with, John Kaag’s American Philosophy: A Love Story, was heartening to me on two fronts. First, the American philosophers, whose … Continue reading →
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, alienation, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, beauty, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, courage, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, faith, freedom, friendship, gender balance, heroes, hidden God, history, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, immortality, law, legal responsibility, literature, love, masculinity, memoir, memory, nineteenth-century, past and future, philosophy, poetry, political movements, politics of ideas, presence, promissory notes, psychology, public intellectual, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romantic love, scientism, social construction, social conventions, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, time, twenty-first century, work, writing, Zeitgeist
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Tagged "the divine Plato", 19th century, 19th century optimism, Abigail L. Rosenthal's "Confessions of a Young Philosopher", American optimism, American Philosophy, archives, Athenian street, Athens, Australian materialism, autobiography, Baruch Spinoza, business mentality, Cephalus, Charles Darwin, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, conventionality, counter-culture, Darwin, Darwinian Laws of Nature, David Stove, David Stove's "Against the Idols of the Tribe", despair, determinism, dialogue, Divine intervention, Evolutionary theory, faith in progress, fate, fictional narrative, go along to get along, God as Witness, God's action, God's role, honesty, John Kaag, John Kaag's "American Philosophy: A Love Story", justice defined, limits of honesty, love life, luck, made up stories, memoir, native grain, New World, overcoming despair, personal pathway, philosophy's tools, Plato, political justice, Pragmatists, promise keeping, providence, pursuit of truth, road less traveled, role of chance, romantic risks, satire, Socrates, Socratic dialectic, Socratic method, Spinoza's Ethics, the God factor, The Name, Tom Wolfe, Tom Wolfe's "The Kingdom of Speech", true love, true stories, truth seeker, truth telling, unconventionality, what rings true, William James, William James' "The Will To Believe"
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