Death, Dying, and Heroes
So, if death is ordinarily not that bad – a big relief, even – why the dread of dying? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the ...
21 Mars 202410min
September 11, A Week Later –
This post, written the week after September 11, 2011, is dedicated to Frank De Martini and Pablo Ortiz. Starting at the 88th floor on the North Tower, they went from floor to floor calling out to peop...
14 Mars 202421min
Success in San Francisco
The trip wasn’t exactly a willing one on my part because my spouse had talked me into giving a paper at the conference where he was to chair a panel and present his own paper. I hadn’t given any philo...
7 Mars 202410min
Léo
Léo was Laurin’s philosophy of art teacher at Brandeis University. He was also my father’s closest friend and a sort of godfather to me, from my earliest days and continuing into adult life. As we tal...
29 Feb 202411min
Zeitgeist
What is it about the Zeitgeist? It’s never quite feasible to pretend it’s not real or to dodge it completely – unless you’ve managed to carve out an existence on an uninhabited Pacific island or a so...
22 Feb 202411min
Apologies to Kierkegaard
In a previous post or two of “Dear Abbie,” I found myself sharply critical – denunciatory even – of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). He is the Danish philosopher/theologian who is still studied by serio...
15 Feb 202410min
Frustrations and Epiphanies
Our quiet town, with its Victorian houses (many of them kept in good repair by the law firms that have taken them over), its charming signs of civic care and pride, has for some years also been the sc...
8 Feb 202415min
A Funny Thing Happened to Philosophy (on its way to the deepest depths)
In the entire history of philosophy, we know of nothing like it. No betrayal on that scale of the loyalty owed by a philosopher to his teacher and his students. It’s without precedent, so far as I kno...
1 Feb 202412min
