Competitive Friendships
I have just been reading the youthful correspondence between my future father, Henry M. Rosenthal, and his best friend in college and for some years thereafter, Lionel Trilling. Trilling went on to m...
27 Dec 202411min
Admiration
In the claims and counter-claims of real life, what is to count as evidence? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Co...
20 Dec 202413min
What’s Your Evidence?
So how does one stay real, and stay in real life, at times of utter frustration? Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author o...
12 Dec 202410min
Are People Really Good at Heart?
“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” These words — set down as a belief, not a question — are among the last lines in the diary of Anne Frank, before the Fr...
5 Dec 20248min
Beatrice in Modern Gear
Of course, many a woman has tried to save a man to her own detriment and without succeeding. There are excellent reasons to warn a girl against embracing such an ideal. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Pro...
28 Nov 20249min
Delusions of Intellection
“People live and die by ideas!” “You are what you think – much more than what you eat!” With encouraging words like these, I would try to persuade students in an intro course to see the study of phil...
22 Nov 202412min
Private Matters
If you think we weren’t scared, think again. We each have a long list of very realistic reasons to believe that we can’t – without extreme diminishment – survive the loss of the other. Abigail L. ...
14 Nov 202411min
Persecution and the Art of Writing
Why should truth-seekers hide their findings? It sounded like a Conspiracy Theory without conspirators, a drama without Dramatis Personae, a tempest in an émigré philosopher’s teapot. Abigail L. Ro...
7 Nov 20248min
