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Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast

Philosophy Podcasts

I would like this podcast to start a conversation with women of all ages, convictions and styles of life – wherever situated on the gamut of experience. In principle, there is no bar to men joining in, since how one defines women has a lot to do with what it means to be a man. But it is women I invite to pull up a chair at this virtual café table and put their questions and views into the conversation. I can be wrong as often as right, so specific advice will be avoided. What will be sought is light on how best to frame the situation of women, considered as a highly interesting problematic. What kind of hand have we been dealt, as women, and how can we best play it?Abigail Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of A Good Look at Evil, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, now appearing in an expanded second edition and as audiobooks. Dr. Rosenthal writes a weekly column for “Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column,” (www.dearabbie-nonadvice.com) where she explores the situation of women. She thinks women’s lives are highly interesting. She’s the editor of The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes’s Secret; Spinoza’s Way by her father, Henry M. Rosenthal. She’s written numerous articles that can be accessed at Academia.edu .

I would like this podcast to start a conversation with women of all ages, convictions and styles of life – wherever situated on the gamut of experience. In principle, there is no bar to men joining in, since how one defines women has a lot to do with what it means to be a man. But it is women I invite to pull up a chair at this virtual café table and put their questions and views into the conversation. I can be wrong as often as right, so specific advice will be avoided. What will be sought is light on how best to frame the situation of women, considered as a highly interesting problematic. What kind of hand have we been dealt, as women, and how can we best play it?Abigail Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of A Good Look at Evil, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, now appearing in an expanded second edition and as audiobooks. Dr. Rosenthal writes a weekly column for “Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column,” (www.dearabbie-nonadvice.com) where she explores the situation of women. She thinks women’s lives are highly interesting. She’s the editor of The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes’s Secret; Spinoza’s Way by her father, Henry M. Rosenthal. She’s written numerous articles that can be accessed at Academia.edu .

Location:

United States

Description:

I would like this podcast to start a conversation with women of all ages, convictions and styles of life – wherever situated on the gamut of experience. In principle, there is no bar to men joining in, since how one defines women has a lot to do with what it means to be a man. But it is women I invite to pull up a chair at this virtual café table and put their questions and views into the conversation. I can be wrong as often as right, so specific advice will be avoided. What will be sought is light on how best to frame the situation of women, considered as a highly interesting problematic. What kind of hand have we been dealt, as women, and how can we best play it?Abigail Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of A Good Look at Evil, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, now appearing in an expanded second edition and as audiobooks. Dr. Rosenthal writes a weekly column for “Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column,” (www.dearabbie-nonadvice.com) where she explores the situation of women. She thinks women’s lives are highly interesting. She’s the editor of The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes’s Secret; Spinoza’s Way by her father, Henry M. Rosenthal. She’s written numerous articles that can be accessed at Academia.edu .

Language:

English

Episodes

Femininity

1/14/2022
What is femininity?

Duration:00:09:50

All About My Mother

1/12/2022
Unlike me, my mother would give advice, solicited and unsolicited. For example: “Never tell other people your sexual history or how much money you have. That’s Life Capital.”

Duration:00:06:55

Loyalty

1/7/2022
For a good many years I had a close woman friend. She was also a colleague, thus for me among the most cherished of life’s treasures. We were very different types, almost polar opposites in our ways of responding to everyday life and doing philosophy.

Duration:00:07:02

All About Love

1/5/2022
But, to love is to … bring it about that the one you love will … suffer? Go figure.

Duration:00:07:15

What Kind of a God?

12/31/2021
I have been following, with a mixture of emotions — including curiosity and claustrophobia — C. S. Lewis’s account, in Surprised by Joy, of his conversion to theism (belief in a personal God) from his former atheism. My last and most unexpected reaction has been recognition!

Duration:00:17:34

Faith

12/29/2021
What is the place of faith in a woman’s life or a man’s? In what should we have faith and when is it best to withhold it?

Duration:00:07:43

Success

12/24/2021
When I was about twenty-five, I said to a friend, “I thought, when I’d be twenty- five, I’d be at least wonderful. But I’m not.”

Duration:00:08:34

Finding Mr. Right

12/22/2021
To marry off Abigail was never a cinch.

Duration:00:09:16

Seduction

12/17/2021
There are worlds in each of us that can’t be discovered if we are too wary.

Duration:00:06:48

My Brilliant Career

12/15/2021
Two roads diverge in a wood. The word was, you pick one or the other: love or work.

Duration:00:08:13

Materialism

12/10/2021
Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly out of sorts, I imagine how my day or week would look to me if I were a materialist. That makes me feel better, because I remember that I’m not one.

Duration:00:08:16

Romantic Love

12/7/2021
Some years back I attended a wedding at a fashionable Manhattan club. Le tout New York was there. The bride was a long-stemmed American beauty, highly thought of in her profession. The groom was one of those Englishmen whose recent best seller depicted his death-defying struggle to survive a desert trek through the back of beyond. Glasses were raised, the happy couple stepped out on the dance floor, and the groom in plummy accents promised us all to “take care of her.” . . .

Duration:00:06:42

Desire

12/1/2021
Desire is the motor of every life.

Duration:00:06:38

Death

11/30/2021
What work does the fear of death do in our lives?

Duration:00:05:17

Cool

11/26/2021
It is a fact of social life – perhaps a bizarre fact – that needful and strenuous efforts can be overshadowed by someone, anyone, who is dubbed “cool.”

Duration:00:05:46

Sex Appeal

11/24/2021
Is it a good thing? A subversive thing? A morally neutral thing?

Duration:00:06:54

Evil

11/19/2021
I know it sounds funny to say, in a “non-advice column” for and about women, but the most evil people I have known personally were women.

Duration:00:06:00

Clothes

11/17/2021
Clothes are a much bigger subject than is generally supposed. I often say, “It doesn’t matter what happens, so long as you’re dressed for it.” I suspect more than a few women would agree with me.

Duration:00:05:55

Authenticity

11/12/2021

Duration:00:05:41

Invisibility

11/10/2021
Invisibility can signal erasure.

Duration:00:06:14

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