Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast
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. Abigail L. 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 .
Episodes
What happens when the ideas that once gave your life direction no longer seem to work?
In this episode, Abigail L. Rosenthal and Jerry L. Martin explore the meaning of intelligent hope as Abigail reaches a breaking point in her philosophical and personal life. After years of trying to reconcile femininity, philosophy, love, and truth, she leaves for England with many of her earlier hopes exhausted.
Their conversation turns to the dif...
Can a woman be feminine and a philosopher?
Abigail L. Rosenthal and Jerry L. Martin explore the tension between femininity and intellectual life, drawing on Abigail’s experience as a philosophy student at Penn State during a time when philosophy was often treated as a distinctly masculine pursuit.
Abigail recalls being told that if she wanted to make real progress in philosophy, she would have to give up or even “destroy&...
What happens when living by your ideals becomes dangerous?
In this episode of Married Philosophers Discuss Confessions, Abigail L. Rosenthal and Jerry L. Martin continue their discussion of Confessions of a Young Philosopher with the stories of John Armstrong and Anna.
John was a fellow Fulbright student in Paris who wanted to test whether his ideals of courage, honor, and integrity could survive in the real world. His decision to tr...
In this episode of Married Philosophers Discuss Confessions, Jerry L. Martin and Abigail L. Rosenthal continue their conversation about the aftermath of Abigail’s first love and the complicated truth she carried home from Paris.
Abigail reflects on heartbreak, secrecy, the loss of innocence, and why telling the truth can sometimes distort an experience rather than preserve it.
The conversation explores romantic disappoint...
What does it mean to be one of God’s chosen people, and why does the Jewish covenant carry both honor and an impossible burden?
In this episode of Married Philosophers Discuss Confessions, philosophers Jerry L. Martin and Abigail L. Rosenthal explore “Of the Impossible Position of the Jews,” the opening chapter of Part Two of Abigail’s book, Confessions of a Young Philosopher.
Jerry and Abigail discuss the mea...
What does desire reveal about the difference between men and women?
In this episode, married philosophers Abigail L. Rosenthal and Jerry L. Martin return to a striking passage from Confessions of a Young Philosopher: “My heavy head of hair bent under his dominion.”
The word dominion is deliberate. Abigail does not mean cruelty, degradation, or the loss of freedom. She means the peculiar power of eros: the experience of be...
After her violating experience with Phidias leaves Abigail frightened, heartbroken, and facing the possibility of pregnancy, she turns to her friend Harper.
Instead of judgment, Harper gives Abigail the gift of recognition. Understanding more than Abigail expects, she offers practical help, kindness, and what Abigail later calls “that pearl without price”: feminine solidarity.
In this episode of Married Philosophers Discu...
In Part 1.3 of Married Philosophers Discuss Confessions, Abigail L. Rosenthal and Jerry L. Martin continue their conversation on Part One of Confessions of a Young Philosopher.
After her innocence has been taken through seduction and manipulation, Abigail confronts a more difficult truth: beneath the violation, there may also have been something like love. Looking back on her first romantic relationship, she reflects on the authorit...
In Part 1.2 of Married Philosophers Discuss Confessions, Abigail L. Rosenthal and Jerry L. Martin continue their conversation on Part One of Confessions of a Young Philosopher.
In Paris, a café conversation between two young philosophy students turns suddenly from politics to love. What begins as argument and intellectual sparring becomes Abigail’s first romantic encounter, forcing her to confront not only desire, but innocenc...
What does it mean to be desired—and what happens if you are not?
In Part One of Confessions of a Young Philosopher, Abigail L. Rosenthal arrives in Paris on a Fulbright fellowship and encounters a culture that seems to make space for romantic love in a way that 1950s America did not. Along the Seine, in the cafés, and throughout the Latin Quarter, she observes a world shaped by different assumptions about love, desire, and the...
What do you carry with you when you leave home for the first time?
In Married Philosophers Discuss Confessions, philosophers Jerry L. Martin and Abigail L. Rosenthal revisit Abigail's memoir, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, chapter by chapter.
Married for decades, they look back together on the experiences, relationships, ideas, and historical events that shaped the young woman Abigail once was, and the life she would event...
In this deeply personal and spiritually rich episode, philosopher Jerry L. Martin is joined by Abigail L. Rosenthal on his podcast God An Autobiography for an intimate conversation about divine encounters, spiritual awakening, and what it means to experience a radically personal God.
Drawing from Jerry’s new book Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age, the discussion explores how spiritual truth is no...
In this episode, Dr. Abigail L. Rosenthal joins her husband Dr. Jerry L. Martin on his podcast God An Autobiography to ask a question deeply human and spiritually profound:
What is love and what does it reveal about the nature of the world we live in?
Jerry and Abigail remind us that truth is not always found in the dominant worldview. Often, it comes from moments that break through: a glance, a conversation, a shared fig...
"God is not fooled. Everybody else could be fooled, but in that respect—just as you can’t fool a child by pretending to be benevolent and love the cute little number when you don’t—the child is not fooled. The dog is not fooled. You know, there are humble creatures in life who are simply not fooled by grown-up pretenses, and God seems to be in that number."
"I did feel obligated, as a Jewish girl who was not stupid, to situate my life on the larger map of human striving in a world that was wide, not narrow. I wanted to know where I was and not just in the realm of personal options. I sought to get my bearings and location in human history itself. I just wanted to know how to find me in the bigger story.”
"If we’re talking about how to understand the Abigail who sets forth on her life journey in the opening pages of this book, I could be deemed naive. But about the hovering presence of unspeakable horror at the outside of this visual screen of the world that I was looking at, I couldn’t be unaware of that."
Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author ...
This week, Abbie revisits the unforgettable story of Marie Antoinette. First shared in an earlier podcast, Encore Marie Antoinette reflects on what made the Queen of France so captivating—and so condemned. Was she a symbol, a scapegoat, or simply herself?
Abigail L. 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...
Dr. Jerry L. Martin and Dr. Abigail L. Rosenthal (author of Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column) are discussing her just-published book Confessions of a Young Philosopher.
Explore more about Confessions of a Young Philosopher.
Get Confessions of a Young Philosopher.
Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of Confessions of A Young Philosoph...
Dr. Jerry L. Martin and Dr. Abigail L. Rosenthal (author of Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column) pursue their discussion of Beginningwise, which is Part One of her new book, Confessions of a Young Philosopher. Let’s see how their discussion goes forward.
Explore more about Confessions of a Young Philosopher.
Get Confessions of a Young Philosopher.
Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City ...
Dr. Jerry L. Martin and Dr. Abigail L. Rosenthal (author of Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column) pursue their discussion of Beginningwise, which is Part One of her new book, Confessions of a Young Philosopher. Let’s see how their discussion goes forward.
Explore more about Confessions of a Young Philosopher.
Get Confessions of a Young Philosopher.
Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita at Brooklyn College of The City ...
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