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” her femininity. Rather than accept that choice, she tried to understand whether a woman could pursue serious philosophical thought without becoming alienated from an essential part of herself.

The conversation moves through Simone de Beauvoir, Freud, feminism, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, romantic desire, cultural expectations, and Abigail’s effort to understand the philosophical divide between herself and her former lover, Pheidias.

At the center is a larger question: how do you remain true to yourself when the culture around you insists that two parts of your identity cannot belong together?

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Join the discussion and explore a life lived philosophically.

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Dr. Abigail L. Rosenthal is a distinguished philosopher, educator and author of Confessions of a Young Philosopher, (following the tradition of Augustine and Rousseau, but from a woman’s perspective, with illustrations) and of A Good Look At Evil, Pulitzer-nominated.

Through her platform, Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column, Abigail engages her audience with thought-provoking blogs and podcasts, discussing among other things the fascinating intricacies of women’s lives and shedding light on contemporary experience. Her philosophical and other articles span a wide range of topics which can be found in academia. She is also the editor of The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes’s Secret; Spinoza’s Way by Henry M. Rosenthal, her late father.