Competitive Friendships

Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast

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 make for himself the most brilliant career of his generation as a public intellectual. Since they had been so very close, I never knew exactly why my father broke it off with him, but that could well have been the reason. On the race track of life, it’s hard to eat your friend’s dust. . .
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 Philosopher (forthcoming), which is a woman's "confession" in the tradition of Augustine and Rousseau. She writes a weekly online column, "Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column" along with "Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Podcast," where she explains why women's lives are highly interesting. Many of her articles are accessible at https://brooklyn-cuny.academia.edu/AbigailMartin. She edited The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes's Secret; Spinoza's Way by her father, the late Henry M. Rosenthal. She is married to Jerry L. Martin, also a philosopher. They live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She can be reached a [e-mail] live under the sheltering umbrellas of our worldviews. To the point where we would feel naked if we were caught in the street without them.