"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.”

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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 dearabbiesilvousplait@gmail.com.We 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.

"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 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 dearabbiesilvousplait@gmail.com.We 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.