CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG PHILOSOPHER

A young intellectual comes of age while grappling with philosophy, femininity, and her Jewish identity in this memoir.

A Jewish girl raised in Manhattan with an insatiable curiosity for history and philosophy, Rosenthal won a Fulbright scholarship to Paris to study aesthetics. There, she was immersed in a world of intellectually curious expats questioning the effects of World War II, the Holocaust, and rising waves of communism. Rosenthal’s own inner dialogue was dominated by questions of love, marriage, and sex, however, after meeting the charming fellow foreign student Pheidias (“I'd never met a modern Greek, though I felt I had met many ancient ones,” she thinks to herself, revealing her consistent preoccupation with the classics.) As Pheidias slowly wore down her resolve to preserve her chastity, Rosenthal cycled through Voltaire, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Simone de Beauvoir, desperate to understand her place as a woman within the context of romantic love. Her memoir’s second section details her return to New York, where she began to develop her perspectives on religion and femininity as American culture shifted around her. Just as Rosenthal felt comfortable no longer believing in God, she returned to Europe. There, in London, she would meet Suzanne, an imposing American with powerful ideas whose belief in Gnostic Christianity quickly spun Rosenthal’s mind “out of its habitat in space and time” (the author’s strange, almost cultlike experiences with Suzanne can read as chaotic and confusing). Rosenthal’s command of philosophy is dazzling; even the smallest of comments can set her off on impressive disquisitions that easily draw from centuries of thought and literature. Her work is most accessible when she assumes a more contemporary perspective on herself, contextualizing her responses within her time period and her personal history. Those willing to follow her will be rewarded with gems of intriguing insight.

A challenging memoir full of thought-provoking philosophy.