Transcendence for Beginners

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

InTranscendence for Beginners, Clare Carlisle examines life writing and philosophy across certain European and Indian traditions, exploring questions of childhood and mortality, art and religion, beauty and loss. Informed by her experience as a biographer of Sren Kierkegaard and George Eliot as well as her own life, Carlisle asks what one human existence can reveal, and how writing can transmit its truth. Intellectually stimulating and deeply moving,Transcendence for Beginnersenacts a philosophy of the heart, told by a generous and compelling guide. This bold, enlivening work asserts Carlisle's place as one of our most innovative thinkers.

Reviews

By taking the discussion on life-writing away from genre towards, instead, philosophical histories of the self, this book makes a powerful case for rethinking life-writing's significance. In the process, it both explores remembering and remembers, doing both with an often startling critical intelligence as well as with surprising emotional immediacy.
Amit Chaudhuri, author ofSojourn

A book of great intricacyand grace.Clare Carlisle is able to look upon the physics of literature, narrative and being as a scientist might look upon the constellations, giving us both understanding and wonder.
Jessica Au, author ofCold Enough for Snow

In this elegant, eloquent, elegiac book, Clare Carlisle describes the movements of other lives, as well as those of her own life, that open paths to understanding what it means to live a life of devotion. This is philosophy as rigorously thought, but also as felt and lived. In an era marked by rampant cruelty and selfishness,Transcendence for Beginnersoffers its readers various modes of the radiant life, one that embraces joy but can also navigate loss and grief in that strange flux of being we call time.
Siri Hustvedt, author ofMothers, Fathers and Others

A wide ranging and surprisingly moving examination of what it is to have, and live, a life.
JessieGreengrass, author ofThe High House

This is the book of a lifetime, and a book about lifetimes. What is the relationship between philosophy and biography How can a line of writing reveal a line of living Clare Carlisle is a guide and a guru:Transcendence for Beginnersis a transformative and transcending experience
Frances Wilson, author ofElectric Spark

A work of thrilling lucidity and substance, on the singularity of lives and the value of life-writing, in whichClareCarlisleshows herself to be the most companionate of thinkers, gifted with uncommon modesty and intellectual grace. A book to read slowly, talk about, savour and learn from.
Claire Harman, author ofAll Sorts of Lives

Transcendence for Beginnersis a brilliant book one of the most intelligent and sophisticated meditations on life-writing Ive ever read, as well as a powerful demonstration of what the best life-writing can do in practice. Carlisle approaches this humble literary genre in the fullness of its ethical dimensions.
Edmund Gordon, author ofThe Invention of Angela Carter

Clare Carlisle'sThe Marriage Questionis the best book I've read on George Eliot.
John Carey,Sunday Times (praise for The Marriage Question)

Finally, Eliot has got the biographer she deserves, namely an ardent and eloquent feminist philosopher who shows us how and why Eliot's books, rightly read, are as philosophically profound as any treatise written by a man.
Stuart Jeffries,Observer (praise for The Marriage Question)

The Marriage Questionalready has the stamp of a classic and is bound to enter the canon of great biographies. I was amazed by the clarity of Clare Carlisle's language; she deals with the most complex ideas with miraculous ease. It was a delight to read while at the same time being deeply thought-provoking. I'm already looking forward to reading this magnificent book again.
Celia Paul, author ofLetters to Gwen John (praise for The Marriage Question)

This book manages to be both engrossing and rigorous, inhabiting an intimate and expansive vision of creativity and the lived life. Following the pulsing and ever-vital questions of love, desire, compromise and companionship,The Marriage Questionis both a thrilling work on Eliot and a probing, illuminating reflection on modern love.
Sen Hewitt, author ofAll Down Darkness Wide (praise for The Marriage Question)

Philosopher of the Heartenacts Kierkegaard's audacity and verve in thinking and writing, his new way of doing philosophy, in a thrillingly inward and intimate style.
Boyd Tonkin,Arts Desk (praise for Philosopher of the Heart)

Superb ... the sort of biography Kierkegaard himself might have written.
David Mason,The Hudson Review (praise for Philosopher of the Heart)

This lucid and riveting new biography at once rescues Kierkegaard from the scholars and makes it abundantly clear why he is such an intriguing and useful figure.
Adam Phillips,Observer (praise for Philosopher of the Heart)

Author Bio

Clare Carlisle is Professor of Philosophy at King's College London, and the author of eight books on philosophy and philosophers, includingPhilosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Sren Kierkegaardand most recentlyThe Marriage Question: George Eliot's Double Life. She grew up in Manchester, studied Philosophy and Theology at Trinity College, Cambridge, and now lives in East London.