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Transcendence for Beginners

Clare Carlisle

$26.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English
FITZCARRALDO EDITIONS
02 December 2025
In Transcendence 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 Søren 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 Beginners enacts 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.
By:  
Imprint:   FITZCARRALDO EDITIONS
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 197mm,  Width: 125mm, 
ISBN:   9781804271957
ISBN 10:   1804271950
Pages:   184
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming

Clare Carlisle is Professor of Philosophy at King's College London, and the author of eight books on philosophy and philosophers, including Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard and most recently The 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.

Reviews for Transcendence for Beginners

'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 'Clare Carlisle's The Marriage Question is the best book I've read on George Eliot.' - John Carey, Sunday Times 'Eloquent and original ... [Carlisle] combines a biographer's eye for stories with a philosopher's nose for questions.... Masterly and enriching.... The deal historian [of marriage] will need great tact and an impious curiosity. Carlisle has both.' - James Wood, New Yorker 'In this thrilling book, the academic philosopher Clare Carlisle explores the novelist's interrogation of ""the double life"", meaning not only Eliot's own 25 years of unsanctioned coupledom with Lewes, but also the difficult love relationships she unleashed on her heroines.... Carlisle speaks of wanting to employ biography as philosophical inquiry and here she succeeds magnificently. With great skill and delicacy she has filleted details from Eliot's own life, read closely into her wonderful novels and, most importantly, considered the wider philosophical background in which she was operating.' - Kathryn Hughes, Guardian


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