Transcendence for Beginners - Clare Carlisle

Transcendence for Beginners by Clare Carlisle / 216-page paperback published in 2026 by New York Review Books / ISBN 9798896230144 *** A lyrical work of philosophy that draws from the work of Spinoza, George Eliot, biographers, memoirists, and more to examine how wisdom and goodness are transmitted by individual human lives. Transcendence for Beginners is an innovative book about philosophy and life writing, exploring how each practice might complement the other and so contribute to a greater understanding of human existence. Reflecting on writers and thinkers from Europe and India—such as Benedict Spinoza and Søren Kierkegaard, Ramana Maharshi and Marcel Proust—Clare Carlisle examines how deep, genuine wisdom and goodness are transmitted by individual lives. She considers her own intertwined pursuits as a philosopher and a biographer, as well as her roles as a mother and a daughter. Animated by the spirit of inquiry and the desire to share its rewards, Transcendence for Beginners is a generous, enlivening work by one of today's most original thinkers. "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 Beginners offers 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 of Mothers, Fathers and Others "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 of Sojourn "Spanning continents and centuries, traversing mountains and seas, this expansive book asks what it means for a philosopher, or a biographer, to work from life. Carlisle’s beautiful prose fizzes with illuminating questions, stories and, above all, human connections, as she maps out a powerful and moving 'philosophy of the heart.'” —Francesca Wade, author of Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife