Transcendence for Beginners

“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

“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 Beginners is a transformative and transcending experience.”
— Frances Wilson, author of Electric Spark

“A book of great intricacy and 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 of Cold Enough for Snow

“Transcendence for Beginners is a brilliant book – one of the most intelligent and sophisticated meditations on life-writing I’ve 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 of The Invention of Angela Carter

“A work of thrilling lucidity and substance, on the singularity of lives and the value of life-writing, in which Clare Carlisle shows 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 of All Sorts of Lives

“A wide ranging and surprisingly moving examination of what it is to have, and live, a life.” —Jessie Greengrass, author of The High House

“Like William James – an earlier Gifford lecturer also fascinated by experiences that are hard to describe – [Carlisle] combines close readings of texts (notably those of Spinoza, Eliot and Proust) with examples from her own life . . . We can make our own shape out of her words because she is never dogmatic and because she is clearly on an open-ended quest herself. All possibilities remain alive in this subtle, generous and humane book.” —Sarah Bakewell, The Guardian

“Adapted from a series of lectures given on natural theology, this book invites readers to explore a new perspective on philosophy and literature that places a reader in a conceptual centerpoint and seeks profundity in the connections that emanate outward . . . A difficult but rewarding revelation.” —Kirkus Reviews