PHILOSOPHY IN THE BOOKSHOP with Clare Carlisle

Transcendence for Beginners

Transcendence for Beginners 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, Clare 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.

Clare Carlisle

Clare Carlisle grew up in Manchester, and studied philosophy (BA, MA and PhD) at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1995 to 2002. She was Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool before joining King’s in 2011.Professor Carlisle is the author of eight books, including philosophical biographies of Søren Kierkegaard and George Eliot, and the editor of George Eliot’s translation of Spinoza’s Ethics. In 2024 she gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews. She is currently President of the British Society for Philosophy of Religion.

Mette Hoeg (Host)

Mette Leonard Høeg, PhD, is a Carlsberg Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Interacting Minds Centre, University of Aarhus, an academic visitor at the Uehiro Oxford Institute and associated fellow at the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, University of Oxford. With an interdisciplinary background in literature, narrative theory and philosophy, her work currently focuses on the ethical and existential dimensions of modern consciousness research, with a special interest in the potential of psychedelics for enhancement of morality and wellbeing.

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