Transcendence for Beginners

by Clare Carlisle

Overview

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. In six short chapters, guided by a pantheon of exemplars drawn from European and Indian traditions as well as her own experience as a biographer and philosopher, Clare Carlisle examines how deep, genuine wisdom and goodness are transmitted by individual lives.

Animated by the spirit of enquiry and the desire to share its rewards, Transcendence for Beginners is a generous, enlivening work by one of the UK’s most original thinkers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798896230144
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	04/07/2026
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Clare Carlisle is the author of eight books on philosophy and philosophers, including Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard and The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life, which won the 2024 PEN Prize for Biography. Carlisle grew up in Manchester, studied philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge, and now lives in London. She is Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London.

Editorial Reviews

"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


"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

From the Publisher