Philosopher of the Heart, Clare Carlisle
Philosopher of the Heart, Clare Carlisle
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Philosopher of the Heart
The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard

Author: Clare Carlisle

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 10 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/18/2020


Synopsis

Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most passionate and challenging of all modern philosophers, and is often regarded as the founder of existentialism. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen pursuing the question of existence—how to be a human being in the world?—while exploring the possibilities of Christianity and confronting the failures of its institutional manifestation around him.

Much of his creativity sprang from his relationship with the young woman whom he promised to marry, then left to devote himself to writing, a relationship which remained decisive for the rest of his life. He deliberately lived in the swim of human life in Copenhagen, but alone, and died exhausted in 1855 at the age of forty-two, bequeathing his remarkable writings to his erstwhile fiancée.

Clare Carlisle's innovative and moving biography writes Kierkegaard's life as far as possible from his own perspective, to convey what it was like actually being this Socrates of Christendom—as he put it, living life forwards yet only understanding it backwards.

About Clare Carlisle

Clare Carlisle is professor of philosophy at King's College London. She is the author of several books, including Spinoza's Religion, Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Soren Kierkegaard, and On Habit. She has also edited George Eliot's translation of Spinoza's Ethics. She grew up in Manchester, studied philosophy and theology at Cambridge, and now lives in London.


Reviews

Goodreads review by César on September 25, 2022

La corte de Kierkegaard parece estar compuesta de apasionados y fervientes seguidores, temperamentos anhelantes que ven en la figura del pensador y escritor danés un compromiso vital radical y verdadero. La persona de Kierkegaard, pese a haberse puesto en el centro de su reflexión, resulta enigmátic......more

Goodreads review by Murtaza on December 12, 2020

"If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair? I......more

Goodreads review by Tavan on January 02, 2021

This was one of the most thorough accounts of the lives of Kierkegaard that I've seen. Regarded by many as the "Father of Existentialism", Kierkegaard explored the depths of the human condition with a zeal that was unparalleled at the time. The book provides intimate details of the inner workings of......more

Goodreads review by Levi on January 08, 2021

After answering the question of who were they?*, the most important task for a biographer is to justify themselves—justify their presence and voice—as the deliverer of the answer to that most important question. There are lesser writers than Carlisle, and these lesser writers would not have been abl......more

Goodreads review by Bryan on December 22, 2019

One of the best biographies I’ve ever read. Just beautifully written.......more