The Visionaries

Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil and the Salvation of Philosophy

Wolfram Eilenberger, Shaun Whiteside

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English

Penguin
19 November 2024

Philosophy; History of ideas

An enthralling intellectual adventure, starring four women who created new ways of thinking from the ruins of totalitarianism and war

The year is 1933. Hannah Arendt escapes Berlin, seeking refuge among the stateless gathering in Paris. Simone de Beauvoir reimagines the dance between consciousness and the world outside in a Rouen cafe. Ayn Rand labours in Hollywood exile on the novel she believes destined to reignite the flame of liberty in her adoptive nation. Simone Weil, disenchanted with the revolution's course in Russia, devotes her entire being to the plight of the oppressed. Over the next decade, one of the darkest in Europe's history, these four philosophers will conceive in parallel ideas that would circle the globe in the second half of the century, reshaping it.

The Visionaries follows in its protagonists' footsteps from Leningrad to New York, Spain at civil war to France under occupation, as each is uprooted by totalitarianism's ascendence. It shows them facing the injustices, unfreedom and unfathomable violence of their time as women, refugees, activists, resistance fighters - but above all as thinkers. Wolfram Eilenberger expertly distils the radical, brilliant philosophies each lived as well as developed, showing the two to be part of the same story, all testament to thought's redemptive power.

By: Wolfram Eilenberger
Translated by: Shaun Whiteside
Imprint: Penguin
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 130mm, Spine: 24mm
Weight: 301g
ISBN: 9780141998473
ISBN 10: 0141998474
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 19 November 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Wolfram Eilenberger (Author) Wolfram Eilenberger is a founding editor of Philosophie Magazin and host of the Sternstunde Philosophie television programme. He has taught philosophy at the University of Toronto, Indiana University, the Berlin University of the Arts and ETH Z rich. His most recent book, Time of the Magicians, was a runaway bestseller on publication in Germany, where it won the prestigious Bayerischer Buchpreis, as well as in Spain and Italy, and has been translated into more than thirty languages.

Reviews for The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil and the Salvation of Philosophy

Ambitious, enthralling ... this is a wonderful book -- Laura Hackett * The Sunday Times * The ceaseless intellectual questing of all four makes for fascinating reading -- Caroline Moorehead * Guardian * Illuminates the times through which these philosophers developed their ideas - and vice versa -- Stuart Jeffries * Observer *