And exactly ten years after being driven out of Hitler’s Germany, Hannah Arendt is figuring out her next steps, reflecting that in “these dark times”: Rand is awaiting the publication of her debut book, The Fountainhead, “a philosophical manifesto masquerading as a novel”. Weil has been asked by occupied France’s shadow government to draw up plans and scenarios for the political reconstruction of France (after her offer to go “to the front to die for her ideals” was refused). But each is already possessed of a trained mind, formidable intelligence and a determination to make sense of life, the universe, and everything.īeauvoir is writing her first philosophical essay, is about to publish her first novel and has a play in the works. Each character is a very young woman, only in her thirties. The Visionaries opens at the end of 1943. It builds, to some extent, on Eilenberger’s earlier volume, Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy, which followed four brilliant young men who transformed European philosophy in the agonised decade following the first world war.īoth books weave the work of the philosophers with social history, biography, accounts of the cultural and economic environment, and depictions of the quarrels and agreements, friendships and passions that characterised their communities. The Visionaries traces the gradual unfolding of their systems of thought, including how they changed their minds in response to the radically changed situations they found themselves in. Review: The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the salvation of philosophy – Wolfram Eilenberger, trans Shaun Whiteside (Allen Lane) I had thought myself reasonably schooled in the writings of these women, but discovered how little I actually knew about them – their early work and their jobs, who they knew and loved or loathed, and how the broken stick of 1930s Europe shaped the possibilities for their lives and thought. Eilenberger writes:Īll of them were tormented from an early age by the same questions: What could it be that makes me so different? What is it that I clearly can’t understand and experience like all the others? Am I really driving down the freeway of life in the wrong direction – or is it not perhaps the mass of wildly honking people coming toward me flashing their lights? Though very different, they all “experienced themselves as having been placed fundamentally differently in the world from how other people had been”. It’s told through the occasionally intersecting lives of four brilliant young women philosophers: Simone de Beauvoir and Simone Weil (both French), Russian-American Ayn Rand, and German-Jewish Hannah Arendt, who spent time exiled in France and New York. It’s a wild ride through ten of the worst years in the 20th century, spanning the period from 1933, the year Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, to 1943 and the thick of the second world war. OL20521282W Page_number_confidence 94.20 Pages 278 Pdf_module_version 0.0.18 Ppi 360 Rcs_key 24143 Republisher_date 20220302171620 Republisher_operator Republisher_time 498 Scandate 20220225101519 Scanner Scanningcenter cebu Scribe3_search_catalog isbn Scribe3_search_id 9781847923868 Tts_version 4.The “actual impulse of astonishment” that sparks all philosophising is “honest bafflement that other people live as they do,” writes Wolfram Eilenberger in his new book, The Visionaries. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 12:09:54 Associated-names Arendt, Hannah, 1906-1975, editor Zorn, Harry, translator Bookplateleaf 0008 Boxid IA40380413 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier
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