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A soaring intellectual narrative starring the radical, brilliant, and provocative philosophers Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Ayn Rand by the critically acclaimed author of Time of the Magicians, Wolfram Eilenberger The period from 1933 to 1943 was one of the darkest and most chaotic in human history, as the Second World War unfolded with unthinkable cruelty. It was also a crucial decade in the dramatic, intersecting lives of some of history’s greatest philosophers. There were four women, in particular, whose parallel ideas would come to dominate the twentieth century—at once in necessary dialogue and in striking contrast with one another. Simone de Beauvoir, already in a deep emotional and intellectual partnership with Jean-Paul Sartre, was laying the foundations for nothing less than the future of feminism. Born Alisa Rosenbaum in Saint Petersburg, Ayn Rand immigrated to the United States in 1926 and was honing one of the most politically influential voices of the twentieth century. Her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged would reach the hearts and minds of millions of Americans in the decades to come, becoming canonical libertarian texts that continue to echo today among Silicon Valley’s tech elite. Hannah Arendt was developing some of today’s most important liberal ideas, culminating with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism and her arrival as a peerless intellectual celebrity. Perhaps the greatest thinker of all was a classmate of Beauvoir’s: Simone Weil, who turned away from fame to devote herself entirely to refugee aid and the resistance movement during the war. Ultimately, in 1943, she would starve to death in England, a martyr and true saint in the eyes of many. Few authors can synthesize gripping storytelling with sophisticated philosophy as Wolfram Eilenberger does. The Visionaries tells the story of four singular philosophers—indomitable women who were refugees and resistance fighters—each putting forward a vision of a truly free and open society at a time of authoritarianism and war.
A soaring intellectual narrative starring the radical, brilliant, and provocative philosophers Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Ayn Rand by the critically acclaimed author of Time of the Magicians, Wolfram Eilenberger The period from 1933 to 1943 was one of the darkest and most chaotic in human history, as the Second World War unfolded with unthinkable cruelty. It was also a crucial decade in the dramatic, intersecting lives of some of history’s greatest philosophers. There were four women, in particular, whose parallel ideas would come to dominate the twentieth century—at once in necessary dialogue and in striking contrast with one another. Simone de Beauvoir, already in a deep emotional and intellectual partnership with Jean-Paul Sartre, was laying the foundations for nothing less than the future of feminism. Born Alisa Rosenbaum in Saint Petersburg, Ayn Rand immigrated to the United States in 1926 and was honing one of the most politically influential voices of the twentieth century. Her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged would reach the hearts and minds of millions of Americans in the decades to come, becoming canonical libertarian texts that continue to echo today among Silicon Valley’s tech elite. Hannah Arendt was developing some of today’s most important liberal ideas, culminating with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism and her arrival as a peerless intellectual celebrity. Perhaps the greatest thinker of all was a classmate of Beauvoir’s: Simone Weil, who turned away from fame to devote herself entirely to refugee aid and the resistance movement during the war. Ultimately, in 1943, she would starve to death in England, a martyr and true saint in the eyes of many. Few authors can synthesize gripping storytelling with sophisticated philosophy as Wolfram Eilenberger does. The Visionaries tells the story of four singular philosophers—indomitable women who were refugees and resistance fighters—each putting forward a vision of a truly free and open society at a time of authoritarianism and war.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the cover
THE PROJECT
What's the use of starting if you must stop?" Not a bad way to begin. That was precisely the essay's intended subject: the tension between one's own finite existence and the obvious infinity of the world. After all, it took only a moment's contemplation of this abyss for every plan, every design, every self-appointed goal-be it conquering the globe or mere gardening-to be abandoned to absurdity. In the end, it all boiled down to the same thing. Even if no one else did, time itself would ensure that whatever work one had done came to nothing, consigning it to eternal oblivion. Exactly as if it had never existed. A fate as certain as one's own death.
Why then do something rather than nothing? Or, to put it better in the form of a classical trio of questions: "What, then, is the measure of a man? What goals can he set for himself, and what hopes are permitted him?" Yes, that worked. That was it, the structure she was looking for!
From her corner table on the second floor of the Café de Flore, Simone de Beauvoir observed the passersby. There they walked. The others. Each one a private consciousness. All moving about with their own concerns and anxieties, their plans and hopes. Exactly as she did herself. Just one among billions. The thought sent shivers down her spine every time.
Beauvoir had not agreed to this assignment lightly, not least of all because the subject was one that her publisher, Jean Grenier, had commissioned her to write about. For an anthology on the prevailing intellectual discourse of the day, he wanted her to write something about "existentialism." But neither she nor Jean-Paul Sartre had claimed this term for themselves. It had merely been coined by the arts pages of the newspaper, nothing more.
The irony of the assignment was thus hard to overstate, because if there had been a leitmotif defining her and Sartre's journey over the past ten years, it was refusing to be put into boxes preassigned to them by other people. That kind of revolt had been right at the heart of her project-and still was today.
THE PRIME OF LIFE
Let the others call it "existentialism." She would deliberately avoid the term. And instead, as an author, she would simply do what she loved most since the earliest diary entries of youth: devote herself with the greatest possible concentration to her life's most concerning questions-whose answers she did not yet know. Strangely, they were still the same. Above all was the question of the possible meaning of her own existence. As well as the question of the importance of other people for one's own life.
But Beauvoir had never felt as certain and as free in this reflection as she did now, in the spring of 1943. At the climax of another world war, in the middle of her occupied city. In spite of ration cards and food shortages, in spite of chronic withdrawals from coffee and tobacco (by now Sartre was so desperate that he crawled around every morning on the floor of the café collecting the previous evening's stubs), in spite of daily checks and curfews, in spite of the ubiquitous censorship and German soldiers swaggering about with ever greater shamelessness in the cafés, even here in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. As long as she could find enough time and peace to write, everything else was bearable. Her first novel was due to be published by Gallimard in the autumn. A second one lay completed in the drawer. There was also a play in the works. Now the first philosophical essay would follow. Sartre's work Being and Nothingness-over a thousand pages in length-was also at the publisher. Within a month his drama The Flies would premiere at...
Reviews-
March 1, 2023
Following up the rave-reviewed Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy, about philosophy in the post-World War I era, Eilenberger investigates Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Ayn Rand, and Simone Weil to show how philosophy unfolded before and during World War II in The Visionaries. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2023 Library Journal
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 15, 2023 Eilenberger (Time of the Magicians), founding editor of Philosophie Magazin, weaves the lives and work of four female philosophers as they grappled with notions of freedom and individuality in this illuminating history. Focusing on the years between WWI and WWII, Eilenberger explores how Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Ayn Rand, and Simone Weil struggled with gendered social expectations, financial hardship, and religious persecution as they interrogated “the possible meaning of... existence” and “the importance of other people for one’s own life.” Among other intriguing parallels, Eilenberger links Rand’s contention that “nothing could be more morally fatal than the will to stand by others first and foremost,” with Weil’s belief that the “rhetoric of the collective and of collectivization” was “the clearest expression of an ideologically embellished” oppression. Yet, their conclusions often differed. Rand’s quest “to establish capitalism as the only true expression of a moral coexistence,” for example, stands in contrast to Arendt’s conviction that “self-discovery could only occur through other people.” Though Eilenberger could sometimes weave the narrative’s various threads together more seamlessly, his energetic, multilayered group portrait reveals that these celebrated thinkers were real people whose ideas, as contradictory as they may seem, developed in response to shared social or political circumstances. This fascinates.
May 15, 2023 An exploration of the philosophical foundations of four of the 20th century's most controversial and influential writers. Following his critically acclaimed 2020 book, Time of the Magicians, German author and philosopher Eilenberger holds to a similar template in this group biography of writers Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Ayn Rand, and Simone Weil, interweaving the trajectories of their lives and work from 1933 to 1943. These were harrowing years in particular for Beauvoir, Weil, and German-born Arendt, as the war was gradually unfolding throughout Europe and the German occupation of France was impacting all three. Rand had moved to the U.S. in 1926. With the same acumen as he displayed in Magicians, Eilenberger draws compelling narratives around these women's lives while ably synthesizing much of their core thinking. Their ideas were germinating during this period, informing their more significant output in years to come. The increasingly controversial writing of Arendt, Rand, and Beauvoir would prove particularly relevant in shaping sociopolitical discourse up through the later years of the 20th century--and even to the present day. While Eilenberger frequently argues the case for Weil's greatness, her ideas, increasingly inclined toward religious and mystical matters, may feel less tangibly relevant to contemporary American readers. She is somewhat of an outlier within this ambitious group of legacy-minded writers. While never quite providing a cohesive rationale for joining these four disparate writers together, Eilenberger offers solid insight into a center-minded way of thinking applicable to each. "The philosophizing person," he writes, "seems to be essentially a pariah of deviant insights, the prophet of a life lived rightly....They simply experienced themselves as having been placed fundamentally differently in the world from how other people had been. And deep inside they remained certain of who or what the problem needing treatment was: not themselves, but the Others. Possibly, in fact--all the Others." An absorbing, well-grounded study.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
August 1, 2023 Eilenberger follows Time of the Magicians (2020) with another work of intellectual history via group portrait, focusing on four brilliant thinkers whose work challenged and ultimately shaped twentieth-century thought, four women who responded to the political, social, and economic forces that emerged in the wake of WWI. Weil was an idealistic polymath of singular intellect. Her self-abnegation called attention to oppression, but her uncompromising commitment came at a high cost. Alternatively, Rand fled her native Russia determined to live the American Dream. She worked tirelessly to incorporate her philosophy into a narrative structure, and her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were among the twentieth century's biggest sellers. Arendt absorbed Heidegger and Husserl's phenomenology before establishing her own voice; her The Origins of Totalitarianism remains relevant today. Beauvoir was the intellectual equal to her partner, Jean Paul Sartre, and was key to establishing existentialism as the philosophy du jour in post-war France; her groundbreaking The Second Sex is a foundational feminist text. Eilenberger brilliantly captures the intellectual fervor of this tumultuous time.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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