Synopses & Reviews
Philosopher of the Heart is the groundbreaking biography of renowned existentialist Søren Kierkegaard’s life and creativity, and a searching exploration of how to be a human being in the world.
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 42, 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.
Review
"[A] sparkling, penetrative new biography....With [her] unconventional structure...Carlisle is better able to crack open the philosopher's life....[Philosopher of the Heart] is an essential guide to those beginning or reembarking on their Kierkegaard journey." Sophie Madeline Dess, Washington Post
Review
"Carlisle...has an absolute mastery of Kierkegaard’s life and works. At the same time, she is a lucid and stylish writer who shares some of her subject’s suspicions of the academic approach. She succeeds wonderfully at what is obviously her chief goal, which is to give us some sense of why Kierkegaard’s task mattered so urgently for him, and of why it might matter for us." Christopher Beha, Harper's
Review
"Carlisle tells the story out of chronological order and adds passages of novel-like scene-setting....The vignettes feel like packaging that the reader must unwrap to get to what is really excellent in the book: Carlisle’s analysis of Kierkegaard’s intellectual milieu." Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker
About the Author
Clare Carlisle is Reader in Philosophy and Theology at King’s College London. She is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and has written dozens of articles on philosophy for The Guardian. Her book, On Habit, was named an Outstanding Academic Title of 2014 by Choice, and she has recently edited George Eliot’s translation of Spinoza’s Ethics. She grew up in Manchester, studied philosophy and theology at Cambridge, and now lives in Hackney.