Virtual Memories Show 675:
Clare Carlisle
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“I was interested in that relationship between philosophy and art, between philosophy and life-writing, philosophy and narrative form: it’s really at the heart of this project.”
Philosopher and biographer Clare Carlisle converses & communes with me over her new book, TRANSCENDENCE FOR BEGINNERS: LIFE WRITING AND PHILOSOPHY (NYRB). We talk about her existential moment of being invited to give the Gifford Lectures on natural theology and how it led her wonder what she could say about the knowledge of God, how writing biographies raised philosophical questions on the nature of a life in its entirety, how flexible the notion of transcendence is (and why it doesn’t have to be “rising above” the world so much as “spreading out” into it), and how the lecture mode offered her an opportunity for a different writing voice. We get into the possibility of communion and transmission, the tension between biography and philosophy, the harmfulness of the notion of attainment and what that implies of the seeking of wisdom, and what happens if you’re like Kierkegaard and you hear The Call but don’t know what it’s calling you to do. We also discuss her philosophical love affair with Spinoza and his philosophy of interconnectedness, the bridge she discovered between Spinoza and Indian traditions, the influence of past guest Celia Paul on the lectures, and more. Give it a listen! And go read TRANSCENDENCE FOR BEGINNERS!
“I’d written biographies of thinkers, but with these lectures I felt I needed to say something myself rather than just interpret another thinker.”
“For Spinoza, on a metaphysical level, each of us is completely interconnected with everything else, and each of us is a singular manifestation or expression of the whole.”
“There’s the ongoing yet diffuse effect of the books we read the thinkers we encounter; they become part of our way of thinking.”
“That idea of necessity, that ‘you have to do this,’ interests me. What kind of necessity is it? No one’s forcing you. It’s not even the Kantian moral law. Not logical necessity. So what is it? What is that necessity that we sometimes feel, that THIS is something I have to do.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Clare Carlisle is the author of eight books on philosophy and philosophers, including Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Soren Kierkegaard and The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life, which won the 2024 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. Clare grew up in Manchester, England; studied philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge; and now lives in East London. She is a professor of philosophy at King’s College London.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at the Nassau Inn in Princeton on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Clare by someone else; photo of Katy Mouse by me. It’s on my instagram.