Overview

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.

Full Product Details

9780141998473

Table of Contents

Reviews

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 - often drawing poignant parallels and discontinuities between the women -- Stuart Jeffries * Observer * Eilenberger’s goal is to show that continental disorder and the threat of violence can inspire originality of thought, and he does so compellingly in this ambitious intellectual history -- Barney Horner * New Statesman *

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 *

Author Information

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.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available