User:Hydrangeans/draft of The Visionaries
 | This is not a Wikipedia article: It is an individual user's work-in-progress page, and may be incomplete and/or unreliable. For guidance on developing this draft, see Wikipedia:So you made a userspace draft. Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
| Author | Wolfram Eilenberger |
|---|---|
| Original title | Feur Der Freiheit: Die Rettung der Philosophie in finsteren Zeiten, 1933–1943 |
| Translator | Shaun Whiteside |
| Genre | Intellectual history |
| Published |
|
| Pages | 386 |
| ISBN | 9780241537374 |
The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Salvation of Philosophy, also published as The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times, is a non-fiction book written by German philosopher Wolfram Eilenberger and translated into English by Shaun Whiteside. Originally published in German as Feur Der Freiheit ("Fire of Freedom"), the book is an intellectual history that follows the lives and thought of Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Ayn Rand, and Simone Weil during the 1930s and early 1940s.
[]
Background
[edit][]
Publication
[edit]Eilenberger's book was originally published in German by Klett-Cotta as Feur Der Freiheit, meaning "Fire of Freedom".[1] Shaun Whiteside translated the book from German into English.[2] In 2023, Allen Lane published the English translation as The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Salvation of Philosophy, and Penguin published it as The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times. Each sold upon release for £25 (GBP) and $32 (USD), respectively.[3] The book is 386 pages long and includes illustrations.[4]
Content
[edit]The Visionaries is an intellectual history and group biography[a] that follows the lives and thought of four writers during the 1930s and early 1940s: Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Ayn Rand, and Simone Weil.[7] An underlying theme of the book is how the four women, in different ways, argued for the value of individualism at a time when forms of social organization that seemed to undermine individuality were ascendant, like fascism, communism, and capitalism.[8] In Eilenberger's words, the four questioned and explored "the importance of other people for one's own life" while often coming to drastically different conclusions.[9]
The book is organized in eight sections which are further subdivided into subtitled subsections, each of which are a few pages long.[6]
[]
The book's concluding section briefly narrates Arendt's, Beauvoir's, and Rand's accomplishments after 1943.[6]
Reception
[edit][]
The Financial Times acknowledged the transcendent connotations of the English title, The Visionaries, but argued that the German title "Fire of Freedom" better captured the book's "idea that it was by squaring up to the true horror of their times that these women were able to think about what freedom meant".[10]
The Sunday Times considered Arendt "the least fleshy of all" four leads.[11] According to the Goethe-Institut, Rand "can sometimes feel short-changed" compared to the others.[12] The American Scholar called Rand "the philosophical joker in this deck of remarkable individuals" whose philosophical vision, while captivating, lacked the nuance of those of her co-protagonists and was "as unwavering as it was unappealing".[13]
Editions
[edit]- Eilenberger, Wolfram (2020). Feur Der Freiheit: Die Rettung der Philosophie in finsteren Zeiten, 1933–1943 [Fire of Freedom: The Salvation of Philosophy in Dark Times, 1933–1943]. Klett-Cotta. ISBN 9783608120370.
- — (2023). The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil and the Salvation of Philosophy. Translated by Whiteside, Shaun. Allen Lane. ISBN 9780241537374.
- — (2023). The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times. Translated by Whiteside, Shaun. Penguin. ISBN 9780593297452.
Notes
[edit]Explanatory
[edit]- ^ The Observer and Goethe-Institut called it a "group biography" and "collective biography" respectively.[5] The Open Letters Review stated that while The Visionaries "isn’t a group biography, it can fill that role for those who aren’t inclined to seek out the definitive books on each woman".[6]
Referential
[edit]- ^ Austin (2024, p. 63); Updegraff (2024).
- ^ Bray (2023, p. 39).
- ^ Economist (2023).
- ^ Szalai (2023).
- ^ Jeffries (2023); Updegraff (2024).
- ^ a b c Canfield (2023).
- ^ Horner (2023, p. 44).
- ^ Horner (2023, p. 44); Szalai (2023).
- ^ Publishers Weekly (2023, p. 113).
- ^ Stonebridge (2023).
- ^ Hackett (2023, p. 20).
- ^ Updegraff (2024).
- ^ Zaretsky (2023, p. 119).
Reviews
[edit]- "A New Book Explains the Intellectual Legacy of Four Women". The Economist. August 24, 2023.
- Austin, Tista (February 2024). "Four Women Seers in a Time of Strife". The Critic. p. 63.
- Bray, Christopher (August 5, 2023). "Four Disparate Intellectual". The Spectator. Vol. 352, no. 10171. p. 39.
- Canfield, Kevin (August 3, 2023). "The Visionaries by Wolfram Eilenberger". Open Letters Review.
- Cleary, Skye C. (November 17, 2023). "Thought in Action: Four Female Philosophers Who Tried to Change the World". The Times Literary Supplement. No. 6294. pp. 22–23.
- Davis, Benjamin P. (2024). "The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times". Contemporary Political Theory. 23: 524–527. doi:10.1057/s41296-024-00679-z.
- Hackett, Laura (July 30, 2023). "The Philosopher Queens of the 20th Century". The Sunday Times. p. 20.
- Horner, Barney (September 8, 2023). "'The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil and the Salvation of Philosophy by Wolfram Eilenberger". New Statesman. Vol. 152, no. 5733. p. 44.
- Jeffries, Stuart (July 30, 2023). "Seers Who Were Shaped by the Shadow of War". The Observer.
- Kelly, Bill (August 1, 2023). "The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times. By Wolfram Eilenberger". Booklist. Vol. 119, no. 22. p. 3.
- Moorehead, Caroline (July 26, 2023). "Four Women Who Changed the World". The Guardian.
- Stonebridge, Lyndsey (July 26, 2023). "The Visionaries: The Women Who Fought Totalitarianism with Their Minds". Financial Times.
- Szalai, Jennifer (August 2, 2023). "How Four Female Philosophers Responded to a Dire Decade". The New York Times.
- "The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times, Wolfram Eilenberger". Publishers Weekly. Vol. 270, no. 20. May 15, 2023. p. 113.
- Updegraff, Eleanor (April 2024). "The Women Who Dared to Think: The Visionaries by Wolfram Eilenberger". Book Blog: Literary Tastings. Goethe-Institut.
- Zaretsky, Robert (Autumn 2023). "Thought Experimenters: Making Sense of a Broken World". The American Scholar. Vol. 92, no. 4. pp. 118–119.