The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times

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. (Aug.)