Clare Carlisle is Professor of Philosophy at King's College London, and author of the recently published book Transcendence for Beginners. For Clare, philosophy is not just an academic discipline, but about the way we choose to live our lives and conduct ourselves in the world. She is especially interested in the way that human beings can embody wisdom and goodness, and how our lives, in the way they unfold and the shape they make, reflect the whole of the cosmos. She sees the literary genre of biography as a useful way of exploring these themes, and amongst her eight published books are the acclaimed lives of Spinoza, Kierkegaard and George Eliot.

She is currently President of the British Society for Philosophy of Religion, and in 2024 was invited to give the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews. These lectures became the source for Transcendence for Beginners.