Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Julienne van Loon, NewSouth, $34.99.
One of the age-old questions of philosophy is what does it mean to live a good life? The intention that van Loon had was to write a book “both academically rigorous and accessible to a broad readership”. This is an extraordinary book.
With The Thinking Woman, she prompts and provokes readers to look at what happens when we apply philosophy to our own everyday circumstances. That is not an easy thing to do, as it can lead to a radical change of attitude to things we have come to accept.
“It can prompt us to investigate more fully our own motivations, or, as has sometimes happened to me, give us a deeply uncomfortable feeling of anger or shame.”
She developed this book after travelling widely and spending considerable hours with her interviewees. Six themes have stayed constant throughout the process: love and friendship, work and play, fear and wonder.
“I wanted to write a companionable book that validates the work of living female thinkers and at the same time provides its readers with a sense that the questions those thinkers are asking are not so different from those we all ponder from time to time.” Julienne celebrates the contribution made by women in the intellectual sphere at the same time as considering their ideas thoroughly, by applying them “to my set of circumstances”.
Profiled in the book are intellectuals and activists. Scholar and writer, Julienne van Loon, applies a range of philosophical ideas to her own experience. There’s engagement with the work of six leading contemporary thinkers and writers — Rosi Braidotti, Nancy Holmstrom, Siri Hustvedt, Laura Kipnis, Julia Kristeva, Marina Warner and discusses fear in relation to the work of Helen Caldicott and Rosie Batty.
Van Loon’s journey is – at once – intellectual and deeply personal, political and intimate. According to Anne Summers in the foreword, this book aims to ‘connect philosophical thinking and everyday life’. Van Loon has done this in an intriguing way.
“The book is partly a memoir, telling often disturbing stories of her childhood, becoming a mother, joining the academy, leaving a long-term relationship, losing a best friend to a violent end, travelling, learning, thinking. It is also an exploration of the themes that have preoccupied her in life and at work and which are the organising themes of this book.”
