Richard Kearney
University College Dublin, Philosophy, Faculty Member
A precarious balance exists between remaining faithful to one’s own language and history while also maintaining an ethical attentiveness to the Other. The danger in the former is the penchant for colonizing and violently reducing the... more
A precarious balance exists between remaining faithful to one’s own language and history while also maintaining an ethical attentiveness to the Other. The danger in the former is the penchant for colonizing and violently reducing the Other. The danger of the later is a supine servility and inability to offer a linguistic home for welcoming the Other. To navigate these two extremes, the conditional hospitality of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics is brought into dialogue with the unconditional hospitality of Derrida’s deconstruction. What is needed is the more embodied approach of a carnal hospitality that assists in discerning the right ways of touching and not touching, of uniting word and body, teaching us how to incarnate the impossible possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness with the stranger.
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This is an edited, abridged, and revised version of a chapter written by Richard Kearney which will appear in his forthcoming book Touch: Recovering Our Most Vital Sense to be published by Columbia University Press in 2021. The chapter in... more
This is an edited, abridged, and revised version of a chapter written by Richard Kearney which will appear in his forthcoming book Touch: Recovering Our Most Vital Sense to be published by Columbia University Press in 2021. The chapter in the book contains many extensions, footnotes, and references that do not appear in this paper. Many thanks to Professor Kearney for his permission to print a version of this chapter in the Journal of Applied Hermeneutics. Keywords: touch, trauma, healing, carnal hermeneutics
This essay explores Aristotle’s discovery of touch as the most universal and philosophical of the senses. It analyses his central insight in the De Anima that tactile flesh is a “medium not an organ,” unpacking both its metaphysical and... more
This essay explores Aristotle’s discovery of touch as the most universal and philosophical of the senses. It analyses his central insight in the De Anima that tactile flesh is a “medium not an organ,” unpacking both its metaphysical and ethical implications. The essay concludes with a discussion of how contemporary phenomenology—from Husserl to Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray—re-describes Aristotle’s seminal intuition regarding the model of “double reversible sensation.”
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After reviewing the recent publications of Richard Kearney, appearing between 2017 and 2021, including an anthology of his essential writings over his career, and covering topics such as hospitality, God, religion, anatheism, theopoetics,... more
After reviewing the recent publications of Richard Kearney, appearing between 2017 and 2021, including an anthology of his essential writings over his career, and covering topics such as hospitality, God, religion, anatheism, theopoetics, hermeneutics, and touch, there follows a critical engagement with Kearney's work, one that sets out in particular how, despite the very considerable overlap in our work, as fellow travelers in continental philosophy of religion and hermeneutics, our positions differ on what we mean by God and by welcoming the tout autre.
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This is a review essay by Richard Kearney celebrating the recent work of John D Caputo and responding to the companion review essay by Caputo on Kearney's work in this issue of PSC. The author critically considers five volumes by... more
This is a review essay by Richard Kearney celebrating the recent work of John D Caputo and responding to the companion review essay by Caputo on Kearney's work in this issue of PSC. The author critically considers five volumes by Caputo and two recent volumes and a reader devoted to his philosophy. The essay covers most of the key issues in Caputo's later published work including ‘weak theology’, ‘deconstruction’, ‘radical hermeneutics’, ‘hauntology’ and ‘the event of the impossible’.
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This is a review essay by Richard Kearney celebrating the recent work of John D Caputo and responding to the companion review essay by Caputo on Kearney's work in this issue of PSC. The author critically considers five volumes by... more
This is a review essay by Richard Kearney celebrating the recent work of John D Caputo and responding to the companion review essay by Caputo on Kearney's work in this issue of PSC. The author critically considers five volumes by Caputo and two recent volumes and a reader devoted to his philosophy. The essay covers most of the key issues in Caputo's later published work including 'weak theology', 'deconstruction', 'radical hermeneutics', 'hauntology' and 'the event of the impossible'.
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After reviewing the recent publications of Richard Kearney, appearing between 2017 and 2021, including an anthology of his essential writings over his career, and covering topics such as hospitality, God, religion, anatheism, theopoetics,... more
After reviewing the recent publications of Richard Kearney, appearing between 2017 and 2021, including an anthology of his essential writings over his career, and covering topics such as hospitality, God, religion, anatheism, theopoetics, hermeneutics, and touch, there follows a critical engagement with Kearney's work, one that sets out in particular how, despite the very considerable overlap in our work, as fellow travelers in continental philosophy of religion and hermeneutics, our positions differ on what we mean by God and by welcoming the tout autre.
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This essay explores how Paul Ricoeur analyses the body as both flesh and text. Beginning with a phenomenology of embodiment and life in his early philosophy of the will, after his hermeneutic turn in the 1960s he concentrated more on the... more
This essay explores how Paul Ricoeur analyses the body as both flesh and text. Beginning with a phenomenology of embodiment and life in his early philosophy of the will, after his hermeneutic turn in the 1960s he concentrated more on the mediation of flesh through textual interpretation and language. This led Ricoeur beyond Husserl and Levinas and closer to the work of Merleau-Ponty. His later writing opens horizons for rethinking the ‘flesh of the world’ in new ontological and ethical ways.
This essay examines the recent critical debate on the hermeneutics of hospitality. It explores the philosophical and ethical implications of Paul Ricoeur’s notion of linguistic hospitality as a translation between host and guest, enemy... more
This essay examines the recent critical debate on the hermeneutics of hospitality. It explores the philosophical and ethical implications of Paul Ricoeur’s notion of linguistic hospitality as a translation between host and guest, enemy and friend, and compares it to Derrida’s notion of impossible hospitality.
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... Bibliografías, Filosofía - Europa - Historia - Siglo XX, Fenomenología, Existencialismo, Filosofía de la Ciencia, Marxismo, Teoría Crítica, Idealismo, Estructuralismo, Deconstrucción, Modernidad y Posmodernidad, Religión - Filosofía,... more
... Bibliografías, Filosofía - Europa - Historia - Siglo XX, Fenomenología, Existencialismo, Filosofía de la Ciencia, Marxismo, Teoría Crítica, Idealismo, Estructuralismo, Deconstrucción, Modernidad y Posmodernidad, Religión - Filosofía, Filosofía del Siglo XX, Filosofía - Historia. ...
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QUESTIONING ETHICS Questioning Ethics: Contemporary debates in philosophy is a major discussion by some of the world's leading thinkers of crucial ethical issues confronting us today. Original contributions by Habermas, Derrida,... more
QUESTIONING ETHICS Questioning Ethics: Contemporary debates in philosophy is a major discussion by some of the world's leading thinkers of crucial ethical issues confronting us today. Original contributions by Habermas, Derrida, MacIntyre, Ricoeur, Kristeva and ...
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The basic thesis of this essay is that several of our great modern novelistsProust, Joyce and Woolfepitomize a singularly sacramental imagination which celebrates the bread and wine of the everyday. The author suggests that a specific... more
The basic thesis of this essay is that several of our great modern novelistsProust, Joyce and Woolfepitomize a singularly sacramental imagination which celebrates the bread and wine of the everyday. The author suggests that a specific phenomenology of incarnation, ...
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«On pourrait définir simplement le sens du possible comme la faculté de penser tout ce qui pourrait être aussi bien, et de ne pas accorder plus d'importance à ce qui est qu'à ce qui n'est pas. On voit que les conséquences... more
«On pourrait définir simplement le sens du possible comme la faculté de penser tout ce qui pourrait être aussi bien, et de ne pas accorder plus d'importance à ce qui est qu'à ce qui n'est pas. On voit que les conséquences de cette disposition créatrice peuvent être ...
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This collection of essays is dedicated to the prolific career of Paul Ricoeur. In his lifetime, Ricoeur made significant contributions to many fields, such as theology, aesthetics, narratology, linguistics, and of course, philosophy.... more
This collection of essays is dedicated to the prolific career of Paul Ricoeur. In his lifetime, Ricoeur made significant contributions to many fields, such as theology, aesthetics, narratology, linguistics, and of course, philosophy. Within philosophy alone, he engaged ...
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in 'Ethos europäischer Gastlichkeit/Contours of an Ethos of European Hospitality' edited by Michael Staudigl and Andris Breitling, Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2015
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Q. In your analysis of myth in The Symbolism of Evil you demonstrate how myth played an important political role in the ancient cultures of the Babylonians, Hebrews and Greeks etc. And in this same work you declare that 'myth relates... more
Q. In your analysis of myth in The Symbolism of Evil you demonstrate how myth played an important political role in the ancient cultures of the Babylonians, Hebrews and Greeks etc. And in this same work you declare that 'myth relates to events that happened at the beginning of time ...
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This article explores ways in which narrative retelling and remembering might provide cathartic release for sufferers of trauma. It looks at examples drawn from genocide, literature, history and psychotherapy. It draws particularly from... more
This article explores ways in which narrative retelling and remembering might provide cathartic release for sufferers of trauma. It looks at examples drawn from genocide, literature, history and psychotherapy. It draws particularly from Aristotle's theory of mythos-mimesis and Ricœur's theory of narrative configuration.
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STATES OF MIND States of mind is a series of dialogues conducted by Richard Kearney with twenty-two leading political, philosophical and literary thinkers. Each has helped to shape some of the most influential debates of our century: the... more
STATES OF MIND States of mind is a series of dialogues conducted by Richard Kearney with twenty-two leading political, philosophical and literary thinkers. Each has helped to shape some of the most influential debates of our century: the legacy of the European mind, national ...