Richard Kearney

The wake of imagination : toward a postmodern culture

A test strip of the type which is dipped into a liquid such as urine for indicating by color information with respect to the liquid. The test strip has a transparent backing on one side of which is located a color-reaction paper with a fastening layer situated between the paper and the backing for fastening the paper to the backing. The fastening layer is opaque and non-reflecting with respect to light, so that while light can pass freely through the backing it will reflected by the color-reaction paper without passing through the backing. The test strip is moved perpendicularly across an optical axis along which light is directed with the light traveling first through the transparent backing and then being reflected by the color-reaction paper. Signals are generated from the light passing through the backing and the light reflected by the color-reaction paper, with the timing of the signal from the reflected light being controlled by the signal from the light which has passed through the transparent backing. The signal from the light which has traveled through the backing is utilized to initiate a time interval after which the signal from the reflected light is generated so as to assure that the operation of the structure providing the signal from the reflected light takes place when the color-reaction paper intersects the optical axis.

Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy

Part I Hermenuetics. Part II Deconstruction. Part III Critical theory. Part IV Psychoanalysis. Part V Applications.

Postnationalist Ireland : politics, culture, philosophy

Introduction: Beyond the Nation State Part One: Politics Study 1: Beyond Sovereignty Study 2: Ideas of a Republic Study 3: Genealogy of Republicanism Study 4: Postnationalism and Postmodernity Study 5: Rethinking Ireland A) On Joint Sovereignty B) Ireland as a European Region C) Towards a British-Irish Council Part Two: Culture Study 6: The Fifth Province Study 7: Myths of Motherland Study 8: Myth and Nation in Modern Irish Poetry Part III: Philosophy Study 9: George Berkely and the Irish Mind Study 10: John Toland - An Irish Philosopher? Study 11: John Tyndall and Irish Science Postscript: Towards a Postnationalist Ireland

The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion

[1] In this volume Richard Kearney takes up the challenge to reflect on God ‘after theGodofmetaphysics’. In the introductionhepresents this volumeasakind of assemblage of thoughts on God, stemming from his doctoral studies on Ricoeur and the co-editing of Heidegger et la question de Dieu (with J. O’Leary, 1981), and more recently his contributions to the Villanova Conferences on ‘religion and postmodernism’ (1997, 1999). How is it possible to ‘overcome the old notion of God as disembodied cause, devoid of dynamism and desire, in favor of a more eschatological notion of God as possibility to come: the posse which calls us beyond the present toward a promised future?’ (3) How is it possible to think God post-onto-theologically? Kearney’s intuition, his ‘wager’, is to conceive of God in terms of a God ‘who may be’, ‘who is May-Be’, a ‘possible God’, a God ‘more than impossible’, with as first name, borrowed from Nicolaus Cusanus: Possest. The God who may be is the God from the kingdom to come, an eschatological God, a God of promise and of powerlessness, of justice and peace, who persuades human beings to answer his call to realize the kingdom. Inspired by and in discussionwith many contemporary thinkers from the so-called continental tradition, Levinas, Derrida, Ricoeur, Marion, Caputo, Breton, and Greisch among others, Kearney sketches ‘the outlines of a narrative [onto-]eschatology’ (8) that favors the possible over the actual, posse over esse. The methodological approach of this reflection on religion is of a phenomenological nature, supplemented with a hermeneutical retrieving of inspiring insights from themain texts of theWestern Judeo-Christian philosophical and intellectual history. This exercise takes the form of an attempt to resist both classical onto-theology and postmodern negative theology. [2] First of all, Kearney undertakes a phenomenology of the persona. The latter term, in a rather Levinasian way, invokes the otherness of the other, that of the other which can never be grasped, known, possessed; which irreducibly differentiates the other from myself, and obstructs every attempt of me to master it. It is indissolubly bound to a concrete person (under its biological, psychological, and social aspects), but never to be reduced to it. The persona is asymmetrically related to me, always already prior to me and later than me – it ‘transfigures me before I configure it’ (16), it has no place, but gives place, Kearney adds. It isToward a phenomenology of the persona I am who I may be transfiguring God desiring God possibilizing God conclusion - poetics of the possible God.

Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action

Introduction - Richard Kearney PART ONE: ESSAYS BY PAUL RICOEUR Reflections on a New Ethos for Europe Fragility and Responsibility Love and Justice PART TWO: ESSAYS FOR PAUL RICOEUR Ricoeur between Heidegger and L[ac]evinas - Peter Kemp Gadamer and Ricoeur on the Hermeneutics of Praxis - Domenico Jervolino Testimony and Attestation - Jean Greisch Refiguring Ricoeur - Mara Rainwater Narrative Force and Communicative Ethics The Other and the Foreign - Bernhard Waldenfels History and the Question of Identity - Edi Pucci Kant, Arendt, Ricoeur Beyond Sovereignty and Deconstruction - Joseph Dunne The Storied Self Rethinking Subjectivity - David Rasmussen Narrative Identity and the Self Narrative Imagination - Richard Kearney Between Ethics and Poetics PART THREE: REVIEW ESSAYS Ricoeur and the Political - Gary Madison Lectures II and a Survey of Recent Ricoeur Publications - Robert D Sweeney Ricoeurs Philosophical Journey - David Tracy Its Import for Religion Oliver Mongins Paul Ricoeur - William Richardson

Terror, philosophy and the sublime: Some philosophical reflections on 11 September

This article begins by posing the question: how can we understand the ‘terror’ of 11 September? First, a brief discussion of the reactions, both psychological and political, provides a background for establishing the particular character of this act of terror as being both inside and outside, simultaneously. The pairing of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in inextricable struggle reminds us of the role monsters have always played in putting a face on the radical alterity of the Other. Second, the experience of terror is examined from three distinct philosophical positions: the fatalism of Baudrillard, the sublime of Kant, and the political of Arendt. Third, a discussion of the media and the role of the viewer of the Event of 11 September ends the discussion. In conclusion, it is suggested that the three ways of responding to the monstrous - practical understanding, working through and pardoning - may provide the best ways to help us empathize with our fellow human beings, which ultimately may move us to a fuller imaginative understanding.

Aliens and others: Between Girard and Derrida

Abstract In the work of Levinas, thought of the Other establishes an infinite responsibility and in that of Derridas latest work an infinite duty of hospitality. Such thought nonetheless leaves a problem of judgement and decision. This paper uses the work of the French philosopher Rene Girard, and in particular his account of scapegoating, to critically discern between malign and benign otherness. It argues that a logic of undecidability needs an ethical hermeneutics capable of discerning between good and evil.

Returning to God after God: Levinas, Derrida, Ricoeur

This essay discusses the anatheist option of returning to God after the atheistic critique of the traditional God of ontotheology. It begins by reviewing the contributions that Levinas and Derrida have made toward this position and the atheistic criticisms of Freud and Nietzsche. The work of Paul Ricoeur is then discussed, showing how the atheist critique is a necessary moment in the development of genuine faith that involves a renunciation of fear and dependency as well as a reaffirmation of life and a return to existence. Kearney goes on to discuss how this return to God is possible, considering the ethical position that makes it possible, the reinterpretations of biblical traditions that it entails, the relationship between the anatheist philosopher and the theologian, and revival of God as an enabling God.

Strangers and Others: From Deconstruction to Hermeneutics

Abstract This paper argues that what is needed to properly engage the human obsession with strangers and enemies is a critical hermeneutic capable of addressing the dialectic of others and aliens, that is, a hermeneutic that can solicit ethical decisions without succumbing to over hasty acts of binary exclusion. It is argued that we need to be able to critically differentiate between different kinds of otherness, while remaining alert to the deconstructive challenge to black-and-white judgements of us-versus-them. We need, at critical moments, to expose the other in the alien and the alien in the other.

God Making: An Essay in Theopoetic Imagination: For Bill Richardson SJ, in Memoriam

Abstract This paper looks at the phenomenon of theopoetic art. The word theopoetic dates back to the Patristic authors—referring to the making divine of the human and the making human of the divine—and has been radically revived as part of the recent religious turn in continental phenomenology and hermeneutics (Keller, Caputo, Nancy, Kearney). Looking at an example of religious art, Andrei Rublev’s Trinity, the author traces the development of the idea of “God making” from Jewish and Christian literature to contemporary debates on the relationship between the secular and the sacred.