Kearney, Richard 1954- (Richard Marius Kearney)

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Kearney, Richard 1954- (Richard Marius Kearney)

PERSONAL:

Born December 8, 1954, in Cork, Ireland; son of Kevin Victor Charles and Ann Lelia Kearney; married Anne Denise Bernard, July 7, 1980; children: Simone, Sarah. Education: University College of Dublin, B.A., 1976; McGill University, M.A., 1977; University of Paris X, Ph.D., 1980. Religion: Roman Catholic.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Boston College, Department of Philosophy, 140 Commonwealth Ave., Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3800. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University College, Dublin, Ireland, lecturer, 1980-90, personal chair of philosophy, 1990-2001, rotating head of philosophy department, 1993-98, chair of film school, 1993—; Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, visiting professor, 1986-2001, Charles Seelig Professor in Philosophy, 2001—; University of Warwick, Warwick, England, external examiner, 1993-97; l'Institut Catholique de Paris, Louvain and Lisbon University, EU Erasmus Exchange Professor, 1994-99; University of Paris, Sorbonne, Paris, France, visiting professor, 1997; University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Nice, France, visiting professor, 1999; has also served as a visiting lecturer or external examiner at numerous universities around the world; serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals and academic publications. Cofounder and chair of Board of Studies, Irish Film School at the National University of Ireland, Dublin, 1994—. Served as speechwriter to Mary Robinson, president of Ireland, 1992.

MEMBER:

Royal Irish Academy, Irish Philosophical Association, British Phenomenological Society, International Association of Philosophy and Literature (IAPL), Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), American Philosophical Association (APA), American Association of Religion (AAR).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Choice Outstanding Book award, 1988; Raconteur Fiction Prize Award 1995; FNAC Meilleur Livre Prix, 1998;

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Joseph Stephen O'Leary) Heidegger et la Question de Dieu, B. Grasset (Paris, France), 1980.

Poétique du Possible: Phénoménologie Herméneutique de la Figuration, Beauchesne (Paris, France), 1984.

Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The Phenomenological Heritage: Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Herbert Marcuse, Stanislas Breton, Jacques Derrida, Manchester University Press (Dover, NH), 1984.

The Irish Mind: Exploring Intellectual Traditions, Wolfhound Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1985.

(Editor) Jeremy Madden Simpson, The No Word Image, Eason & Son (Dublin, Ireland), 1986.

Modern Movements in European Philosophy, Manchester University Press (Wolfeboro, NH), 1987, 2nd edition, 1994.

The Wake of Imagination: Toward a Postmodern Culture, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1988.

(Editor) Across the Frontiers: Ireland in the 1990s: Cultural, Political, Economic, Wolfhound Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1988.

Transitions: Narratives in Modern Irish Culture, Manchester University Press (Manchester, England), 1988.

(Editor) Migrations: The Irish at Home & Abroad, Wolfhound Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1990.

(Editor, with Jean Greisch) Paul Ricoeur, Les Métamorphoses de la Raison Herméneutique: Actes du Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, 1er-11 âout 1988, Editions du Cerf (Paris, France), 1991, published as Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1996.

Angel of Patrick's Hill, Raven Arts Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1991.

Poetics of Imagining: From Husserl to Lyotard, HarperCollinsAcademic (London, England), 1991.

Visions of Europe: Conversations on the Legacy and Future of Europe, Wolfhound Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1992.

(Editor) Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy, Routledge (New York, NY), 1994, reprinted, 2003.

States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Poetics of Modernity: Toward a Hermeneutic Imagination, Humanities Press (Atlantic Highlands, NJ), 1995.

Sam's Fall, Sceptre (London, England), 1995.

(Editor, with Mara Rainwater) The Continental Philosophy Reader, Routledge (New York, NY), 1996.

Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, Philosophy, Routledge (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor, with Philip McGuinness and Alan Harrison) John Toland, John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious: Text, Associated Works, and Critical Essays, Lilliput Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1997.

Poetics of Imagining: Modern to Post-modern, Fordham University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

(Editor, with Mark Dooley) Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, Routledge (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor, with David Rasmussen) Continental Aesthetics: Romanticism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, Blackwell Publishers (Malden, MA), 2001.

The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 2001.

On Stories, Routledge (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor, with Luke Gibbons and Willa Murphy) Encyclopedia of Contemporary Irish Literature, Routledge (London, England), 2002.

Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness, Routledge (New York, NY), 2003.

On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of Minerva, Ashgate Pub. (Burlington, VT), 2004.

Debates in Continental Philosophy: Conversations with Contemporary Thinkers, Fordham University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Navigations: Collected Irish Essays, 1976-2006, Syracuse (Syracuse, NY), 2006.

(Author of foreword) Traversing the Imaginary: Richard Kearney and the Postmodern Challenge, edited by Peter Gratton and John Panteleimon Manoussakis, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 2007.

Contributor to academic journals, including Journal of the Interdisciplinary Crossroads; contributor of chapters to various academic texts.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer, educator, and philosopher Richard Kearney was born December 8, 1954, in Cork, Ireland. He attended University College of Dublin, where he earned his undergraduate degree in 1976, then earned his master's degree the following year from McGill University. In 1980, Kearney graduated with his doctoral degree from the University of Paris. He serves on the faculty at Boston College, where he is the Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy. Over the course of his career, he has also taught at a number of other institutions as a visiting professor, including University College Dublin, the University of Paris (Sorbonne), and the University of Nice. He has also served as a visiting lecturer at numerous universities around the world, as well as an external examiner for graduate thesis work. Outside of his classroom responsibilities, he has spent time on the Arts Council of Ireland and the Higher Education Authority of Ireland, and serving as the chair of the Irish School of Film at University College Dublin. In addition, he has done some political writing, assisting with several drafts for proposals pertaining to the peace settlement with Northern Ireland, and providing speeches for Mary Robinson, the Irish president. He served as a presenter for a multipart television program on culture and philosophy and is the author or editor of numerous books.

Visions of Europe: Conversations on the Legacy and Future of Europe is a collection of talks originally held on Irish television that Kearney organized and orchestrated. The subjects of the interviews include philosophers, politicians, poets, and other important figures in various European circles, each of which discusses the future of the region as pertains to their individual field. Rather than discuss merely the surface questions pertaining to politics or the European economy, each participant looks more deeply into the concept of being part of the European culture and history. Guests for the program included such luminaries as Italian novelist Umberto Eco, Irish president Mary Robinson, and political philosopher Charles Taylor. John McGurk, in a contribution for the Contemporary Review, commented that "it is refreshing to listen to these major international figures discuss the deeper and wider visions of what Europe thinks of itself thereby helping all of us towards some understanding of the multi-cultural European ideal."

Kearney is the author of a three-volume work involving "Thinking in Action" that commenced with his 2001 publication, The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion. On Stories, the second volume, addresses the differences revealed regarding human consciousness compared to non-human creatures, which appear to live very much in the immediate moment—a sort of present-only consciousness. Humans, by contrast, have a narrative structure to their consciousness that allows people to look forward and backward, and to analyze their timeline of existence. Kearney looks at where stories originate and includes references to particular works of literature that are emblematic of literature, analysis, and film, examining how their themes play out repeatedly. He looks at narratives based on country of origin, as well, studying similarities and differences to determine what appears to have a more primal link rather than a mere influence from outside examples. He includes thorough notes for reference on all of the sections. Kearney includes his own take on narrative importance and origins in each part of the book, comparing and contrasting to his analysis. Overall, he looks at how the strength or weakness of any given narrative affects the power it has to influence cultural underpinnings. He also compares narrative that depicts reality in a straightforward manner versus that which uses allegory or fantasy or other techniques. Ciaran Benson, in a review for the Irish Literary Supplement, remarked that "in a necessarily short book Kearney has managed to introduce and embody a very wide range of issues that concern those currently exploring this most central of human capabilities."

Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness, the last of Kearney's three-volume work, ad- dresses ethical concerns in the human experience, using cultural touchstones such as film, literature, and the media as examples of Western civilization's general thoughts and feelings on the subject. His references run the gamut from classic literature and philosophical thought to the most modern icons of popular culture. Media references include such current events as the attacks of September 11, 2001. His main criticisms are held out against postmodern thinkers who focus on division and the concept of otherness rather than unity and common ground. Jeffrey L. Kosky, writing on the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Web site, concluded of the book that "it is clear that Kearney has done much to help clarify the ethical intentions of thinkers such as Levinas, Derrida, and Caputo. His objections have pushed toward clarification of the difference between undecidability and indecision, and in doing so have reminded us of the necessity of deciding and doing, the need to distinguish between willed allegiance to the supposed immemorial and ethical subjection to the immemorial."

In the book On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of Minerva, Kearney offers readers insight into the thought processes and writings of the respected twentieth-century philosopher. He proposes that the basic concept that serves as the foundation of Ricoeur's philosophies is that human beings interpret life and the world simply through their existence. Because existence is ongoing in a general sense, Ricoeur questions how one determines what is new and how it has come into being, and likewise, how the introduction of something new alters the past and makes it fresh. Kearney divides the book into various series of essays that address different aspects of Ricoeur's writings, such as imagination and language, myth and tradition, ideology and utopia, and poetics and ethics, among others. In addition, Kearney has included several interviews with Ricoeur, in which he discusses his life's work. Ricoeur was thorough in his research and philosophy, reading and incorporating a wealth of material into his own ideas, and often following tangents into other disciplines to give his work a more rounded foundation. While Kearney could not possibly address all of Ricoeur's work in a single volume, he provides a variety of analysis and covers a solid representation. William Katerberg, in a review for Utopian Studies, remarked that "the synthetic scope of Kearney's discussion, the clarity of his interpretive analysis, and the carefully chosen interviews, are a fitting tribute to the daunting breadth of Ricoeur's reading and imagination."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, June 1, 1998, Deborah J. Keirsey, review of Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, Philosophy, p. 339.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 1, 2002, T. Loe, review of On Stories, p. 1763; March 1, 2005, C.E. Reagan, review of On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of Minerva, p. 1240.

Comparative Studies in Society and History, July 1, 1999, Andrew J. Wilson, review of Postnationalist Ireland, p. 602.

Contemporary Review, March 1, 1991, J.J.N. McGurk, review of Migrations: The Irish at Home & Abroad, p. 165; May 1, 1993, John McGurk, "Visions of Europe: Conversations on the Legacy and Future of Europe," p. 271.

Current History, March 1, 1998, Douglass Watson, review of Postnationalist Ireland, p. 137.

Ethics, January 1, 1998, review of Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action, p. 452.

Irish Literary Supplement, fall, 2004, Ciaran Benson, "Narrative Notes," p. 27.

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, spring, 1990, Leonard Lawlor, review of The Wake of Imagination: Toward a Postmodern Culture, p. 179.

Journal of Modern Literature, fall, 1989, Patrick A. McCarthy, review of Transitions: Narratives in Modern Irish Culture.

Journal of Religion, July 1, 1990, Eric Ziolkowski, review of The Wake of Imagination, p. 501; October 1, 2004, Andrea C. White, review of The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion, p. 632.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, June 1, 2004, Victor E. Taylor, review of Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness, p. 540.

Modern Fiction Studies, June 22, 1989, Bernard Benstock, review of Transitions, p. 331.

New Statesman & Society, June 23, 1995, review of Sam's Fall, p. 40.

Philosophy Today, spring, 2004, "Thinking at the Limits: Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion in Dialogue with Richard Kearney," p. 3; fall, 2006, "Beyond Continents: Eschatological Dimensions in the Philosophy of William James and Richard Kearney," p. 263.

Political Geography, February 1, 1999, Ben Tonra, review of Postnationalist Ireland, p. 236.

Political Studies, June 1, 1998, Chris Gilligan, review of Postnationalist Ireland, p. 376.

Reference & Research Book News, February 1, 2005, review of On Paul Ricoeur, p. 4; November 1, 2006, review of Navigations: Collected Irish Essays, 1976-2006.

Review of English Studies, February 1, 1990, review of Transitions, p. 146.

SciTech Book News, December 1, 1999, review of Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, p. 6.

Teaching Philosophy, March 1, 2004, Shannon Sullivan, review of Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, p. 85.

Theory, Culture & Society, April 1, 2000, "Paul Ricoeur: Recent Work," p. 121.

Times Literary Supplement, May 19, 1995, Andrea Ashworth, review of Sam's Fall, p. 21; April 11, 1997, Roy Foster, review of Postnationalist Ireland, p. 6.

Utopian Studies, January 1, 2006, William Katerberg, review of On Paul Ricoeur, p. 270.

World Literature Today, spring, 1989, Kieran Quinlan, review of Transitions, p. 349; fall, 1989, review of The Wake of Imagination, p. 753.