Imagination Now: A Richard Kearney Reader [Hardcover]

The world is increasingly polarized along religious, ethnic, race, gender, class, and ideological lines. But must such diversity necessarily breed suspicion, fear, or violence? Richard Kearney invites us to consider another path. He wagers that the cause of our divisions often lies not in difference but in a lack of creative imagination. Ever in a spirit of dialogue, he shows how poetics and narrative imagination can break the hold of hostility and open new possibilities of reconciliation, accomplishing what moral arguments alone cannot.

Now, more than ever, there is an urgent need for Kearneys work, which addresses our current moment of crisis and division, providing pathways of creative response and healing. This book follows Kearneys journey through the fields of philosophy of the imagination, hermeneutics, philosophy of religion, ethics, psychology, practical philosophy, and politics. The selection of writings in this volume offers to the specialist and the general reader a concise, well-rounded entry into one of the most prolific and wide-ranging thinkers in contemporary philosophy.

Richard Kearney is Charles Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College. His many publications include The Wake of Imagination (1988), On Stories (2002), Strangers, Gods, and Monsters (2003), Anatheism (2011), and Navigations (2007).


M. E. Littlejohn lectures in Philosophy at the University of New Brunswick and he is a visiting researcher at Sorbonne Universit?.

Murray E. Littlejohn has prepared a gift for those new to Richard Kearneys work and a valuable compendium for those already familiar. It is an exceptional constellation of essays that map the contours of Kearneys ranging conversations and comprehensive writings on the imagination. More than this, it is a catalyst for further reflections on the imagination with Kearney and the philosophical hermeneutical tradition from which he was formed. Such reflections are vital for our times disciplilx