Imagination Now : A Richard Kearney Reader

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 Kearney’s work, which addresses our current moment of crisis and division, providing pathways of creative response and healing. This book follows Kearney’s 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 Université.