States of Mind presents a series of dialogues with twenty-two of the world's leading political, philosophical, and literary thinkers. Over the past decade, Richard Kearney has interviewed a range of notable figures, including Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, George Steiner, Charles Taylor, Herbert Marcuse, Seamus Heaney, Jorge Luis Borges, Noam Chomsky, Miroslav Holub, Jean-Franois Lyotard, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Umberto Eco, Neal Ascherson, Emmanuel Levinas, Marina Warner, Paul Ricoeur, Edward Said, Stanilas Breton, Martha Nussbaum, and Vaclav Havel. Each of these critics has helped to shape the most pressing debates of the century in areas such as ethics, art, language, psychology national and international identity, and religion. This searching and lively exchange of ideas, reflecting a multitude of provocative and exciting visions, acts as an introduction to the work of each thinker. The volume addresses issues on a global scale and makes some of the most pioneering and influential thinkers of our time available for the first time to a general readership.
Author
Richard Kearney is the Charles Seelig professor of philosophy at Boston College and has taught at many universities including University College Dublin, the Sorbonne, and the University of Nice. He studied at Glenstal Abbey under the Benedictines until 1972, and was a 1st Class Honours graduate in Philosophy in the Bachelor of Arts graduate class of 1975 in UCD. He completed an M.A. at McGill University with Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, and a PhD with Paul Ricœur at University of Paris X: Nanterre. He corresponded with Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida and other French philosophers of the era. He was also active in the Irish, British, and French media as a host for various television and radio programs on literary and philosophical themes. His work focuses on the philosophy of the narrative imagination, hermeneutics and phenomenology.
