Poetics of Modernity: Toward a Hermeneutic Imagination (Philosophy and Literary Theory)

Kearney addresses one of the key issues of modern European thought - how the crisis of values (ethics) relates to the crisis of imagination (poetics). Through a series of in-depth studies of thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Ricoeur, Derrida, and others, Kearney explores the ways in which Continental philosophy, in both its modern and post-modern guises, has endeavoured to respond to these twin crises. Some studies focus on the dilemma of individual imagination faced with the fragmentation of inherited concepts of truth, God, or the good. Others concentrate on conflicts internal to the social imagination of our times - eg: ideology versus utopia, myth versus critique, tradition versus reason, modernity versus post-modernity. Kearney also applies these philosophical disputes to a number of post-modern texts in literature and to painting and politics.