Hosting the Stranger: Between Religions

Richard Kearney holds the Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College and has served as a Visiting Professor at University College Dublin, the University of Paris (Sorbonne) and the University of Nice. He is the author of over 20 books on European philosophy and literature and has edited or co-edited 14 more. He was formerly a member of the Arts Council of Ireland, the Higher Education Authority of Ireland and chairman of the Irish School of Film at University College Dublin. As a public intellectual in Ireland, he was involved in drafting a number of proposals for a Northern Irish peace agreement (1983, 1993, 1995) and in speechwriting for the Irish President, Mary Robinson. He has presented five series on culture and philosophy for Irish and/or British television and broadcast extensively on the European media. His most recent work in philosophy comprises a trilogy entitled 'Philosophy at the Limit'. The three volumes are On Stories (Routledge, 2002), The God Who May Be (Indiana UP, 2001) and Strangers, Gods, and Monsters (Routledge, 2003). James Taylor is a teaching fellow in the Philosophy Department at Boston College, USA. His main areas of expertise are Ricoeur, Foucault, Heidegger and Gadamer.