Carnal Hermeneutics
Building on a hermeneutic tradition in which accounts of carnal embodiment are overlooked, misunderstood, or underdeveloped, this work initiates a new field of study and concern.
Carnal Hermeneutics provides a philosophical approach to the body as interpretation. Transcending the traditional dualism of rational understanding and embodied sensibility, the volume argues that our most carnal sensations are already interpretations. Because interpretation truly goes "all the way down," carnal hermeneutics rejects the opposition of language to sensibility, word to flesh, text to body.
In this volume, an impressive array of today's preeminent philosophers seek to interpret the surplus of meaning that arises from our carnal embodiment, its role in our experience and understanding, and its engagement with the wider world.
Richard Kearney is the Charles Seelig Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. He is the author of over 20 books, among them the trilogy The God Who May Be (Indiana University Press, 2001), On Stories (Routledge, 2002), and Strangers, Gods, and Monsters (Routledge, 2003), as well as works including Debates in Continental Philosophy (Fordham University Press, 2004), and Anatheism (Columbia, 2011). In 2008 he launched the Guestbook Project, an ongoing artistic, academic, and multi-media experiment in hospitality.
Brian Treanor is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Environmental Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He is the author of Aspects of Alterity (Fordham, 2006) and Emplotting Virtue (SUNY Press, 2014), and the coeditor of A Passion for the Possible (Fordham University Press, 2010), Interpreting Nature (Fordham University Press, 2013), and Being-in-Creation (Fordham University Press, 2015). Current projects include the development of an "earthy" hermeneutics, and a monograph on the experience of joy.