Philosophy Department Faculty

Richard Kearney

Charles Seelig Professor in Philosophy

Department

Philosophy

Profile

Richard Kearney holds the Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College and formerly served as Professor at University College Dublin, the Sorbonne, and the University of Nice.He is the author of 27 books of European philosophy and literature (including three novels and a volume of poetry) and has edited 23 more. His books have been translated into 21 languages. He has received graduate degrees from McGill University, The National University of Ireland, and The University of Paris, as well as several honorary degrees.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. He is currently a member of the Royal Irish Academy and received the Research Ireland Medal for distinguished international scholarship in 2025.As a public intellectual he presented numerous series on culture and philosophy for Irish and British radio and television, and broadcast extensively on the European and international media (France Culture, ABC, CBC, NPR).He is currently the international director of the Guestbook Project–Hosting the Stranger: Between Hostility and Hospitality.

Recent Publications

Salvage, Arrowsmith, MA, 2023.

Hosting Earth: Facing the Climate Emergency (ed. Richard Kearney, Peter Klapes, and Urwa Hameed), Routledge, NY, 2024.

Thinking Film: Philosophy at the Movies (ed. Richard Kearney and M.E. Littlejohn), Bloomsbury, London, 2023.

Radical Hospitality (with Melissa Fitzpatrick), Fordham UP, NY, 2021.

Touch: Recovering Our Most Vital Sense, Columbia UP, NY, 2021.

Imagination Now: A Richard Kearney Reader (ed. M.E. Littlejohn), Rowman & Littlefield, London, 2020.

The Art of Anatheism (ed. Richard Kearney and Matthew Clemente), Rowman & Littlefield, London, 2018.

Twinsome Minds: An Act of Double Remembrance, with visuals by Sheila Gallagher, Cork University Press and Quinnipiac University Press, , Ireland and Connecticut, 2017.

Reimagining the Sacred: Richard Kearney Debates God (ed. Richard Kearney and Jens Zimmerman), Columbia University Press, New York, 2015.

Carnal Hermeneutics (ed. Richard Kearney and Brian Treanor), Fordham University Press, New York, 2015.

Anatheism, Columbia University Press, New York, 2011.