Poetics of Imagining

What is imagination? Is it possible to reconcile the right to imagine with the right to justice? Are the claims of aesthetic creativity and moral responsibility compatible? This important new book provides a fascinating and accessible account of the major theories of imagination in modern European thought. Richard Kearney examines the theories of many European philosophers, including Husserl, Sartre, Heidegger and Kristeva. Poetics of Imagining breaks new ground by drawing together such diverse philosophies as existentialism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, post-structuralism, post-modernism and deconstruction. It also displays the author's own passionate concern for the claims of the imagination in our postmodern world of fragmentation and fracture.