Brian Treanor

Continental philosophy has maintained an abiding interest in transcendence; however, that interest has been shaped by the geographical, historical, and cultural milieu in which continental philosophy developed. But today “continental” philosophy is pursued beyond the boundaries of continental Europe, and it behooves us to ask what might be contributed to phenomenological and hermeneutic accounts of transcendence by traditions rooted in other places, other continents. Some of the first distinctive philosophical contributions of North America—“philosophical” in the sense that term is used in “Western” philosophy—are to be found in the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau, in particular, gave voice to a very different view of transcendence. Thoreau and those thinking in his wake—Henry Bugbee, Annie Dillard, and others—think transcendence in terms of nature, particularly wilderness, in terms of contact, and in terms of wandering or itinerancy. Here transcendence is less about trans-ascendance and its focus on another world, and more about a mode of living deeply in this world.

This edited collection responds to Richard Kearney's recent work on touch, excarnation, and embodiment, as well as his broader work in carnal hermeneutics, which sets the stage for his return to and retrieval of the senses of the lived body. Here, fourteen scholars engage the breadth and depth of Kearney's work to illuminate our experience of the body. The essays collected within take up a wide variety of subjects, from nature to non-human animals to our experience of the sacred and the demonic, from art's account of touching to the political implications of various types of embodiment. Followed by an inspired new reflection from Kearney himself, in which he lays out his vision for "anacarnation," this volume is an important statement about the centrality of touch and embodiment in our experience, and a reminder that, despite the excarnating tendencies of contemporary life, the lived body remains a touchstone for wisdom in our increasingly complicated and fragile world. Written for scholars and students interested in touch, embodiment, phenomenology, and hermeneutics, this diverse and challenging collection contributes to a growing field of scholarship that recognises and attempts to correct the excarnating trends in philosophy and in culture at large.