Beyond Continents: Eschatological Dimensions in the Philosophy of William James and Richard Kearney

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Richard Kearney is a contemporary continental philosopher with interests in the divine beyond the onto-theological.1 In The God Who May Be, Kearney is interested in an eschatological hermeneutic of God rather than a traditional metaphysical interpretation. His justification for such a conceptualization of God is drawn from sacred scriptures of various religious faiths-but in this work, predominantly Christian and Jewish. Echoing Heidegger's claim in the introduction to Being and Time that possibility stands higher than actuality,2 Kearney's eschatological hermeneutic yields an onto-eschatological position of God as possibility. That is, God neither is nor is not but may be. Kearney …