Review of <em>Carnal hermeneutics</em>.


Reviews the book, Carnal Hermeneutics by Richard Kearney and Brian Treanor (2015). When contemporary continental thought is developing in new directions, it may well be in our interests, as Humanistic psychologists, to attend to these shifting tides. This volume, Carnal Hermeneutics, offers exactly such an update on these new developments. These essays offer one of the most representative collections of contemporary continental thought available at this time. Carnal Hermeneutics shows the new philosophical turn away from the overly abstract, relativist and limited emphasis on structural linguistics and deconstruction in favor of a new emphasis on the upsurge of consciousness that is the founding act of incarnation. The second section is a different matter. Titled “Rethinking the Flesh” these essays are primarily devoted to more specialized philosophical discourse—in the wake of Merleau-Ponty. The final section “divine bodies” takes a very radical turn. Here, we witness the application of Kearney’s own idea of anatheism. Carnal embodiment is the heart and soul to a psychology that abhors the desiccating restrictions of a strictly naturalized universe in favor of a psychology of life. If humanistic psychology is to offer a critical, and theoretically rigorous, alternative to the ‘neuro-mania’ and reductionism that has recently only more deeply possessed mainstream psychology, then this collection could serve as a formidable resource. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)